general knowledge and a slight cognizance
of abnormal psychology, I must admit bafflement at the spectacle of your
mottled complexion once more in these rooms sacred to the perpetuation
of truth and the dissemination of enlightenment. Everyday you embezzle
good money from this paper under pretense of giving value received, and
each day your uselessness becomes more conspicuous. Almost anyone would
disapprove the divine choice in the matter of taking Gootes and leaving
you alive, and while I know the world suffered not the least hurt by his
translation to whatever baroque, noisy and entirely public hell is
reserved for reporters, at least he attempted to forge some ostensible
return for his paycheck."

"Mr Le ffacase," I began indignantly, but he cut me off.

"You unalloyed imbecile," he roared, "at least have the prudence if not
the intelligence or courtesy to be silent while your betters are
speaking. Gootes was a bloody knave, a lazy, slipshod, slack, tasteless,
absurd, fawning, thieving, conniving sloven, but even if he had the
energy to make the attempt and a mind to put to it, he could not, in ten
lifetimes, become the perfect, immaculate and prototypical idiot you
were born."

I don't know how long he would have continued in this insulting vein,
but he was interrupted by the concealed telephone. "What in the name of
the ten thousand dubious virgins do you mean by annoying me?" he
bellowed into the mouthpiece. "Yes. Yes. I know all about deadlines; I
was a newspaperman when you were vainly suckling canine dugs. Are you
ambitious to replace me? Go get with child a mandrakeroot, you, you
journalist! I will meet the _Intelligencer_'s deadline as I did before
your father got the first tepidly lustful idea in his nulliparous head
and as I shall after you have followed your useless testes to a worthy
desuetude."

He replaced the receiver and picked up the mouthpiece of the dictaphone
again, paying no further attention to me. He enunciated clearly and
precisely, speaking in an even monotone, pausing not at all, as if
reading from some prepared script, though his eyes were fixed upon a
vacant spot where wall and ceiling joined.

"In the death today of Jacson Gootes the _Daily Intelligencer_ lost a
son. It is an old and good custom on these solemn occasions to pause and
remember the dead.

"Jacson Gootes was a reporter of exceptional probity, of clear
understanding, of indefatigable effort, and of great native abilit