and the owners have to be
pacified. Then "Oh yes"----"Yes, I hear you----Yes" and a long
unintelligible series of affirmatives in different keys. My friend's
face and figure gradually lost all appearance of fatigue. His eyes
sharpened and glared at us over the receiver as he listened and said
"yes" with exasperating reiteration. His wife signalled dolefully to me
that it was probably a bird's-eye view, and she'd never get him up in
the morning to catch the seven o'clock. It occurred to me at the time
that bird's-eye views are not usually ordered at ten o'clock at night;
but I was too absorbed in watching my friend's expression of
bewilderment, doubt, delight and anticipation in rapid succession, and I
did no more than shrug. At length he smiled broadly, remarked, "Right.
I'll get busy. See you later, Jimmy. G'bye," and rang off. And then, to
my amazement and his wife's indignation, he threw his heels in the air
and walked across the room on his hands!

"What's the matter with you?" she asked severely. Assuming a
conventional position again, and walking up and down with his hands in
his pockets, he told us the cause of his excitement.

"It's Jimmy Larkin in the _News_ Building. He's got a big job on. Got to
go south and wait for orders. He's got a pal in the Navy at Norfolk, and
he's phoned that they'd just received a wireless from a cruiser in the
West Indies somewhere to say she'd spoken an aeroplane going north-west.
They think it's that chap--you know?--and Lord Cholme of the _Morning's_
springing something on us. Anyhow, Jimmy's got the assignment and he's
put me in too, to do some hurry-up sketches on the spot if we're lucky."

"Not to-night!" said Bill, aghast.

"Sure, to-night. I'll have to take the trolley into Newark and join
Jimmy on the New Orleans Limited there."

"Then," I said, "this is a wild-goose chase after our neighbour's
brother?"

Mac is an extremely practical man, and he merely shrugged his shoulders.
"Maybe, old man. Whether it's him or somebody else, the story has to be
covered, and we're away to cover it. It might mean a staff job later for
the _News_, eh?"

"It's quite a romance," I remarked.

"Romance nothing--it's bread and butter, man! Where's my grip? Oh yes, I
remember." And he pranced away upstairs to the studio to pack the tools
of his craft. His wife, who was looking out linen and hosiery and all
the things a woman firmly believes a man can never remember for himself,
and with