4. Rewrite the following story, giving it a summary lead and improving it in every possible way.
Fresh from an evening of shopping in 125th Street, Mrs. Margaret Werner started down Broadway about 10:30 last night, headed for her apartment at 627 West 109th Street, and talking Christmas plans with her friends, Miss Ethel Hinkey, of 421 Cathedral Parkway, and Jennie Fielding, of 301 Harrison Avenue.
Their thoughts were full of the Yuletide and their arms were full of bundles, and as they were walking down from 118th Street past the long, lonesome stretch of the Columbia University buildings they were so absorbed in their chatting that they paid no attention to three men speeding to catch up with them.
Suddenly two of the men stepped around in front of them, and one reached for the capacious handbag swinging by a strap from Mrs. Werner’s wrist. The other two men devoted themselves solely to keeping the other two women quiet, and Mrs. Werner was practically left to fight it out with the highwayman. She was a pretty good match for him.
Her first thought was to clench her fist grimly on the straps of her handbag. Her second was to scream, and she carried this second idea into such good effect she could be heard a block away, despite her assailant’s swift reach for her throat. Once his fingers closed, she did not make any more noise, but just struggled and twisted while the highwayman thrust her against the wall.
But her first cry had been heard by a broad-shouldered muscular stranger who was swinging up Broadway and changed his walk to an interested run at the sound of the cries for help. He reached out a long arm for Mrs. Werner’s assailant, and after wrenching him around gave him a stinging buffet over the head.
Then the two men locked, and the highwayman’s assistants stood at a nervous and respectful distance while the stranger did his work. He finally had the chief offender so suppressed that his only remaining weapon was his teeth, and these he imbedded in the rescuer’s shoulder.
This was the way matters stood when Mrs. Werner and her friends heard the sound of Patrolman McDonald fairly racing up Broadway from his post two blocks below, where he had been standing when he first heard the cries. At sight of him the two[Pg 121] minor highwaymen just turned on their heels and fled, while McDonald closed on their friend.
The stranger, released from his chivalrous police duties, rubbed his shoulder ruefully, and identified himself as Harry Rogers, a civil engineer. He helped to calm Mrs. Werner, who was very much wrought up, and not at all pleased to find that for all her valiant self-defense two five-dollar bills were missing from her opened bag, to say nothing of her eyeglasses. All her Christmas bundles were intact, however, lying strewn on the pavement at the very spot where she had dropped them and from which the highwayman had pushed her over toward the wall.
As for the highwayman, he went peaceably enough to the West 125th Street Station, where he gave his name as Arthur G. Duffy, his age as 21, his occupation that of a driver, and his address, 961 West Forty-fifth Street. Mrs. Werner’s money was not to be found in his pockets, but her glasses were.