ining shoes in the Corrugated arcade yet? Hey?
I will tell you this. Nobodies don't come and hire my hall from me,
fifty a week, in advance."

"Cash or checks?" I puts in.

"If the bank takes the checks, why should I worry?" asks Anton.

"Oh, the first one might be all right," says I, "and the second;
but--well, you know your own business, I expect."

Anton gazes at me stupid for a minute, then turns to his desk and fishes
out a bunch of returned checks. He goes through 'em rapid until he has
run across the one he's lookin' for.

"Maybe I do," says he, wavin' it under my nose triumphant.

Which gives me the glimpse I'd been jockeyin' for. The name of that
bank was enough. From then on I was mighty interested in this Mortimer
J. Stukey; and while I didn't exactly use the pressure pump on Anton, I
may have asked a few leadin' questions. Who was Stukey, where did he
come from, and what was his idea--hirin' halls and so on? While Anton
could recognize a dollar a long way off, he wasn't such a keen observer
of folks.

"I don't worry whether he's a Wilson man or not," says Anton, "or which
movie star he likes best after Mary Pickford. If I did I should ask
Anna."

"Eh?" says I, sort of eager.

"He tells her a lot he don't tell me," says Anton.

"That's reasonable, too," says I. "Ask Anna. Say, that ain't a bad
hunch. Much obliged."

It wasn't so easy, though, with Stukey on the job, to get near enough to
ask Anna anything. When they came in, and Anton invites me to join the
fam'ly group in the boardin'-house dinin'-room while the cheese
sandwiches and pickles was bein' passed around, I finds Stukey blockin'
me off scientific.

As Anton had said, he had it bad. Never took his eyes off Anna for a
second. I suppose he thought he was registerin' tender emotions, but it
struck me as more of a hungry look than anything else. Miss Sobowski
seemed to like it, though.

I expect a real lady's man wouldn't have had much trouble cuttin' in on
Stukey and towin' Anna off into a corner. But that ain't my strong suit.
The best I could do was to wait until the next day, when there was no
opposition. Meantime I'd been usin' the long-distance reckless; so by
the time Anna shows up at the Alcazar to open the window for the evenin'
sale, I was primed with a good many more facts about a certain party
than I had been the night before. Stukey wasn't quite such a man of
mystery as he had been.

Course, I might have gone straight to