"Of course they wouldn't--if we let them in on what we were up to!--for they are staunch supporters of the present administration--but they won't smell a rat till the edition is off the press ... and then it will be too late to stop it!" "In other words," laughed Travers, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his nose, "they'll think they're turning over their paper, _The Globe_, to a bunch of boys to have some harmless fun ... a few sophomoric jokes on the professors, and so forth.... "And they'll wake up, to find we've slipped a real man-size sheet over on them, for the first time in local history!" "It'll raise hell's all I've got to say!" sagely commented the prematurely bald "Colonel," his eyes glinting merrily. "It'll be lots of fun," remarked Travers, characteristically, "and I'm for it, lock, stock, and barrel." "That's not the reason I'm for it; I'm for it for two reasons," reinforced Jerome Miller magisterially, "first, because it will put the Scoop Club on the map as something more than a mere college boys' organisation; secondly, because it will lead to civic betterment, if only temporary--a shaking up where this old burg needs a shaking up ... right at the court house and in the police station.... "But, make no mistake about it,--it's going to kick up a big dust! "Also, remember, no one is going to stand by us ... even the Civic Betterment League, headed by Professor Langworth--your friend, Johnnie--will be angry with us--say our methods are too sensational. "And the university authorities will say we shouldn't have done it because it will give the school a black eye ... it will be Ibsen's _Enemy of Society_ all over again!..." Immediately some of our more conservative members set themselves against the "clean up" ... but Jack Travers and I delivered eloquent, rousing speeches. And the decision was more for full steam ahead. * * * * * "Senator" Blair was easily deluded, and persuaded to turn his paper over to us, for one day. Our strong-featured, energetic president, Jerome Miller, together with the suave, plausible Travers, went to see him, deputation-wise, where he sat, in the Laurel _Globe's_ editorial office,--white and unhealthy-looking, a great, fat slug of a man, with the slug's nature, which battens on the corruption of earth. He liked the idea of the publicity his paper would get through the stunt of the "boys." He did not guess the kind of publicity he would really come into. During the three weeks that we had before we were to bring out the paper we grew quite proficient in the tawdry life lived in the "Bottoms." We found out that most of the ramshackle "nigger" dives were owned by a former judge ... from which he derived exorbitant rents.