That afternoon, I had two assignments, and failed badly in both. The first was to find a company promoter who had got into trouble, and to ask him “all about it.” I could not find him; his house, his office, his club knew him not. After two hours’ frantic search, I returned crestfallen, expecting to be dismissed there and then. Cooper, however, cut short my lengthy explanations with a shrug of the shoulders, and sent me up to the Fort Lee woods, across the Hudson River, to find out “all about” a suicide whose body had just been discovered under the trees. “Get his name right, why he did it, and what the relatives have to say,” were his parting words. The Fort Lee woods were miles away, I saw the body--an old man with a bullet hole in his temple, I found his son at the police station, and asked him what his tears and grief made permissible, the answer being that “he had no troubles and we can’t think what made him do it.” Then I telephoned these few facts to the office. On getting back myself at half-past six when the last edition was already on the streets, Cooper showed me the final edition of the _Evening World_. It had a column on the front page with big head-lines. The suicide was a defaulter, and the reporter gave a complete story of his gambling life. Cooper offered no comment. The _Evening World_ had got “a beat”; and I had failed badly. I sat down at the reporters’ table and wondered what would happen, and then saw, lying before me, our own last edition with exactly the same story, similar big headlines, and all the important facts complete. An interview with the company promoter was also in print. I was at a loss to understand what had happened until Whitey, on the way into the drug-store a little later, explained things: the United Press, a news agency that “covered” everything, had sent the story. The “flimsy” men, so called because they wrote on thin paper that made six copies at once, were very valuable. “Make friends with them,” said Whitey, “and no one will ever get a beat on you. They’re paid a salary and don’t care. It’s only the space-men, as a rule, who won’t give up.” CHAPTER XIII As a new “bum reporter,” however, I had a hectic life, but rapidly made friends with the other men, and a mutual loathing of the work brought us easily together. Friday was pay-day; by Wednesday everybody was trying to borrow money--one dollar, usually--from everybody else, the debts being always faithfully repaid when the little envelopes were collected at the cashier’s office downstairs.