King Coal Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: was introduced, and it quickly became clear to Hal that hero was the man he was looking for. Keating knew exactly what questions to ask, and had the whole story in a few minutes. "By thunderI" he cried. "My last edition I " And he pulled out his watch, and sprang to the telephone. " Long distance," he called; then, " 1 want the city editor of the Western City Gazette. And, operator, please see if you can't rash it through. It's very urgent, and last time I had to wait nearly half an hour." He turned back to Hal, and proceeded to ask more questions, at the same time pulling a bunch of copy-paper from his pocket and making notes. He got all Hal's statements about the lack of sprinkling, the absence of escape-ways, the delay in starting the fan, the concealing of the number of men in the mine. " I knew things were crooked up there I " he exclaimed. " But I couldn't get a lead I They kept a man with me every minute of the time. You know a fellow named Predovich? " " I do," said Hal. " The company store-clerk; he once went through my pockets." Keating made a face of disgust. " Well, he was my chaperon. Imagine trying to get the miners to talk to you with that sneak at your heels I 1 said to the superintendent, ' I don't need anybody to escort me around your place.' And he looked at me with a nasty little smile. ' We wouldn't want anything to happen to you while you're in this camp, Mr. Keating.' ' You don't consider it necessary to protect the lives of the other reporters,' I said. 'No,' said he; 'but the Gazette has made a great many enemies, you know.' ' Drop your fooling, Mr. Cart- wright,' I said. ' You propose to have me shadowed while I'm working on this assignment ?' ' You can put it that way,' he answered, ' if you think it'll please the readers of the Gazette.'" ...Read More