“I’ll show ’em,” he muttered darkly to himself, “I’ll show ’em they can’t pull that cave-man stuff around my home circle!”
And in half an hour’s time he had an ex-pool-roomer from a private detective agency busily shadowing Gunboat Dorgan, and another quiet-moving agent gathering what data he could as to the physical disabilities of Raoul Uhlan, and an expeditious clerk from the outer office confirming the address and movements of a certain Miss Ruby Reamer. Then, having started these wheels into motion, he hurriedly looked up a point or two of law, consulted his watch, and called up Louis Lipsett, of _The Star_, at the Press Club.
“Louis,” he said over the wire, “I’ve got a great news story for you.”
“Yes, it’s so good, in fact, that you’ve got to come and help me kill it in the bud.”
“Then let me add that what you want isn’t a reporter, but an undertaker,” retorted the unfeeling young White Hope of his over-saffroned daily.
“No, I want you, Louis, and I want you as quick as you can come,” Gerry coolly averred.
“Because you’re the only ink-coolie on this Island who’d keep your word if you once promised to. So come over here in a taxi and let me unload.”
Louis came, and smoked Gerry’s good cigars, and listened, and remembered his promise with a true inkster’s pang of regret.
“Now, the one thing that Avenue-robin can’t stand, the one thing be doesn’t want, in all this, is printer’s ink. So it’s up to us to give him what he’s afraid of. It’s up to us to hold a full-page Sunday story over his fat head. I want you to go right up to him as a reporter from _The Star_, with every detail I’ve given you. I want you to let him see just what it’ll look like when it’s unrolled, the entire unsavory story. And if he isn’t sending a hurry-call in for the soft pedal before you’re out of the elevator I’ll buy _The Star_ and give it to you to play with when you’ve got writer’s cramp in the coco and can’t dream up cable-despatches any more.”
“And supposing our Romeo doesn’t weaken?”
“He can’t help it. But if he’s crazy enough not to, I’ll bring Gunboat Dorgan up there myself. And if that doesn’t turn the trick, I’ll call the rotter out myself and give ’im what he deserves. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll put a bullet into him!”