He turned then and looked at me squarely. It was very seldom that he did such a thing, and as some time had elapsed since his last look he was likely able to detect a subtle change in my face.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked gruffly. "If you had _my_ job, now, there'd be something to worry over! What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

He turned away, precipitately.

"Gee! Let me get out of here! That's what women always say when they're getting ready to cry."

"But I'm not going to cry!" I a.s.sured him, as he dashed through the doorway and I turned with some relief to my desk, for talking was somewhat of an effort.

I raised the top, whistling softly--one can nearly _always_ manage a little sizzling whistle--then shrank back in terror from what I saw there.--Such chaos as must have been scattered about before sunrise on the morning of the First Day! Was it possible that I had been excited yesterday to the point of leaving the mucilage bottle unstopped?

I set to work, however, with a little sickening sense of shame, to making right the ravages that had taken place.

"A woman may fashion her balloon of antic.i.p.ation out of silver tissue--but her parachute is _always_ made of sack-cloth!" I groaned.

My desk was really in the wildest disorder. The tin top of the mucilage bottle had disappeared, the bottle had been overturned, its contents had been lavished upon the devoted head of a militant suffragette, and she was pinioned tightly to my blotting-pad.

"The elevator to Success is not running--take the stairs," grinned a framed motto above the desk.

"You take a--back seat!" I said, jumping up and turning the thing to the wall. "What do I care about success, if it's the sort of thing connected with typewriters, offices, copy paper and a pot of paste?

I'm--I'm _des-qua-mat-ing_!"

Never before in my experience had the life of journalistic devotion looked quite so black as the ink that accompanies it.

"Mottoes about success ought to belong to men, anyhow!" I said again, looking up furiously at the drab back of the frame. "I'm not a man, nor cut out for man's work. I'm just a woman, and my head aches!"

I looked again at the militant suffragette, for it was a tragedy to me. I had spent a week of time and five honest dollars in the effort to get that photograph from a New York studio. She wasn't any common suffragette, but a strict head-liner.

"I'm not even a woman--I'm a child to let a little thing like this upset me," I was deciding a while later, when the door of the room opened again and some one entered.

"You're a big baby!" the city editor p.r.o.nounced disgustedly, coming up to my desk and lowering his voice. "I knew you were going to cry."

"I--I think I may be coming down with typhoid," I said coldly, to keep from encouraging him in conversation. "And I've got a terrible lot of work to do before it gets quite dark. Really, an awful lot."

He dropped back a few paces, then circled nearer once more.

"Got anything--special?" he asked aimlessly.

His manner was so entirely inconsequential that I knew he had the most important thing for a month up his sleeve.

"Do you call this--mess anything special?" I asked. "I've got to do a general house-cleaning, and I wish I had a vacuum machine that would suck the whole business up into its mouth, swallow it and digest it--so I'd never see a sc.r.a.p of it again."

Have I said before that he was a middle-aged man, named Hudson, and had scant red hair? It doesn't make any special difference about his looks, since I hadn't taken any rash vow to marry the first unfortunate man who crossed my path, but he looked so ludicrously insignificant and unlike an instrument of fate as he stood there, trying to break the news to me by degrees.

"Hate your ordinary work this afternoon?" he asked.

"I hate everything."

"Then, how would you like to change off a little?"

"I'd like to change off from breathing--if that would accommodate you any," I replied.

He made a "tut-tut" admonition with the tip of his tongue.

"You might not find blowing red-hot coals any pleasanter," he warned, "and angry little girls like you can't hope to go to heaven when they die!"

I rose, with a great effort after professional dignity.

"Mr. Hudson, evidently you have an a.s.signment for me," I said. "Will you be so good as to let me know what it is?"

But even then he looked for a full thirty seconds into the luscious doors of a fruit stand across the street.

"I want _you_ to get--that Consolidated Traction Company story for me," he then declared.

I jumped back as I had never jumped but once in my life before--the time when Aunt Patricia announced that she was going to leave James Christie's love-letters to me.

"You were at that dance last night!" I cried out accusingly, then realizing the absurdity of this I began stammering. "I mean, that I'm a special feature writer!" I kept on before he had had time to send me more than a demon's grin of comprehension.

"You are and this story is devilish special," he returned. "I want you to get it."

His tone, which all of a sudden was the boiled-down essence of business, sent me in a tremor over toward the nail where my hat hung.

It was getting dark and I remembered then that I had heard fragments of telephonic conversation earlier in the evening anent "catching him there about seven."

"Well?"

He looked at me--with almost a human expression.

"I wasn't at the ball last night--but grapevines have been rustling, I admit," he said. "I hate like the very devil to ask you to do it, if you want to know the truth, but there's no other way out. I hope you believe me."

"A city editor doesn't have to be believed, but has to be obeyed," I responded, rising again from my chair where I had dropped to lock my desk. "Now, what is it I must do?"

"Well, I have a hunch that you will succeed where Clemons and Bolton and Reade have failed," he said. "And the foolish way the fellow acts makes it necessary for us to use all haste and strategy!"

"The fellow?"

"Maitland Tait. A day or two ago it was understood that he might remain in this town for several days longer--then to-day comes the news that he's straining every nerve to get away to-morrow!"

"Oh, to-morrow!"

"It appears that all the smoke in Pittsburgh is curling up into question marks to find out when he's coming back--"

"He's so important?"

"Exactly! But to-night he's going to hold a final conference at Loomis, and you can catch him before time for this if you'll go right on now."

"Very well," I answered, feeling myself in profound hypnosis.