"Was the information about him that you wished, in the telegram?"
asked the confidential clerk.

"Yes; all I wanted. Thanks for looking after it. Have the Toledo
reporter, who sent it, forward his bill. And if the old inventor
who's been haunted by disembodied voices comes again, bring him to
me."

"Yes, sir," said Simpson, going out.

Left to himself, Average Jones again ran over the dispatches,
conveying the information as to the lost Toledo youth. They had
given a fairly complete sketch of young Hoff's life and character.
At twenty-four, it appeared, Roderick Hoff had achieved a career.
Emerging, by the propulsive method, from college, in the first term
of his freshman year, he had taken a post-graduate course in the
cigarette ward of a polite retreat for nervous wrecks. He had
subsequently endured two breach-of-promise suits, had broken the
state automobile record for number of speed violation arrests, had
been buncoed, badgered, paneled, blackmailed and short-carded out of
sums varying between one hundred and ten thousand dollars; and now,
in the year of grace, 19--, was the horror of the pulpit and the
delight of the press of the city which he called his home. For the
rest, he was a large, mild, good-humored, pulpy individual, with a
fixed delusion that the human organism can absorb a quart of
alcoholic miscellany per day and be none the worse for it. The
major premise of his proposition was perfectly correct. He proved
it daily. The minor premise was an error. Bets were even in the
Toledo clubs as to whether delirium tremens or paresis would win the
event around young Mr. Hoff's kite-shaped race-track of a brain.