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While I was writing it up, however, the youth of the Jovian curls returned from an assignment, hung up his little wrinkled overcoat and sat down in great comfort next me. His evening’s work was apparently futile for he took out his pipe, rapped it sonorously on his chair, lighted it and then picked up an evening paper.

“What’s doing, Jock, up at police headquarters?” called the little man over his shoulder.

“Nothing much, Bob,” replied the other, without looking up.

“By jing, you police reporters have a cinch!” jested the first. “All you do is sit around up there at headquarters and get the news off the police blotters, while we poor devils are chasing all over town. We have to earn our money.” His voice had a peculiarly healthy, gay and bantering ring to it.

“That’s no joke,” put in a long, lean, spectacled individual who was sitting in another corner. “I’ve been tramping all over south St. Louis, looking for a confounded robbery story.”

“Well, you’ve got long legs, Benson,” retorted the jovial Hazard. “You can stand it. Now I’m not so well fixed that way. Bellairs, there, ought to be given a chance at that. He wouldn’t be getting so fat, by jing!”