nd a general bearing of unrepressed hostility toward all
created beings, he was professionally known as "Bim." Journalism, for
him, was comprised in a single tenet; that no visitor of whatsoever kind
had or possibly could have any business of even remotely legitimate
nature within the precincts of the "Clarion" office. Tradition of the
place held that a dent in the wall back of his desk marked the
termination of an argument in which Reginald, all unwitting, had essayed
to maintain his thesis against the lightweight champion of the State who
had come to call on the sporting editor.

There had been a lull in the activities of this minor Cerberus when the
light and swinging footfall of one coming up the dim stairway several
steps at a time aroused his ready suspicions. He bristled forth to the
rail to meet a tall and rather elegant young man whom he greeted with a
growl to this effect:

"Hoojer wanter see?"

"Is the editor in?"

"Whajjer want uvvum?"

The tall visitor stepped forward, holding out a card. "Take this to him,
please, and say that I'd like to see him at once."

Unwisely, Reginald disregarded the card, which fluttered to the floor.
More unwisely, he ignored a certain tensity of expression upon the face
of his interlocutor. Most unwisely he repeated, in his very savagest
growl:

"Whajjer want uvvum, I said. Didn' chu hear me?"

Graceful and effortless as the mounting lark, Reginald Currier rose and
soared. When he again touched earth, it was only to go spinning into a
far corner where he first embraced, then strove with and was finally
tripped and thrown by a large and lurking waste-basket. Somewhat
perturbed, he extricated himself in time to see the decisive visitor
disappear through an inner door. Retrieving the crumpled and rejected
card from its resting-place, he examined it with interest. The legend
upon it was "Mr. Harrington Surtaine."

"Huh!" grunted Reginald Currier; "I never seen _that_ in no sporting
column."

Once within the sacred precincts, young Mr. Surtaine turned into an
inner room, bumped against a man trailing a kite-tail of proof, who had
issued from a door to the right, asked a question, got a response, and
entered the editor's den. Two littered desks made up the principal
furniture of the place. Impartially distributed between the further desk
and a chair, the form of one lost in slumber sprawled. At the nearer one
sat a dyspeptic man of middle age waving a heavy pencil above a