ivate. That's the army for
you. And the railroad people he'd been with before had been shifted
around so much that they'd forgotten all about him. He wasn't the kind
to tell 'em what a whale of a guy he was, and nobody else did it for
him. So there he was, floatin' around, when Mr. Robert happened to hear
of him.

"Must have got you in some lively spots, runnin' a right of way smack up
to the German lines?" I suggests.

"M-m-m-m!" says he, through his teeth.

"Wasn't it you laid the tracks that got up them big naval guns?" I asks.

"I may have helped," says he.

So I knew all about it, you see. Quite thrillin' if you had a high speed
imagination. And you can bet I was some relieved when Mr. Robert blew in
and took him off my hands. Must have been an hour later before he comes
out and I goes into the private office to find Mr. Robert with his chin
on his wishbone and his brow furrowed up.

"Well, I take it the one-syllable champion broke the sad news to you!"
says I.

"Yes, he wants to quit," says Mr. Robert.

"Means to devote all his time to breakin' the long distance no-speech
record, does he?" I asks.

"I'm sure I don't know what he means to do," says Mr. Robert, sighin'.
"Anyway, he seems determined not to go to work for the Corrugated. I did
discover one thing, though, Torchy; there's a girl mixed up in the
affair. She's thrown him over."

"I don't wonder," says I. "Probably he tried to get through a whole
evenin' with her on that yes-and-no stuff."

No, Mr. Robert says, it wasn't that. Not altogether. Nicky has done
something that he's ashamed of, something she'd heard about. He'd
renigged on takin' her to a dinner dance up in Boston a month or so
back. He'd been on hand all right, was right on the spot while she was
waitin' for him; but instead of callin' around with the taxi and the
orchids he'd slipped off to another town without sayin' a word. The
worst of it was that in this other place was the other woman, someone
he'd had an affair with before. A Reno widow, too.

"Think of that!" says I, "Nicky the Silent! Say, you can't always tell,
can you? What's his alibi?"

"That's the puzzling part of it," says Mr. Robert. "He hasn't the ghost
of an excuse, although he claims he didn't see the other woman, had
almost forgotten she lived there. But why he deserted his dinner partner
and went to this place he doesn't explain, except to say that he doesn't
know why he did it."

"Too fishy," says I. "Un