If you succeed with the assignment I'm going to give you, and keep straight after this, you may stay on here. If yon fail on this assignment through any blunder of your own, or if you are drunk again, I shall discharge you on the spot. It is your last chance in this office. Do you understand?"
Brooke understood. He knew Curtis to be a man of his word.
"What is the assignment, sir?" he asked, his bloodshot eyes resting a moment on his chiefs clear-cut features.
"While you were away, Saturday," answered Curtis, picking up a handful of clippings, "young Sydney Enfield, of Carew & Enfield, brokers, was arrested on a charge of embezzling two hundred thousand dollars from the firm of which he is junior partner. There's very little evidence against him, and he'll get off without any trouble. The police themselves look on the whole thing as a silly legal blunder. But here's what I want: I want you to go up to young Enfield's house—he lives somewhere in the early Forties—and get an interview with his wife. She's a mere girl. They were only married last year. I want you to get a good 'human interest' story there. You know the sort,—wifely indignation at her darling husband's unjust arrest, and all that sort of rot. If she won't see you, try to get a statement of some kind from Enfield's lawyers. They are Porter & Jackson, 992 Nassau Street."
"A nice sort of assignment to send a man on when it's his one hope of holding his job," Brooke growled as he boarded a Third Avenue Elevated train. "The woman will never consent to see me; and as for the lawyers, of course they're under honor not to discuss their client's case with outsiders. Any fool knows that."
The drink-mists gradually cleared from Jack Brooke's brain as he glanced over the clippings Curtis had given him. He was a born reporter, and his professional interest in the case was awakening. Hurriedly he mastered each detail and mapped out to himself the line of questions he would ask should Mrs. Enfield by any rare chance give him an interview.
The hope of keeping his position on the Planet too went far towards sobering Brooke. He felt, somehow, that if he were thrown out of work at this crisis there would be no more stoppages on his path to tramp-hood. His "grip" would be lost for good and all.
That he would be able to turn over a new leaf and remain sober, in case he kept his position, was a question on which he was far more doubtful.
Still, he felt, stranger things had happened. A boyish stride replaced his former slouching gate as he walked up Forty-seventh Street towards the Enfield house.
"Is Mrs. Enfield at home?" he asked of the trim maid at the door.
The servant looked distrustfully at him, and Brooke's heart sank.
