CHAPTER XIV
I
“Well, that’s the last of it, thank God, and you’re no more pleased than I am, Johnson. And it’s a topping good job you’ve done.”
The weary jobbing man’s face lit up with a pleased smile at Dane’s words.
They stood with Valerie and Ryder and Jimmy beside the jobbing machine which five minutes before had run off the last inset ready now to go out with the paper on Monday. It was the Saturday night before the election, which did not take place till the following Thursday, but it was the last inset and the last chance for special pleading because the voting laws of New Zealand have certain regulations peculiar to that land.
With the idea that the voter shall have a period of comparative peace in which to sum up the arguments he has heard, nothing of a coercive nature, nothing designed to agitate his meditative mind, is allowed to be printed in any paper or displayed in any shape or form for two days prior to the polls. The candidates and their official representatives may deliver their speeches up till election eve, but the newspapers may only report them as said without comment. Straight news may be printed, but also without comment. So that the Monday was Dane’s last chance to swerve the wavering mind. And he had done his most humorous and pungent best in the editorial and in the inset, and in putting into shape the notes Bob had sent in from the field.
The pile of insets made a brilliant bit of colour in the drab composing-room, for Dane had insisted on a red sheet
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