Wilson," said the city editor of _The Daily Record_ to the star rewrite
man. He glanced through the hastily typed report that had come through
on the wireless set erected on the thirty-sixth story of the Record
Building. "Tommy Travers gone, eh? And James Dodd, too! There'll be woe
and wailing along the Great White Way to-night when this news gets out.
They say that half the chorus girls in town considered themselves
engaged to Tommy. Nice fellow, too! Always did like him!"

"Queer, that curtain of fog that seems to lie on the actual site of the
south pole," he continued, glancing over the report again. "So Storm
thinks that Tommy crashed in it, and that it's a million to one against
their ever finding his remains. What's this about beetles? Shells of
enormous prehistoric beetles found by Tommy and Dodd! That'll make good
copy, Wilson. Let's play that up. Hand it to Jones, and tell him to
scare up a catching headline or two."

* * * * *

He beckoned to the boy who was hurrying toward his desk, a flimsy in his
hand, glanced through it, and tossed it toward Wilson.

"What do they think this is, April Fool's Day?" he asked. "I'm surprised
that the International Press should fall for such stuff as that!"

"Why, to-morrow is the first of April!" exclaimed Wilson, tossing back
the cable dispatch with a contemptuous laugh.

"Well, it won't do the I. P. much good to play those tricks on their
subscribers," said the city editor testily. "I'm surprised, to say the
least. I guess their Adelaide correspondent has gone off his head or
something. Using poor Travers's name, too! Of course that fellow didn't
know he was dead, but still...."

That was how _The Daily Record_ missed being the first to give out
certain information that was to stagger the world. The dispatch, which
had evidently outrun an earlier one, was as follows:

ADELAIDE, South Australia, March 31.--Further telegraphic
communications arriving almost continuously from Settler's
Station, signed by Thomas Travers, member of Travers Antarctic
Expedition, who claims to have penetrated earth's interior at
south pole and to have come out near Victoria Desert. Travers
states that swarm of prehistoric beetles, estimated at two
trillion, and as large as men, with shells impenetrable by rifle
bullets, now besieging Settler's Station, where he and Dodd and
Haidia, woman of subterranean race whom they broug