"The Despatch," Walsh told him.
The servant turned quickly and stared at Walsh.
He appeared the typical butler, an Englishman of over forty,
heavily built, soft- moving, with ruddy, smooth-shaven cheeks
and prematurely gray hair. But now from his face the look of
perfunctory politeness had fallen; the subdued voice had changed
to a snarl that carried with it the accents of the Tenderloin.
"So, you're the one, are you?" the man muttered.
For a moment he stood scowling; insolent, almost threatening,
and then, once more, the servant opened the door and noiselessly
closed it behind him.
The transition had been so abrupt, the revelation so unexpected,
that the men laughed.
"I don't blame him!" said young Irving. "I couldn't find a
single fact in the whole story. How'd your people get it --
pretty straight?"
"Seemed straight to us," said Walsh.
"Well, you didn't handle it that way," returned the other. "Why
didn't you quote Rainey or Gaylor? It seems to me if a man's on
the point of death" -- he lowered his voice and glanced toward
the closed door -- "that his private doctor and his lawyer might
know something about it."
Standing alone with his back to the window was a reporter who
had greeted no one and to whom no one had spoken.
Had he held himself erect he would have been tall, but he stood
slouching lazily, his shoulders bent, his hands in his pockets.
When he spoke his voice was in keeping with the indolence of his
bearing.
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