300
/p>
"You have no concern for yourself?" puzzled the minister.
"Oh, I'll come out on top. I always come out on top. What got to my heart was my boy. I thought he'd gone wrong. And now I know he hasn't."
The old charlatan's strong hand fell on his assailant's shoulder, then slipped down supportingly under his arm.
"You look pretty shaky," said he with winning solicitude. "Let me take you home in my car. It's waiting outside."
The Reverend Norman Hale accepted, marveling greatly over the complex miracle of the soul of man--who is formed in the image of his Maker.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE WARNING
Tradition of the "Clarion" office embalms "the evening the typhus story broke" as a nightmare out of which was born history. Chronologically, according to the veracious records of Bim the Guardian of Portals, the tumult began at exactly 10.47, with the arrival of Mr. McGuire Ellis, traveling up the staircase five steps at a jump and calling in a strangled voice for Wayne. That usually controlled journalist rushed out of an inner room in alarm, demanding to know whether New York City had been whelmed with a tidal wave or the King of England murdered in his bed, and in an instant was struggling in the grasp of his fellow editor.
"What's left of the epidemic spread?" demanded the new arrival breathlessly.
"The killed story?"
"What's left of it?" clamored Ellis, dancing all over his colleague's feet. "Can you find the copy? Notes? Anything?"
"Proofs," said Wayne. "I saved a set."
Ellis sat down in a chair and regarded his underling with an expression of stupefied benevolence.
"Wayne," he said, "you're a genius. You're the fine flower and perfect blossom of American journalism. I love you, Wayne. With passionate fervor, I love you. Now, gitta move on!!!" His voice soared and exploded. "We're going to run it to-morrow!"
"To-morrow? How? It isn't up