“And you got into the house and had the whole bunch right in your fist and never snapped a shutter!  See here, Miss Murdock I ain’t running a Bible class and you’re not working in the slums,—­you can keep that gush for some other place.  You had your camera and flash,—­I saw you go out with them.  I wanted everything:  corpse of girl, the mother, children; where she was hauled out,—­who hauled her out,—­her lover,—­she went overboard for some fellow, you remember,—­I told you all that.  Well, you’re the limit!”

Joe had moved up closer, now.  He was formulating in his mind what would happen to Katie if he caught the night city editor under his chin and slammed his head against the wall.  He knew what would happen to the editor and to himself, but it was Katie’s fate that kept his hands flat to his sides.

“I would rather throw up my position than have done it, sir,” Katie pleaded.  “There are some things never ought to be printed.  This drowned girl—­”

The night city editor sprang from his chair, brushed the pile of notes aside with his hand, and shouted

“Say, you!  Find that damned boy, somebody, if he isn’t asleep!”

Joe, who was not ten feet away, stepped up and faced him,—­stepped so quickly that the man backed away as if for more room.

“Get a move on and send Miss Parker here.  Hunt for her,—­if she isn’t downstairs she may be at Cobb’s getting something to eat.  Quick, now!” Then he turned to Katie

“You better go home, Miss Murdock.  You’re tired, maybe:  anyhow, you’re way off.  Miss Parker’ll get what we want,—­she isn’t so thin-skinned.  Here, take that stuff with you,—­it’s no use to me.”

The girl reached across the desk, gathered up the scattered notes, and without a word left the room.  On the way downstairs she met Miss Parker coming up, Joe at her heels.  She was older than Katie,—­ and harder; a woman of thirty-five, whose experience had ranged from nurse in a reformatory to a night reporter on a “Yellow.”  The two women passed each other without even a nod.  Joe turned and followed Katie Murdock downstairs and into the night air.  Miss Parker kept on her way.  As she glided through the room to the city editor’s office, she had the air of a sleuth tracking a criminal.

Once outside in the night air, Joe drew Katie from under the glare of the street lamp.  Her eyes were running tears,—­at the man’s cruelty and injustice, she who had worked to any hour of the night to please him.

Joe was boiling.

“I’ll go back and punch him, if you’ll let me.  I heard it all.”

“No, it’ll do no good,—­both of us would get into trouble, then.”

“Well, then, I’ll chuck my job.  This ain’t no place for any decent girl nor man.  Was it pretty bad where you went, Katie?”