Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/313

 pinching forty-three sightseers in the St. Moe lobby in an enthusiastic drive against mashers. Hazel's effort was to be found bound and gagged in our flat by a couple of obliging coppers, ex-colleagues of Jerry's. Naturally, Hazel's twenty-five thousand-dollar diamond key ring was missing and of course the foul deed was did by a "mysterious masked man". Hazel photographs like a billion and Tommy's paper ate this hokum up hungrily. Really, he looked like a cinch for a lengthy stay on the Evening Wow. In fact, he boasted that one morning when he reported for the day's chores, the city editor actually nodded to him!

However, about the only successes in New York who can rest on their laurels and still rate attention from the populace are those who have been done in bronze and placed at park entrances and city squares. This was brought home hard to Thomas when the "beats" I furnished him had their brief flicker and died out. To have seriously upset Broadway's cynical calm, Colombus would have had to discover a new continent daily, perhaps two on Sundays. So one fatal day Tommy's city editor told him cold turkey that in two weeks Tom might be president of Porto Rico, Duke of Nebraska or head of the Steel Trust, but what he won't be is on the payroll of the Evening Wow!

Honestly, this unpleasant news disturbed me greatly and while I was cudgelling my brain for some scheme