Next time you nabs me writin' a form sheet on any unknown, you can hang out the waste paper sign and send me to the scows. Look at the mess I makes of this here Mallory business! Why, first off I has him billed for a Percy boy that had strayed into the general office from the drygoods district. He had a filin' job in the bond room, and when he drew his envelope on Saturdays it must have set the Corrugated Trust back for as much as twelve D.
Course, I didn't pay no attention to him, until one noon I finds him in the next chair at the dairy lunch. He's got his mug of half white and half black, and his two corned beef splits, with plenty of mustard, and he's just squarin' off for a foodfest, when I squats down with two hunks of pie and all the cheese I could get at one grab.
"Hello, Algy!" says I. "Where's the charlotte russe and the cup of tea?"
"Beg pardon," says he; "were you speaking to me?"
"Sure," says I. "You didn't think I was makin' that crack at the armchair, did you? Maybe we ain't been introduced; but we're on the same payroll."
"Oh, yes," says he, "I remember now. You're the—the——"
"Go on, say it," says I. "I don't mind if it is red, and I lets anybody call me Torchy that wants to, even Willies."
"Well, now, that's nice of you," says he, sidetrackin' a bite to look me over. Then he grins.
Say, it was that open face movement that made me suspicious maybe he wa'n't one of the Algernon kind, after all. But he had most of the points, from the puff tie to the way he spoke. It wa'n't the hot potato dialect Piddie uses; but it leaned that way. If he'd been a real Willie boy, though, he'd gone up in the air, and maybe I'd got slapped on the wrist. His springin' that grin was a hunch for me to hold the decision.
"How long you been keepin' Corrugated stocks from goin' below par?" says I.