Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/32

20 what he knew even about the Powers that befriended him—and then denying that he had opened his loyal and protesting mouth. The reporter to whom he had been talking, worked for the independent "labor journal" that was leading the new political revolt against the railway control of the government of the state; he had had more than one scandal "tipped off" to him by Johns.

"I 'm right in the game with the rest o' them," Johns would tell him. "I got to be—to keep my job. But I would n't weep' any salt tears if the whole bunch was blown to blazes. They make me work fer my bread an' butter—an' they get all the cake."

He had concluded his account of the jobbing of Daneen: "An' him a decent married man! A decent married man!" He was sincere on that point. It had touched his sympathy. It might have excused him to himself for "leaking" to the newspaperman, if he had had any scruples about it. As a matter of fact, he had recently persuaded himself that he was a man of independence who did political "dirty work for the higher-ups " because he had to earn his living under them, but who secretly preserved himself clean of any loyalty to them, in their sculduggery [sic], by criticizing them behind their backs to any one who was not of their following.

Silent Sam's story was published to the state under a startling three-column head "Innocent Man Condemned?"—with the saving question-mark as an