for, Jimmie?" he
said uncompromisingly.

"Selfishness. Pure selfishness," said Jimmie Dale softly. "They'd guy me
unmercifully if they ever heard of it at the St. James Club. The
honour is all yours, Carruthers. I don't appear on the stage. That's
understood? Yes? Well, then"--he handed over the signed confession--"is
the 'scoop' big enough?"

Carruthers fingered the sheets, but his eyes in a bewildered way
searched Jimmie Dale's face.

"Big enough!" he echoed, as though invoking the universe. "It's the
biggest thing the newspaper game has ever known. But how did you come to
do it? What started you? Where did you get your lead?"

"Why, from you, I guess, Carruthers," Jimmie Dale answered thoughtfully,
with artfully puckered brow. "I remembered that you had said last week
that the Gray Seal never left finger marks on his work--and I saw one on
the seal on Metzer's forehead. Then, you know, I lifted one corner where
the seal overlapped a thread of blood, and, underneath, the thread of
blood wasn't in the slightest disturbed; so, of course, I knew the seal
had been put on quite a long time after the man was dead--not until the
blood had dried thoroughly, to a crust, you know, so that even the damp
surface of the sticky side of the seal hadn't affected it. And then,
I took a dislike to Clayton somehow--and put two and two together,
and took a flyer in getting him to handle the notebook. I guess that's
all--no other reason on earth. Jolly lucky, don't you think?"

Carruthers didn't say anything for a moment. When he spoke, it was
irrelevantly.

"You saved me twenty-five thousand dollars on that reward, Jimmie."

"That's the only thing I regret," said Jimmie Dale brightly. "It wasn't
nice of you, Carruthers, to turn on the Gray Seal that way. And
it strikes me you owe the chap, whoever he is, a pretty emphatic
exoneration after what you said in this morning's edition."

"Jimmie," said Carruthers earnestly. "You know what I thought of him
before. It's like a new lease of life to get back one's faith in him.
You leave it to me. I'll put the Gray Seal on a pedestal to-morrow that
will be worthy of the immortals--you leave it to me."

And Carruthers kept his word. Also, before the paper had been an hour
off the press, Carruthers received a letter. It thanked Carruthers
quite genuinely, even if couched in somewhat facetious terms, for his
"sweeping vindication," twitted him gently for his "backsliding,"
begged to remain