eady gray eyes and
the poker face was that he must be dead from the neck up. Or else he'd
gone into a trance and couldn't get out.

Nice lookin' young chap, too. Oh, say thirty or better. I don't know as
he'd qualify as a perfect male, but he has good lines and the kind of
profile that had most of the lady typists stretchin' their necks. But
there's no more expression on that map of his than there would be to a
bar of soap. Just a blank. And yet after a second glance you wondered.

You see, I'd happened to drift out into the general offices in time to
hear him ask Vincent, the fair-haired guardian of the brass gate, if Mr.
Robert is in. And when Vincent tells him he ain't he makes no move to
go, but stands there starin' straight through the wall out into
Broadway. Looks like he might be one of Mr. Robert's club friends, so I
steps up and asks if there's anything a perfectly good private sec. can
do for him. He wakes up enough to shake his head.

"Any message?" says I.

Another shake. "Then maybe you'll leave your card?" says I.

Yes, he's willin' to do that, and hands it over.

"Oh!" says I. "Why didn't you say so? Mr. Nickerson Wells, eh? Why,
you're the one who's going to handle that ore transportation deal for
the Corrugated, ain't you?"

"I was, but I'm not," says the chatterbox.

"Eh?" says I, gawpin'.

"Can't take it on," says he. "Tell Ellins, will you?"

"Not much!" says I. "Guess you'll have to hand that to him yourself, Mr.
Wells. He'll be here any minute. Right this way."

And a swell time I had keepin' him entertained in the private office for
half an hour. Not that he's restless or fidgety, but when you get a
party who only stares bored at a spot about ten feet behind the back of
your head and answers most of your questions by blinkin' his eyes, it
kind of gets on your nerves. Still, I couldn't let him get away. Why,
Mr. Robert had been prospectin' for months to find the right man for
that transportation muddle and when he finally got hold of this Nicky
Wells he goes around grinnin' for three days.

Seems Nicky had built up quite a rep. by some work he did over in France
on an engineerin' job. Ran some supply tracks where nobody thought they
could be laid, bridged a river in a night under fire, and pulled a lot
of stuff like that. I don't know just what. Anyway, they pinned all
sorts of medals on him for it, made him a colonel, and when it was all
over turned him loose as casual as any buck pr