My boss is giving a party tonight...

          ... and consequently I have been on the telephone all day long to all the bootleggers arranging for the provision of liquor.   Sometimes I wish we had more in the way of speakeasies in Los Angeles, as ringing round and round as I am expected to do for every gathering does become tiresome.  Four of our actors and one director have legitimate prescriptions from their doctors for one pint a day (the errand boys collect it from the pharmacy at lunchtime), so perhaps if the others catch on I will be spared a job.

          Mr Arbuckle has been dealt a blow by the news that the great lawyer Earl Rogers is suffering too much ill health to be able to take on his legal defense, despite Mr Adolph Zukor agreeing to foot the costs.  It really is too bad as Mr Arbuckle needs all the help he can get at the moment.  Why, the yellow press (led of course by the Hearst Newspapers), have all but tried and hung him before he has even been charged.

          The latest story to zip around the colony like a wildfire is that, when Mr Arbuckle finally emerged from the room in which he had been alone with Miss Rappé, the unfortunate girl was heard to shout to her friend:

“I’m hurt, I’m dying. He did it Maudie”

          Well I put this to my chum who was in attendance (she has come clean on that matter now) and she swears on her mother's grave she heard no such thing.  Her memory of the evening in question still leaves a little to be desired but she insists that she would have remembered if Miss Rappé had shouted, and she did not.

          She does admit that Mr Arbuckle was getting annoyed with Miss Rappé's complaints of feeling ill (she believes this is why he had gone into the room in the first place, to tell her to be quiet or go home as she was ruining everyone's good time at the party) and may have said some fool thing like “if she doesn't pipe down I'll throw her out of the window”, but she knows for quite sure that it was simply in jest and certainly not intended as any real threat.