"The simp!" groans Whitey.
"You're a great little describer, Whitey," says I. "Simp is right. But next time you want to win front page space by losing a dramatist I'd advise you to lock him in a vault. Islands are too easy located."
CHAPTER XVII
WITH VINCENT AT THE TURN
It was Mr. Piddie who first begun workin' up suspicions about Vincent, our fair haired super-office boy. But then, Piddie has that kind of a mind. He must have been born on the dark of the moon when the wind was east in the year of the big eclipse. Something like that. Anyway, he's long on gloom and short on faith in human nature, and he goes gum-shoein' through life lookin' as slit-eyed as a tourist tom-cat four blocks from his own backyard.
Course, he has his good points, lots of 'em, or else he never would have held his job as office manager in the Corrugated Trust so long. And there's at least two human beings he thinks was made perfect from the start—Old Hickory Ellins and Mr. Robert. The rest of us he ain't sure of. We'll bear watchin'. And Piddie's idea of earnin' his salary is to be right there with the restless eye from 8:43 until 5:02, when he grabs his trusty commutation ticket and starts for the wilds of Jersey, leavin' the force to a whole night of idleness and wicked ways.
Still, I am a little surprised when he picks out Vincent.
"I regret to say it, Torchy," says he, "but someone ought to have an eye on that boy."