ilver in his right. He was still
contemplating in awed silence this perplexing fact when Brown handed
him a five-dollar bill.

"Now, you run right out and get stewed to the eyebrows again,"
directed Brown. "Get properly pickled and have it over with, then show
up here in the morning with a headache and get to work. We want you to
take charge of the Sam Stone expose, and in to-morrow's _Bulletin_ we
want the star introduction of your life."

"Do you mean to say you're going to trust the whole field conduct of
this campaign to that chap?" asked Bobby, frowning, when Dillingham
had gone.

"This is his third day, so Dill's safe for to-morrow morning," Brown
hastened to assure him. "He'll be up here early, so penitent that
he'll be incased in a blue fog--and he'll certainly deliver the
goods."

Bobby sighed and gave it up. This was a new world.

Over in his dingy little office, up his dingy flight of stairs, Sam
Stone sat at his bare and empty old desk, looking contemplatively out
of the window, when Frank Sharpe--his luxuriant gray mustache in an
extraordinary and most violent state of straggling curliness--came
nervously bustling in with a copy of the _Bulletin_ in his hand.

"Have you seen this?" he shrilled.

"Heard about it," grunted Stone.

"But what do you think of it?" demanded Sharpe indignantly, and spread
the paper out on the desk before the Boss, thumping it violently with
his knuckles.

Stone studied it well, without the slightest change of expression upon
his heavy features.

"It's a swell likeness," he quietly conceded, by and by.

CHAPTER XXIII

BOBBY BEGINS TO GIVE TESTIMONY THAT HE IS OLD JOHN BURNIT'S SON

Closeted with Jolter and Brown, and mapping out with them the
dangerous campaign into which they had plunged, Bobby did not leave
the office of the _Bulletin_ until six o'clock. At the curb, just as
he was about to step into his waiting machine, Biff Bates hailed him
with vast enthusiasm.

"Go to it, Bobby!" said he. "I'm backing you across the board, win,
place and show; but let me give you a hot tip right from the stables.
You want to be afraid to go home in the dark, or Stone's lobbygows
will lean on you with a section of plumbing."

"I've thought of that, Biff," laughed Bobby; "and I think I'll
organize a band of murderers of my own."

Johnson, whom Bobby had quite forgotten in the stress of the day,
joined them at this moment. Thirty years as head bookkeeper and
confid