So he did, and they did.
At breakfast it was finally decided that the series by Perth Dewar should consist of ten stories, including four still to be written.
Ethridge salved his conscience by resolving secretly that they should all be published in the back of the book.
In due course of time the first story appeared. It contained a mean reference to the Knights of Pythias, or Mormonism, or a former Vice-President of the United States, or something; for which reason the issue containing it was suppressed.
Whereupon the buried issue became a Living Issue. The intelligentsia rushed to the rescue with highbrow hue and cry. Round robins were circulated. Newspaper columnists got sarcastic. Liberal cliques chittered. Perth Dewar became suddenly significant.
The issue containing the second story was sold out the day it appeared.
By the time the third one was out, Professor Lion Whelps, of Yale, proved in an article in the Sunday Times, that Dewar's attitude toward women was like Turgeniev's, and Professor Brando Methuseleh, of Columbia, discovered he had cadences. Sinclair Lewis inserted a mention of him in the forty-ninth edition of "Babbitt". Nine British novelists hurried over to lecture on him.
And Ethridge?
He was made. In acknowledgement of his peerless editorial acumen that could discern true genius at a glance, the directors of the magazine doubled his salary and gave him a bonus to keep him from being coaxed away by the "Saturday Evening Pictorial".