"Thrillers," as he called them, had always disgusted John. A book wherein the hero overcame the villain by desperate means and won the girl by a single stroke of manly dauntlessness was to him like so much trash. Melodramatic plays he despised. Griffith's pictures were the only ones in which he could tolerate a "staged" thrill.

It never came into his mind as he heard the whistle of the "Lark" flying a mile a minute over the rails to what might be a horrible disaster that here was a real "thriller" exceeding the imagination of any cheap novelist, aspiring playwright or industrious scenario writer. Later when he rehearsed in his mind what happened that night, he realized that in fact truth was often stranger than fiction. Every newspaper man eventually comes to the same realization.

In striking contrast to his feeling that minutes were hours a few moments before, it seemed only five or six seconds before the headlight of the oncoming train pierced through the darkness of the night. He felt that it was coming toward them faster than any train had ever traveled. A fear that there had been a mistake and that the engineer could not possibly bring the heavy train to a stop before the locomotive wheels struck the derailer seized him.

The detective was on his feet, rifle ready to be thrown to his shoulder. Brennan leaped up and John saw that he held the automatic in his hand.

Then the sound for which they had so anxiously waited came up to them from the track below. They could hear the brakes grinding and shrieking against the wheels of the locomotive and the coaches.

The detective dashed through the brush, stumbling and falling almost headlong as he pitched himself down into the gully. Brennan, John and Benton were at his heels. John's right hand gripped the automatic Gibson had loaned him.

There was a shot, a curse, another shot. Then it seemed to John a thousand shots were fired. He saw the detective throw the rifle to his shoulder and there was a spurt of flame after a quick aim. In a descending circle he saw the flash of guns fired by the other detectives coming down from the hilltop. He saw Brennan—and it surprised him—shooting down into the gully "throwing" his shots in the cowboy fashion he had read of.

He tripped and fell, the automatic flew from his hand. When he got to his feet, slightly stunned by his fall, the shooting had stopped. He ran into the pit of the gully at reckless speed.

He saw Gibson on his back on the ground, two men kneeling at his side, tearing his shirt from his shoulder. He saw a crimson stain spreading on Gibson's shirt. A few yards away he saw "Red Mike" spilled in a heap, hemmed in by a ring of Gibson's detectives each with a sawed-off shotgun pointed down at him.

"Where's that damned photographer?" Brennan demanded.

"Coming," they heard a voice shout and Benton was beside them, screwing his camera into his tripod as he hurried forward.

"Gibson?" asked John, panting.

"He's all right—bullet scratch on the shoulder—that's all—he got 'Red Mike,' I guess," Brennan answered in jerks.

John looked toward the train. The cowcatcher of the locomotive, which stood panting like some frightened, trembling animal, was less than five feet from the derailer! He saw the engineer of the train lift his cap from his head and scratch his forehead with a finger as he contemplated how close his engine had been to destruction.

Turning he found Gibson on his feet, pale and haggard, his hair tousled, his arm bandaged to his side, posing in the center of a group of detectives for Benton and his camera. The flashlight boomed and a ghastly white light lit up the scene for the briefest fraction of a second.

He followed Gibson and the detectives to where "Red Mike" lay sprawling on the ground. Electric torches held by other detectives put the desperado's prone figure in an arc of light.

Gibson looked down at "Red Mike" in silence.

The wounded man—John could tell that "Red Mike" was fatally wounded—turned over on his back, groaning. His face, covered with a stubble of red beard, was drawn in pain and his eyes seemed dulled. Groaning again he lifted his head and his eyes fixed on Gibson.

"You —— —— —— ——!" he snarled. "You crossed me, you —— —— —— ——!"

Then he dropped back into unconsciousness.

Six of the detectives lifted his limp body and, staggering under the load, started toward the road and the automobile Gibson had driven. They paused only long enough for Benton to snap another flashlight.

By that time the passengers—who, when the train pulled to a sudden stop that was followed by a fusillade of shots, believed it had been halted by bandits—had recovered from their confusion and were pouring out of the coaches, swarming toward the locomotive. A stout woman, whose short hair straggling to her bare shoulders indicated that she had been preparing to retire, screamed and fainted into the arms of a little man who struggled desperately to save her from falling to the ground. Benton set up his camera on the track and his flashlight boomed again as he made a photograph of Gibson standing beside the derailer, the locomotive in the background.

With much pointing of fingers and nodding of heads it was whispered through the crowd that Gibson was the man who had prevented the wreck and shot "Red Mike," who had been rushed away to a hospital in the machine in which he and Gibson had driven to the scene. Men and women in various stages of dishabille, unconscious of their appearance, pressed around him, shaking his hand. A girl threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. To John it was strikingly similar to the scene of an averted train wreck he had once inadvertently seen in a motion picture—if the girl had been Consuello, dressed, say, in a neat and dashing riding habit or some other altogether inappropriate costume.

A fat, white-haired man—typical bank president, John thought—wrote out a check, using the cowcatcher for a desk, and handed it to Gibson with a bow.

John, standing near them, saw the check was for $5,000.

