"I don't blame him!" says the Kid. "And lemme tell you, he never got them muscles from brushin' clothes and buttonin' vests. I felt his arm when I swung him around that time, and this guy is just about as soft as the Rock of Gibraltar!"
"I can't understand," says Miss Vincent, "how a strong, healthy man can be a valet—ugh!" she winds up, with a little shiver.
"That's easy," sneers the Kid. "A man can't!"
Well, a man did! Gimme your ears, as the deaf guy said.
The next mornin' it turns out that I can guess like a rabbit can run. The new entry on the payroll borrehs a match from me, and durin' the tête-à-tête that folleyed, I find out that his name is John R. Adams and, as far as the world in general and America in particular is concerned, it could of been George Q. Mud. Durin' the lifetime of twenty-nine years he's been on earth, he's tried his hand at everything from bankin' to bartenderin', and so far the only thing he's been a success at is bein' a failure. At that he leads the league. And now, to top it all off, he's a valet for a movie hero!
"It's all a matter of luck!" he says, bitterly. "A man who tries these days is not an ambitious hustler, but a pest to the powers above him! I defy a man to stand on his own feet and make good without influence. It's not what do you know any more, but who do you know! I've been a bookkeeper, a printer, a salesman, a chauffeur, a bank clerk, and, yes, even a chorus man. At every one of those things I gave the best I had in stock to get to the front. Did I get there? Not quite!" he throws away the cigarette he's hardly had a puff of. "Why?" he asks me. "Because in every trade or profession there's somebody with half the sand and ability, who don't know the job's requirements but knows the boss's son! I'm not a quitter or I wouldn't be here, but I'm sick and disgusted with this thing called life and—"
"And that's why you never got nowhere!" breaks in a voice behind us—and there's Eddie Duke. Adams flushes up and starts away, but Eddie pulls him back.
"Listen to me, young feller!" he says. "I happened to hear your moan just now and your dope is all wrong. There ain't no such thing as luck; if there was, a blacksmith is the luckiest guy in the world and oughta make a million a minute, because he's handlin' nothin' but horseshoes all day long, ain't he? Forget about that luck stuff! Makin' good is all in the way you look at it, anyways. A bricklayer makin' thirty bucks a week, raisin' a family and bringin' home his pay every Saturday night in his pocket instead of on his breath, is makin' good as big as J. P. Morgan is—d'ye get me? Yes, sir, that bird can say he's got over! Makin' good is like religion, every other guy has a different idea of what it means, but there's many a feller swingin' a pick that's makin' good just as much as the bird that owns the ditch—in his own way! You claim a guy's got to know somebody these days to get over, eh? Well, you got that one right, I'll admit it!"
"Of course!" says Adams, brightenin' up. "That's my argument and—"
"That ain't no argument, that's a whine!" sneers Duke, cuttin' him off short. "Listen to me—you bet you gotta know somebody to get anywheres, you gotta know yourself! That's all! Just lay off thinkin' how lucky the other guy is, and give Stephen X. You a minute's attention. You may be the biggest guy in the world at somethin', if you'll only check up on yourself and see what that somethin' is! Remember Whosthis says, 'Full many a rose is born to blush unseen—' Well, don't be one of them desert flowers; come into the city and let 'em all watch you blush. Get me? How did you happen to meet this big stiff De Vronde?"