Newshound by Stephen Marlowe

McLeod made an appointment to see Jack Lantrel, the Gunman Chief of the _Star-Times_, Saturday morning. He spent the remainder of Friday pondering and drinking a little too much. The combination yielded a hangover, but not even tentative conclusions. While Tracy Kent had become an unexpected enigma, he couldn't spend too much time on it. Wainwright's proposal nagged at all his thoughts, but he kept telling himself he couldn't trust the _World_ reporter. And for the first time he found he didn't like the feeling of power inherent in a newspaperman's position. Having the power of life and death over nameless, faceless people was one thing, but playing the role of the Greek hag who snipped the thread of life with a pair of indifferent scissors for Crippens was quite another.

Lantrel met McLeod in the Gunman's office, greeted him and said, "Dragging me down on Saturday, this better be important. " Jack Lantrel was a harried-looking little man. You always expected a great, bosomy wife to come charging in to henpeck him, although, like McLeod, Lantrel was a bachelor. He straightened the thinkwriter and the other items of office equipment on his desk with mechanical efficiency. He was an old fuddy-duddy, thought McLeod, but he had signed the death warrants for hundreds of people.