We was havin' a directors' meetin'. Get that, do you? We, you know! For nowadays, as private sec. and actin' head of Mutual Funding, I crashes into all sorts of confidential pow-wows. Uh-huh! Right in where they put a crimp in the surplus and make plots to slip things over on the Commerce Board! Oh my, yes! I'm gettin' almost respectable enough to be indicted.
Well, we'd just pared the dividend on common and was about breakin' up the session when Mr. Robert misses some figures on export clearances he'd had made up and was pawin' about on the table aimless.
"Didn't I see you stowin' that away in one of your desk pigeonholes yesterday?" I suggests.
"By George!" says he. "Think you could find it for me, Torchy? And, by the way, bring along my cigarettes too. You will find them in a leather case somewhere about."
I locates the export notes first stab; but the dope sticks ain't in sight. I claws through the whole top of the desk before I fin'lly discovers, shoved clear into a corner, a thin old blue morocco affair with a gold catch. By the time I gets back he's smokin' a borrowed brand and tosses the case one side.
Half an hour later the meetin' is over. Mr. Robert sighs relieved, bunches up a lot of papers in front of him, and begins feelin' absent-minded in his pockets. Seein' which I pushes the leather case at him.
"Ah, yes, thanks," says he, and snaps it open careless.
But no neat little row of paper pipes shows up. Inside is nothing but a picture, one of these dinky portraits on ivory—mini'tures, ain't they? It shows a young lady with a perky chin and kind of a quizzin' look in her eyes: not a reg'lar front row pippin', you know, but a fairly good looker of the highbrow type.
For a second Mr. Robert stares at the portrait foolish, and then he glances up quick to see if I'm watchin'. As it happens, I am, and blamed if he don't tint up over it!
"Excuse," says I. "Only leather case I could find. Besides, I didn't know you had any such souvenirs as this on your desk."