The managing editor, whose humors and moods fixed the tone of the office, may have been responsible, but whatever the cause a stricter discipline was manifest, and editors, reporters and copy-readers moved and labored with a consciousness that an unknown being walked among the desks, and hung over the forms to the very last moment before they were hurled to the stereotypers.

The editorial writers--those astute counselors of the public who are half-revered and half-despised by their associates on the news side of every American newspaper--wrote uneasily under a mysterious, hidden censorship.

It was possible that even the young woman who gleaned society news might, by some unfortunate slip, offend the invisible proprietor.

But as time passed nothing happened.

The imaginable opaque pane that separated the owner from the desks of the "Courier's" reporters and philosophers had disclosed no faintest shadow.
Occasionally the managing editor was summoned below by the general manager, but the subordinates in the news department were unable, even by much careful study of their subsequent instructions, to grasp the slightest thread that might lead them to the concealed hand which swayed the "Courier's" destiny.