CHAPTER XIIIn Chinese Red
I first pulled out of the overhead hanging file Mr. VanHymes Severingham Cushing-Barkley’s selections. Ten in number they were. Simon Stannard knew his stock, all right! I riffled them over. In their contained envelopes—that is. The corner return cards on the envelopes showed who had written them. Octavus van Loan—Fanny Gerstenmeier—Henry Stavensbury Queen—Susan Hartz—Edgar R. Harroughs—Rupert Husenking—Carolyn Bell—Agatha Wistaria—Tiff Thannery—Catha Thrush. There wasn’t a name there that I hadn’t seen in all the big magazines from the Saturday Evening Post to Liberty. And it dawned on me in an instant—the why and wherefore of it all. This bag of wind that called itself Cushing-Barkley was riding on a reputation. As a story-picker. And probably didn’t know a re
