anation, all right, and here's the way it
stands: Uncle Dudley has been called on because his partic'lar
double-entry trick is to keep the run of the private accounts. All they
want him to do is to take descriptions of a couple of checks, dig up
the stubs, and juggle his books so the record will fit in with a nice
new set of transactions that's just been invented for the purpose.

"But what checks?" says I. "The five thousand plunkers to Mutt & Mudd?"

"Why, yes," says he. "How did you know?"

"Ah, how did I----Say, Dudley, ain't you been readin' the papers
lately?" says I.

Would you believe it? He don't know any more about what's in the air
than a museum mummy knows of Lobster Square. This little private cyclone
that's been turnin' the office upside down ain't so much as ruffled his
whiskers. Checks are checks to him, and these special trouble makers
don't give him any chills up the back at all. He's been told, though, to
use the acid bottle on his books and write in a new version.

"Well, why not do it?" says I. "What's that to you?"

"Why, don't you see," says he, "it would be making a false entry,
and--I--I----Well, I've never done such a thing in my life, Torchy, and
I can't begin now."

And, say, what do you know about that, eh? Just a piece of phony
bookkeepin' that he don't even have to put his name to, his job gone if
he don't follow orders, and him almost to the age limit anyway, with
Son in Law Bennett ready to shove him on the street the minute he gets
the sack!

"Do you mean it?" says I.

He puts his signature to the resignation and hands it over for me to
read.

"Say, Dudley," says I, lookin' him up and down, "this listens to me like
a bughouse play of yours; but I got to admit that you do it sporty.
There's no ocher streak in you."

"I hoped you would understand," says he. "In the circumstances, it was
all I could do, you see."

"What I see plainer'n anything else," says I, "is that if this goes
through your career is bugged to the limit. When do you want this handed
in?"

"As soon as possible," says he. "I suppose I ought to resign at once."

"Resign!" says I. "You'll be lucky if the old man don't have you chucked
through the window. Better be waitin' down in the lower corridor when I
spring this on Mr. Ellins."

Nothin' of that kind for Uncle Dudley, though. He starts straightenin'
up his desk as I goes out, as calm as though he was house cleanin' for a
vacation.

And while I'm tr