The Secret Pact Part 41

Trembling with excitement, she started the press rolling. Faster and faster it went. In a moment papers dropped so swiftly from the folder that her eye could not follow. A conveyer carried them upward over the presses to the distributing room.

Mr. Parker offered Penny a paper, smiling as he saw her stare at the nameplate. Instead of the _Star_ it read: _The Weekly Times_.

"Why, Dad!" she exclaimed. "They've made a mistake."

"It's no mistake," he corrected. "This is your extra. Your name appears as Managing Editor."

"So that was why DeWitt was so agreeable to all my suggestions?" she laughed. "I might have guessed."

Later, while newsboys cried their wares, Penny and her father sat in the private office, talking with Matthew Judson. From his own lips they learned how he had submitted to blackmail rather than disgrace Pauletta by returning to prison.

"Your case is a deserving one," Mr. Parker told him kindly. "I a.s.sure you we'll never publish the story, and I'll do everything in my power to help you obtain a pardon."

Before leaving the office, Mr. Judson promised Penny he would tell his daughter the truth, allowing her to break her engagement to Major Atchley if she chose.

"We'll go away somewhere," he said. "California, perhaps. Although I'll never try to publish a paper again, at least my life will cease to be a torment."

Alone with her father once more, Penny had two requests to make.

"Name them," he urged.

"Can you get Tillie Fellows a job?"

"Easily."

"And will you take Horney into your own plant?"

"I'll be glad to do it as soon as the _Star_ operates again. Until remodeling work is completed I have no plant."

"Yes, you have, Dad. This building is yours if you can make arrangements with Mr. Veeley."

"Penny! You're willing to give up the _Weekly_?"

"Willing?" she laughed. "I'm hilariously crazy to get rid of it. Matters have reached a state where either I must abandon the paper or my education. I've only awaited a chance to end my career in a blaze of glory."

"A blaze expresses it very mildly," smiled Mr. Parker. "In all modesty, let us say a conflagration!"

"Oh, why be modest?" grinned Penny. "Let's come right out and call it a holocaust! That's the strongest word I know."

THE END