“Good, John. I should be sorry to inconvenience you. And have you thought of your wish?”
MacVeagh grinned. “I’ve had more important things on my mind, Whalen. Go run along now. I’m sorry to lose you; you know that. And I wish you luck, whatever it is you’re up to. Goodbye.”
“Please, John.” The old man’s deep voice was earnest. “I do not wish you to lose what is rightfully yours. What is your wish? If you need money, if you need love—”
MacVeagh thumped his desk. “I’ve got a wish, all right. And it’s not love nor money. I’ve got a paper and I’ve got a debt to that paper and its readers. What happened tonight’ll happen again. It’s bound to. And sometime I may not have the strength to fight it, God help me. So I’ve got a wish.”
“Yes, John?”
“Did you ever look at our masthead? Sometimes you can see things so often that you never really see them. But look at that masthead. It’s got a slogan on it, under where it says ‘Grover Sentinel. ’ Old Jonathan Minter put that slogan there, and that slogan was the first words he ever spoke to me when he took me on here. He was a great old man, and I’ve got a debt to him too, and to his slogan.
“Do you know what a slogan really means? It doesn’t mean a come-on, a bait. It doesn’t mean Eat Wootsy-Tootsie and Watch Your Hair Curl. It means a rallying call, a battle cry.”
“I know, John.”
“And that’s what this slogan is, the Sentinel’s battle cry: ‘We print the truth. ’ So this is my wish, and if anybody had a stack of Bibles handy I’d swear to it on them: May the Sentinel never depart from that slogan. May that slogan itself be true, in the fullest meaning of truth. May there never be lies or suppression or evasions in the Sentinel, because always and forever we print the truth.”
It was impossible to see what Whalen Smith did with his hands. They moved too nimbly. For a moment it seemed as though their intricate pattern remained glowing in the air. Then it was gone, and Whalen said, “I have never granted a nobler wish. Nor,” he added, “a more dangerous one.”
He was gone before MacVeagh could ask what he meant.
II
Wednesday’s extra of the Grover Sentinel carried the full, uncensored story of the murder of Agnes Rogers, and a fine job Molly had done of it. It carried some filling matter too, of course—much of it mats from the syndicate—eked out with local items from the spindles, like the announcement of Old Man Herkimer’s funeral and the secretary’s report of the meeting of the Ladies’ Aid at Mrs. Warren’s.
There was no way of telling that one of those local items was infinitely more important to the future of John MacVeagh and of Grover itself than the front-page story.
MacVeagh woke up around two on Wednesday afternoon. They’d worked all night on the extra, he and Molly and Luke. He’d never thought at the time to wonder where the coffee came from that kept them going; he realized now it must have been Molly who supplied it.
But they’d got out the extra; that was the main thing. Sensationalism? Vultures, as Molly had said? Maybe he might have thought so before H. A. Hitchcock’s visit. Maybe another approach, along those lines, might have gained Hitchcock’s end. But he knew, as well as any man can ever know his own motives, that the driving force that carried them through last night’s frantic activity was no lust for sensationalism, no greed for sales, but a clean, intense desire to print the truth for Grover.
The fight wasn’t over. The extra was only the start. Tomorrow he would be preparing Friday’s regular issue, and in that—
The first stop, he decided, was the station. It might be possible to get something out of Chief Hanby. Though he doubted if the chief was clear enough of debt to Manson’s bank, to say nothing of political obligations, to take a very firm stand against H. A. Hitchcock.
MacVeagh met her in the anteroom of the station. She was coming out of the chief’s private office, and Phil Rogers was with her. He had just his normal pallor now, and looked almost human. Still not human enough, though, to justify the smile she was giving him and the way her hand rested on his arm.
That smile lit up the dark, dusty little office. It hardly mattered that she wasn’t smiling at MacVeagh. Her smile was beauty itself, in the absolute, no matter who it was aimed at. Her every movement was beauty, and her clothes were a part of her, so that they and her lithe flesh made one smooth loveliness.
And this was H. A. Hitchcock’s daughter Laura, and MacVeagh was more tongue-tied than he usually was in her presence. He never could approach her without feeling like a high school junior trying to get up nerve to date the belle of the class.
“Laura—” he said.
She had a copy of the extra in one hand. Her fingers twitched it as she said, “I don’t think there is anything we could possibly say to each other, Mr. MacVeagh.” Philip Rogers was obviously repressing a snicker. MacVeagh turned to him. “I’m glad to see you looking better, Phil. I was worried about you last night. Tell me: how did you happen to find the body?”
Laura jerked at Philip’s arm. “Come on, Phil. Don’t be afraid of the big, bad editor.”
Philip smiled, in the style that best suited his pallid profile. “Quite a journalistic achievement, this
