It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes.  He brought to the m. e. a pad with the code-key written on it.

“I felt the swing of it as soon as I saw it,” said Vesey.  “Hurrah for old Calloway!  He’s done the Japs and every paper in town that prints literature instead of news.  Take a look at that.”

Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code: 

          Foregone — conclusion
          Preconcerted — arrangement
          Rash — act
          Witching — hour of midnight
          Goes — without saying
          Muffled — report
          Rumour — hath it
          Mine — host
          Dark — horse
          Silent — majority
          Unfortunate — pedestrians*
          Richmond — in the field
          Existing — conditions
          Great — White Way
          Hotly — contested
          Brute — force
          Select — few
          Mooted — question
          Parlous — times
          Beggars — description
          Ye — correspondent
          Angel — unawares
          Incontrovertible — fact

Mr. Vesey afterward explained that the logical journalistic
complement of the word “unfortunate” was once the word
“victim.”  But, since the automobile became so popular, the
correct following word is now “pedestrians.”  Of course, in
Calloway’s code it meant infantry.

“It’s simply newspaper English,” explained Vesey.  “I’ve been reporting on the Enterprise long enough to know it by heart.  Old Calloway gives us the cue word, and we use the word that naturally follows it just as we use ’em in the paper.  Read it over, and you’ll see how pat they drop into their places.  Now, here’s the message he intended us to get.”

Vesey handed out another sheet of paper.

Concluded arrangement to act at hour of midnight without saying.  Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelming force of infantry will be thrown into the field.  Conditions white.  Way contested by only a small force.  Question the Times description.  Its correspondent is unaware of the facts.

“Great stuff!” cried Boyd excitedly.  “Kuroki crosses the Yalu to-night and attacks.  Oh, we won’t do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison’s essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!”

“Mr. Vesey,” said the m. e., with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you.  You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year.  I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary.  Somebody send Ames to me.”

Ames was the king-pin, the snowy-petalled Marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the rewrite men.  He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every top-spinning urchin, an uprising of the down-trodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile.  When not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.