"I cannot accept this for myself, sir," Gibson said. "I am a police commissioner of the city of Los Angeles and if you will permit me to make such disposition of it I will turn it over to some well deserving charity."

"It's yours—do what you want with it," the fat man said. As he walked away John thought that he was fully pleased with himself for having given Gibson the check, that he had paid the man who had saved his life in dollars and cents and what more could he do?

"Somebody give me a cigarette," he heard a voice plead and, turning, he found himself face to face with Brennan.

"Quick, someone, that man has a weapon!" a woman shrieked.

John saw Brennan's automatic protruding from his coat pocket. Brennan, who was talking to Gibson, did not notice him take the pistol from him.

"How did it happen, Mr. Commissioner?" Brennan asked.

"Come along, I'll tell you as we ride back to the city," promised Gibson, who shook the hands thrust out in the path that was opened for him as he walked through the crowd toward the road and the waiting automobiles.

Returning to the city, Gibson told his story. "Red Mike," he said, did not become suspicious until a second or so before the engineer applied the brakes to the train and then his suspicion seemed born of instinct. At the first sound of the screeching brakes, he said "Red Mike" shot at him and he fired back.

"I was lucky—my first shot got him," Gibson said. "He went down, but he continued firing. He was shooting wild and I wasn't half as afraid of his shots as those my men were raining down from the sides of the hill.

"I hope," he said, with a touch of regret, "that 'Red Mike' doesn't die. He's a bad one, as bad as they come, and should be put some place where he can't do harm. I hope, though, that he recovers."

"He hasn't much to live for," Brennan put in.

"No," said Gibson. "He told me that he had been blacklisted by the railroads because he was an I. W. W. Revenge was as much a part of his motive in attempting to wreck the 'Lark' as robbery. I really believe he might have got away with it if——"

"If you hadn't been there," John completed the sentence for Gibson.

"Thanks, Gallant," Gibson acknowledged. "Of course, boys, I'll have to talk to the morning newspapermen when they find me, but you saw the whole thing for yourselves and you've got the only pictures made out there where it happened."

"The A. M.'s will get the break on the story, but we'll have the edge on them at that," said Brennan. "It was too late, you know, for us to come out with an extra unless you had permitted us to tell our city editor what was coming off."

They left the automobile when it reached their office.

"I'm on my way home now to get this doctored up," said Gibson, inclining his head to his bandaged shoulder. "I want a bath and a sound sleep. I haven't had either since I met 'Red Mike.' Good night, boys, see you, tomorrow."

As they went into the office to telephone P. Q. what they had seen and what the [**text not readable**] the first edition in the morning, John, feeling certain of a different answer than those he had received in the past, asked Brennan what he thought of Gibson now.

"He's got nerve, all right," Brennan said. "But——"

"But what?" asked John, wondering what possible criticism Brennan could have in view of Gibson's display of courage.

"But," said Brennan, "he's a grandstander."

"A grandstander?" exclaimed John.

"You said it, after me," said Brennan. "A grandstander, a man who plays to the crowd instead of playing the game for what it's worth."

A surge of exasperation went through John. Was this man incapable of ever believing anything or in anyone?

"Good heavens, Brennan!" he said, hotly. "He risked his life, didn't he?"

"I said he had nerve."

"He did it to save others, didn't he?"

"Others?" said Brennan sarcastically. "Others? Bosh! He did it to be a hero, for public acclamation, for glory, for power. Others? Why, don't you see that he risked the lives of all those others you say he saved just to make himself a hero?"

Brennan's answer, the sarcastic way he gave it, maddened John.

"Ah, you make me tired," he said in his aggravation. "What do you want to look at it that way for? You tell me to keep my faith in men, to believe as much as I can, and then you talk this way."

Apparently ignoring what John said, Brennan telephoned to P. Q.

"Hello, P. Q.," he said. "This is Brennan. Gibson has pulled off a great stunt, great story. The mornings' will have the break on it, but we have the only pictures and lots of eye-witness stuff."

He proceeded to give what even John admitted to himself was an accurate account of the attempt to wreck the "Lark" and how Gibson had saved the train and "shot it out" with "Red Mike."

Hanging up the receiver he looked around to find John standing waiting for him. Lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of the one he had finished he motioned to John to sit down.

"Now, Gallant, you listen to me for a while," he said. "You can believe what I'm going to say or not, but I'm going to tell you a few things. And don't get the idea I'm just talking for the sake of hearing myself blatt.

"Hasn't it ever occurred to you that Gibson didn't have to go through with this business tonight at all? When he discovered that 'Red Mike' was going to try to wreck the 'Lark' he could have had him arrested right then and sent him up for a good long stretch.

"He didn't have to let things go as far as he did. He could have stopped it right there. Why, he actually endangered the lives of everyone on that train simply to make a big show of it. There wouldn't have been so much glory in it for him to have arrested 'Red Mike' when he found out what he was planning to do.

"Sure, he had nerve. He did what few of us would want to do, even if we were forced to. 'Red Mike' got no more than he deserved, but I can't help thinking of him as something of a victim of Gibson's lust for glory and power just the same. A really great man doesn't have to make a display of his courage like Gibson did. A really great man would have been satisfied by the realization that he had prevented a disaster without endangering the lives of others.

