!"

"Ain't that rich?" whispers the Kid to me. "You got to hand it to this
bird!"

"You'd be a wonder as a press agent!" I says to Harold.

"Now that's odd you should remark that," he smiles. "For, as a matter
of fact, I excel in _that_ field! I did all the press work for--"

"Columbus!" yells Duke, wavin' him off. "Good-by!" he goes on. "I got
enough! You got a liar lookin' like George Washington!"

Harold looks after Duke as he went into the office.

"Heavens!" he says. "I can't stand that man with his petty little
jealousies! Now when I--"

I don't know what the rest of it was, because me and the Kid left him
to tell it to the African Desert.

Well, Genaro bein' afraid to get in dutch with Potts, which accordin'
to Harold was a ex-roommate of his, give this guy a crack at everything
from directin' to supin', and Harold hit .000 at 'em all. The only
thing he seemed to be any good at was talkin' about himself, and he was
champion of the world at that! He was willin' to concede that
Wellington beat Napoleon and it was Fulton who doped out the steamboat,
but _he_ was the guy that had put over everything else. His favorite
word only had one letter in it, and that's the one that comes right
after H. No matter what subject would come up anywheres where Harold
could get a earful of it, he was the bird that invented it!

We went down to Montana Joe's one afternoon to deal prohibition a blow,
and the Kid gets talkin' about drinkin' as a art, carelessly lettin'
fall the information that, before he had put the Demon Rum down for the
count, he had been looked on as a champion at goin' through the rye.
He winks at Joe and orders a tumbler of private stock. Harold never
bats a eye, but says he's got a roomful of lovin' cups which was give
him for emptyin' bottles. Joe sets down a mixin' glass full of booze
before the Kid, and Scanlan looks at Harold and asks Joe what was the
matter with the shaker. Harold coughs and raps on the bar. "You may
let me have a seidel of gin!" he says, sneerin' at the Kid--and we all
fainted!

He got run out the south gate one afternoon by a enraged scene painter
for tellin' the latter that he could shut both eyes, bind one arm, lay
flat on his side and paint a better exterior than the two hundred
dollar a week decorator, and he started a riot in the developin' room
another time by remarkin' that the bunch in there didn't know how to
paste up film--adding of course, that _he_