“Well, why not you?” says I.

“Why?” says Whity.  “Because I made the fellow.  He—­why, he is my joke, the biggest scream I ever put over—­my joke, understand?  And now this adumbrated ass of a Quigley, who’s been sent on here from St. Louis to take the city desk, he falls for Virgie as a genuine personage.  Not only that, but picks me out to cover this phony tea of his.  And the stinging part is, if I don’t I get canned, that’s all.”

“Ain’t he the goods, then?” says I.  “What about this sculptor poet business?”

“Bunk,” says Whity, “nothing but bunk.  Of course, he does putter around with modeling clay a bit, and writes the sort of club-footed verse they put in high school monthlies.”

“Gets it printed in a book, though,” says I.  “I’ve seen one.”

“Why not?” says Whity.  “Anyone can who has the three hundred to pay for plates and binding.  ‘Sonnets of the City,’ wasn’t it?  Didn’t I get my commission from the Easy Mark Press for steering him in?  Why, I even scratched off some of those things to help him pad out the book with.  But, say, Torchy, you ought to remember him.  You were on the door then,—­tall, wide-shouldered freak, with aureole hair, and a close cropped Vandyke?”

“Not the one who wore the Wild West lid and talked like he had a mouthful of hot oatmeal?” says I.

“Your description of Virgie’s English accent is perfect,” says Whity.

“Well, well!” says I.  “The mushbag, we used to call him.”

“Charmingly accurate again!” says Whity.  “Verily beside him the quivering jellyfish of the salt sea was as the armored armadillo of the desert.  Soft?  You could poke a finger through him anywhere.”

“But what was his game?” says I.

“It wasn’t a game, my son,” says Whity.  “It was a mission in life,—­to get things printed about himself.  Had no more modesty about it, you know, than a circus press agent.  Perfectly frank and ingenuous, Virgie was.  He’d just come and ask you to put it in that he was a great man—­just like that!  The chief used to froth at the mouth on sight of him.  But Virgie looked funny to me in those days.  I used to jolly him along, smoke his Coronas, let him take me out to swell feeds.  Then when they gave Merrow charge of the Sunday side, just for a josh I did a half-page special about Virgie, called him the sculptor poet, threw in some views of him in his studio, and quoted some of his verse that I’d fixed up.  It got by.  Virgie was so pleased he wanted to give a banquet for me; but I got him to go in on a little winter wheat flier instead.  He didn’t drop much.  After that I’d slip in a paragraph about him now and then, always calling him the sculptor poet.  The tag stuck.  Other papers began to use it; until, first thing I knew, Virgie was getting away with it.  Honest, I just invented him.  And now he passes for the real thing!”

“Where you boobed, then, was in not filin’ copyright papers,” says I.  “But how does he make it pay?”