A Double Barrelled Detectice Story

“Some late bird of a reporter stole one of my placards, then hunted the town over and found the other one, and stole that. In this manner he accomplished what the profession call a “scoop”--that is, he got a valuable item, and saw to it that no other paper got it. And so his paper--the principal one in the town--had it in glaring type on the editorial page in the morning, followed by a Vesuvian opinion of our wretch a column long, which wound up by adding a thousand dollars to our reward on the paper’s account! The journals out here know how to do the noble thing-- when there’s business in it.”