* * * * *

By noon of the day, hints of what was coming were riding the winds of general report....

Carefully we read the proofs.

At last there it was—­all the data, statistics, and details of the town’s debauchery and corruption ... damning, in cold type, the administration, and the aquiescent powers in the university.

We ourselves had not as yet begun to perceive what it would lead to—­a state-wide scandal that would echo in the Chicago, San Francisco and New York newspapers, and result in severe criticism of the university faculty for remaining blind to such a condition of affairs ... and how there would be interrogations in the Kansas Legislature and a complete shake-up of the political power in Laurel.

* * * * *

News of the forthcoming expose spread mysteriously in “The Bottoms” before the paper was off the press.  To avoid the coming storm, already negro malefactors and white, were “streaming” as Travers phrased it, “in dark clouds” out of town, for brief sojourns, beyond reach of the compelling subpoena, in Kansas City, Missouri.

By five o’clock the edition, an extra large one, had been almost exhausted, and people were lining up at the newspaper office, paying five cents a copy....

“Senator” Blair rushed back, having heard of what he called our “treachery” and abuse of his confidence, over telephone....

He looked sick and worried, as if he had run in all the way from the little lake, five miles from town, where he had gone for his week-end of idyllic, peaceful fishing....

“You’ve ruined me, you boys have!” he almost sobbed, collapsing fatly in his chair, then he flamed, “by God, I’ll have you each investigated personally and clapped in jail,” ... which threat, however, he did not even try to carry through....

Instead, his paper, and the other two town papers, tried to turn off the affair as a mere college joke, played on a whole community....

But we had expected just such action—­rather the executive genius of Jerome had expected it—­for which reason we had confronted the readers of the Globe with damning facts and statistics, carefully gathered, which presented an insurmountable barrier to evasion.

And as we also had expected, the Civic Betterment League was also dead against us....

“Why,” cried Langworth to me, “why didn’t you bring all the evidence to us, and let us proceed calmly and soberly with the case?”

“Professor Langworth, you are a friend of mine, and a very good one—­but you know very well that the conditions exposed you people knew of all along ... and for years you have dallied along without acting on it.”

“We were biding the proper time!”

“The reason you never started something was your fear of involving the university in the publicity that was sure to follow!...”