making any observation. Then he bent a queer look upon Banneker and
grunted:

"What do you call this stuff, anyway?"

"Just putting down what I saw."

Gardner read on. "What about this, about a Pullman sleeper 'elegant as a
hotel bar and rigid as a church pew'? Where do you get that?"

Banneker looked startled. "I don't know. It just struck me that is the
way a Pullman is."

"Well, it is," admitted the visitor, and continued to read. "And this
guy with the smashed finger that kept threatening to 'soom'; is that
right?"

"Of course it's right. You don't think I'd make it up! That reminds me
of something." And he entered a memo to see the litigious-minded
complainant again, for these are the cases which often turn up in the
courts with claims for fifty-thousand-dollar damages and heartrending
details of all-but-mortal internal injuries.

Silence held the reader until he had concluded the seventh and last
sheet. Not looking at Banneker, he said:

"So that's your notion of reporting the wreck of the swellest train that
crosses the continent, is it?"

"It doesn't pretend to be a report," disclaimed the writer. "It's pretty