et that makes him forget everything but the
figures on the tape. So he quits trainin'. About ten days later he drops
in one afternoon, with fur on his tongue, and his eyes lookin' like a
couple of cold fried eggs.

"Are you comin' or goin', Mr. Gordon?" says I.

"Where, Shorty?" says he.

"Hospital," says I.

He grinned a little, the kind of grin a feller wears when he's bein'
helped to his corner, after the count.

"I know," says he; "but when you've been sitting for two weeks on a
volcano, Shorty, wondering whether it would blow you up, or open and let
you fall in, you're apt to forget your liver."

"It ain't apt to forget you, though," says I. "Shall we have a little
session right now?"

And then he springs his proposition. He'd got to go to Washington and
back inside of the next two breakfasts, and he wanted me to go along,
some on account of his liver, but mostly so's he could forget that he
was still on the lid. His private car was hitched to the tail of the
Flyer, and he had just forty-five minutes to get aboard. Would I come?

"If I'm wiped out by the time we get back," says he, "I'll make you a
preferred creditor."

"I'll take chances on that," says I.

They did do the trick to Pyramid once, you know; but they'd never got
him right since. They had him worried some this time, though. You could
tell that by the way he smiled at the wrong cues, and combed his deacon
whiskers with his fingers. They're the only deacon whiskers I ever had
in the Studio. Used to make me nervous when I hit 'em, for fear I'd
drive 'em in. But he's dead game, Pyramid is, whether he's stoppin'
mitts, or buckin' the Upright Oil push. So I grabs a few things off the
wall, and we pikes for the ferry.

"Where's the other parties?" says I, when I'd sized up the inside of the
Adeline. There was room enough for a minstrel troupe.

"We're to have it all to ourselves, professor," says he. "And it's
almost time for us to pull out; there's the last Cortlandt-st. boat in."

About then we hears Mr. Rufus Rastus, the Congo brunet that's master of
ceremonies on the car, havin' an argument out in the vestibule. He was
tryin' to shunt somebody. They didn't shunt though, and in comes a
long-geared old gent, wearin' one of those belted ulsters that they make
out of horse-blankets for English tourists. He had a dinky cloth cap of
the same pattern, and the lengthiest face I ever saw on a man. It wasn't
a cheerful face, either; looked like he w