“I don’t recollect,” was the reply, and with a subdued, “Wait a moment,” Dorothy set down the receiver and feverishly turned the pages of the Congressional Directory until she reached the index and ran down the list of names. “There’s no John Graham in the book,” she shouted into the telephone a second later.
“Sure you have the last edition? Thanks.”
Dorothy put back the receiver with a relieved sigh. A glance at her wrist watch showed her that it was already a quarter of five—and the foreman was waiting for early copy. There was no time to hunt up Vera, and with her nerves on edge she turned to her list of assignments and telephoned to first one hostess and then another, getting dinner and lunch lists until she had a formidable number before her. But one hostess remained uncalled, and with renewed zeal she resorted to the telephone again.
“This is Miss Deane, society editor, Morning Tribune,” she explained. “I will be greatly obliged if you will give the names of your dinner guests tonight for tomorrow’s paper.”
“I give dinners to my friends, not for the newspapers,” came the frigid reply, and Dorothy heard the bang of the telephone receiver at the other end of the wire.
“Waugh!” she exclaimed aloud, turning back to her typewriter. “So Mrs. Purse thinks she has arrived—and last year she was sending in her own dinner lists to the newspapers, as well as the names of guests at entertainments to which she was invited.”
Dorothy’s skilled fingers flew over the typewriter as her active brain put in fitting phrases the information she had secured over the telephone, and later, in some instances, she rewrote the important social events chronicled in the evening newspapers. She had almost completed her task when the door opened and the office boy ushered in a much-talked-about divorcée whose career had provided entertainment for staid Washingtonians.
Dorothy was a favorite of hers and she greeted her warmly. “No, I can’t sit and gossip,” she announced, standing by the partly open door. “I only came to bring you this data about our dramatic club,” laying a folded manuscript on the desk perilously near the paste pot. “Dress it up in your own style, Dorothy. I congratulate you on your society column; it’s the best in town.”
“Indeed,” and Dorothy flushed with pleasure. “I did not think you would ever bother to read it.”
“I always read the social news to keep track of the entertainments to which I am not bidden given by women who owe me invitations.” A faint hardness crept into her voice, and was gone instantly as she bade Dorothy a cordial good-by and departed.