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Burns made no comment for a moment. Instead, he looked the young man over angrily from his eager face to his unblacked shoes. His silence, his stare, were eloquent.

“Why? Why not?” Anderson demanded, querulously. “I tell you this description isn’t right. It–it’s nothing like her, nothing at all.”

“Say! I thought I’d seen the last of you,” growled the corpulent man. “Aren’t you on to yourself yet?”

“Do you–mean that your talk this evening don’t go?” Paul demanded, quietly. “Do you mean to say you won’t even give me the chance you promised?”

“No! I don’t mean that. What I said goes, all right, but I told you to identify this girl. I didn’t agree to do it. What d’you think this paper is, anyhow? We want stories in this office. We don’t care who or what this girl is unless there’s a story in her. We’re not running a job-print shop nor a mail-order business to identify strayed females. Twenty thousand posters! Bah! And say–don’t you know that no two men can write similar descriptions of anybody or anything? What’s the difference whether her hair is burnished gold or ‘raw gold’ or her eyes bluish gray instead of grayish blue? Rats! Beat it!”

“But I tell you–“

“What’s her name? Where does she live? What killed her? That’s what I want to know. I’d look fine, wouldn’t I, circularizing a dead story? Wouldn’t that be a laugh on me? No, Mr. Anderson, author, artist, and playwright, I’m getting damned tired of being pestered by you, and you needn’t come back here until you bring the goods. Do I make myself plain?”

It was anger which cut short the younger man’s reply. On account of petty economy, for fear of ridicule, this editor refused to relieve some withered old woman, some bent and worried old man, who might be, who probably were, waiting, waiting, waiting in some out-of-the-way village. So Anderson reflected. Because there might not be a story in it this girl would go to the Potter’s Field and her people would never know. And yet, by Heaven, they would know! Something told him there was a story back of this girl’s death, and he swore to get it. With a mighty effort he swallowed his chagrin and, disregarding the insult to himself, replied:

“Very well. I’ve got you this time.”

“Humph!” Burns grunted, viciously.

“I don’t know how I’ll turn the trick, but I’ll turn it.” For the second time that evening he left the office with his jaws set stubbornly.

Paul Anderson walked straight to his boarding-house and bearded his landlady. “I’ve got a job,” said he.

“I’m very glad,” the lady told him, honestly enough. “I feared you were going to move out.”

“Yes!” he repeated. “I’ve got a job that carries the highest salary on the paper. You remember the yellow-haired girl who killed herself awhile ago?” he asked.

“Indeed I do. Everybody knows about that case.”

“Well, it got too tough for the police and the other reporters, so they turned it over to me. It’s a bully assignment, and my pay starts when I solve the mystery. Now I’m starved; I wish you’d rustle me some grub.”

“But, Mr. Anderson, you’re bill for this week? You know I get paid in–“

“Tut, tut! You know how newspapers are. They don’t pay in advance, and I can’t pay you until they pay me. You’ll probably have to wait until Saturday, for I’m a little out of practice on detective stuff. But I’ll have this thing cleared up by then. You don’t appreciate–you can’t appreciate–what a corking assignment it is.”

Anderson had a peculiarly engaging smile, and five minutes later he was wrecking the pantry of all the edibles his fellow-boarders had overlooked, the while his landlady told him her life’s history, wept over the memory of her departed husband, and confessed that she hoped to get out of the boarding-house business some time.

A good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast put the young man in fine fettle, and about ten o’clock he repaired to a certain rooming-house on Main Street, the number of which he obtained from the clipping in his pocket.