tion for him as a reporter. Several times John
overheard wordy altercations between P. Q. and Brennan in which the
city editor would threaten to discharge him and Brennan would reply with
a threat to resign, but nothing ever came of these quarrels and they
were forgotten within an hour after they occurred.

From Brennan John received precious bits of advice.

"Never argue with a city editor," Brennan warned him. "It's useless.
Don't ever, no matter how friendly he is, get familiar with one of them.
It's ruinous."

Gradually John learned Brennan's story. An Englishman by birth and a
university man, Brennan was a rancher in Alberta for a year before he
joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. He had been everywhere and
seen everything. He became a reporter under P. Q. in a Middle West city,
and his first training received, he became restless again. He went to
Central America to participate in a revolution and then to the South Sea
islands. For a time he had been in China, Japan and India, and Kipling's
verse was given its proper swing when he recited it. He was a fast, hard
boxer and John had to extend himself to hold his own when they sparred
for exercise at Blake's gymnasium.

"Something of a soldier; something of a dreamer; something of a
poet--but only a newspaper man," he once described himself, adding a
few seconds later, "Oh, forget it," as though he was ashamed to
soliloquize about himself.

To John he was unstinted in his laudation of P. Q., whose eccentricities
he knew so well.

"P. Q. has always believed that a hungry reporter is the best reporter,"
Brennan told John. "He swears that a reporter works twice as well when
he is hungry as when he is well fed. He says a person can't help but
become somewhat soggy mentally when his stomach is full, while an empty
stomach makes a keen brain. That's why he never has breakfast until
after the first edition is away. He practices what he preaches."

Assigned to work as Brennan's "leg man," the newspaper term for
understudy, John became acquainted with the men in Los Angeles who
appear almost daily in the news. He met Le Compte Davis, Paul Schenck,
Joe Ford, Dick Kittrelle, Al MacDonald, W. I. Gilbert, Frank Dominguez
and Jud Rush among the lawyers; the district attorney and his staff of
deputies; "Bud" Hill, the county counsel; police detectives, deputy
sheriffs, private detectives, city and county officials, federal agents
and a host of others, including such p