ced valet, and
before I'd done guessin' where they was headed for they shows up in the
office door.

"My name is Dawes. Fletcher Dawes," says the gent in the overcoat.

"I could have guessed that," says I. "You look somethin' like the
pictures they print of you in the Sunday papers."

"I'm sorry to hear it," says he.

But say, he's less of a prize hog than you'd think, come to get
near--forty-eight around the waist, I should say, and about a number
sixteen collar. You wouldn't pick him out by his face as the kind of a
man that you'd like to have holdin' a mortgage on the old homestead,
though, nor one you'd like to sit opposite to in a poker game--eyes
about a quarter of an inch apart, lima bean ears buttoned down close,
and a mouth like a crack in the pavement.

He goes right at tellin' what he wants and when he wants it, sayin'
he's a little out of condition and thinks a few weeks of my trainin'
was just what he needed. Also he throws out that I might come up to
the Brasstonia and begin next day.

"Yes?" says I. "I heard somethin' like that over the 'phone."

"From Corson, eh?" says he. "He's an ass! Never mind him. You'll be
up to-morrow?"

"Say," says I, "where'd you get the idea I went out by the day?"

"Why," says he, "it seems to me I heard something about----"

"Maybe they was personal friends of mine," says I. "That's different.
Anybody else comes here to see me."

"Ah!" says he, suckin' in his breath through his teeth and levelin'
them blued steel eyes of his at me. "I suppose you have your price?"

"No," says I; "but I'll make one, just special for you. It'll be ten
dollars a minute."

Say, what's the use? We saves up till we gets a little wad of twenties
about as thick as a roll of absorbent cotton, and with what we got in
the bank and some that's lent out, we feel as rich as platter gravy.
Then we bumps up against a really truly plute, and gets a squint at his
dinner check, and we feels like panhandlers workin' a side street.
Honest, with my little ten dollars a minute gallery play, I thought I
was goin' to have him stunned.

"That's satisfactory," says he. "To-morrow, at four."

That's all. I'm still standin' there with my mouth open when he's
bein' tucked in among the tiger skins. And I'm bought up by the hour,
like a bloomin' he massage artist! Feel? I felt like I'd fit loose in
a gas pipe.

But Swifty, who's had his ear stretched out and his eyes bugged all the
time