news, isn't it, Mr. Surtaine?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Yes: but here's the facts. That engineer had been kept on duty
forty-eight hours with only five hours off. He was asleep when he ran
past the block and killed those people."

"Is he telling the truth, Mac?" asked Hal in a swift aside to Ellis.

"If he says so, it's right," replied Ellis.

"What do you call that?" pursued the speaker.

"Murder. I call it murder." Max Veltman, who sat just beyond the
speaker, half rose from his chair. "The men who run the road ought to be
tried for murder."

"Oh, _you_ can call it that, all right, in one of your Socialist
meetings," returned the reporter genially. "But I can't."

"Why can't you?" demanded Hal.

"The railroad people would shut down on news to the 'Clarion.' I
couldn't get a word out of them on anything. What good's a reporter who
can't get news? You'd fire me in a week."

"Can you prove the facts?"

"I can."

"Write it for to-morrow's paper. I'll see that you don't lose your
place."

Marchmont sat down, blinking. Again there was silence around the table,
but this time it was electric, with the sense of flashes to come. The
slow drawl of Lindsay, the theater reporter, seemed anti-climatic as he
spoke up, slouched deep in his seat.

"How much do you know of dramatic criticism in this town, Mr. Surtaine?"

"Nothing."

"Maybe, then, you'll be pained to learn that we're a set of liars--I
might even go further--myself among the number. There hasn't been honest
dramatic criticism written in Worthington for years."

"That is hard to believe, Mr. Lindsay."

"Not if you understand the situation. Suppose I roast a show like 'The
Nymph in the Nightie' that played here last week. It's vapid and silly,
and rotten with suggestiveness. I wouldn't let my kid sister go within
gunshot of it. But I've got to tell everybody else's kid sister, through
our columns, that it's a delightful and enlivening _melange_ of high
class fun and frolic. To be sure, I can praise a fine performance like
'Kindling' or 'The Servant in the House,' but I've got to give just as
clean a bill of health to a gutter-and-brothel farce. Otherwise, the
high-minded gentlemen that run our theaters will cut off my tickets."

"Buy them at the box-office," said Hal.

"No use. They wouldn't let me in. The courts have killed honest
criticism by deciding that a manager can keep a critic out on any
pretext or without any. Besides, there's the advertising.