vert bloodshed."

"If he had so much as touched you, Shorty," says Sadie, "I would have
spent my pile to have had him sent up for life."

"Oh, it wouldn't have cost that much," says I. "With me thinkin' the way
I did then, maybe there wouldn't have been a whole lot left to send."

Ah, look away! I ain't tellin' what Sadie did next. But say, she's a
hummin'-bird, Sadie is.

CHAPTER IX

How about him, eh?--the two-spot of clubs in billiard cloth and buttons
at the door. There's no tellin' what the Studio'll have next--maybe a
sidewalk canopy and a carriage caller. Swifty Joe's gettin' ambitious.
Me gettin' mixed up with that Newport push has gone to Swifty's head
like a four-line notice does to the pompadour of a second row chorus
girl. First off he says it's a shame I don't have a valet.

"Say," says I, "don't it keep me busy enough remindin' you that I'm
still able to wear my own clothes, without puttin' on an extra hand?"

But after this last stunt he broke out again; so we compromised on
Congo. I thought Swifty'd had him made to order, uniform and all; but he
says he found him, just as he stands, doin' the stray act over on
Sixth-ave. He'd come up from New Orleans with a fortune-tellin' gent
that had got himself pinched for doing a little voudoo turn on the side,
and as Congo didn't have much left but his appetite, I put him on the
pay-roll at two per and found. And say, I'm stung, at that. To look at
him you'd think a ham sandwich would run him over; but he's got a
capacity like a shop-lifter's pocket. For three days I tried to feed
him up on the retail plan, and then I let out the contract to a
free-lunch supply concern.

Sure, it gives the joint kind of a swell look, havin' him on the door,
and if it didn't act the same on Swifty's head I wouldn't kick.

On the dead now, I don't care so much about loomin' up in the picture.
There's them that it suits down to the ground, and that shows up well in
front; and then again, there's a lot of people gets the spot light on
'em continual who'd be better off in the shade. I'm a top-gallery boy,
by rights, and that's where you'll find me most of the time; but now and
then I get dragged down into the wings with a note. Yes, yes, I'm just
back after one of them excursions.

You see, after we'd shunted Sadie's Baron back on to the goulash
circuit, where he belonged, and Sadie and Pinckney had got over their
merry fit and skipped off to wake up another crowd of