Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/39

Rh night, as he sat on the steps of the editor's cottage, he found himself asking about Helen Dimmick.

"In the old days, when the three of us were here together," he said, "Helen Dimmick, you remember, kept the books and wrote the society column Saturdays, and looked after the want ads and subscriptions. How we three did work! And when a show or a circus came to town Helen and I would go and enjoy it the more because we belonged to the Press and had complimentary tickets!"

The girl, Stratton learned had left the Sun a year after he himself, and, like him, had gone East. The old man led him inside and showed him a copy of a small juvenile paper with Helen Dimmick's name as associate editor.

"How proud I have been of you two," said the old editor, placing a hand upon Stratton's shoulder,—"the geniuses who started on the Sun!"

This news of his old colleague sent Stratton's thoughts roving often into the past. But the joy of recreating the old atmosphere and of experiencing anew the zest and restless eagerness of earlier days was too keen for him to be other than contented.

And then one day, nearly a month after his return, Fred Stratton felt once more the thrill of the big news story and, in an instant, became the metropolitan reporter, Stratton of the Sentinel.

He had wandered early one afternoon to the depot, where he proposed covering the up express in the interests of the "Local Comings and Goings" column, and had been standing at the ticket window talking idly with the agent when the telegraph instrument began chattering sharply its "urgent—urgent—urgent" signal. The agent opened his key and shot back a reply as he drew a yellow pad toward him.

Stratton, sensing anxiety in the other's actions, leaned over his shoulder and watched the twisting pencil.

The instrument kept up its sharp, nervous clatter, repeating the message while the agent straightened up slowly and sprang toward the door.

Stratton grasped his arm as he emerged. "I'll fetch doctors," he said, "and nurses and supplies—"

"Yes—yes," replied the other, not stopping. "And hurry." He disappeared in the direction of the roundhouse.

Stratton crossed the street to the office of the telegraph and telephone company. He gave the news to central with orders to locate every doctor within call. While waiting, he stepped across to the telegraph counter and scrawled a message. It was a twenty-word "flash" of the wreck addressed to the Sentinel and signed "Stratton." The operator sent it at once. Then, like a good reporter, he learned the location of the telegraph office nearest the wreck. The girl at the switchboard called him and for the next five minutes Stratton repeated his news to doctors and nurses, and to stores where he ordered blankets and such other things as occurred to him as likely to be of use. And always he