"Yes, sir."
"Well, then, an hour's delay won't be serious. Now you go back to your desk and send Mr. Murphy here. I'll let you know shortly whether Saturday night or this noon will be convenient."
It was perhaps a half-hour before lunch-time when Mr. Comer again called for Mitchell, greeting him with the gruff inquiry:
"See here, do you think I'm going to advance you from twelve to twenty-five a week at one clip?"
"No, sir."
"Humph! I'm not. I had a talk with Murphy. I think he's a liar, but I'm going to make it fifteen hundred a year and expenses. Now get busy and work your 'trade' for all it's worth."
Young Mitchell's knees wabbled, but, having learned the value of a black mask and a gun, he went through his victim thoroughly while he had him down.
"I'd like a traveling position the first of the year, sir, if you don't mind."
"All right! If you hold your present gait I'll give you the Western roads. Anything else you'd like? Well, then, git!"
That day Louis switched from the narrow-countered bakery-lunch route to regular standard-gauge restaurants; he ordered clothes like a bookmaker's bride and he sent a cubic foot of violets to Miss Harris. At dinner-time he patronized Mr. Gross so tantalizingly that the latter threatened to pull his nose out until it resembled a yard of garden hose.