"Gawsh," murmured the blond stenographer from the corner of her mouth, after the manner of convicts, "Old Grizzly's pickin' on the chinless wonder again. I don't see how Croly stands it. I wouldn't if I was him."
"Aw, wadda yuh expeck of Chinless?" returned the brunette stenographer disdainfully as she crackled paper to conceal her breach of the office rules against conversation. "Feller with ingrown jaws was made to pick on."
At noon Croly went out to his lunch, not to the big hotel, as Cowdin had suggested, but to a crowded basement full of the jangle and clatter of cutlery and crockery, and the smell and sputter of frying liver. The name of this cave was the Help Yourself Buffet. Its habitués, mostly clerks like Croly, pronounced "buffet" to rhyme with "rough it," which was incorrect but apt.
The place was, as its patrons never tired of reminding one another as they tried with practiced eye and hand to capture the largest sandwiches, a conscience beanery. As a matter of fact, one's conscience had a string tied to it by a cynical management.
The system is simple. There are piles of food everywhere, with prominent price tags. The hungry patron seizes and devours what he wishes. He then passes down a runway and reports, to the best of his mathematical and ethical ability, the amount his meal has cost—usually, for reasons unknown, forty-five cents. The report is made to a small automaton of a boy, with a blasé eye and a brassy voice. He hands the patron a ticket marked 45 and at the same instant screams in a sirenic and incredulous voice, "Fawty-fi'." Then the patron passes on down the alley and pays the cashier at the exit. The purpose of the boy's violent outcry is to signal the spotter, who roves among the foods, a derby hat cocked over one eye and an untasted sandwich in his hand, so that persons deficient in conscience may not basely report their total as forty-five when actually they have eaten ninety cents' worth.
On this day, when Croly Addicks had finished his modest lunch, the spotter was lurking near the exit. Several husky-looking young men passed him, and brazenly reported totals of twenty cents, when it was obvious that persons of their brawn would not be content with a lunch costing less than seventy-five; but the spotter noting their bull necks and bellicose air let them pass. But when Croly approached the desk and reported forty-five the spotter pounced on him. Experience had taught the spotter the type of man one may pounce on without fear of sharp words or resentful blows.
"Pahdun me a minute, frien'," said the spotter. "Ain't you made a little mistake?"
"Me?" quavered Croly. He was startled and he looked guilty, as only the innocent can look.
"Yes, you," said the spotter, scowling at the weak outlines of Croly's countenance.
"No," jerked out Croly. "Forty-five's correct." He tried to move along toward the cashier, but the spotter's bulk blocked the exit alley.