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Fresh Every Hour: Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child.Toohey, John Peter

General

Fresh Every Hour: Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child.

Name: Fresh Every Hour: Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child.
Author: Toohey, John Peter

Toohey, John Peter

Press agents -- Fiction

His anxiety increased as the day wore on and the early editions of the
evening papers which played up the story even more extensively than the
“mornings” failed to buoy him up. There was still no word of the N-24,
and navy department officials in Washington were reported to be gravely
alarmed at the possibilities.

At noon the British embassy gave out the announcement that “a
distinguished person” had cabled for detailed information and had begged
to be kept in hourly touch with the developments. Flaming head-lines
carried the legend “King Anxious About Lost Dirigible.” Upon reading
this three rival publicity promoters who had suspected the presence of
the fine Italian hand of Jimmy Martin in the proceedings from the
beginning and who had foregathered for lunch in their favorite club,
simultaneously started out on a joint jamboree that was to become a
memorable minor historical incident in the turgid annals of Broadway. It
offered the only means of escaping from the tragic feeling of profound
and passionate envy that surged up from the very depths of their beings.

At 3 o’clock as Jimmy, red-eyed and haggard, nodded at his desk between
telephone calls, a messenger boy dropped a cablegram in front of him. He
tore it open and gazed bewilderingly at this cryptic message:

                                HAMILTON, BERMUDA.
                   JAMES T. MARTIN.
                     JOLLYLAND PARK,
                       CONEY ISLAND, N. Y.
                     COME ON IN—THE WATER’S FINE—GIVE
                   MY REGARDS TO LOLITA, BUT CAN’T
                   SAY I’M SORRY IT HAPPENED AS YET.
                                   BOBBY WILKINS.

Jimmy gave a second look at the heading and rushed into the next office
where McClintock was snoring sonorously on a sofa. He shook the manager
savagely and waved the cablegram in front of his eyes.

“All’s right with the world, Mac,” he shouted joyously. “They’ve landed
in Bermuda. Can you beat that fresh son-of-a-gun doin’ a thing like
that? What’s the big idea, I wonder?”

McClintock grabbed the message and read it hurriedly.

“I guess maybe he’s mailing the answer,” he remarked. “It beats me.
You’d better get a wire off to him asking for particulars.”

The shrill summons of the telephone brought Jimmy back into his own
office the next moment. The voice of his friend, Lindsay, the day desk
man of the Associated Press, came over the wire in crisp, staccato
sentences.

“Got some news for you,” he said. “It’s going to make this morning’s
headlines look sick. Here’s the way our first bulletin reads:

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Fresh Every Hour: Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child.

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