and started to read it. A thick eyebrow shot up
immediately and he allowed his pipe to hang slackly from his mouth.

"Purple," he exclaimed, "magenta, violet, lavender, mauve. Schmaltz,
real copperriveted, brassbound, steeljacketed, castiron schmaltz. I
havent seen such a genuine sample since my kid sister wrote up Jack the
Ripper back in 1889."

The manifest discrepancy in these remarks so confused me my fingers
stumbled over the typewriter keys. Evidently he intended some kind of
humor or sarcasm, but I could make nothing of it. How could his younger
sister...?

"Bertie boy," he said, after I had struggled to get another paragraph
down, "it breaks my heart to see you toil so. Let's take in as much as
youve done to the chief and either he'll be so impressed he'll put a
stenographer to transcribing the rest or else--"

"Or else?" I prompted.

"Or else he won't. Come on."

Mr Le ffacase had apparently not stirred since last we were in his
office. He opened his eyes, thumbed a pinch of snuff and asked Gootes,
"Where the bloody hell is that stuff on the grass?"

"Here it is, Chief. No date, no who what when and where, but very litry.
Very, very litry."

The editor picked up my copy and I could not help but watch him
anxiously for some sign of his reaction. It came forth promptly and
explosively.

"What the ingenious and delightfully painful hell is this, Gootes?"

"'As Reported by Our Special Writer, Albert Weener, The Man Who
Inoculated the Loony Grass.'"

"Gootes, you are the endproduct of a long line of incestuous idiots, the
winner of the boobyprize in any intelligencetest, but you have outdone
yourself in bringing me this verminous and maggoty ordure," said Le
ffacase, throwing my efforts to the floor and kicking at them. The
outrage made me boil and if he had not been an older man I might have
done him an injury. "As for you, Weener, I doubt if you will ever be
elevated to the ranks of idiocy. Get the sanguinary hell out of here
and do humanity the favor to step in front of the first tentontruck
driving by."

"One minute, Chief," urged Gootes. "Don't be hasty. Seen the latest on
the grass? Well, the mayor's asked the governor to call out the National
Guard; the _Times_'ll have an interview with Einstein tomorrow and the
_Examiner_'s going to run a symposium of what Herbert Hoover, Bernard
Shaw and General MacArthur think of the situation. Don't suppose perhaps
we could afford to ghost Bertie here?"