“You mean to find out who killed this man?” he said at last.

Spargo nodded his head—­twice.

“I’ll find that out,” he said doggedly.

The editor picked up a pencil, and bent to his desk.

“All right,” he said.  “Go ahead.  You shall have your two columns.”

Spargo went quietly away to his own nook and corner.  He got hold of a block of paper and began to write.  He was going to show how to do things.

CHAPTER SIX

WITNESS TO A MEETING

Ronald Breton walked into the Watchman office and into Spargo’s room next morning holding a copy of the current issue in his hand.  He waved it at Spargo with an enthusiasm which was almost boyish.

“I say!” he exclaimed.  “That’s the way to do it, Spargo!  I congratulate you.  Yes, that’s the way—­certain!”

Spargo, idly turning over a pile of exchanges, yawned.

“What way?” he asked indifferently.

“The way you’ve written this thing up,” said Breton.  “It’s a hundred thousand times better than the usual cut-and-dried account of a murder.  It’s—­it’s like a—­a romance!”

“Merely a new method of giving news,” said Spargo.  He picked up a copy of the Watchman, and glanced at his two columns, which had somehow managed to make themselves into three, viewing the displayed lettering, the photograph of the dead man, the line drawing of the entry in Middle Temple Lane, and the facsimile of the scrap of grey paper, with a critical eye.  “Yes—­merely a new method,” he continued.  “The question is—­will it achieve its object?”

“What’s the object?” asked Breton.

Spargo fished out a box of cigarettes from an untidy drawer, pushed it over to his visitor, helped himself, and tilting back his chair, put his feet on his desk.

“The object?” he said, drily.  “Oh, well, the object is the ultimate detection of the murderer.”

“You’re after that?”

“I’m after that—­just that.”

“And not—­not simply out to make effective news?”

“I’m out to find the murderer of John Marbury,” said Spargo deliberately slow in his speech.  “And I’ll find him.”

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of clues, so far,” remarked Breton.  “I see—­nothing.  Do you?”

Spargo sent a spiral of scented smoke into the air.

“I want to know an awful lot,” he said.  “I’m hungering for news.  I want to know who John Marbury is.  I want to know what he did with himself between the time when he walked out of the Anglo-Orient Hotel, alive and well, and the time when he was found in Middle Temple Lane, with his skull beaten in and dead.  I want to know where he got that scrap of paper.  Above everything, Breton, I want to know what he’d got to do with you!”

He gave the young barrister a keen look, and Breton nodded.

“Yes,” he said.  “I confess that’s a corker.  But I think——­”