rown suddenly tired.
The hand that held the champagne glass relaxed naturally and the glass
turned over on its side with a small tinkling sound and spilled its thin
contents on the table.

It had been easier than she had thought it would be. She stepped back,
still holding the hatpin. She moved around from behind him, and then she
saw his face, half upturned, almost directly beneath the low light.
There was no blood, no sign even of the wound, but his jaw had dropped
down unpleasantly, showing the ends of his lower front teeth, and his
eyes stared up unwinkingly with a puzzled, almost a disappointed, look
in them. A green fly lit at the outer corner of his right eye; more
green flies were coming. And he didn't put up his hand to brush it away.
He let it stay--he let it stay there.

With her eyes still fixed on his face, the woman reached out, feeling
for her glass of the champagne. She felt that she needed it now, and at
a gulp she took a good half of it down her throat.

She put the glass down steadily enough on the table; but into her eyes
came the same puzzled, baffled look that his wore, and almost gently she
slipped down into the chair facing him.

Then her jaw lolled a little too, and some of the other flies came
buzzing toward her.

IV

ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES

The first time I saw Major Putnam Stone I didn't see him first. To be
exact, I heard him first, and then I walked round the end of a
seven-foot partition and saw him.

I had just gone to work for the Evening Press. As I recall now it was my
second day, and I hadn't begun to feel at home there yet, and probably
was more sensitive to outside sights and noises than I would ever again
be in that place. Generally speaking, when a reporter settles down to
his knitting, which in his case is his writing, he becomes impervious to
all disturbances excepting those that occur inside his own brainpan. If
he couldn't, he wouldn't amount to shucks in his trade. Give him a good,
live-action story to write for an edition going to press in about nine
minutes, and the rattles and slams of half a dozen typewriting machines,
and the blattings of a pestered city editor, and the gabble of a couple
of copy boys at his elbow, and all the rest of it won't worry him. He
may not think he hears it, but he does, only instead of being
distracting it is stimulating. It's all a part of the mechanism of the
shop, helping him along unconsciously to speed and