desk. "I can't understand why so many guys always thought that Vandervere fellow was hard to get at. I got everything I asked and more too. Why, the guy was a phonograph. And it's all in here." He tapped the memorandum pad.
Then, for the first time, Davis looked up, and the expression on his face frightened French momentarily. He recovered quickly, however, and said:
"Well, I'll get to work on writing it. Won't take long. I just wanted to let you know I got it okey."
Davis' red face became even redder as it slowly contorted in a rage that only city editors can summon up.
"You lunkhead!" he stormed. "You nitwit! You're fired! There's no place around here for men like you, who call themselves reporters. Get out!"
French was startled first, then frightened. He stammered:
"But b-boss, I—I don't under"
"So you don't understand, huh? I thought you wouldn't. Hell, French, you knew Vandervere wasn't going to be easy to see. In fact, you would have considered yourself very damned lucky to get into his house. So when you couldn't see him, you decided to frame an interview for me, and you thought I'd be sucker enough to take it. But the funny thing, French, is this: neither one of us knew Jud Vandervere was out of town and had been for the past three or four days."
"B-but w-wait. I did see" French stuttered.
Davis interrupted him: "On the way out, while getting your stuff together, you can get your check. And you might read this, too. It came in on the teletype a few minutes after you left the office."
He handed French a sheet of typewritten paper, and the former reporter turned and left the office, reading the sheet as he wove in and out among the desks.
He sank in the chair at his desk, feeling queer deep down in the pit of his stomach. And it all came to him then: the butler with the gashed forehead, the white-faced young heir, the strange coldness about the house. But he thought, this couldn't be true! Things like this didn't happen! But it was there, all too clearly, on the printed sheet before him:
Alton, April 13.—Judson Vandervere, scion to the immense Vandervere steel fortune, and Henry Felton, butler at the Vandervere home in Shore Oaks, were killed instantly early today when the car young Vandervere was driving apparently skidded on the wet pavement and went over an embankment near here.
Vandervere's neck was broken in the crash, while Felton, who was thrown through the windshield, died when a piece of glass went through his forehead and pierced his brain.
The bodies were positively identified by Vandervere's uncle, who came along a short while after the accident. The three of them had been part of a group who spent the past several days at the Vandervere hunting-lodge on Moose Head Lake.
It is a well known fact that Vandervere was a very reckless driver and had been arraigned several times for . . .
