ure for the
library. I'll bet you fifteen hundred against a thousand that I get
Wilkinson in Washington in time to put over his deal."

"I got you," I says. "If he gets there too late to put over anything
with the War Department, I win--right?"

"Correct!" says Alex. "And now have Cousin Alice put up some
sandwiches and the like for us. I got a lot to do!"

Well, at five minutes to twelve that night they was a Gaflooey truck
gasolined its merry way aboard a Forty-second Street ferry. On board
it was Alex, the lovely Wilkinson, one thousand storm-proof army
overcoats and yours in the faith.

I ain't liable to forget that trip for a long while to come, because I
got soaked to the skin--with water--and just missed gettin' pneumonia
by one cough. The rain kept gettin' worse and worse and it hadn't a
thing on the roads. We went through Trenton, N. J., along around 4
a.m. in a storm that would of made the Flood look like fallin' dew.
The mud is up over the hubs of the truck, but it keeps plowin' along at
a steady gait with Alex and the mechanic takin' turns at the wheel. I
crawled in under some of them one thousand overcoats at Philly and went
to sleep, the last I heard bein' the lovely and half-drowned Wilkinson
callin' out the time every fifteen minutes and moanin', "We'll never
make it!"

Mornin' brung no let up in the rain, but the old Gaflooey truck keeps
thunderin' on. Sometimes we done five miles a hour, sometimes twenty
and when this big baby was goin' twenty, believe me, it was rough
sleddin'! We run into a bridge at Wilmington, Del., and at Baltimore
we bumped a Flivver off of the road, but outside of that they was
nothin' but rain and mud and the lovely Wilkinson complainin' about the
dampness, like he was the only one that was gettin' a endless cold
shower.

It was twenty minutes of five when we rolled into the city limits of
Washington and I'll tell the world we was a rough lookin' bunch. Alex
is grinnin' from ear to ear and slappin' Wilkinson on the back and this
guy has perked up a bit, though wishin' out loud that he was home with
coffee, bacon and eggs and Mrs. Wilkinson. I am cursin' the day that
ever brung Alex into our family circle and wonderin' if death by double
pneumonia is painful. The mechanic is fallin' asleep at the wheel,
wakin' himself up from time to time with shots out of a flask and of
lemon ice-cream sodas or something he had on his hip.

We stopped in front of the War D