"The joke of it is," he said, "that they think down there you're a muckraker."
"I'll be one soon if this keeps on."
"But it won't," he replied. "As soon as you've once broken in, and they see it's a glory story you want, you can't imagine how nice they'll be."
"I haven't broken in," I said.
"You will to-morrow," he told me, "because Abner Bell will be with you. He's our star photographer. Wait till you see little Ab go to work. The place he can't get into hasn't been invented. Besides," the editor added, "Abner is just the sort of chap to take hold of an author from Paris and turn him into a writer."
And this Abner Bell proceeded to do. He was a cheerful, rotund little man with round simple eyes and a smile that went all over his face.
"You see," he said, when I met him the next day down at the docks, "you can't ask a harbor to hold up her chin and look into your camera while you count. She's such a big fat noisy slob she wouldn't even hear you. You've got to run right at her and bark."
"Look here, old man," he was asking a watchman a few moments later. "What's the name of the superintendent on the next pier down the line!"
"Captain Townes."
"Townes, Townes? Is that Bill Townes?"