ttle while, Professor, I've got to give out some
assignments." He turned to Jimmy and growled:

"Say, lissen, young feller, in the last wire you sent, you
misspelt a name. How many times have I got to tell you--"

He stopped. For the first time that morning did he get a good look
at Jimmy's swollen, purple eye. He whistled. His face wrinkled in
what passed with him for a smile. He murmured in reverent awe:

"What a shiner, what a peach. Where did you get--"

He opened the door into the noisy city room. His roar cut through
the conglomerate clatter. The room hushed.

"Hey, gang, come here quick. Lookit Jimmy. Ask him where he got
it. Bet he tells each of you a different lie." The doorway was
instantly filled with grinning faces. The hubbub subsided after a
few minutes and Hite shooed them out of the room. He turned to
Professor Brierly, his hand on the door knob.

"Oh, by the way. I had somebody chased up to Pleasantville to see
about the cops who wanted to arrest you. They were all gone. The
pilot up there says it was a peach of a scrap and he ought to
know; he's been in some himself. Rather lucky for you, you were
not alone, eh Professor? They didn't expect any one to be with
you."

"It was not luck, Mr. Hite. John insisted on coming along with me.
Anyone would think to hear him talk that I am unable to take care
of myself, but perhaps it was fortunate after all that he and Hale
were there. Don't laugh at Hale's eye; he got it in that fight."

"Huh, huh, I see. Anything I can do for you, Professor, while
we're waiting for a report?"

"I should like to send some telegrams, Mr. Hite, please."

"Why, sure, wires, phones, anything. Jimmy'l help you; he knows
the ropes."

The door closed behind him. Professor Brierly murmured:

"What a perfectly astonishing person. He literally takes your
breath away. Is that his manner all the time, Hale?"

"No, not all the time, Professor. Usually he's worse."

The two young men left him and for the next hour and a half
Professor Brierly kept several copy boys and the telephone
operator on the jump. He was not disturbed. The managing editor
was told who was in his office when he came in and he took a desk
in the city room, where he transacted his routine morning
business.

Professor Brierly was sitting at the desk mentally going over the
tangled threads of the case. He was rejecting one by one the many
fanciful hypotheses that imaginative newspaper writers had woven
a