“Mr. Lovell, I'd like to know—”
Lovell, however, cut him short with a hoarse but peremptory “Don't talk! Can't answer!” pointed to his throat, and disappeared in the inner office, the door of which he closed.
Whereupon the disappointed applicants, expressing their feelings in a series of heartrending jerks, twitches, tremors, and grimaces, trooped out into the hall. There they cross-examined Wright and arrived at the conclusion that they were to be used as living advertisements for the Acme Vibrator. Doctors were employed to boom it and the company supplied dummies or “property” patients.
II
To the same clerk in the Herald office, a fortnight later, came the same man in black, and whispered something. The clerk recognized him, leaned over, and asked, pleasantly:
“What is it this time?” He had a good memory. He afterward remembered thinking that the hoarseness was chronic.
“How much for one inch in Help Wanted, Male?”
“Pica caps?”
The man nodded eagerly, half a dozen times.
“Two dollars and thirty-two cents.”