"Whajjer want uvvum, I said. Didn' chu hear me?"
Graceful and effortless as the mounting lark, Reginald Currier rose and soared. When he again touched earth, it was only to go spinning into a far corner where he first embraced, then strove with and was finally tripped and thrown by a large and lurking waste-basket. Somewhat perturbed, he extricated himself in time to see the decisive visitor disappear through an inner door. Retrieving the crumpled and rejected card from its resting-place, he examined it with interest. The legend upon it was "Mr. Harrington Surtaine."
"Huh!" grunted Reginald Currier; "I never seen that in no sporting column."
Once within the sacred precincts, young Mr. Surtaine turned into an inner room, bumped against a man trailing a kite-tail of proof, who had issued from a door to the right, asked a question, got a response, and entered the editor's den. Two littered desks made up the principal furniture of the place. Impartially distributed between the further desk and a chair, the form of one lost in slumber sprawled. At the nearer one sat a dyspeptic man of middle age waving a heavy pencil above a galley proof.
"Are you the editor?" asked Hal.
"One editor. I'm Mr. Sterne. How the devil did you get in here?"
"Are you responsible for this?" Hal held up the morning's clipping, headed "Surtaine Fakeries Explained."
"Who are you?" asked Sterne, nervously hitching in his chair.
"I am Harrington Surtaine."
The journalist whistled, a soft, long-drawn note. "Dr. Surtaine's son?" he inquired.