Evening Star Newspaper, September 22, 1935, Page 84

Magazine Section THIS WEEK “What are you talking about, child?”; “About eloping to Mexico” September 22, 1935 Five Minutes to Decide Which would you have chosen, the job or the girl? It wasn’t as casy as it sounds 5y bv RAY LONG and FRANK R. ADAMS S ciry editor of the “‘San Francisco Star,”” I am giving deep thought to a momentous question: whether | shall violate the sacred moo-cow of journalism, become practically the accepter of a bribe, or carry an unsullied shield forth to battle on the morrow. In order to marshal the pros and cons of that question, it seems a good idea to set them down while waiting for the deadline to lock up the forms and start the presses rumbling for the last edition. Here they are: Last night about eleven o'clock 1 spoke into the dictograph on my desk: “‘Send Miss Manning in, and be quick about it."” “All righty, Mr. Barnes.” As if I didn't have enough to endure without somebody saying ‘“‘All righty”’ to me. I made a memo, “‘Fire Molly Beeson tomorrow for saying ‘All righty'.” and then I put it where she would be sure to see it when she cleaned up my desk. Miss Manning came in —not right away of course, but after she had looked over her make-up and decided that it would do for a city editor. I barked. City editors have been doing that ever since “The Front Page.” “Got any idea why I hired you?"" Marian Manning smiled. “Yes, but I can't tell you yet." “You're supposed to be running the gossip column on a big city newspaper, and what happens? Another reporter, in New York three thousand miles away, hears about the Burke-Mitchel divorce plans and publishes them. Yet those folks live right around the corner from you, and we haven't a line about it. Got cotton in your ears?" “Why, Ned, I knew about that ages ago " ““And let yourself be scooped?’’ “‘But, Ned, they're friends of mine."” “‘For crying out in a high soprano,’ I mut- tered in desperate pain. “In a gossip column job you've got to forget you have any friends -—and in a few weeks you won't have. Listen. I hired you because you know everybody in town and get invited to all the parties even if you —" “It’s not fair to throw up my poverty at me like that.” “Poverty, my eye. You get thirty-five dol- lars a week, don't you?"’ “But, Ned. this dress cost more than that.” “What of it ?" “Don’'t I look nice in it?" “Yes, but you'd look like an angel in a pair of patched overalls."” One of my telephones rang. **Is Miss Man- ning there?" the operator asked. I shoved it across the desk at her. She talked for a minute. “Ned," she said, looking up from the re- ceiver. ‘‘It's Bob Alvarado. He wants me to go to supper with him if I haven't a date. Have 12" “I'm sorry. phone. “We got to talk this matter over,” I ex- plained when she hung up. ‘‘And besides, 1've got to protect the fair flower of our woman- hood from the Mexican invasion." “Mexican invasion? Why, Ned, don't you Bob,”" she cooed into the know that the Alvarados were first settlers in these parts?" She thought I was jealous of Bob Alvarado. There was no use trying to tell her that I just didn't like him because he wore a waxed moustache with his mess jacket. At any rate, I told the dog-watch where I'd be in case there was an earthquake or an assassination and we went to the Van Nuys Bar. After some oysters I began to work on her, trying to tell her, in a few well chosen words, just what her job was all about. “You're so clever, Ned," she said with an expression of dumb admiration which was especially hard to bear. “Why don't you write stories for the class magazines, darling?” I wish she'd ever say ‘‘darling’’ to me and mean it. The word squirts out of her like juice from a grape-fruit and hits anybody who gets in the way. “What I'm getting at,”" 1 went on, pur- posely ignoring her attempts to side-track me from my intention to talk to her like a Dutch uncle, ‘‘is that the policy of the Star is to print fresh news while it's still quivering not cold-storage hamburger; to have an event in type by the time it happens and get an edition on the streets before the corpse of the innoCent bystander hits the ground.” I was not merely talking to hear my own voice, which I am told might not be so bad over the radio reading ‘*Trees' to the accom- paniment of soft music, but also because there had been definite complaints from Mr. Hen- dersen, our owner, to the effect that our “Waggin' Tongue '’ column had no sting in it. The trouble was that Mr. Henderson had never sat across a table from Marian, as I had, and drowned himself in the blue pools of sweetness and light through which she looks out trustfully at a menacing world. It was her eyes which had made me give her the job in the first place when she came into my office that day nearly a year ago, right after her father had gone through bankruptcy and then died. I admit that she had no more qualifications for a journalistic career than a maltese kitten, but it was a rainy day and I couldn't put her out into it. The hair was against me, too - I'm a sucker for natural blondes -- and she had a sweet, gentle mouth which should have told me that she would be no use at a murder but which, at the time, seemed like something I must never let suffer any more. What I was trying to tell Marian was prac- tically that she was being given a last chance. What Henderson's memorandum :actually said was “Either fire that deaf, dumb and blind nit-wit or get out yourself.” I trans- lated that to mean that Marian wasn't doing so well and that she ought to pull a fast one pretty soon or else Mr. Henderson would be irritated. We ate our way through some Van Nuys menu, and I asked for the check. But before the waiter could get back, a storm blew up in the shape of a young woman in a black velvet gown that matched her hair, and large eyes that smouldered under long curtains of lashes. She saw Marian the minute she came in,- - she was alone,-— and, apparently at her .