meanwhile, was reading with horrified eyes the alleged corking Scandal Page. It seemed to him without exception the most frightful production he had ever seen. It appalled him.     

       “This is awful,” he moaned. “We shall have a hundred libel actions.”      

       “Oh, no, that's all right. It's all fake stuff, tho the public doesn't know it. If you stuck to real scandals you wouldn't get a par. a week. A more moral set of blameless wasters than the blighters who constitute modern society you never struck. But it reads all right, doesn't it? Of course, every now and then one does hear something genuine, and then it goes in. For instance, have you ever heard of Percy Pook, the bookie? I have got a real ripe thing in about Percy this week, the absolute limpid truth. It will make him sit up a bit. There, just under your thumb.”      

       Roland removed his thumb, and, having read the paragraph in question, started as if he had removed it from a snake.     

       “But this is bound to mean a libel action!” he cried.     

       “Not a bit of it,” said Mr. Petheram comfortably. “You don't know Percy. I won't bore you with his life-history, but take it from me he doesn't rush into a court of law from sheer love of it. You're safe enough.”      

       But it appeared that Mr. Pook, tho coy in the matter of cleansing his scutcheon before a judge and jury, was not wholly without weapons of defense and offense. Arriving at the office next day, Roland found a scene of desolation, in the middle of which, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat Jimmy, the vacant-faced office boy. Jimmy was reading an illustrated comic paper, and appeared undisturbed by his surroundings.     

       “He's gorn,” he observed, looking up as Roland entered.     

       “What do you mean?” Roland snapped at him. “Who's gone and where did he go? And besides that, when you speak to your superiors you will rise and stop chewing that infernal gum. It gets on my nerves.”      

       Jimmy neither rose nor relinquished his gum. He took his time and answered.     

       “Mr. Petheram. A couple of fellers come in and went through, and there was a uproar inside 

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