Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/110

 and told himself he was upholding the social fabric.

After he had written and filed his story, he told Billy Woods, The Day's star man, about it. Woods despised cub reporters theoretically, but he was always kind to those who came to him for advice.

"There's a great deal in throwing out a good bluff, isn't there?" said Linton.

"Yes," said Woods, "only that was not the reason you bagged that fellow."

"How do you mean?"

"The reason he didn't turn you down was that he wanted the advertising that would come from having his name in the paper as the lawyer to a prominent family," said Billy Woods, who knew his job.

The younger man laughed, and said "That's so."

It is not very pleasant to be interviewing people about divorces, especially when you know perfectly well that the newspaper's motive is not so much to uphold the unit of government as to supply reading-matter that will sell. "Oh, well, all this is good experience," he said to himself. You see he was a sociologist, and he was in this thing to get