some telegrams;
I took 'em myself."

"But was not a letter sent to our Western manager," Piddie goes on,
"hinting that the G. L. T. dividend might be passed, and doesn't the boy
have access to the private letter book?"

"Carried it from my desk to the safe, that's all," says I.

"Still," insists Piddie, "that would give him time enough to look."

"Oh, sure!" says I. "And since he's been here he's had a chance to
snitch, off a barrel full of securities, or drop bombs down the elevator
well; but somehow he hasn't."

"Well, we might as well have him in," says Old Hickory, pushin' the
buzzer.

Seemed kind of silly to me, givin' fair-haired Vincent the third degree
on sketchy hunch like that. Vincent! Why, he's been with the Corrugated
four or five years, ever since they took me off the gate. And when he
went on the job he was about the most innocent-eyed office boy, I
expect, that you could find along Broadway. Reg'lar mommer's boy. Was
just that, in fact. Used to tell me how worried his mother was for fear
he'd get to smokin' cigarettes, or shootin' craps, or indulgin' in other
big-town vices. Havin' seen mother, I could well believe it. Nice,
refined old girl, still wearin' a widow's bonnet. Shows up occasionally
on a half-holiday and lets Vincent take her to the Metropolitan Museum,
or to a concert.

Course, Vincent hadn't stayed as green as when he first came. Couldn't.
For it's more or less of a liberal education, being on the gate in the
Corrugated General Offices, as I used to tell him. You simply gotta get
wise to things or you don't last. And Vincent has wised up. Oh, yes.

Why, here only this last week, for instance, he makes a few plays that I
couldn't have done any better myself. One was when I turns over to him
the job of gettin' Pullman reservations on the Florida Limited for
Freddie, the chump brother-in-law of Mr. Robert. Marjorie--that's the
sister--had complained how all she could get was uppers, although they'd
had an application in for six weeks. And as she and Freddie was taking
both youngsters and two maids along they were on the point of givin' up
the trip.

"Bah!" says Mr. Robert. "Freddie doesn't know how to do it, that's all.
We'll get your reservations for you."

So he passes it on to me, and as I'm too busy just then to monkey with
Pullman agents I shoots it on to Vincent. And inside of an hour he's
back with a drawin' room and a section.

"Have to buy somebody; eh, Vincent?" I ask