Torchy Part 4

"Got nothin'!" says I. "You must think I'm a writ of habeas corpus. I want to know who was the gent that most likely tipped off your warden friend."

When I'd got that I asks the time of the next uptown boat, and makes a deal with one of them ferry hawks to back his chariot up near the express office door and be ready to make a swift move for the gangplank.

Then me and Hunchy fakes up this little billy ducks to Mr. Hinkey Tolliver, tellin' him to chase to the nearest 'phone and call up the gent that Mr. Robert had put me wise to.

It was worse'n playin' a three-ball combination for the side pocket, and I holds my breath while Hunch pokes his book at him and waits to see if there's any answer. Tolliver, he reads it over two or three times, first with one eye and then the other. One minute I thought he was goin', and the next he settles back like he'd made up his mind to balk. He squints at the burlap package, and then at the message, and all of a sudden he makes a break for the 'phone.

He hadn't begun movin' before I was up to the window with my receipt, callin' for 'em to get a hustle on, as Mr. Doe had run out of veal and had to have it in a hurry. Ever try to poke up one of them box jugglers? They took their time about it--and me lookin' for trouble every tick of the clock! But I got an O. K. on it after awhile, and for a quarter I hired a wagon helper to drag the bundle out and chuck it into the hansom. Then I climbs in and we made the boat just as the bell rang. She was pullin' out of the slip when Tolliver rushes out about as calm as a bulldog chasin' a tramp.

"Say," says the driver, climbin' down to take a look at the baggage, "who you got sewed in the sack!"

"Get on your perch!" says I. "Ain't you makin' extra money on this? And when you fetch up at the club, do it like you was used to stoppin' at such places."

It was a great ride that me and the deer meat had across town and up Fifth-ave. I'd stopped once to put Mr. Robert next; so he was waitin'

for me out in front of the club, wearin' a grin that was better'n a breakfast food ad.

But that wa'n't anything to the look on Piddie when Mr. Robert shows up next mornin' and pats me on the back like I was one of his old Hasty Puddin' chums.

"Piddie," says I, "look what it is to be born handsome and lucky, all in one throw!"

CHAPTER III

MEETING UP WITH THE GREAT SKID

Next time you nabs me writin' a form sheet on any unknown, you can hang out the waste paper sign and send me to the scows. Look at the mess I makes of this here Mallory business! Why, first off I has him billed for a Percy boy that had strayed into the general office from the drygoods district. He had a filin' job in the bond room, and when he drew his envelope on Sat.u.r.days it must have set the Corrugated Trust back for as much as twelve D.

Course, I didn't pay no attention to him, until one noon I finds him in the next chair at the dairy lunch. He's got his mug of half white and half black, and his two corned beef splits, with plenty of mustard, and he's just squarin' off for a foodfest, when I squats down with two hunks of pie and all the cheese I could get at one grab.

"h.e.l.lo, Algy!" says I. "Where's the charlotte russe and the cup of tea?"

"Beg pardon," says he; "were you speaking to me?"

"Sure," says I. "You didn't think I was makin' that crack at the armchair, did you? Maybe we ain't been introduced; but we're on the same payroll."

"Oh, yes," says he, "I remember now. You're the--the----"

"Go on, say it," says I. "I don't mind if it is red, and I lets anybody call me Torchy that wants to, even w.i.l.l.i.e.s."

"Well, now, that's nice of you," says he, sidetrackin' a bite to look me over. Then he grins.

Say, it was that open face movement that made me suspicious maybe he wa'n't one of the Algernon kind, after all. But he had most of the points, from the puff tie to the way he spoke. It wa'n't the hot potato dialect Piddie uses; but it leaned that way. If he'd been a real Willie boy, though, he'd gone up in the air, and maybe I'd got slapped on the wrist. His springin' that grin was a hunch for me to hold the decision.

"How long you been keepin' Corrugated stocks from goin' below par?" says I.

That stuns him for a minute, and then a light breaks. He throws another grin. "Oh, about a year," he says.

"Chee!" says I. "And they ain't put you on the board of directors yet?"

"I've managed to keep off so far," says he.

"Get a lift every quarter, though, I suppose?" says I.

"I'm getting the same salary I began with, if that's what you mean,"

says he, tacklin' another sandwich that had got past the meat inspectors.

"Yours must be fatter'n most of the Sat.u.r.day prize packages they hand out in the general office, or you wouldn't have kept satisfied so long,"

says I.

He thinks that over for awhile, like it was a new proposition, and then he says, quiet and easy, "I'm not at all sure, you see, that I am satisfied."

"Why not chuck it then and make another grab?" says I. "It's good luck sometimes to shake the bag."

He swings his shoulders up at that,--and say, he's got a good pair, all right!--but he don't say a word.

"Ain't married the job, have you?" says I. "Or have you lost your nerve?"

"Perhaps it's a lack of nerve, as you suggest," says he, more as if he was talkin' to himself than anything else.

"Don't think you could connect with another, eh?" says I.

He shakes his head. "I'm not exactly proud of the fact," says he; "but I don't mind telling you in confidence that it required the combined efforts of my entire family and all my friends to get me into this job."

"Honest?" says I. "Chee! They picked a pippin for you, didn't they?"

"It's a star," says he.

"So's a swift kick from the bottom of a well," says I.

With that I shakes off the pie crumbs and takes a chase up around the Flatiron, to watch the kids collectin' cigar coupons and take a look at the folks from the goshfry-mighty belt s.h.i.+verin' in the rubberneck buggies. Say, I never feel quite so much to home in this burg as when I watch them jays from the one-night stands payin' their coin to see things that I shut my eyes on every day.

When I gets back on the gate I tries to figure out this Mallory gent; but I can't place him. He's no Willie, and he's no dope, I can see that.

With his age and general get-up, though, he ought to be pullin' out fifty or so a week. What's he been at all this time?

I was just curious enough to stroll over and take a look at him. He has his coat off, pluggin' away on the job and doin' the kind of work that I could learn to play with any time I had a day off. Not that I'm lookin'

for it. Bein' head office boy suits me down to the ground. That's bein'

somethin', even if they do pay you off with a five and a one. But if you're a live one you'll get tipped as much more. And you don't have cold chills up the spine every time the boss lugs down an after breakfast grouch.

Course, a duck like Mallory can't get in any such game; so he's got to dig away at the filin' case and wear his last summer's suit until Christmas. Diggin' and keepin' quiet seemed to be his only play. Just as though he'd ever win any medals by the way he stacked papers away in little pasteboard boxes!

He wins somethin' else, though. One day the general manager rushes into Mallory's corner after somethin' he wanted in a hurry, and by the time he'd found it he'd pied things from one end of the coop to the other.

Mallory was just tryin' to straighten out the mess, when along comes Piddie, with that pointed nose of his in front. Piddie don't ask any questions; he throws a fit. Why, he had Mallory on the carpet for forty minutes by the clock, givin' him the grand roast, and the only time Mallory opens up to tell him how it was he shuts him off with a, "That is sufficient, Mr. Mallory! I am here to get results, not excuses. Is that quite clear?"

"Yes, sir," says Mallory.