Chapter 15 - Page 2

"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 kid."

"The more reason why she shouldn't be driving a car."

"Why have you got it in for her, Mr. Surtaine?" ventured the other.

"I haven't got it in for her. But we've let her off once. And this is too flagrant a case."

"It means a loss of thousands of dollars in advertising, just as like as not."

"That can't be helped."

Shearson did the only thing he could think of in so unheard-of an emergency. He went out to call up the office of E.M. Pierce.

Left to his own thoughts, the editor-in-chief reconstructed the scene of the outrage. None too strong did