Contrary to propular belief, all the world will not necesssarily love a lover. There was, for instance, the case of Catherine Small.
Catherine first came to the world's attention as that funny-faced girl who was frequently seen on the arm of Freddie Dubuque. Freddie was a rock star who had hitherto shown a marked predilection for statuesque blondes, and there was a feeling that this new playmate, build short and bony, with a round face and reddish brown hair clipped short to show ears that would have been much better better hidden, would disappear from the pages of the world's press in a week or so.
Far from disappearing, withint a few weeks she had left the side of Dubuque for that of Dewey Jossens, a writer whose gala parties and protracted public quarrels were as sensational as his novels once had been.
After Jossens came Kurt Kilbride, a talk show host who was known to receive at least thirty marriage proposals a week.
It was at this point that sounds of dissatisfaction began to be heard among the general public. Among women, the phrase "that stupid girl" came to be universally recognized as a reference to Catherine Small. There was a general agreement, of course, that she must have been dreadfully good in bed, but this hardly lessened the dissatisfaction of vast numbers of women who felt that they too were damned good in bed, if only they'd be given a chance to show their stuff.
When Catherine moved on to Ashley Langston, the feeling among the general female public came close to outrage, for millions of women had cried themselves to sleep over the knowledge that this strikingly handsome actor was an incorrigible homosexual.
For some reason, the male part of the public began making remarks about Catherine Small that were almost as snide as those of the opposite sex. One popular columnist suggested that the average male was enraged by this idea of this woman who was available to so many other men but not to him.
It was at this point that Barney Nichols, a reporter on one of the major metropolitan newspapers, decided to find out just exactly what was the story on Catherine Small.