news at the morgue today?" I would inquire as we settled
ourselves at the table. And Terry would rattle off the details of the
latest murder mystery with a cheerfully matter-of-fact air that would
have been disgusting had it not been so funny.

It was at this time that I learned his history prior to the days of the
Post-Dispatch. He was entirely frank about himself, and if one half of
his stories were true, he has achieved some amazing adventures. I
strongly suspected at times that the reporting instinct got ahead of the
facts, and that he embroidered incidents as he went along.

His father, Terry Senior, had been an Irish politician of considerable
ability and some prominence on the East River side of the city. The
boy's early education had been picked up in the streets (his father had
got the truant officer his position) and it was thorough. Later he had
received a more theoretical training in the University of New York, but
I think it was his early education which stuck by him longest, and
which, in the end, was probably the more useful of the two. Armed with
this equipment, it was inevitable that he should develop into a star
reporter. Not only did he write his news in an entertaining form, but he
first made the news he wrote about. When any sensational crime had been
committed which puzzled the police, Terry had an annoying way of solving
the mystery himself, and publishing the full particulars in the
Post-Dispatch with the glory blatantly attributed to "our reporter." The
paper was fully aware that Terence K. Patten was an acquisition to its
staff. It had sent him on various commissions to various entertaining
quarters of the globe, and in the course of his duty he had encountered
experiences. One is forced to admit that he was not always fastidious as
to the role he played. He had cruised about the Mediterranean as
assistant cook on a millionaire's yacht, and had listened to secrets
between meals. He had wandered about the country with a monkey and a
hand-organ in search of a peddler he suspected of a crime. He had helped
along a revolution in South America, and had gone up in a captive war
balloon which had broken loose and floated off.

But all this is of no concern at present. I am merely going to chronicle
his achievement in one instance--in what he himself has always referred
to as the "Four-Pools Mystery." It has already been written up in
reporter style as the details came to light from day to day. But a