It will be noticed that when off duty these minions of the Secret Service were apt to live like kings, and with reason; for often they had to put up with scanty rations, and poor at that, when far removed from restaurant fare, and forced to live off the country. “First a feast, and then a famine,” Perk was accustomed to saying when Jack mildly reproached him for giving so much thought to what he usually designated as “the eats.”
Perk would have liked very well to have spent an hour or so at some theatre or other, and had even given a few hints about a screen play at the Paramount but met with no encouragement from his side partner.
“Best for us not to make any sort of an exhibit of ourselves while we’re in close quarters with that write-up newspaper chap,” he told Perk, who, realizing that Jack meant just what he said, allowed the subject to drop.
“Kinder gu—er-reckon as haow yeou’re ’baout right there, ole hoss,” he admitted, with a slight vein of regret in his voice; “course we kin see all the picters we want when we’ve struck the wind-up o’ aour trail—that is, providin’ we’re still alive, an’ kickin’ as usual.”
“That lad has got me guessing, and no mistake,” Jack added; “in one way I admire such persistence, especially in one of his breed, where there’s a big scramble for fresh news stories; but they can make it a whole lot disagreeable for other people in the bargain. Makes me think of the leeches that used to pester us by hanging on in the old swimmin’ hole of my boyhood days—you just couldn’t shake the blood-thirsty varments off, try as you might, they were such stickers.”
Finishing their supper they strolled forth in a leisurely fashion, as if, as Perk himself observed in his quaint way: they had “the whole evening at their disposal, with nothing to do but kill time.”
Picking up a late evening paper on the way to their room at the Henry Grady Hotel they settled down to be as comfortable as possible, until the time arrived to make a start.
“We’ll get a taxi to take us out to Candler Field,” quoth Jack, always arranging his plans with meticulous certainty; “then change to our flying togs, and get going as quietly as possible. It’s to be hoped that sticking plaster wont be nosing around out there, to see some mail ship start off, or come into the airport—you never can tell about such fly-by-nights, who bob up in the most unexpected places just when you don’t want to see them.”
“Huh! yeou said it, partner,” Perk added, whimsically; “jest like I used to see that queer jack-o’-lantern in the country graveyard foggy nights now here, an’ agin over yonder, fur all the world like a ghost huntin’ fur its ’ticular stone to climb under agin.”
Jack, having made himself comfortable, commenced glancing over the paper he had picked up, briefly scanning each page as though skimming the news.