Jimmy wasn’t able to concentrate on his regular duties that afternoon. He had acquired an obsession and he couldn’t shake it off. The problem of how to make good on his promise to the gushy Miss Slosson occupied his entire time and attention. A more careless or indifferent wayfarer in the field of theatrical publicity might have been content to let that plump and pleasing person print her story on the following day and let it go at that, neglecting to follow the idea up and failing to redeem his pledges. Jimmy knew a dozen of his confreres who would just drop the thing on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread, but he wasn’t that kind of press agent. He didn’t know it, but he was really a great creative artist in his own sphere and he got just the same inner satisfaction out of seeing his ideas blossom into realities that a great painter gets as he watches an imagined color harmony spring into life on the easel before him, or that a stylist thrills to when he achieves a perfect phrase after a tiresome search for the inevitable word.

The thought of apple pie haunted him. He just had to have one delivered from Chicago for Miss Slosson, but how to accomplish this feat without notifying Madame Stephano or her manager worried him. He didn’t know anyone in that city he could trust to ship one on in time and he rather figured that even if he did wire or telephone an acquaintance there the latter would take the request as a weird practical joke of some sort and pay no serious attention to it.

He found himself out in the street peering into bakeshop windows and critically appraising the more or less appetizing pastry displayed therein. No use to buy one of those pies and attempt to work it off on Miss Slosson, he thought. They were all too obviously the apple pies of commerce, pale, anaemic affairs bearing not even a remote resemblance to the succulent product of the home kitchen. His artist’s soul revolted at the thought of utilizing one of them to further his nefarious designs.

He exhausted the possibilities of the bakeries on three of the principal avenues in the center of the city and worked himself into a fine frenzy of despair from which he sought relief in a motion picture theatre. What was programmed as a Nonpareil Comedy was unfolding itself on the screen when he entered and just as he slid into a seat in the back row he beheld a large object hurtling through the air propelled by the principal comedian. It struck the comedy villain of the piece full in the face with a disastrously liquid and messy result.

“My God, apple pie,” murmured Jimmy to himself as he clambered out into the aisle, barking the shins and stirring up the latent profanity of an irascible looking man who had slipped into a seat alongside him.

He met Tom Wilson again that evening in the hotel lobby and they went into dinner together.

“Don’t ask me about that story, Tom,” he pleaded as they sat down. “I want to forget it for a little while.”

And he did. The dinner was excellent, the waiter was alert and extremely polite and his companion unbosomed himself of a flow of anecdotes that kept him in a constant state of merriment.

“Mighty good dinner, Tom,” he remarked heartily near the end of the meal, “and mighty fine service.”

The waiter cleared away the dishes and presented the menu to Jimmy.

“If I may be permitted, sir,” he said deferentially, “I might suggest that the apple pie is excellent tonight.”

Jimmy pushed his chair back from the table with such violence that he almost upset it.

“You’ll be permitted to take a punch in the eye, Mr. Fresh,” he said bitterly and then hastened to apologize.

His companion laughed uproariously.

“Still on your mind, Jimmy?” he inquired.

“Yes,” retorted the other; “seems like we’re hooked up to do a double act for life.”

Jimmy had a sleepless night. Every time he dropped off into a fitful slumber he was bothered by a dream in which apple pie played a central part. Once he dreamt that he was chained to a pillar in a great room and that Madame Stephano was forcing him to devour an apparently inexhaustible pie which stood on a table and which she fed him with an enormous long handled spoon. He choked so hard on one spoonful that he awoke with a start.

At the breakfast table he read Miss Slosson’s promised story in the Star. It was all that the most ambitious purveyor of publicity could desire. There was a four column headline reading:

Underneath was a big picture of a kitchen table on each side of which a woman was shown busil............