Summary
Ink still wet on his press badge, cub reporter Henry Egbert Xerxes is ordered to sniff out a ring of counterfeiters that haunts the gin-soaked shadows of the Red Dog Inn—a dive whose scarlet sign pulsates like a fresh wound above the waterfront. On the very stoop of the newsroom he spots the same moon-eyed girl who earlier slipped bogus bills across a streetcar aisle; seconds later she is muscled into a hansom cab that melts into fog. Henry gives chase through cobblestone arteries, only to yank open the carriage door and confront null air: the vehicle is a vacuum, a magician’s hat without the rabbit. Undaunted, he prowls the tavern’s sawdust labyrinth, unmasking a dungeon where the girl—part pawn, part accomplice—hangs in burlap suspense. Fists, chairs, and kerosene lanterns fly in a Keystone-style cyclone until the duo burst into nocturnal freedom. Sprinting back to his boarding-house garret, Henry hammers out the scoop of his dreams, only to discover next morning that the front page remains virgin white. Outraged, he barges into the city desk to learn the vertiginous truth: every clue, every peril, every heartbeat was an elaborate newsroom prank designed to assay whether the tyro could sniff real news from artificial smoke.
Synopsis
Henry Egbert Xerxes' big chance as a cub reporter comes when he is assigned to track down a gang of counterfeiters which gathers regularly at the Red Dog Inn. As he leaves the office, Henry witnesses a girl being dragged into a cab -- the same girl he had seen that morning passing counterfeit money. Henry follows, but on overtaking the cab, he finds it empty. At the Red Dog Inn, he discovers that the girl is being held captive. After a series of rough and tumble adventures with the resident thugs, he and the girl escape, after which he rushes home to write up the story. When it fails to appear in print, Henry storms into the city room only to discover that the entire business was a hoax, intended to test his reporter's instincts.
