"But the tag on the end—J. R. D.—I passes up," says I. "Don't stand for Judge of Rent Dodgers, does it?"
"Those letters," says he, makin' another merry face, "represent the symbols of my Vedic progression."
"If I'd stopped to think once more, I'd fetched that," says I.
It was a jolly. I've never had the Vedic progression—anyways, not had enough to know it at the time—but I wasn't goin' to let him stun me that way.
Later on I got next to the fact that he was some kind of a healer, and that the proper thing to do was to call him Doc. Seems he had a four-by-nine office on the top floor back, over the Studio, and that he was just startin' to introduce the Vedic stunt to New York. Mostly he worked the mailorder racket. He showed me his ad in the Sunday personal column, and it was all to the velvet. Accordin' to his own specifications he was a head-liner in the East Indian philosophy business, whatever that was. He'd just torn himself away from the crowned heads of Europe for an American tour, and he stood ready to ladle out advice to statesmen, tinker up broken hearts, forecast the future, and map out the road to Wellville for millionaires who'd gone off their feed.
He sure had a full bag of tricks to draw from; but I've noticed that the more glass balls you try to keep in the air at once, the surer you are to queer the act. And Pinphoodle didn't look like a gent that kept the receivin' teller workin' overtime.
There was something about him, though, that was kind of dignified. He was the style of chap that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar 'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but the female with the gimlet eyes and the keen-cutter tongue.
"She is a mistaken, misguided person," says he. "And by the way, Professor McCabe, there is a fire-escape, I believe, which leads from my office down to your back windows. Would it be presuming too much if I should ask you to admit me there occasionally, in the event of my being—er—pursued again?"
"It ain't a board bill, is it, Doc?" says I.
"Nothing of the kind, I assure you," says he.