The Soul Stealers

Bryan moved his muscular shoulders as though against an invisible resistance. Then, slowly, still fighting that resistance, he reached into the breast pocket of his rumpled tweed jacket and produced a pencil and a wrinkled but otherwise clean envelope. Most reporters carried notepads about with them; some even went in for stenographers' shorthand notebooks. But to Bryan news was something more than mere details. It was a thing of human and emotional qualities, and these he carried in his head like songs—some gay and humorous, many more tragic and sad. This characteristic had given his by-line its great popularity with Courier readers. When he needed to remember details at all—comparatively unimportant facts like dates and numbers—he recorded them on envelopes.