"Bah!" snorts Waddy. "You can attend to business any time--tomorrow,
next week, next month. But the lovely Marcelle may be sailing within
forty-eight hours."

"Well, what do you expect me to do?" demands Mr. Robert. "Want me to
scuttle the steamer?"

"I want you to help me find Joe Bruzinski," says Waddy.

Mr. Robert throws up both hands and groans. "Here, Torchy," says, he,
"take him away. Listen to his ravings, and if you can discover any
sense----"

"But I tell you," insists Waddy, "that I must find Bruzinski at once."

"Very well," says Mr. Robert, pushin' him towards the door. "Torchy will
help you find him. Understand, Torchy? Bruzinski. Stay with him until he
does."

"Yes, sir," says I, grinnin' as I locks an arm through one of Waddy's
and tows him into the outer office. "Bruzinski or bust."

And by degrees I got the tale. First off, this lovely Marcelle person
was somebody he'd met while he was helpin' wind up the great war. No,
not on the Potomac sector. Waddy actually got across. You might not
think it to look at him, but he did. Second lieutenant, too. Infantry,
at that. But they handed out eommissions to odder specimens than him at
Plattsburg, you know. And while Waddy got over kind of late he had the
luck to be in a replacement unit that made the whoop-la advance into
Belgium after the Hun line had cracked.

Seems it was up in some dinky Belgian town where the Fritzies had been
runnin' things for four years that Waddy meets this fair lady with the
impulsive manners. His regiment had wandered in only a few hours after
the Germans left and to say that the survivin' natives was glad to see
'em is drawin' it mild. This Miss Jedain was the gladdest of the glad,
and when Waddy shows up at her front door with a billet ticket callin'
for the best front room she just naturally falls on his neck. I take it
he got kissed about four times in quick concussion. Also that the flavor
lasted.

"To be received in that manner by a high born, charming young woman,"
says Waddy. "It--it was delightful. Perhaps you can imagine."

"No," says I. "I ain't got that kind of a mind. But go on. What's the
rest?"

Well, him and the lovely Marcelle had three days of it. Not going to a
fond clinch every time he came down to breakfast or drifted in for
luncheon. She simmered down a bit, I under stand, after her first wild
splurge. But she was very folksy all through his stay, insisted that
Waddy was her heroic deliverer, and