second thought I saw no reason why I should not
take advantage of the editor's need. Business was slack and I was
overworked; a succession of petty annoyances had driven me almost to a
nervous breakdown and a vacation at the expense of the New Los Angeles
_Daily Intelligencer_ sounded pleasantly restful after the serious work
of grappling with industrial affairs. Of course I did not need their
paltry few dollars, but at the moment some of my assets were frozen and
a weekly paycheck would be temporarily convenient, saving me the bother
of liquidating a portion of my smaller investments.

Besides, if, as was barely possible, this new growth was in some
unbelievable way an extension of the old, it would of course ruin our
sales of pemmican to the tourists and it behooved me to be on the spot.
I therefore answered: CONSIDER DOUBLE FORMER SALARY WIRE TRANSPORTATION.
Next day the great transcontinental plane pouterpigeoned along the
runway of the magnificent New Los Angeles airport.

I was in no great hurry to see the editor, but took a taxi instead to
the headquarters of the American Alpinists Incorporated where there was
frank worry over the news and acknowledgment that no further
consignments of pemmican would be accepted until the situation became
more settled. I left their offices in a thoughtful mood. Pausing only to
wire Fles to unload as much stock as he could--for even if this were
only a temporary scare it would undoubtedly affect the market--I finally
drove to the _Intelligencer_.

Knowing Le ffacase I hardly expected to be received with either
cordiality or politeness, but I was not quite prepared for the actual
salute. A replica of his original office had been devised, even to the
shabby letters on the door, and he was seated in his chair beneath the
gallery of cartoons. He began calmly enough when I entered, speaking in
a low, almost gentle tone, helping himself to snuff between sentences,
but gradually working up into a quite artistic crescendo.

"Ah, Weener, as you yourself would undoubtedly put it in your inimitable
way, a bad penny always turns up. I could not say _canis revertit suam
vomitem_, for it would invert a relationship--the puke has returned to
the dog.

"It is a sad thought that the listless exercise which eventuated in your
begetting was indulged in by two whose genes and chromosomes united to
produce a male rather than a female child. For think, Weener, if you had
been born a woman, with wh