light revealed the nurse
asleep with a book on her knees. The patient's eyes were closed and his
breathing was regular. He was coming along. Cutty decided to go to bed.

Meantime, when the elevator touched the ground floor, the operator
observed a prospective passenger.

"Last trip, sir. You'll have to take the stairs."

"Where'll I find the engineer who went up with you just now?"

"The man I took up? Gone to bed, I guess."

"What floor?"

"Nothing doing, bo. I'm wise. You're the fourth guy with a subpoena
that's been after him. Nix."

"I'm not a lawyer's clerk. I'm a reporter, and I want to ask him a few
questions."

"Gee! Has that Jane of his been hauling in the newspapers? Good-night!
Toddle along, bo; there's nothing coming from me. Nix."

"Would ten dollars make you talk?" asked the reporter, desperately.

"Ye-ah--about the Kaiser and his wood-sawing. By-by!"

The operator, secretly enjoying the reporter's discomfiture, shut off
the lights, slammed the elevator door to the latch, and walked to the
revolving doors, to the tune of Garry Owen.

The reporter did not follow him but sat down on the first step of the
marble stairs to think, for there was a lot to think about. He sensed
clearly enough that all this talk about street-railway strikes and
subpoenas was rot. The elevator man and the engineer were in cahoots.
There was a story here, but how to get to it was a puzzler. He had one
chance in a hundred of landing it--tip the mail clerk in the business
office to keep an eye open for the man who called for "Double C" mail.

Eventually, the man who did call for that mail presented a card to the
mail clerk. At the bottom of this card was the name of the chief of the
United States Secret Service.

"And say to the reporter who has probably asked to watch--hands off!
Understand? Absolutely--off!"

When the reporter was informed he blew a kiss into air and sought his
city editor for his regular assignment. He understood, with the wisdom
of his calling, that one didn't go whale fishing with trout rods.

CHAPTER XV

Early the next morning in a bedroom in a rooming house for aliens in
Fifteenth Street, a man sat in a chair scanning the want columns of a
newspaper. Occasionally he jotted down something on a slip of paper.
This man's job was rather an unusual one. He hunted jobs for other
men--jobs in steel mills, great factories, in the textile districts, the
street-car lines, the shipping yards an