saw you were a very difficult man to deal with or to convince, and I
dared not take the risk of letting you know I had the news. You might
very easily have called in Mr. Alder, told him that Hazel had given up
the documents, and sent him flying to Brixton, where very likely the
clerk has a duplicate set. It would have been too late to get the
sensation into any other morning paper, and, even if it were not too
late, you would have had something about the sensation in the _Bugle_,
and so the victory would not have been as complete as it is now. No, I
could not take such a risk. I thought it all out very carefully."

"You credit us with more energy, Miss Baxter, than we possess. I can
assure you that if you had come here at ten or eleven o'clock with the
documents, I should have been compelled to purchase them from you.
However, that is all past and done with, and there is no use in our
saying anything more about it. I am willing to take all the blame for
our defeat on my shoulders, but there are some other things I am not
willing to do, and perhaps you are in a position to clear up a little
misunderstanding that has arisen in this office. I suppose I may take it
for granted that you overheard the conversation which took place between
Mr. Alder and myself in this room yesterday afternoon?"

"Well," said Miss Baxter, for the first time in some confusion, "I can
assure you that I did not come here with the intention of listening to
anything. I came into the next room by myself for the purpose of getting
to see you as soon as possible. While not exactly a member of the staff
of the _Evening Graphite_, that paper nevertheless takes about all the
work I am able to do, and so I consider myself bound to keep my eyes and
ears open on its behalf wherever I am."

"Oh, I don't want to censure you at all," said Hardwick; "I merely wish