“Hello, that you Kennedy?... No, I can’t come—too busy. Suppose you run over here.... Got some people there? Well, bring ’em along.... Why can’t they come? Who are they?... Can’t you tell me what the situation is?... All right, then; in a couple of minutes.”

Bruce hung up the receiver and arose.

“So you’re going after all?” asked Billy.

“Guess I’d better,” returned the editor, putting on his coat and hat. “Kennedy says something big has just broken loose. Sounds queer. Wonder what the dickens it can be.” And he started out.

“But how about your celebration story?” queried Billy. “Want it to go down?”

Bruce looked at his watch.

“Two hours till press time; I guess it can wait.” And taking the story back from the boy he tossed it upon his desk.

He stepped out into the local room, which [Pg 14]showed the same kindly tolerance of dirt as did his private office. At a long table two young men sat before typewriters, and in a corner a third young man was taking the clicking dictation of a telegraph sounder.

[Pg 14]

“Remember, boys, keep everything but the celebration down to bones!” Bruce called out. And with that he passed out of the office and down the stairway to the street.

[Pg 15]

[Pg 15]

CHAPTER II

THE BUBBLE REPUTATION

Despite its thirty thousand population—“Forty thousand, and growing, sir!” loyally declared those disinterested citizens engaged in the sale of remote fields of ragweed as building lots—Westville was still but half-evolved from its earlier state of an overgrown country town. It was as yet semi-pastoral, semi-urban. Automobiles and farm wagons locked hubs in brotherly embrace upon its highways; cowhide boots and patent leather shared its sidewalks. There was a stockbroker’s office that was thoroughly metropolitan in the facilities it afforded the élite for relieving themselves of the tribulation of riches; and adjoining it was Simpson Brothers & Company, wherein hick’ry-shirted gentlemen 

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