be anything doing. If you'd listened to me you wouldn't need to have stuck around all this time."
"And if your boy friend here listened to you about the 'phone around the corner," retorted the fat man, indicating his leaner competitor, "he'd have been in a swell jam if anything broke. A repair man from the telephone company has had it all apart for the last half hour. I heard what you told the young fellow here, girlie, and took the trouble to check up. When you've been in this game as long as I have, you learn to listen to everything."
"Well, what do you know about that for mistrustfulness," sighed Tess, rolling her gum and looking around at the back of the exiting corpulent reporter.
"Thanks for the tip anyway. You meant well," smiled the lean reporter. "Next time we'll fix him."
Had either reporter followed the trail of Steven Carter when he left the Inter-City offices ten minutes later, the sleuths of the news might have learned something that would have made the front page with glaring headlines.
Carter descended in the elevator to the entrance hall of the Inter-City Building. There he sought a telephone booth and called a number.
"Hello," said Carter briskly when the connection was made. "P. G. Callahan Association? Hello—Mike? Puggy there? Good. Put him on, will you?" A pause followed. Then, "Hello—Puggy? Say, I may have a little job for you. Strong-arm work. Plenty of dough. Don't worry. I'll protect
