Torchy | Page 8

worry. I've had that happen to me so often that I get uneasy without it. If I should wear a stripe for every time the can's been tied to me, my sleeves would look like a couple of barber's poles. Cheer up, Piddie! Maybe they'll let you pick out somethin' that suits you better next time."
He couldn't get over it, though. Along about lunch time he comes out to me, as solemn as though he's servin' a warrant for homicide, and says that Mr. Robert will attend to my case now.
"Piddie," says I, givin' him the partin' grip, "you've been a true friend of mine. When you hear me hit the asphalt, send out for a chocolate ice cream soda and drown your sorrow."
Then I turns down a page in "Old Sleuth's Revenge" and goes to the slaughter.
Mr. Robert has just talked about three cylinders full of answers to the letters that's piled up while he's been gone, and as the girl goes out with the records he whirls around in the mahogany easy-chair and takes a good long look at me.
"If it comes as hard as all that," says I, "I'll write out my resignation."
"Mr. Piddie's been talking to you, I suppose?" says he.
"He's done everything but say mass over me," says I.
"Piddie is a good deal of an----" then he pulls up. "Where the deuce did he find you?"
"It wasn't him found me," says I; "it was a case of me findin' him; but if it hadn't been for your old man's buttin' in, that's all the good it would have done me."
"Ah!" says he. "That explains the mystery. By the way, son, what do they call you?"
"Guess," says I, and runs me fingers through it. "Just Torchy, and it suits me as well as Percival or Montgomery."
"Torchy is certainly descriptive," says he. "How long have you been doing office work?"
"Ever since I could lift a waste basket," says I.
"Are you ambitious?" says he.
"Sure!" says I. "I'm waitin' for some bank president to adopt me."
"You came in here expecting to be discharged, I presume?" says he.
"What, me?" says I. "Nah! I thought you was goin' to ask me over to the Caffy Martang for lunch."
For a minute or so after that he looks me straight in the eye, and I gives him the same. And say, for the kind, he ain't so worse. Course, I wouldn't swap him for Mr. Belmont Pepper, who's the only boss I ever had that I calls the real thing; but Mr. Robert would get a ratin' anywhere.
"Torchy," says he after a bit, "I'm inclined to think that you'll do. Have a chair."
"Don't I get the blue ticket, then?" says I.
"No," says he, "not until you do something worse than obey orders. Besides you're the cheekiest youth that has ever graced the offices of the Corrugated Trust, and once in awhile we have use for just such a quality. For instance, I am tempted to send you on a very important errand of my own. Wait a moment while I think it over."
"Time out!" says I.
Well say, I didn't know what was comin', he took so long makin' up his mind. But Mr. Robert ain't one of the kind to go off half cocked. He's got somethin' on his shoulders besides tailor's paddin', and when he sets the wheels to movin' you can gamble that he's gettin' somewhere. After awhile he slaps his knee and says:
"No, there isn't another person around the place who would know how to go about it. Torchy, I'm going to try you out!"
It wasn't anything like I'd ever been up against before. He hands me an express receipt and says he wants me to go over to Jersey City and get what that calls for without landin' in jail.
"You'll see a bundle done up in burlap somewhere around the express office," says he, "a big bundle. It looks like a side of veal; but it isn't. It's a deer, one that I shot four days ago up north. Torchy, did you know that it was illegal to shoot deer during certain months of the year?"
"You can be pinched for shootin' craps any time," says I.
"Really?" says he.
Then he goes on with his tale, givin' me all the partic'lars, so I wouldn't make any batty moves. And say, they can think up some queer stunts, hangin' around the club of an afternoon and lookin' out at Fifth-ave. through the small end of a glass. This was one of them real clubby dreams. It started by Mr. Robert countin' himself in on a debate that he didn't know the beginning of.
"When they asked me if I could do it, I said, 'Of course I can,'" says he, "and then I asked what it was."
The bunch had been gassin' about an