Nick Jennings, night city editor of the Baltimore Bulletin, stifled a yawn, stretched his arms, stood up and lounged over to the copy desk. He was utterly unlike the city editor of fiction. He was a short, stocky person with a round and jovial face and there wasn’t a trace of the fabulous steely glint in his grey eyes.

“Not a line of stuff worth sending up,” he observed to Tom North, the head copy-reader. “Unless something breaks the local end of the old sheet tomorrow is going to be about as interesting as a seed catalog. I’ve marked Milligan’s story on the food inspection scandal for a two column head, but it’s pretty dead stuff. Got an idea?”

Tom North shook his head.

“I thought for a minute there might be a feature in that North Side Woman’s Club resolution protesting against the psycho-analysis movement,” he said, “but I didn’t suggest it to you because that Arline Dupont Maxwell introduced it. That dame can cook up more schemes to get her name on the front page than any three prima donnas I know of. There isn’t anything else that’s worth wasting good ink on.”

The city editor yawned again and looked at the clock. It was after ten.

“It’s tough turkey,” he rejoined. “I’ll bet you there was more news stirring out in Twisted Twig, Oregon, today than in this burg.”

An office boy touched him on the arm and handed him a card. He looked at it, hesitated for a second or two and then remarked:

“I’ll take a look at that bird. Send him in.”

He turned to his co-worker again.

“Zip goes another resolution,” he said with a half-laugh. “I’m going to see a press agent. I’ll take any kind of a chance on a night like this. Persistent gink. Sent in his card an hour ago and I turned him down flat. Now he sends it in again marked ‘absolutely imperative I see you—great story with a local angle.’”

He had just settled himself again at his desk when Jimmy Martin swung through the city room and greeted him with an expansive smile.

“Well, Mr. Martin?” grunted Jennings interrogatively as he bent over a page of typewritten copy on his desk in simulation of great pre-occupation.

“Mr. Jennings,” began Jimmy eagerly, “I’ve got a great story with a local angle, a story that’ll stir this little old town up considerable and then some.”

“Uh, uh,” said the city editor, never looking up.

There wasn’t the slightest trace of interest in Jennings’ attitude and Jimmy felt his own enthusiasm flagging for just a moment. Cold-blooded fish, these city editors, he said to himself, always afraid someone is going to put one over on them.

“You see, Mr. Jennings,” he resumed, “I’m with Meyerfields’ Frolics. We play the Lyric next week and——

“I saw your card,” snapped Jennings. “What’s the finale?”

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