e no
one knew anything very definite. The best guess was that our advance
had been swung off for a flank movement, and that this particular
one-man battery had been overlooked. I don't even know whether he was
picked up again, or whether the Turks finally got him; but let me tell
you, talk as much about your gallant Bulgarians as you like, some of
those little Greeks were good fighters too. Anyway, I'll take off my
hat any day to that one on the hill."

"Gee!" I breaks out. "Some scrapper, what?"

At which Mr. Robert swings around and gives me a look. "Ah!" says he.
"I hadn't realized, Torchy, that we still had the pleasure of your
company."

"Don't mention it," says I. "I was just goin' to--er--by the way, Mr.
Robert, there's a poor scrub waitin' outside for a word with you, an
old club waiter. Says you knew him as Mike."

"Mike?" says he, looking blank.

"His real name sounds like Popover," says I. "It's a case of
retrievin' a lost job."

"Oh, very well," says Mr. Robert. "Perhaps I'll see him later. Not
now. And close the door after you, please."

So I'm shunted back to the front office, so excited over that war story
that I has to hunt up Piddie and pass it on to him. It gets him too.
Anything in the hero line always does, and this noble young Greek doin'
the come-one-come-all act was a picture that even a two-by-four
imagination like Piddie's couldn't fail to grasp.

"By Jove, though!" says he. "The spirit of old Thermopylae all over
again! I wish I could have seen that!"

"As close as Skid did?" says I. "Ah, you'd have turned so green they'd
taken you for a pickled string bean."

"Oh, I don't pretend to be a daredevil," admits Piddie, with a sudden
rush of modesty. "Still, it is a pity Mr. Mallory did not stay long
enough to find out the name of this unknown hero, and give it to the
world."

"The moral of which is," says I, "that all heroes ought to carry their
own press agents with 'em."

We'd threshed it all out, Piddie and me, and I'd gone back to my desk
some reluctant, for this jobless waiter was still sheddin' his gloom
around the reception room, and I was just thinkin' how it would be to
put a screen in front of him, when Mr. Robert and Skid comes out arm in
arm, swappin' josh about that banquet that was to be pulled off.

"Of course you'll come." Mr. Robert is insistin'. "Only a few
directors, you know. No, no set speeches, or anything like that. But
they'll want to he