The Bulletin’s Day Book

The pesky Nazis have been extremely busy on many fronts during the past few days. They seem to be a determined lot, plague take them! and they are evidently determined to plague me into an active psychosis. But they better beware. When H.W.’s psychosis gets active, Svengali Hitler had better start running.

One of the low-down methods the unmentionables have taken of getting hunk on me for all those sensational exposes I have been giving my public is the following:

I was peacefully pecking away at my typewriter the other day when Cohen—the Romeo of the mailing department of this newspaper—comes dashing in to my cubby hole. His face was a bit chalky and there was a quiver in his voice.

“There’s three guys outside asking for you,” he managed to stammer through wobbling lips. “They’re tough-looking babies.”

There is no mirror in the Day Book’s sanctum, but if there was one and I had the presence of mind to look into it, I’ll wager I would have caught myself blanching.

“Are you sure they asked for me?” I said weakly, feeling my blood curdle and the queer shivers racing up and down my spine to set a new record for the course. “Are you positive it wasn’t Vic, they were asking for? Or Kan, the baby who drives me into writing those mean things about the Nazis? Or our demon Kashruth expert and charity racket exposeur, Danny Schorr?”

But Cohen wouldn’t budge. He’s stubborn that way.

“No,” he insisted. And, pointing his finger at me for emphasis, he repeated: “It’s you they asked for.”

With that, he ran. While I was gulping a couple or three times and preparing to drag my limp carcass out to meet these three tough babies and my fate as stoically as possible, Cohen came dashing in again.

“There’s five of ’em now!” he groaned, and I could see by the yellowish tint that was covering his eyeballs that he wasn’t kidding me, either.

The Nazis have got me at last, gurgled. Wondering dully how it would feel to get rubbed out and whether my comrades would erect a monument for me some day, I managed with superhuman effort to drag myself out to meet my executors.

When I emerged from my sanctum, the invaders were already occupying a corner of the city room. As I passed by their desks, my colleagues swear that they distinctly heard a rattling as of knees that were getting chronically chummy with each other. I’m not at all surprised at this. As a matter of fact I’m surprised that I didn’t sustain fractured knees as a result of that trip down the room from my pigeon cote to that grim, forbidding looking group of five huskies who stood, hands sunk significantly in coat pockets, awaiting me.

After what seemed an age, I reached my destination, somewhat surprised that I hadn’t been mowed down.

“Who did you wish to see, gentlemen?” I asked, and to this day I don’t know where I got the courage to ask it.

A broad-shouldered husky with set jaw and unmistakably “Aryan” features, clad in a tough-looking trench coat of the kind affected by our best gangsters, answered in a flinty voice.

Looking me up and down as if measuring me for an oblong wooden suit, he said:

“We wanna see the big boss.”

I said, do you mean Mr. B? And he said, no. Then I said, realizing in a flash that they didn’t know me by sight and that Cohen had had the good sense not to point me out to them, maybe you mean this fellow here. He’s the city editor, I said, and without further ceremony I fled back to the comparative safety of my sanctorum.

There, I must have fallen asleep, or maybe it was a faint. Anyway, when I was revived later, the five tough babies had gone. I looked around for signs of a struggle or for bloodstains. Not finding either, I counted the staff members. They were all there. Only then was I informed that the five tough babies were a delegation of the Anti-Nazi Minute Men of America who had come down to tip me off about something or other that the Nazis in Yorkville were up to.

Now, isn’t that just like those pesky Nazis to start something nefarious just so they’d get the Anti-Nazis so worked up about it that they’d send their toughest-looking babies down to my hangout and scare the wits out of me?

But if I lost a few pounds and added a few gray hairs over that devilish piece of business, I am considerably comforted and elated over a signal defeat that was administered through my efforts to the Oscar Ostrich anti-Semites of the Empire of Zoo.

Readers of the daily newspapers may have come across an item in the animal columns that told about Mortimer Mongoose (wrongly called Rickey Mongoose in some versions of the story) being finally permitted to go on exhibition.

Now here’s the low-down (and it’s plenty low) about the whole business. According to the general press accounts, Mr. Mongoose had been kept in strict seclusion or coventry because the government doesn’t approve of the mongoosian habit of swindling chickens and of innocently reproducing. Now that, of course, is a lot of bosh, buncombe and hooey, begging the government’s pardon.

The actual facts of the case are these—and they’re copyrighted, so the general press had better not swipe this story from me:

Sammy (Cobra) Snake, the Nazi viper who is a prominent member without portfolio of the Ostrich cabinet, hates Mortimer’s intestines and everything else inside or outside himself. It seems that he once tried to get the best of Mortimer, who comes of a long line of bankers, in a sharp business deal. Morty, however, turned tables on Sammy and Sammy wasn’t able to take it. Ever since Sammy has made no bones about being out to “get” Mongoose. So, when Oscar Ostrich and Slim Skunk formed that anti-Semitic bloc in Zoodom, Sammy saw his chance to get even. The first hiss launched by this group, the reader may remember, was launched by Sammy at Mortimer. Mortimer’s racial ancestry was attacked. The viper was tireless in his sibilant tirades against the Semitic Mortimer.

And now, for the denouement, Sammy and his venomous confreres got to the Zoodom emperor and blackmailed him into keeping Mortimer in hiding. The poor fellow was almost forced out of business by the long layoff and probably would have expired in the pending purge that the officials are planning against other members of the Empire if not for the valiant intercession of this columnist. How this intercession was carried out I have promised to retain a secret. The fact remains, however, that Mortimer Mongoose is now doing business at the old stand again and he has H.W. and not the government to thank for it.

—H. W.