He bellowed, while he belabored Martin’s back:
“Well, well, well, well, well, well! Old Mart! Why, you old son of a gun! Why, you old son of a gun! Why, you damn’ old chicken-thief! Say, you skinny little runt, I’m a son of a gun if you look one day older’n when I saw you last in Zenith!”
Martin was aware of the bright leering of the once humble reception-clerk. He said, “Well, gosh, it certainly is good to see you,” and hastened to get Clif into the privacy of his office.
“You look fine,” he lied, when they were safe. “What you been doing with yourself? Leora and I did our best to look you up, when we first came to New York. Uh— Do you know about, uh, about her?”
“Yuh, I read about her passing away. Fierce luck. And about your swell work in the West Indies—where was it? I guess you’re a great man now—famous plague-chaser and all that stuff, and world-renowned skee-entist. I don’t suppose you remember your old friends now.”
“Oh, don’t be a chump! It’s—it’s—it’s fine to see you.”
“Well, I’m glad to observe you haven’t got the capitus enlargatus, Mart. Golly, I says to meself says I, if I blew in and old Mart high-hatted me, I’d just about come nigh unto letting him hear the straight truth, after all the compliments he’s been getting from the sassiety dames. I’m glad you’ve kept your head. I thought about writing you from Butte—been selling some bum oil-stock there and kind of got out quick to save the inspectors the trouble of looking over my books. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I’ll just sit down and write the whey-faced runt a letter, and make him feel good by telling him how tickled I am over his nice work.’ But you know how it is—time kind of slips by. Well, this is excellentus! We’ll have a chance to see a whole lot of each other now. I’m going in with a fellow on an investment stunt here in New York. Great pickings, old kid! I’ll take you out and show you how to order a real feed, one of these days. Well, tell me what you been doing since you got back from the West Indies. I suppose you’re laying your plans to try and get in as the boss or president or whatever they call it of this gecelebrated Institute.”
“No— I, uh, well, I shouldn’t much care to be Director. I prefer sticking to my lab. I— Perhaps you’d like to hear about my work on phage.”
Rejoicing to discover something of which he could talk, Martin sketched his experiments.
Clif spanked his forehead with a spongy hand, and shouted: