, freely, good humoredly.

Only the visible evidence of a former disorder remained. The room
was still untidy and grimy. Papers in unbelievable profusion
heaped the floors and desks. The rumble in the basement ceased. In
a few moments it began again. It was running off the final
edition.

James Hale, star reporter on the New York Eagle, who had a few
minutes ago been the personification of dynamic activity, was now
trying to get a rise out of Marie LaBelle, editor of the Heart
Balm column.

Marie was sitting slumped in the chair in front of the typewriter,
trying to ignore his jibes. At the side of Marie's desk were the
literary effusions from love sick males and females that were the
daily grist of "her" department.

Marie glowered at Jimmy, perspiring profusely over Jimmy's
witticisms. On the night before, there had been a crap game in
which Pop Fosdick, head of the Eagle morgue, had participated. Pop
had been a cub when Greeley, Bennett and Dana had been names to
conjure with in the newspaper field. Pop still lived in his youth.
He had an encyclopedic memory for names, places and dates, which
made him so valuable in the morgue.

When a reporter was too lazy to look up some needed information
himself, he would ask Pop. Pop would glower, growl, swear--and to
hear him was a treat--and get the necessary data. On the night
before, in the crap game, Pop had cleaned up the entire gang and
broken up the game.

Marie LaBelle was cursing fluently the luck that on that occasion
had seemed to run all in one direction--with Pop Fosdick. Marie
hitched up the left half of his suspenders and began his old
plaint:

"Think of that old geezer, old enough to--"

"Oh, I don't know," broke in one of the listeners. "It doesn't
take much to see sevens--, and elevens. Even Pop--"

"I don't mean that," lied Marie. "I wasn't thinking of his luck
last night. I was thinking of the remarkable manner in which a man
of his age conducts that morgue. It isn't just memory either. He
seems to have an uncanny intelligence about--"

"A man of his age," scoffed Jimmy. "He isn't the only one. I know
one man who is, I believe, older than Pop--"

"We all know who that is, of course," jeered Roy Heath, the
rewrite man, with his soft southern drawl. "Jimmy is now going to
effuse about Professor Herman Brierly. Now, down South, in God's
own country there are really remarkable old men. I grant that
Professor Brierly is quite a chap for a Yankee;