The car had swerved at the corner, but not quite quickly enough. There was a snort of the horn, a scream that gritted on the ear like the clamor of tortured metals, and a huddle of black and white was flung almost at Hal's feet. Equally quick with him, a middle-aged man, evidently of the prosperous working-classes, helped him to pick the woman up. She was a trained nurse. The white band on her uniform was splotched with blood. She groaned once and lapsed, inert, in their arms. "Help me get her to the automobile," said Hal. "This is a hospital case." "What automobile?" said the other. Hal glanced up the street. He saw the green car turning a corner, a full block away. "She didn't even stop," he muttered, in a paralysis of surprise. "Stop?" said the other. "Her? That's E.M. Pierce's she-whelp. True to the breed. She don't care no more for a workin'-woman's life than her father does for a workin'-man's." A policeman hurried up, glanced at the woman and sent in an ambulance call. "I want your name," said Hal to the stranger. "What for?" "Publication now. Later, prosecution. I'm the editor of the 'Clarion.'" The man took off his hat and scratched his head. "Leave me out of it," he said. "You won't help me to get justice for this woman?'" cried Hal. "What can you do to E.M. Pierce's girl in this town?" retorted the man fiercely. "Don't he own the town?" "He doesn't own the 'Clarion.'" "Let the 'Clarion' go up against him, then. I daresn't." "You'll never get him," said a voice close to Hal's ear. It was Veltman, the foreman of the 'Clarion' composing-room. "He's a street-car employee. It's as much as his job is worth to go up against Pierce." They were pressed back, as the clanging ambulance arrived with its white-coated commander. "No; not dead," he said. "Help me get her in." This being accomplished, Hal hurried up to the city room of the paper. He remembered the pile of suit-cases in the Pierce car, and made his deductions. "Send a reporter to the Union Station to find Kathleen Pierce. She's in a green touring-car. She's just run down a trained nurse. Have him interview her; ask her why she didn't turn back after she struck the woman; whether she doesn't know the law. Find out if she's going to the hospital. Get her estimate of how fast she was going. We'll print anything she says. Then he's to go to St. James Hospital, and ask about the nurse. I'll give him the details of the accident." News of a certain kind, of the kind important to the inner machinery of a newspaper, spreads swiftly inside an office. Within an hour, Shearson, the advertising manager, was at his chief's desk. "About that story of Miss Pierce running over the trained nurse," he began. "What is your suggestion?" asked Hal curiously.