However, I made the best of my time reading, and finally went out to supper alone, returning as quickly as possible in case there should be an assignment for me. When I returned I found my name on the book and I set out to interview a Chicago minister who was visiting in the city. Evidently this city editor thought it would be easier for me to interview a Chicago minister than any other. I found my man, after some knocking at wrong doors, and got nothing worth a stick—mere religious drive—and returned with my “story,” which was never used.
While I was writing it up, however, the youth of the Jovian curls returned from an assignment, hung up his little wrinkled overcoat and sat down in great comfort next me. His evening’s work was apparently futile for he took out his pipe, rapped it sonorously on his chair, lighted it and then picked up an evening paper.
“What’s doing, Jock, up at police headquarters?” called the little man over his shoulder.
“Nothing much, Bob,” replied the other, without looking up.
“By jing, you police reporters have a cinch!” jested the first. “All you do is sit around up there at headquarters and get the news off the police blotters, while we poor devils are chasing all over town. _We_ have to earn our money.” His voice had a peculiarly healthy, gay and bantering ring to it.
“That’s no joke,” put in a long, lean, spectacled individual who was sitting in another corner. “I’ve been tramping all over south St. Louis, looking for a confounded robbery story.”
“Well, you’ve got long legs, Benson,” retorted the jovial Hazard. “You can stand it. Now I’m not so well fixed that way. Bellairs, there, ought to be given a chance at that. He wouldn’t be getting so fat, by jing!”
The one called Jock also answered to the name of Bellairs.
“You people don’t do so much,” he replied, grinning cheerfully. “If you had my job you wouldn’t be sitting here reading a newspaper. It takes work to be a police reporter.”
“Is that so?” queried the little man banteringly. “You’re proof of it, I suppose? Why, you never did a good day’s work in your life!”
“Give us a match, Bob, and shut up,” grinned the other. “You’re too noisy. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me yet tonight.”
“I got your work! Is she over sixteen? Wish I had your job.”