I gets back, though. Do I find Forsythe in his
shirt-sleeves climbin' around on the rafters? I do not. He's sittin'
comfortable in a camp-chair on a fur motor robe, smokin' a cigarette
calm, and surrounded by half a dozen classy young ladies that he's
rounded up by 'phone from the nearest country club. The girls and three
or four chauffeurs are doin' the work, while Forsythe is doin' the heavy
directin'.

He'd sketched out his decoratin' scheme on the back of an envelop, and
now he was tellin' 'em how to carry it out. The worst of it is, too,
that he's gettin' some stunnin' effects and is bein' congratulated
enthusiastic by the girls.

It's the same way with fixin' up the tables with ferns and flowers.
Forsythe plans it out with a pencil, and his crew do the hustlin'
around.

Course, I had to let it ride. Besides, there was a dozen other things
for me to look after. But I'm good at a waitin' game. I kept my eye on
Forsythe, to see that he didn't slip away. He was still there at
two-thirty, havin' organized a picnic luncheon with the young ladies,
when Miss Jane blew in. And blamed if she don't fall for Forsythe's
stuff, too.

"Why, you've done wonders, Mr. Hurd," says she. "What a versatile genius
you are?"

"Oh, that!" says he, wavin' a sandwich careless. "But it's an
inspiration to be doing anything at all for you, Miss Gorman."

And here he hasn't so much as shed his overcoat.

It must have been half an hour later when Sig. Zaretti, the head chef,
comes huntin' me out with a desperate look in his eyes. I was consultin'
Miss Jane about borrowin' a piano from the Y. M. C. A. tent, but he
kicks right in.

"Ah, I am distract," says he, puffin' out his cheeks. "Eet--eet ees too
mooch!"

"Go on," says I. "Shoot the tragedy. What's too much?"

"That Pedro and that Salvatore," says he. "They have become lost, the
worthless ones. They disappear on me. And in three hours I am to serve,
in this crude place, a dinner of six courses to seven hundred men. They
abandon me at such a time, with so much to be done."

"Well, that's up to you," says I. "Can't some of your crowd double in
brass? What about workin' in some of your waiters?"

"But they are all employed," says Zaretti. "Besides, the union does not
permit. If you could assist me with two men, even one. I implore."

"There ain't a cook in sight," says I. "Sorry, but----"

"Eet ees not for cook," he protests. "No; only to help make the peel
from those so ma