I’d got that far, discovered that Virgie owned up to bein’ thirty-five and a bachelor, that he was born in Schoharie, son of Telemachus J. and Matilda Smith Bunn, and that he’d once been president of the village literary club, when I remembers the clippin’ files we used to have back on Newspaper Row.  So down I hikes—­and who should I stack up against, driftin’ gloomy through the lower lobby, but Whity Meeks, that used to be the star man on the Sunday sheet.  Course, it wa’n’t any miracle; for Whity’s almost as much of a fixture there as Old Gluefoot, the librarian, or the finger marks on the iron pillars in the press-room.

A sad example of blighted ambitions, Whity is.  When I first knew him he had a fresh one every Monday mornin’, and they ranged all the way from him plannin’ to be a second Dicky Davis to a scheme he had for hookin’ up with Tammany and bein’ sent to Congress.  Clever boy too.  He could dash off ponies that was almost good enough to print, dope out the first two acts of a play that was bound to make his fortune if he could ever finish it, and fake speeches that he’d never heard a word of.

When he got to doin’ Wall Street news, though, and absorbed the idea that he could stack his little thirty per against the system and break the bucketshops—­well, that was his finish.  Two killings that he made by chance, and he was as good as chained to the ticker for life.  No more new rosy dreams for him:  always the same one,—­of the day when he was goin’ to show Sully how a cotton corner really ought to be pulled off, a day when the closin’ gong would find him with the City Bank in one fist and the Subtreasury in the other.  You’ve met that kind, maybe.  Only Whity always tried to dress the part, in a sporty shepherd plaid, with a checked hat and checked silk socks to match.  He has the same regalia on now, with a carnation in his buttonhole.

“Well, mounting margins!” says he, as I swings him round by the arm.  “Torchy!  Whither away?  Come down to buy publicity space for the Corrugated, have you?”

“Not in a rag like yours, Whity,” says I, “when we own stock in two real papers.  I’m out on a little private gumshoe work for the boss.”

“Sounds thrilling,” says he.  “Any copy in it?”

“I’d be chatterin’ it to you, wouldn’t I?” says I.  “Nix!  Just plain fam’ly scrap over whether Cousin Inez shall marry again or not.  My job is to get something on the guy.  Don’t happen to have any special dope on T. Virgil Bunn, the sculptor poet, do you?”

Whity stares at me.  “Do I?” says he.

“Say!” Then he leads me over between the ’phone booth and the cigar stand, flashes an assignment pad, and remarks, “Gaze on that second item, my boy.”

“Woof!  That’s him, all right,” says I.  “But what’s a bouillabaisse tea?”

“Heaven and Virgil Bunn only know,” says Whity.  “But that doesn’t matter.  Think of the subtle irony of Fate that sends me up to make a column story out of Virgie Bunn!  Me, of all persons!”