Before he could get up, Flash leaped on him and jerked the package from his overcoat pocket. One glance convinced him he had made no mistake. The package plainly was marked for the _Ledger_.
“Hey, get off, will you!” Frowein growled. “Can’t you take a little joke?”
Flash coolly pocketed the package before removing himself from Frowein’s mid-section.
“Your brand of humor doesn’t appeal to me,” he retorted. “And I doubt if it would make such a hit with your editor either!”
“See here,” Frowein protested in quick alarm, “you’re not going to spill this, are you? It was only a joke.”
“A joke which would have cost me my job!”
“I could make it plenty tough for you,” Frowein hinted defensively. “Suppose it should get out that Deems held you up on the Gezzy-Brady fight! But I’m not that sort of fellow. We’ll strike a bargain. You keep your lip buttoned and so will I.”
Flash had no intention of carrying the matter further.
“All right,” he agreed, helping Frowein to his feet. “We’ll call the whole thing a draw.”
The _Globe_ photographer grinned ruefully as he rubbed his chin.
“You pack a wicked wallop,” he said grudgingly.
The cage door opened and the elevator man peered out at the pair.
“Nothing,” muttered Frowein, rescuing his hat from the stairway. “I slipped and fell, that’s all. They ought to keep these vestibules lighted.”
Flash had turned toward the door. He could not resist one parting shot.
“Well, so long, Frowein,” he tossed cheerfully. “From now on, no more ‘hello, hero,’ stuff. I’m just plain Evans to you.”
Flash delivered the airplane crash pictures into the hands of City Editor Riley, whose only comment was that it had taken him long enough to make the trip. In fifteen minutes the prints were on the wirephoto cylinders, by means of which the photos were transmitted to other sections of the country. A short time later the _Ledger_ made the street with a back page devoted to the exclusive shots.
Not even Joe Wells heard the story of how close the _Ledger_ had come to being scooped by the _Globe_. Flash kept the affair strictly to himself, but he had learned a bitter lesson. While he knew there were few persons who would stoop to Luke Frowein’s low trickery, he never again would entirely trust a rival photographer.
