The Editor wants to find out what Dartmouth is going to do at Harvard during the game weekend, so he decides that someone goes to Hanover and finds out. But the Editor wants to do it in a subtle way, that will make the Crimsons look cute and maybe make the Dartmouths look pretty dull.

The Editor keeps talking and tells me he's had special press cards printed, and he's been corresponding with the Daily Dartmouth on the deal, only they don't know he's the Editor of the Harvard CRIMSON.

I listen, thinking move and more of how big and tough they are at Dartmouth, and remembering stories of how they paint Harvard people green for being spies.

That's just what the Editor is asking me to do--be a spy. He's been working on this thing for a couple of months, sending phoney letters from an outfit called the North American Photograph Service to Tom Gerber, Editor-in-Chief of the Dartmouth Daily.

NAPS span the continent, says the press card the Editor hands me, and it says that we've got offices in New York, Montreal, Seattle, and a helluva lot of other big cities.

New York Letters

How come you send letters from New York when you're in Cambridge?" I ask him, and he tells me that New York is a big city, with a lot of people who will do anything for a buck.

I try to talk my way out of this espionage business by telling the Editor that I wear Chipp suits, button-down shirts, and club ties, sport a crew cut, and talk with a broad-A, and anyone who does all those things surely comes from Harvard, and even the people at Dartmouth would spot me a mile off.

The Editor smiles and says he will fix that. And he does. He gets me a grey pin-striped suit, double-breasted, with shoulders that I can grab in my fist and make look like a football. The Editor doesn't forget anything. He finds me a tie that leaves me as flat as warm beer, and then insists I put a ruptured duck in the lapel of the suit, and find a shirt that isn't button-down. The hat I wear looks like something out of the Front Page.

D-Day comes, and the photographer who goes with me. I have never seen before, and he doesn't say much as we get into the car that is very dusty and has New York plates. He is wearing a Legion button, I notice.

Onion on Breath

Just before we get to Dartmouth, the photog suggests we add more realism, so we go to a hamburger stand, and order three hamburgers, with thick slices of onion. The waitress does not like us. To make it seem that we are New York slickers, we chew gum when we pull into Hanover, and also to seem like polite Joes who don't like to have people breathing our enjoy breath.

Our room is okay at the Hanover Inn, and the first thing we decide to do is go over and see the boys at the Daily Dartmouth. This is a tricky moment, and I wonder when they grab us right off, how we going to let our friends at Harvard know we are prisoners, so they can come rescue us.

But everything turns out okay. The Editor Tom Gerber is very impressed with a New York-writer-photog team. He asks how the trip from New York was and we say tough. He laughs, and kind of asks if there is anything he can do for us.

I know there is much he can do, like to tell us whether the Daily Dartmouth is putting out a phoney issue, but one must be subtle about spying.