t speak. As she looms up
in the door, lookin' bigger'n ever, she was diggin' somethin' out of her
handbag, somethin' shiny. It wa'n't anything but a silver purse; but
the professor must have thought it was somethin' else, for he gives only
one look. Then he throws up both hands, hollers "Don't shoot, don't
shoot!" and makes a dive under a desk in the corner. The hole under that
desk wa'n't built for divin' through; so McCallum wedges himself in
there like a cork in a bottle, wavin' his legs in the air, and callin'
for help.

"There!" says Marjorie, throwin' some bills on the floor. "That's for
what I owe you, you horrid old fraud! Baby elephant, am I? Oh, you
wretch!" With that she goes out and bangs the door behind her.

It was all me and the cornet artist next door could do to separate
McCallum from the desk, and even when we worked him loose he didn't want
to come out. When we'd got him into a chair, and he'd felt himself all
over careful, he says to me:

"Torchy, how--how many times did she shoot?"

And when I gets back to the office Mr. Robert wants to know why I didn't
let 'em know I was goin' all the way to Washington after them stamps.

"Chee!" says I, "but you're gettin' restless! Maybe you think I oughter
travel by pneumatic tube? Huh!"

CHAPTER V

WHERE MILDRED GOT NEXT

There's nothin' wins out surer in this town of New York than puttin' up
a good front. If you've got the fur coat and the goggles on your cap,
you can walk or ride on a transfer, and folks'll take it as a cinch that
your bubble's back in the garage bein' fitted with a new set of
hundred-dollar tires. Why, just the smell of benzine on a suit you've had
out to the cleaners will give 'em the dream, if you throw your chest out
right.

Look at the way Mildred has us goin'. Maybe you don't know about
Mildred. Say, I'll bet if you met up with her on Fift'-ave. you'd hold
your breath till she got by and wonder whether she was a Vanderbilt or
one of the Goulds! But she floats into the Corrugated Trust offices more
or less reg'lar every day, just the same, and does her little stunt on
the typewriter at so much per. Honest, when I sees her sailin' in
mornin's, with all her swell drygoods on, I'm just as liable as not to
half break my neck openin' the door for her. That's what I did the
first time I saw her, when I was new on the gate.

"This way, lady," says I, and when she pikes right by and heads for the
cloakroom I almost has a fi