spiked it with Glidden’s copy.

“No pictures,” explained the reporter, “except one in the Scientific American of last July showing working drawings of a steel monoplane—the one they used in the New York-Chicago flight.”

“Get it and take it to the picture man. Tell him to make a two-column cut of it. No pictures of the young men?”

“Not on file.”

“That’s good,” said Mr. Latimer with his first smile of the evening. “It’ll make a good ‘follow’ to-morrow. By the way, did you get a story of these youngsters right up to date?”

“No,” answered the reporter, somewhat regretfully, “I couldn’t find anything about them after their record flight in a steel monoplane between New York and Chicago last July. I know they were in New York at their Waldorf offices until August. But I can’t find anything about them since that date. If they’ve got a new idea, they’ve had since last August to work on it unmolested by the newspapers.”

Mr. Latimer was shaking his head as he refilled his pipe.

“Get your supper and hurry back. Stewart’ll be here in fifteen or twenty minutes. Then we’ll see what we can all do to find out what they’ve been doing since August. The story is gettin’ to look good.”

Winton was about to hasten away when his interest got the better of his judgment and he violated one of the unwritten rules of the Herald office: he questioned his superior.

“I know it isn’t my business, Mr. Latimer,” he began, hesitatingly, “but didn’t Stewart say they have made a new machine that can fly two hundred miles an hour?”

The night city editor nodded his head.

“And he has the details of the machine?”

“All of them,” replied the editor. “But he’s missed the main thing—the story. What are they going to do with such a craft? Why should they test it out in secret—under cover of night?”

“And that’s what we are trying to find out?” asked Winton, showing confusion.

“Certainly,” was the response. “The mere account of a new aeroplane isn’t worth two columns in the Herald. That’s only half the story. Its purpose and possibility make the real story.”

Winton leaned over the desk, his face flushed.

“I know what those boys have done in the past,” he said in a low voice. “There’s only one thing left for them to do now. If you can’t find them and don’t know what that is I’ll make a guess for you: they’re going to cross the Atlantic.”

“Certainly,” was Mr. Latimer’s response. “My own idea precisely. And that is the story the Herald is going to print in the morning.”

But the night city editor was wrong. The Herald did not print such a story in the morning, as will be set forth in the next chapter.