"Now what's your honest opinion of that, Son? Is it poetry?

"Listens something like it," says I; "but I wouldn't want to say for sure."

"Nor I," says Mr. Ellins. "All I'm certain of is that it isn't sculpture, and that if I should read any more of it I'd be seasick.

But in T. Virgil Bunn himself I have an active and personal interest.

Anything to offer?"

"Not a glimmer," says I.

"And I suppose you could find nothing out?" he goes on.

"I could make a stab," says I.

"Make a deep one, then," says he, slippin' over a couple of tens for an expense fund.

And, say, I knew when Old Hickory begins by unbeltin' so reckless that he don't mean any casual skimmin' through club annuals for a report.

"What's the idea?" says I. "Is it for a financial rating or a regular dragnet of past performances?"

"Everything you can discover without taking him apart," says Old Hickory. "In short, I want to know the kind of person who can cause a fifty-five-year-old widow with grown sons to make a blinkety blinked fool of herself."

"He's a charmer, eh?" says I.

"Evidently," says Mr. Ellins. "Behold this inscription here, 'To dear Inez, My Lady of the Unfettered Soul--from Virgie.' Get the point, Son? 'To dear Inez'! Bah! Is he color blind, or what ails him? Of course it's her money he's after, and for the sake of her boys I'm going to block him. There! You see what I want?"

"Sure!" says I. "You got to have details about Virgie before you can ditch him. Well, I'll see what I can dig up."

Maybe it strikes you as a chesty bluff for a juvenile party like me to start with no more clew than that to round up in a few hours what a high-priced sleuth agency would take a week for. But, say, I didn't stand guard on the Sunday editor's door two years with my eyes and ears shut. Course, there's always the city and 'phone directories to start with. Next you turn to the Who book if you suspect he's ever done any public stunt. But, say, swallow that Who dope cautious. They let 'em write their own tickets in that, you know, and you got to make allowances for the size of the hat-band.

I'd got that far, discovered that Virgie owned up to bein' thirty-five and a bachelor, that he was born in Schoharie, son of Telemachus J. and Matilda Smith Bunn, and that he'd once been president of the village literary club, when I remembers the clippin' files we used to have back on Newspaper Row. So down I hikes--and who should I stack up against, driftin' gloomy through the lower lobby, but Whity Meeks, that used to be the star man on the Sunday sheet. Course, it wa'n't any miracle; for Whity's almost as much of a fixture there as Old Gluefoot, the librarian, or the finger marks on the iron pillars in the press-room.

A sad example of blighted ambitions, Whity is. When I first knew him he had a fresh one every Monday mornin', and they ranged all the way from him plannin' to be a second d.i.c.ky Davis to a scheme he had for hookin' up with Tammany and bein' sent to Congress. Clever boy too.

He could dash off ponies that was almost good enough to print, dope out the first two acts of a play that was bound to make his fortune if he could ever finish it, and fake speeches that he'd never heard a word of.

When he got to doin' Wall Street news, though, and absorbed the idea that he could stack his little thirty per against the system and break the bucketshops--well, that was his finish. Two killings that he made by chance, and he was as good as chained to the ticker for life. No more new rosy dreams for him: always the same one,--of the day when he was goin' to show Sully how a cotton corner really ought to be pulled off, a day when the closin' gong would find him with the City Bank in one fist and the Subtreasury in the other. You've met that kind, maybe. Only Whity always tried to dress the part, in a sporty shepherd plaid, with a checked hat and checked silk socks to match. He has the same regalia on now, with a carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole.

"Well, mounting margins!" says he, as I swings him round by the arm.

"Torchy! Whither away? Come down to buy publicity s.p.a.ce for the Corrugated, have you?"

"Not in a rag like yours, Whity," says I, "when we own stock in two real papers. I'm out on a little private gumshoe work for the boss."

"Sounds thrilling," says he. "Any copy in it?"

"I'd be chatterin' it to you, wouldn't I?" says I. "Nix! Just plain fam'ly sc.r.a.p over whether Cousin Inez shall marry again or not. My job is to get something on the guy. Don't happen to have any special dope on T. Virgil Bunn, the sculptor poet, do you?"

Whity stares at me. "Do I?" says he.

"Say!" Then he leads me over between the 'phone booth and the cigar stand, flashes an a.s.signment pad, and remarks, "Gaze on that second item, my boy."

"Woof! That's him, all right," says I. "But what's a bouillabaisse tea?"

