"Whajjer want uvvum, I said. Didn' chu hear me?" Graceful and effortless as the mounting lark, Reginald Currier rose and soared. When he again touched earth, it was only to go spinning into a far corner where he first embraced, then strove with and was finally tripped and thrown by a large and lurking waste-basket. Somewhat perturbed, he extricated himself in time to see the decisive visitor disappear through an inner door. Retrieving the crumpled and rejected card from its resting-place, he examined it with interest. The legend upon it was "Mr. Harrington Surtaine." "Huh!" grunted Reginald Currier; "I never seen _that_ in no sporting column." Once within the sacred precincts, young Mr. Surtaine turned into an inner room, bumped against a man trailing a kite-tail of proof, who had issued from a door to the right, asked a question, got a response, and entered the editor's den. Two littered desks made up the principal furniture of the place. Impartially distributed between the further desk and a chair, the form of one lost in slumber sprawled. At the nearer one sat a dyspeptic man of middle age waving a heavy pencil above a galley proof. "Are you the editor?" asked Hal. "One editor. I'm Mr. Sterne. How the devil did you get in here?" "Are you responsible for this?" Hal held up the morning's clipping, headed "Surtaine Fakeries Explained." "Who are you?" asked Sterne, nervously hitching in his chair. "I am Harrington Surtaine." The journalist whistled, a soft, long-drawn note. "Dr. Surtaine's son?" he inquired. "Yes." "That's awkward." "Not half as awkward as it's going to be unless you apologize privately and publicly." Mr. Sterne looked at him estimatingly, at the same time wadding up a newspaper clipping from the desk in front of him. This he cast at the slumberer with felicitous accuracy. "Hoong!" observed that gentleman, starting up and caressing his cheek. "Wake up, Mac. Here's a man from the Trouble Belt, with samples to show." The individual thus addressed slowly rose out of his chair, exhibiting a squat, gnarly figure surmounted by a very large head. Hal's hand came up out of his pocket, with the dog-whip writhing unpleasantly after it. Simultaneously, the ex-sleeper projected himself, without any particular violence but with astonishing quickness, between the caller and his prey. Without at all knowing whence it was derived, Hal became aware of a large, black, knobby stick, which it were inadequate to call a cane, in his new opponent's grasp. Of physical courage there was no lack in the scion of the Surtaine line. Neither, however, was he wholly destitute of reasoning powers and caution. The figure before him was of an unquestionable athleticism; the weapon of obvious weight and fiber. The situation was embarrassing.