"Yes, ain't he?" says I. "And for smoothness he's got a greased plank lookin' like a graveled walk."
I didn't think he'd come after that. But the other lines they had out must have been hauled in empty; for not ten days later I has a 'phone call from him sayin' he's in town and that if it's convenient he'll drop around about three p.m.
"I'll be here," says I.
"And I trust," he adds, "that I—er—may not encounter any pugilists or—er——"
"You'll be safe," says I, "unless some of my Wall Street customers break office rules and try to ring you in on a margin deal. Outside of them, or now and then a railroad president, the studio has a quiet, refined patronage."
"Ah, thanks," says he.
"Swifty," says I to my assistant, "don't show yourself in the front office after three to-day. I'm goin' to entertain a pillar of society, and a sight of that mug of yours might get him divin' through the window."
"Ahr-r-r-r chee!" remarks Swifty Joe, catchin' the wink.
Course, I might have got real peevish over Mr. Bayne's suspicions, and told him to go chase himself; but I'm feelin' sort of good-humored that day. Besides, thinks I, it won't do any harm to show him just how peaceful and respectable a physical culture studio can be. You know the ideas some people get. And as a rule our floor here is the quietest in the buildin'. I knew it would be that day specially; for all we had on the slate was a couple of poddy old parties who'd be workin' away at the apparatus, havin' about as strenuous a time as a baby playin' with its toes.
But I hadn't counted in that Sieger & Bloom combination, up on the fourth. They run a third-rate theatrical agency, you know, and just about then they was fillin' out contracts for summer snaps, and what you saw driftin' up and down the stairs didn't make you yearn to be a vaudeville actor. So later on, when I heard an argument in progress out in the hall, I glances nervous at the clock. It's almost on the tick of three.