After a prolonged silence, Dick spoke again, solemnly: "I should like to meet her."
"Whom?"
"Miss--Quincy, did you call her?"
"Oh! Isn't she rather out of your class?"
"Pshaw! Don't talk of classes, now that you're out of college. Do you
know anything about her?"
"Nothing," said Ellery shortly. "I don't consider it my business to go
beyond my official relations."
"Well, I haven't any business relations not to go beyond," said Dick.
"So I mean to pursue the inquiry."
"Do as you like," Ellery answered. "Is that what you came down here to
talk about?"
"No," said Dick, changing his manner. "I came to talk up an editorial
campaign. You don't know my chum, Olaf Ericson, do you? He's the biggest
man on the force, and he's a corker. I've learned more from him about
bad smells than I did in two years of chemistry at New Haven. He knows
this town from the seventh sub-cellar up, and 'him and me is great
friends'. Seriously, Norris, I've begun to get hold of just the facts I
wanted about 'the combine', and it's information that is so very
definite and to the point that I believe I can make it hot for them. I
want the public to be kept informed on everything that is to their
discredit. Now the Star is a fairly clean paper, as papers go. I want
help."
"You'll have to go up higher for that, my boy. It's not for a freshman
like myself to direct the policy of the paper. It would be a pretty
serious matter to run up against those fellows. Mr. Lewis, the old man,
is out, but when he comes back we'll go and have a talk with him."
"Talk to him! I should think so!" Dick exclaimed, and he began to pace
the room and pour out the floods of his information, in wrath of soul
and glow of spirits at his resolve to clean things up.
Meanwhile in Miss Huntress' office, farther down the hall, Lena was
discussing with that determined person the possibility of supplying the
public with more of the kind of literature for which women, in
particular, are supposed to have a mad desire. Miss Huntress was an
adept at filling her page with personalities by which those who know
nobody may have almost as great a knowledge of the great as those who
have achieved the proud distinction of being "in it". Lena had written a
highly successful series of articles on "St. Etienne as seen from the
shop windows," and she longed for new and similar fields to conquer.
"I've been wondering," said Miss Huntress, "if you couldn't get up some
catchy little things on private libraries and picture galleries. If you
can raise some photographs to go with them, you might make quite a hit.
That's the kind of thing that takes. You see it makes people able to
talk about the inside of rich folk's houses."