Chapter 40 - Page 2

York, smiled widely.

"You see they've got to say something, Jem," he explained. "It's too big a scoop to be passed over. Something's got to be turned in. And it means money to the fellows, too. It's good copy."

"Suppose," suggested Jem, watching him with interest, "you were to write the facts yourself and pass them on to some decent chap who'd be glad to get them."

"Glad!" Tembarom flushed with delight. "Any chap would be'way up in the air at the chance. It's the best kind of stuff. Wouldn't you mind? Are you sure you wouldn't?" He was the warhorse snuffing battle from afar.

Jem Temple Barholm laughed outright at the gleam in his eyes.

"No, I shouldn't care a hang, dear fellow. And the fact that I objected would not stop the story."

"No, it wouldn't, by gee! Say, I'll get Ann to help me, and we'll send it to the man who took my place on the Earth. It'll mean board and boots to him for a month if he works it right. And it'll be doing a good turn to Galton, too. I shall be glad to see old Galton when I go back."

"You are quite sure you want to go back?" inquired Jem. A certain glow of feeling was always in his eyes when he turned them on T. Tembarom.

"Go back! I should smile! Of course I shall go back. I've got to get busy for Hutchinson and I've got to get busy for myself. I guess there'll be work to do that'll take me half over the world; but I'm going back first. Ann's going with me."

But there was no reference to a return to New York when the Sunday Earth and other widely circulated weekly sheets gave prominence to the marriage of Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and Miss Hutchinson, only child and heiress of Mr. Joseph Hutchinson, the celebrated inventor. From a newspaper point of view, the wedding had been rather unfairly quiet, and it was necessary to fill space with a revival of the renowned story, with pictures of bride and bridegroom, and of Temple Barholm surrounded by ancestral oaks. A thriving business would have been done by the reporters if an ocean greyhound had landed the pair at the dock some morning, and snap-shots could have been taken as they crossed the gangway, and wearing apparel described. But hope of such fortune was swept away by the closing paragraph, which stated that Mr. and Mrs. Temple Barholm would "spend the next two months in motoring through Italy and Spain in their 90 h. p. Panhard."

It was T. Tembarom who sent this last item privately to Galton.

"It's not true," his letter added, "but what I'm going to do is nobody's business but mine and my wife's, and this will suit people just as well." And then he confided to Galton the thing which was the truth.

The St. Francesca apartment-house was a very new one, situated on a corner of an as yet sparsely built but rapidly spreading avenue above the "100th Streets"--many numbers above them. There was a frankly unfinished air about the neighborhood,