When a reporter was too lazy to look up some needed information himself, he would ask Pop. Pop would glower, growl, swear--and to hear him was a treat--and get the necessary data. On the night before, in the crap game, Pop had cleaned up the entire gang and broken up the game. Marie LaBelle was cursing fluently the luck that on that occasion had seemed to run all in one direction--with Pop Fosdick. Marie hitched up the left half of his suspenders and began his old plaint: "Think of that old geezer, old enough to--" "Oh, I don't know," broke in one of the listeners. "It doesn't take much to see sevens--, and elevens. Even Pop--" "I don't mean that," lied Marie. "I wasn't thinking of his luck last night. I was thinking of the remarkable manner in which a man of his age conducts that morgue. It isn't just memory either. He seems to have an uncanny intelligence about--" "A man of his age," scoffed Jimmy. "He isn't the only one. I know one man who is, I believe, older than Pop--" "We all know who that is, of course," jeered Roy Heath, the rewrite man, with his soft southern drawl. "Jimmy is now going to effuse about Professor Herman Brierly. Now, down South, in God's own country there are really remarkable old men. I grant that Professor Brierly is quite a chap for a Yankee; one would think he was a Southerner, but must we listen to--" Pat Collins, a newcomer to the staff of the Eagle, interrupted. "Shut up, Roy. I've heard a lot about this Brierly, but I know very little about him. Does Jimmy know him personally?" "Know him?" drawled Heath. "Pat, to hear Jimmy talk, you'd think he created Brierly. Go on Jimmy, you got an audience." Jimmy bristled. Roy had touched a sensitive spot, but he saw that this was just the superficial cynicism of the newspaperman. He saw the respectful interest that even these hardened reporters could not disguise. They shared his genuine admiration for the remarkable old scientist. "Come on, Jimmy," urged Pat. "Tell me." "You yellow journalists, with your minds running on lurid headlines, can hardly appreciate a man of his kind. Professor Herman Brierly is one of the four foremost scientists in the world today. He shuns publicity, really shuns it, and it is only because of his participation in several remarkable criminal cases that he has become generally known. "He's nearly eighty years old. He doesn't wear glasses and I believe he still has all his teeth. He is little more than five feel tall, but built like a miniature Apollo; bushy white hair; deeply sunken blue eyes that seem to dissect one with sharp knives, and bushy black eyebrows.