," said John.

"Certainly," said Brennan. "Don't think I class Gibson with criminals
like 'Red Mike.' It was either his life or 'Red Mike's' and what choice
was there? I confess, though, it was the excitement more than anything
else that made me shoot."

They were silent for a few minutes.

"Think it over, Gallant," said Brennan, rising and putting a hand on
John's shoulder. "I may sound like a cynic, but I'm not. There's one
thing that disgusts me more than anything else and that's selfish
hypocrisy. I look for the real things in life and I've been disappointed
so often that I frequently misjudge.

"Remember we're newspaper reporters. Whatever we think, whatever we
feel, about things must be kept to ourselves. It isn't our opinion that
people want to read. It isn't how things look to us, but facts, truth,
accuracy, that we must write. Opinions we must leave to the readers to
form for themselves and it is unfair to give them untrue impressions for
them to form their opinions from."

John carried Brennan's words home with him. Until he dropped off to
sleep he thought them over. Perhaps Gibson was a grandstander, a glory
seeker, after all--but was he to be blamed if what he sought above all
else was the admiration of one like Consuello?

Gibson's heroism in preventing the wreck of the "Lark" covered the front
pages and scattered throughout the inside pages of the morning papers.
The whole city talked of him. There were more resolutions of
commendation and he was termed the "fighting crusader," the "man of the
hour."

Spread across the front page was a statement issued by Gibson and
carried under the headline of "Gibson Hits at Police." In this statement
Gibson again condemned Sweeney as inefficient.

"If my detectives, working where Sweeney's men ought to be, had not
discovered 'Red Mike's' plot the 'Lark' would have been wrecked last
night, scores killed, the mail car robbed and 'Red Mike' would have been
over the border today," a part of the statement read.

It was a telling blow to the mayor and Police Chief Sweeney. Gibson was
sweeping everything before him. For the mayor or the chief to have
detracted from Gibson's act by hinting that he should have informed the
police and caused "Red Mike's" arrest without going through with the
plot to the point of assisting in placing the derailer on the track
would have been instantly resented as an embittered and ungrateful
move--a cry of "sour grapes."

During the