n if she is near the forty
mark."

"And only imagine," he adds, "within a year or so she may be a
grandmother!"

"That don't count these days," says I. "It's gettin' so you can hardly
tell the grandmothers from the vamps."

And when I said that I expect I unloaded my whole stock of wisdom about
women.

CHAPTER XII

WHEN THE CURB GOT GYPPED

It was what you might call a session of the big four. Anyway, that's the
way I'd put it; for besides Old Hickory, planted solid in his mahogany
swing chair with his face lookin' more'n ever like a two-tone cut of the
Rock of Gibraltar, there was Mr. Robert, and Piddie and me. Some
aggregation, I'll say. And it didn't need any jiggly message from the
ouija board to tell that something important in the affairs of the
Corrugated Trust might happen within the next few minutes. You could
almost feel it in the air. Piddie did. You could see that by the nervous
way he was twitchin' his lips.

Course it was natural the big boss should turn first to me. "Torchy," he
growls, "shut that door."

And as I steps around to close the only exit from the private office I
could watch Piddie's face turn the color of a piece of cheese. Mr.
Robert looks kind of serious, too.

"Gentlemen," goes on Old Hickory, tossin' the last three inches of a
double Corona reckless into a copper bowl, "there's a leak somewhere in
this office."

That gets a muffled gasp out of Piddie which puts him under the
spotlight at once, and when he finds we're all lookin' at him he goes
through all the motions of a cabaret patron tryin' to sneak past one of
Mr. Palmer's agents with something on the hip. If he'd been caught in
the act of borin' into the bond safe he couldn't have looked any
guiltier.

"I--er--I assure you, Mr. Ellins," he begins spluttery, "that
I--ah--I----"

"Bah!" snorts Old Hickory impatient. "Who is implying that you do? If
you were under suspicion in the least you wouldn't have been called in
here, Mr. Piddie. So your panic is quite unnecessary."

"Of course," puts in Mr. Robert. "Don't be absurd, Piddie. Anything new
this morning, Governor?"

"Rather," says Old Hickory, pointin' to a Wall Street daily that has
broke loose on its front page with a three-column headline. "See what
the Curb crowd did to G. L. T. common yesterday? Traded nearly one
hundred thousand shares and hammered the opening quotations for a
twenty-point loss. All on a rumor of a passed dividend. Well, you know