The pasteboard box containing the pie was carefully placed on top of the bed of newspapers and other papers were packed in tightly around and above it. The lid was nailed solidly on and Jimmy affixed an express label addressed to himself. When the box had been carefully loaded on a push wagon in charge of a small colored boy and was on its way down Euclid Avenue toward the Star office, personally chaperoned by the two press agents, the conspiracy was completed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter Twenty E. Cartwright Jenkins, dramatic editor of the Star, was distinctly displeased with life as a whole and with humanity in general that morning. His professional dignity had been subjected to a series of frontal and flank attacks of great violence for nearly twenty-four hours and the final insult had been handed out by the managing editor who had just left the little cubby hole designated by a painted sign as the “dramatic department.” E. Cartwright had read Jimmy’s oleaginous epistle three times at the breakfast table the morning before and had left his home in a fine glow of self-approval. In fancy he walked upon the misty mountain tops of high achievement until he reached the Star office and then he found himself hurled suddenly into the well known slough of despond. Billy Parsons, the advertising manager, who met him in the elevator, started it. “Well, old man,” Billy, said laughingly, “I see they got to you for a home-run this morning with all the bases full.” E. Cartwright had bristled at this and had expressed himself as not comprehending the esoteric significance of the allusion. Billy had then become more specific. “They put it over on you,” he replied. “That press agent fellow with Olga Stephano, I mean.” “Put it over on me?” the dramatic editor had returned. “I don’t exactly understand what you mean.” “Say, old dear,” Billy had sarcastically responded, “it’s a worse case than I thought it was at first. You’d ought to see a doctor.” E. Cartwright, who abhorred slang and those who used it, had become quite indignant at this and had insisted upon a clear explanation of what Billy Parsons meant. The latter gentleman obliged him with one. He pointed out, with great clarity, the trick that Jimmy Martin had played on the astute and dignified dramatic editor. He dwelt upon the number of times the name of Madame Stephano had been cunningly inserted into the correspondence and proved that the whole affair was a carefully calculated scheme for the exploitation of that lady.