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CI.6306378
Vol. VIII
:^
No. 8
PHONf ICTBREr.
MAGAZINI
SEPT., 1914
The Gilded Kidd
(Edison) By PETER WADE
It was one of those kind of days in the ' ' copy ' ' room of the Chronicle when a man frantically jerks his index finger around inside of his melting collar and wishes he were dressed in pajamas and seated on an iceberg in Baffin Bay.
Now and then a typewriter ticked feebly, but mostly the boys sat around and swore softly at the city editor's closed door. There came the splash of an electric fan thru the transom, which tempered not the wind to the shorn lambs.
From the superheated street below the blatting of a "cut-out" on a lawdefying auto tore the ambient air.
The office fixture, in the person of the city hall reporter, leaned lazily out of the window.
"It's the Gilded Kidd," he informed the others. "Lawsy! I thought he was sequestrated on a sheep-ranch in Arizona."
"Who's who?" demanded a cub.
The mouthpiece of the mayor eyed him in stony silence. "Back to the little, red schoolhouse, son," he admonished parentally ; ' ' even the boss knows all about the Gilded Kidd."
"We dont," chorused the hardened
group. "Well,
well, well, and then well !
27
scorned the city-hallite. "Mayhap I'd better refer you to the files five years back, or the 'morgue,' or the library."
"Little schooners have big ears," suggested "police courts," humbly.
The senior reporter tilted his chair, pressed his finger-tips together and prepared to enlighten.
1 ' Five years ago, ' ' he began, " K. K. Kidd owned about all the soap factories in the State — that was before the trust came along and slid him a cool five million. ' '
"Some wash-out," explained the city hall sleuth.
' ' No levity, son, for this is no lye, ' ' admonished the senior reporter.
"To begin again, as it were, K. K. Kidd had an only son, Harry, known the town over as the Gilded Kidd.
"Now Harry was as prankish as the proverbial Puck, but he never could get into trouble — papa's money always came between him and his victims. Every one knew that K. K. Kidd doted on his offspring and would pay by the nose for his skylarking; consequently, every one let him off easy — and sent in a thundering bill afterwards.
"Once the Gilded Kidd frisked off with a clothing-store dummy