Detective and mystery stories; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction; Nurses -- Fiction; Washington (D.C.) Region -- Fiction
“Sure you have the last edition? Thanks.”
Dorothy put back the receiver with a relieved sigh. A glance at her
wrist watch showed her that it was already a quarter of five--and the
foreman was waiting for early copy. There was no time to hunt up Vera,
and with her nerves on edge she turned to her list of assignments and
telephoned to first one hostess and then another, getting dinner and
lunch lists until she had a formidable number before her. But one
hostess remained uncalled, and with renewed zeal she resorted to the
telephone again.
“This is Miss Deane, society editor, _Morning Tribune_,” she explained.
“I will be greatly obliged if you will give the names of your dinner
guests tonight for tomorrow’s paper.”
“I give dinners to my friends, not for the newspapers,” came the frigid
reply, and Dorothy heard the bang of the telephone receiver at the
other end of the wire.
“Waugh!” she exclaimed aloud, turning back to her typewriter. “So Mrs.
Purse thinks she has arrived--and last year she was sending in her
own dinner lists to the newspapers, as well as the names of guests at
entertainments to which she was invited.”
Dorothy’s skilled fingers flew over the typewriter as her active
brain put in fitting phrases the information she had secured over the
telephone, and later, in some instances, she rewrote the important
social events chronicled in the evening newspapers. She had almost
completed her task when the door opened and the office boy ushered in a
much-talked-about divorcée whose career had provided entertainment for
staid Washingtonians.
Dorothy was a favorite of hers and she greeted her warmly. “No, I can’t
sit and gossip,” she announced, standing by the partly open door. “I
only came to bring you this data about our dramatic club,” laying a
folded manuscript on the desk perilously near the paste pot. “Dress
it up in your own style, Dorothy. I congratulate you on your society
column; it’s the best in town.”
“Indeed,” and Dorothy flushed with pleasure. “I did not think you would
ever bother to read it.”
“I always read the social news to keep track of the entertainments to
which I am not bidden given by women who owe me invitations.” A faint
hardness crept into her voice, and was gone instantly as she bade
Dorothy a cordial good-by and departed.
Rewriting the dramatic club article proved more of a task than Dorothy
had bargained for; thoughts of Vera, of Bruce Brainard, and last--of
Hugh Wyndham, projected themselves before the typed words, and in
desperation she seized the scissors and, shortening the manuscript, she
pasted the remainder on her copy paper. She was busy marking her copy
when the telephone bell called her back to the instrument.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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