"Heaven and Virgil Bunn only know," says Whity. "But that doesn't matter. Think of the subtle irony of Fate that sends me up to make a column story out of Virgie Bunn! Me, of all persons!"

"Well, why not you?" says I.

"Why?" says Whity. "Because I made the fellow. He--why, he is my joke, the biggest scream I ever put over--my joke, understand? And now this adumbrated a.s.s of a Quigley, who's been sent on here from St.

Louis to take the city desk, he falls for Virgie as a genuine personage. Not only that, but picks me out to cover this phony tea of his. And the stinging part is, if I don't I get canned, that's all."

"Ain't he the goods, then?" says I. "What about this sculptor poet business?"

"Bunk," says Whity, "nothing but bunk. Of course, he does putter around with modeling clay a bit, and writes the sort of club-footed verse they put in high school monthlies."

"Gets it printed in a book, though," says I. "I've seen one."

"Why not?" says Whity. "Anyone can who has the three hundred to pay for plates and binding. 'Sonnets of the City,' wasn't it? Didn't I get my commission from the Easy Mark Press for steering him in? Why, I even scratched off some of those things to help him pad out the book with. But, say, Torchy, you ought to remember him. You were on the door then,--tall, wide-shouldered freak, with aureole hair, and a close cropped Vand.y.k.e?"

"Not the one who wore the Wild West lid and talked like he had a mouthful of hot oatmeal?" says I.

"Your description of Virgie's English accent is perfect," says Whity.

"Well, well!" says I. "The mushbag, we used to call him."

"Charmingly accurate again!" says Whity. "Verily beside him the quivering jellyfish of the salt sea was as the armored armadillo of the desert. Soft? You could poke a finger through him anywhere."

"But what was his game?" says I.

"It wasn't a game, my son," says Whity. "It was a mission in life,--to get things printed about himself. Had no more modesty about it, you know, than a circus press agent. Perfectly frank and ingenuous, Virgie was. He'd just come and ask you to put it in that he was a great man--just like that! The chief used to froth at the mouth on sight of him. But Virgie looked funny to me in those days. I used to jolly him along, smoke his Coronas, let him take me out to swell feeds. Then when they gave Merrow charge of the Sunday side, just for a josh I did a half-page special about Virgie, called him the sculptor poet, threw in some views of him in his studio, and quoted some of his verse that I'd fixed up. It got by. Virgie was so pleased he wanted to give a banquet for me; but I got him to go in on a little winter wheat flier instead. He didn't drop much. After that I'd slip in a paragraph about him now and then, always calling him the sculptor poet. The tag stuck. Other papers began to use it; until, first thing I knew, Virgie was getting away with it. Honest, I just invented him. And now he pa.s.ses for the real thing!"

"Where you b.o.o.bed, then, was in not filin' copyright papers," says I.

"But how does he make it pay?"

"He doesn't," says Whity. "Listen, Son, and I will divulge the hidden mystery in the life of T. Virgil Bunn. Cheese factories! Half a dozen or more of 'em, up Schoharie way. Left to him, you know, by Pa Bunn; a coa.r.s.e, rough person, I am told, who drank whey out of a five-gallon can, but was cute enough to import Camembert labels and make his own boxes. He pa.s.sed on a dozen years ago; but left the cheese factories working night shifts. Virgie draws his share quarterly. He tried a year or two at some Rube college, and then went abroad to loiter.

While there he exposed himself to the sculptor's art; but it didn't take very hard. However, Virgie came back and acquired the studio habit. And you can't live for long in a studio, you know, without getting the itch to see yourself in print. That's what brought Virgie to me. And now! Well, now I have to go to Virgie."

"Ain't as chummy with him as you was, I take it?" says I.

Whity shrugs his shoulders disgusted. "The saphead!" says he. "Just because we slipped up on a few stock deals he got cold feet. I haven't seen him for a year. I wonder how he'll take it? But you mentioned a Cousin Inez, didn't you?"

I gives Whity a hasty sketch of the piece, mentionin' no more names, but suggestin' that Virgie stood to connect with an overgrown widow's mite if there wa'n't any sudden interference.

"Ha!" says Whity, speakin' tragic through his teeth. "An idea! He's put the spell on a rich widow, has he? Now if I could only manage to queer this autumn leaf romance it would even up for the laceration of pride that I see coming my way tonight. Describe the fair one."

"I could point her out if you could smuggle me in," I suggests.

"A cinch!" says he. "You're Barry of the City Press. Here, stick some copy paper in your pocket. Take a few notes, that's all."

"It's a fierce disguise to put on," says I; "but I guess I can stand it for an evenin'."