Page:Vance--The rass bowl.djvu/229

 head-lines that met his eye on the front page proved as bracing as a slap in the face.

"'The Maitland Jewels,'" he read, half aloud: "'Daring Attempt at Burglary. "Mad" Maitland Catches "Handsome Dan" Anisty in the Act of Cracking His Safe at Maitland Manor. Which was Which? Both Principals Disappear.'"

A dull red glow suffused the reader's countenance; he compressed his lips, only opening them once, and then to emit a monosyllabic oath, which can hardly have proved any considerable relief to his surcharged emotional nature.

The news-story was exploited as a "beat"; it could have been little else, since nine-tenths of its "exclusive details" had been born full-winged from the fecund imagination of a busy reporter to whom Maitland had refused an interview while in his bath, some three hours earlier. Maitland discovered with relief that boiled down to essentials it consisted simply of the statement that somebody (presumably himself) had caught somebody (presumably Anisty) burglarizing the library safe at Maitland Manor