Ida Alexa Ross Wylie Release Date: 10 December 0140 Format: Paperback Pages: 168 Publisher: General Books ISBN: 9781458804426 ISBN-10: 1458804429
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill JOHN PRETTYMAN'S FOURTH DIMENSION The sub-editor put his head round the glass door, and having blinked a moment to accustom himself to the murky smoke-laden atmosphere, discovered his quarry at the far end of the room and hailed him derisively. He did not come in further, however, because he was going out to dinner, and dinner meant almost more to him than a sensational crime or a world cataclysm. " Drop it Drop it, Young Saunders We don't want 'em and we wont have 'em They're a drug on the market. If you've nothing better to do you can write up an obituary notice. Try your hand on J. D. Prettyman. We'll want as much as we can squeeze out of the old devil two columns three columns great national figure and all that textit{you know." " But he's not dead," objected Young Saunders from out of the yellow gloom. " He soon will be in time for the next issue, please heaven. I don't know what we're going to fill up with if he doesn't. But I had the straight tip from his secretary can't last another day. Now put your back into it, my boy. 'Tisn't often a cub like you gets the chance to spread himself over three columns " He slammed the door and his laugh echoed with Mephis- tophelian glee down the stone passage. " Oh, damn Damn everything " said Young Saunders. He let his tip-tilted chair drop forward suddenly so that his grey head came into the dim circle of light, and the loose scraps of paper, littering the desk, rose up like a frightened flock of birds and fluttered down into the darkness. He did not bother to pick them up. For the first time in his life he believed the sub-editor, and for the first time in his life he knew that he was an old man. But he had a conscience a rigid sense of duty, and he got up at last and went painfully over to the ...