Part 34 (1/2)

THROWING THE LINE TO SKID

Say, this is twice I've been let in wrong on Skid Mallory. Remember him, don't you? Well, he's our young college hick that I helped steer up against Baron Kazedky when he landed that big armor plate order. Did they make Skid a junior partner for that, or paint his name on a private office door? Not so you'd notice it. Maybe they was afraid a sudden boost like that would make him dizzy. But they promotes him to the sales department and adds ten to his pay envelope. I was most as tickled over it as Mallory was, too.

”Didn't I tell you?” says I. ”You're a comer, you are! Why, I expect in ten or a dozen years more you'll be sharin' in the semi-annuals and ridin' down to the office in a taxi.”

”Perhaps I may, Torchy--in ten or a dozen years,” says he, kind of slow and sober.

I could guess what he was thinking of then. It was the girl, that sweet young thing that Brother d.i.c.k towed in here along last winter, some Senator's daughter that Skid had got chummy with when he was doin' his great quarterback act and havin' his picture printed in the sportin'

extras.

”How's that affair comin' on?” says I; for I ain't heard him mention her in quite some time.

”It's all off,” says he, shruggin' them wide shoulders of his. ”That is, there never was anything in it, you know, to begin with.”

”Oh, there wa'n't, eh?” says I. ”Forgot all about that picture you used to carry around in the little leather case, have you?”

Skid, he flushes up a bit at that, and one hand goes up to his left inside pocket. Then he laughs foolish. ”It isn't I who have forgotten,”

says he.

”Oh-ho!” says I. ”Well, I wouldn't have thought her the kind to s.h.i.+ft sudden, when she seemed so----”

But Mallory gives me the choke off sign, and as we walks up Broadway he gradually opens up more and more on the subject until I've got a fair map of the situation. Seems that Sis ain't exactly set him adrift without warnin'. He'd sort of helped cut the cable himself. She'd begun by writin' to him every week, tellin' him all about the lively season she was havin' in Was.h.i.+ngton, and how much fun she was gettin' out of life. She even put in descriptions of her new dresses, and some of her dance orders, and now and then a bridge score, or a hand painted place card from some dinner she'd been to.

And Skid, thinkin' it all over in the luxury of his nine by ten boudoir, got to wonderin' what attractions along that line he could hold out to a young lady that was used to blowin' in more for one new spring lid than he could earn in a couple of weeks.

”And orchids are her favorite flowers!” says he. ”Ever buy any orchids, Torchy?”

”Not guilty,” says I; ”but they ain't so high, are they, that you couldn't splurge on a bunch now and then? What's the tariff on 'em, anyway?”

”At times you can get real nice ones for a dollar apiece,” says he.

”Phe-e-e-ew!” says I. ”She has got swell tastes.”

”It isn't her fault,” says he. ”She's never known anything different.”

So what does Skid do but slow up on the correspondence, skippin' an answer here and there, and coverin' only two pages when he did write.

For one thing, he didn't have so much to tell as she did. I knew that; for I'd seen more or less of Mallory durin' the last few months, and I knew he was playin' his cards close to his vest.

Not that he was givin' any real lifelike miser imitation; but he didn't indulge in high priced cafe luncheons on Sat.u.r.days, like most of the bunch; he'd scratched his entry at the college club; and he was soakin'

away his little surplus as fast as he got his fingers on it.

Course, that programme meant sendin' regrets to most of the invites he got, and spendin' his evenin's where it didn't cost much to get in or out. One frivolous way he had of killin' time was by teachin' 'rithmetic to a cla.s.s of new landed Zinskis at a settlement house over on the East Side.

”Ah, what's the use?” I used to tell him. ”They'd learn to do compound interest on their fingers in a month, anyway, and the first thing you know you'll be payin' rent to some of 'em.”

But he was pretty level headed about most things, I will say that for Mallory, specially the way he sized up this girl business. Seems at last she got the idea he was grouchy at her about something; and when he didn't deny, or come to the front with any reason--why, she just quit sendin' the billy ducks.

”So you're never going to see her any more, eh?” says I.