"That's why I say Gibson is a grandstander, Gallant. Understand, when I say he's a grandstander I don't mean that he isn't sincere in his crusade to clean up the city. He's simply a grandstander in the way he does things and that makes it impossible for him to ever be a truly big man.

"Grandstanders often make good, but not in the way some of us would like. Oftener they fall down, tripped up by their insatiable desire for public acclaim. Full reward should be given to those who do big things, but they shouldn't do them for the reward. They should work for the satisfaction their accomplishments bring to themselves, within themselves."

"I saw you shooting at 'Red Mike' yourself," said John.

"Certainly," said Brennan. "Don't think I class Gibson with criminals like 'Red Mike.' It was either his life or 'Red Mike's' and what choice was there? I confess, though, it was the excitement more than anything else that made me shoot."

They were silent for a few minutes.

"Think it over, Gallant," said Brennan, rising and putting a hand on John's shoulder. "I may sound like a cynic, but I'm not. There's one thing that disgusts me more than anything else and that's selfish hypocrisy. I look for the real things in life and I've been disappointed so often that I frequently misjudge.

"Remember we're newspaper reporters. Whatever we think, whatever we feel, about things must be kept to ourselves. It isn't our opinion that people want to read. It isn't how things look to us, but facts, truth, accuracy, that we must write. Opinions we must leave to the readers to form for themselves and it is unfair to give them untrue impressions for them to form their opinions from."

John carried Brennan's words home with him. Until he dropped off to sleep he thought them over. Perhaps Gibson was a grandstander, a glory seeker, after all—but was he to be blamed if what he sought above all else was the admiration of one like Consuello?

Gibson's heroism in preventing the wreck of the "Lark" covered the front pages and scattered throughout the inside pages of the morning papers. The whole city talked of him. There were more resolutions of commendation and he was termed the "fighting crusader," the "man of the hour."

Spread across the front page was a statement issued by Gibson and carried under the headline of "Gibson Hits at Police." In this statement Gibson again condemned Sweeney as inefficient.

"If my detectives, working where Sweeney's men ought to be, had not discovered 'Red Mike's' plot the 'Lark' would have been wrecked last night, scores killed, the mail car robbed and 'Red Mike' would have been over the border today," a part of the statement read.

It was a telling blow to the mayor and Police Chief Sweeney. Gibson was sweeping everything before him. For the mayor or the chief to have detracted from Gibson's act by hinting that he should have informed the police and caused "Red Mike's" arrest without going through with the plot to the point of assisting in placing the derailer on the track would have been instantly resented as an embittered and ungrateful move—a cry of "sour grapes."

During the day John received his first praise from P. Q., who called him to his desk.

"Brennan tells me that if it had not been for you we wouldn't have been in on Gibson's little party last night," the city editor said. "I told you Gibson would be a man worth knowing. You're coming along splendidly, Gallant. Just keep it up and practice writing. Read Brennan's stuff and study how he does it. I'll give you all the chance you want and there'll be a little more in your pay envelope this week."

John thanked him and hunted up Brennan.

"It was mighty kind of you to tell P. Q. that I've helped you," he said.

"Forget it," said Brennan.

"Your story had all the others beaten to death," he said, referring to what Brennan had written of the attempted train wreck.

"Forget that, too," said Brennan.

Later in the afternoon he heard from Consuello. He was considerably surprised when he recognized her voice.

"I do so want to thank you for what appeared in your paper about Mr. Gibson," she said. "He tells me that it was the best account of what occurred that appeared in any of the papers."

"I'm sorry," John confessed, "but it happens that I did not write a word of it."

"Really? I thought—he said you were there——"

"I was, but you must remember I'm only a cub. I couldn't be trusted with a big story like that. It was written by our star man."

"Wasn't it wonderful?"

"You mean what Mr. Gibson did?"

"Yes," before he realized he added, "and I have an idea that to hear you say so means more to him than all that has been written."

"He has—been kind enough—to say—something like that."

Then she laughed.

"I suppose," she said, "he wouldn't care very much to have me tell you such things. You wouldn't believe me if I told you that what he said didn't please me, would you?"

"Well——"

"I won't insist that you answer that."

"You spoke of wishing to meet mother?" he ventured. "You were so kind Sunday—could you—would you—visit us at home? It's not much but—it's home, you know."

"I've been waiting for you to say that," she replied. "Make it whenever you wish. I do want to meet your mother."

"Sunday—for dinner?"

"Yes."

"At three."

"At three," she repeated.

Mrs. Gallant rejoiced with him that evening over the increase in salary P. Q. had promised him. She had learned of Consuello from the talks they had each evening, when John recounted to her the events of the day.

"I'll do my best to make things nice for her," Mrs. Gallant said when John spoke to her of having invited Consuello for dinner Sunday. "It is so good of her to wish to meet me."

"Mother," he said, taking her in his arms, "no one can be a friend of mine who is not a friend of yours."

"Not even Consuello?" she asked him, banteringly.