' on anything."

And it was a lovely sample of arrested mental anguish that I has before
me for the next hour or so,--this Popokoulis gent, with his great,
doughy face frozen into a blank stare, about as expressive as a
half-baked squash pie, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, and only
now and then a spasm in his throat showin' that he was still thinkin'
an occasional thought.

Course, Piddie discovers him after a while and demands pettish, "That
person still here! Who is he?"

"Club waiter with a mislaid job," says I.

"What!" says Piddie. "A waiter? Just a common waiter?"

I couldn't begin to put in all the deep disgust that Piddie expresses;
for, along with his fondness for gettin' next to swell people, he seems
to have a horror of mixin' at all with the common herd. "Waiters!" he
sniffs. "The scum of mankind. If they had a spark of courage, or a
gleam of self respect, or a teaspoonful of brains, they wouldn't be
waiters. Bah!"

"Also I expect," says I, "if they was all noble specimens of manhood
like us, Sherry's and Rector's would have to be turned into automatic
food dispensaries, eh?"

"No fear!" says Piddie. "The lower classes will always produce enough
spineless beings to wear aprons and carry trays. Look at that one
there! I suppose he never has a thought or an ambition above----"

Bz-z-z-zt! goes the buzzer over my desk, and I'm off on the jump for
Mr. Robert's room. I wa'n't missin' any of his calls that mornin'; for
a partic'lar friend of mine was in there--Skid Mallory. Remember Skid,
the young college hick that I helped find his footin' when he first hit
the Corrugated? You know he married a Senator's daughter, and got
boosted into an assistant general manager's berth. And Skid's been
making good ever since. He'd just come back from a little trip abroad,
sort of a delayed weddin' tour, and you can't guess what he'd pulled
off.

I'd only heard it sketched out so far, but it seems while him and young
Mrs. Mallory was over there in Athens, or some such outlandish place,
this late muss with the Turks was just breakin' loose. Skid he leaves
Wifey at the hotel one mornin' while he goes out for a little stroll;
drifts down their Newspaper Row, where the red ink war extras are so
thick the street looks like a raspberry patch; follows the drum music
up as far as City Hall, where the recruits are bein' reviewed by the
King; listens to the Greek substitute for "Buh-ruh-ruh! Soak 'em!" a