d:

LEONIDAS MACKLIN DODGE
Commissioner-at-Large

"For what?" says I.

"It all depends," says Mr. Dodge. "Sometimes I call it a brass polisher,
then again it's a tooth-paste. It works well either way. Also it cleans
silver, removes grease spots, and can be used for a shaving soap. It is
a product of my own lab'ratory, none genuine without the signature."

"How does it go as a substitute for beef and?" says I.

"I've never quite come to that," says he, "but I'm as close now as it's
comfortable to be. My gold reserve counts up about a dollar
thirty-nine."

"You've got me beat by a whole dollar," says I.

"Then," says he, "you'd better let me underwrite your next issue."

"There's a friend of mine up to Forty-second Street that ought to be
good for fifty," says I.

"I've had lots of friendships, off and on," says he, "but never one that
I could cash in at a pinch. I'll stay by until you try your touch."

Well, the Forty-second Street man had been gone a month. There was
others I might have tried, but I didn't like to risk gettin' my fingers
frost-bitten. So I hooks up with Leonidas and we goes out with a grip
full of Electro-Polisho, hittin' the places where they had nickel-plated
signs and brass hand rails. And say! I could starve to death doing that.
Give me a week and two pairs of shoes and I might sell a box or so; but
Dodge, he takes an hour to work his side of the block and shakes out a
fist full of quarters.

"It's an art," says he, "which one must be born to. After this you carry
the grip."

That's the part I was playin' when we strikes the Tuscarora. Sounds like
a parlor car, don't it? But it was just one of those swell bachelor
joints--fourteen stories, electric elevators, suites of two and three
rooms, for gents only. Course, we hadn't no more call to go there than
to the Stock Exchange, but Leonidas Macklin, he's one of the kind that
don't wait for cards. Seein' the front door open and a crowd of men in
the hall, he blazes right in, silk hat on the back of his head, hands in
his pockets, and me close behind with the bag.

"What's up; auction, row or accident?" says he to one of the mob.

Now if it had been me that butted in like that I'd had a row on my
hands in about two minutes, but in less time than that Leonidas knows
the whole story and is right to home. Taking me behind a hand-made palm,
he puts me next. Seems that some one had advertised in