call.

"I want your name," said Hal to the stranger.

"What for?"

"Publication now. Later, prosecution. I'm the editor of the 'Clarion.'"

The man took off his hat and scratched his head. "Leave me out of it,"
he said.

"You won't help me to get justice for this woman?'" cried Hal.

"What can you do to E.M. Pierce's girl in this town?" retorted the man
fiercely. "Don't he own the town?"

"He doesn't own the 'Clarion.'"

"Let the 'Clarion' go up against him, then. I daresn't."

"You'll never get him," said a voice close to Hal's ear. It was Veltman,
the foreman of the 'Clarion' composing-room. "He's a street-car
employee. It's as much as his job is worth to go up against Pierce."

They were pressed back, as the clanging ambulance arrived with its
white-coated commander.

"No; not dead," he said. "Help me get her in."

This being accomplished, Hal hurried up to the city room of the paper.
He remembered the pile of suit-cases in the Pierce car, and made his
deductions.

"Send a reporter to the Union Station to find Kathleen Pierce. She's in
a green touring-car. She's just run down a trained nurse. Have him
interview her; ask her why she didn't turn back after she struck the
woman; whether she doesn't know the law. Find out if she's going to the
hospital. Get her estimate of how fast she was going. We'll print
anything she says. Then he's to go to St. James Hospital, and ask about
the nurse. I'll give him the details of the accident."

News of a certain kind, of the kind important to the inner machinery of
a newspaper, spreads swiftly inside an office. Within an hour, Shearson,
the advertising manager, was at his chief's desk.

"About that story of Miss Pierce running over the trained nurse," he
began.

"What is your suggestion?" asked Hal curiously.

"E.M. Pierce is a power in this town, and out of it. He's the real head
of the Retail Dry Goods Union. He's a director in the Security Power
Products Company. He's the big boss of the National Consolidated
Employers' Association. He practically runs the Retail Dry Goods Union.
Gibbs, of the Boston Store, is his brother-in-law, and the girl's uncle.
Mr. Pierce has got a hand in pretty much everything in Worthington. And
he's a bad man in a fight."

"So I have heard."

"If we print this story--"

"We're going to print the story, Mr. Shearson."

"It's full of dynamite."

"It was a brutal thing. If she hadn't driven right on--"

"But she's only a ki