Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/240

 keeping your weather eye open for reporters. That's the only one you can keep open, isn't it? Who shut up the other one for you?"

It was by such ingenious and apparently disinterested questions as these, that the reporter gradually led Roy Sheldon on to tell his story from beginning to end. He was really astonished when the boy brought his narrative to a close, and told himself that he was master of some secrets that would eventually bring Colonel Shelly and his superintendent into trouble, and the runaway Rowe into his rights. More than one reporter has run to earth criminals whom the best detectives could not track, and Roy's visitor suddenly resolved that he would do a little in that line himself. He would have given something handsome to know where Rowe was at that minute and what he intended to do; but Roy could not enlighten him. On the other hand, he asked the reporter to tell him what he knew about Rowe himself.

"That boy is well fixed over there on the island," said he. "Everybody is kind to him, he has everything money can buy, and he