Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/22

 by any one who knew him. Volcon, who trailed him, says he was the most difficult man he ever saw to keep in sight—he would have made a perfect shadow, he made so little impression on any one. Why, jewellers here who knew him well could not give us the colour of his eyes, his height, weight, kind of clothes he wore, or a single detail of his appearance. We tried that, just to satisfy ourselves that Volcon was right."

"No picture of him?"

"Not a picture. They ransacked his apartment in New York, and found a lot of queer junk about gems and jewellery but not so much as a silhouette of him."

"Well, much obliged, Grost! See you later—I want to get this written in six different ways, fifteen hundred words per each way, between now and 10 o'clock to-night. So long!"

Thus the mighty engine of publicity—general publicity—was set in motion in the case of the Goles mystery and the Wrest robbery. Urleigh did his work well, at from five to nine dollars a column, and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. Having the story well distributed as a news sensation, he followed it up with second-day stories, and the theories of rather surprised and wondering sheriffs and police and detective chiefs, who obtained their first information from Urleigh's own tales.

Then Urleigh wrote Sunday specials, which retold