Personality Plus | Page 5

I came up here twelve years ago I got a job as reception-room usher. A reception-room usher is an office boy in long pants. Sometimes, when I'm optimistic, I think that if I live twelve years longer I'll begin to know something about the rudiments of this game."
"Oh, of course," began Jock, apologetically. But Hupp's glance was over his head. Involuntarily Jock turned to follow the direction of his eyes.
"Busy?" said a voice from the doorway.
"Come in, Dutch! Come in!" boomed Hupp.
The man who entered was of the sort that the boldest might well hesitate to address as "Dutch"--a tall, slim, elegant figure, Van-dyked, bronzed.
"McChesney, this is Von Herman, head of our art department."
Their hands met in a brief clasp. Von Herman's thoughts were evidently elsewhere.
"Just wanted to tell you that that cussed model's skipped out. Gone with a show. Just when I had the whole series blocked out in my mind. He was a wonder. No brains, but a marvel for looks and style. These people want real stuff. Don't know how I'm going to give it to them now."
Hupp sat up. "Got to!" he snapped. "Campaign's late, as it is. Can't you get an ordinary man model and fake the Greek god beauty?"
"Yes--but it'll look faked. If I could lay my hands on a chap who could wear clothes as if they belonged to him--"
Hupp rose. "Here's your man," he cried, with a snap of his fingers. "Clothes! Look at him. He invented 'em. Why, you could photograph him and he'd look like a drawing."
Von Herman turned, surprised, incredulous, hopeful, his artist eye brightening at the ease and grace and modishness of the smart, well-knit figure before him.
"Me!" exploded Jock, his face suffused with a dull, painful red. "Me! Pose! For a clothing ad!"
"Well," Hupp reminded him, "you said you'd do anything."
Jock McChesney glared belligerently. Hupp returned the stare with a faint gleam of amusement shining behind the absurd glasses. The amused look changed to surprise as he beheld the glare in Jock's eyes fading. For even as he glared there had come a warning to Jock--a warning sent just in time from that wireless station located in his subconscious mind. A vivid face, full of pride, and hope, and encouragement flashed before him.
"Jock," it said, "don't let 'em buffalo you. They'll try it. If they give you a broom and tell you to sweep down the back stairs--"
Jock was smiling his charming, boyish smile.
"Lead me to your north light," he laughed at Von Herman. "Got any Robert W. Chambers's heroines tucked away there?"
Hupp's broad hand came down on his shoulder with a thwack. "That's the spirit, McChesney! That's the--" He stopped, abruptly. "Say, are you related to Mrs. Emma McChesney, of the Featherloom Skirt Company?"
"Slightly. She's my one and only mother."
"She--you mean--her son! Well I'll be darned!" He held out his hand to Jock. "If you're a real son of your mother I wish you'd just call the office boy as you step down the hall with Von Herman and tell him to bring me a hammer and a couple of spikes. I'd better nail down my desk."
"I'll promise not to crowd you for a year or two," grinned Jock from the doorway, and was off with the pleased Von Herman.
Past the double row of beehives again, into the elevator, out again, up a narrow iron stairway, into a busy, cluttered, skylighted room. Pictures, posters, photographs hung all about. Some of the pictures Jock recognized as old friends that had gazed familiarly at him from subway trains and street cars and theater programmes. Golf clubs, tennis rackets, walking sticks, billiard cues were stacked up in corners. And yet there was a bare and orderly look about the place. Two silent, shirt-sleeved men were busy at drawing boards. Through a doorway beyond Jock could see others similarly engaged in the next room. On a platform in one corner of the room posed a young man in one of those costumes the coat of which is a mongrel mixture of cutaway and sack. You see them worn by clergymen with unsecular ideas in dress, and by the leader of the counterfeiters' gang in the moving pictures. The pose was that met with in the backs of magazines--the head lifted, eyes fixed on an interesting object unseen, one arm crooked to hold a cane, one foot advanced, the other trailing slightly to give a Fifth Avenue four o'clock air. His face was expressionless. On his head was a sadly unironed silk hat.
Von Herman glanced at the drawing tacked to the board of one of the men. "That'll do, Flynn," he said to the model. He glanced again at the drawing. "Bring out the hat a little more, Mack. They won't burnish it if you don't,"--to the artist. Then, turning about,