Torchy Part 14

"Oh, slush!" says I. "Don't play so rough, Piddie."

I was onto him, all right. I've seen these hot-air plungers before. They follow up a stock for weeks, and buy and sell in six figures, and reckon up how they've hit the market for great chunks--but it's all under their lids. You can't spend pipe dreams, if you win; and if you lose, it don't shrink the size of your really truly roll. It's almost as satisfyin' as walkin by the back door of a bakery when you're hungry.

That kind of game is about Piddie's size, too. All it calls for is plenty of imagination, and he's got that by the bale. I was kind of glad to see him enjoyin' himself so innocent, and now and then I'd help along the excitement.

"Heard about how Morgan's tryin' to get hold of Blitzen?" I'd say, and Piddie would p.r.i.c.k up his ears like a fox-terrier sightin' a rat.

"Who told you?" Piddie'd ask.

"Why," I'd say, "I got it straight from a delicatessen man that lives on the same block with a man that runs a hot dog cart in John-st. Don't want anything closer'n that, do you!"

Then Piddie'd look kind of foolish, and go off and call down some one good and hard, just to relieve his feelin's.

First thing I knew, though, Piddie was havin' star-chamber sessions with a seedy-lookin' piker that wore an actor's overcoat and a brunette collar that looked like it had been wished onto his neck about last Thanksgivin'. They'd get together in a corner of the reception room and whisper away for half an hour on a stretch. If it hadn't been Piddie, I'd put it down for a hard-luck tale with a swift touch for a curtain; but no one that ever took a second look at Piddie would ever waste their time tryin' a touch on him. So I guessed the gent was a bucketshop tout who was tryin' to interest Piddie in some kind of a deal.

Still, I couldn't get any picture of Piddie takin' a chance with real money. It wa'n't until I seen him walkin' around stary-eyed one day, and gettin' nervous by the minute, that I could believe he's really been rung in. He was goin' through all the motions, though, of a man that's shoved everything, win or lose, on the red, and it was a circus to keep tabs on him. He makes a bluff at bein' awful busy with the billbook; but he couldn't stay at the desk more'n three minutes at a spell. Inside of an hour I counted four times that he washed his hands and six drinks of water that he had.

"You'll be damp enough to need wringin' out, if you keep that up," says I.

"Keep what up?" says he. Honest, he was so rattled he didn't know whether he was usin' the roller towel or runnin' over the ticker tape.

Half an hour before lunchtime he skips out and leaves word with me that maybe he'll be back late.

"All right," says I. "If the boss calls for you I'll tell him he'll have to shut down the shop until you blow in again."

Maybe you've seen symptoms like that in a hired man. It gen'rally means that there's somethin' doin' in ponies or margins, and that next payday is goin' to seem a long ways off. If I'd been asked to give a guess, I should have put it as about two hundred bucks that Piddie had thrown into the market. Anyway, it wa'n't enough to knock the props out of call-money quotations; so I was lettin' Piddie do all the worryin'.

He didn't show back at twelve-thirty, nor at twelve-forty-five. Some one else did, though. She was a nice little lady, one of the smooth-haired, big-eyed kind, as soft talkin' and as gentle actin' as the heroine in "No Weddin' Cake for Her'n," just before she gets to the weepy scenes.

You could see by the punky mill'nery and the last season's drygoods that she'd just drifted in from Mortgagehurst, New Jersey. The little snoozer she has by the hand was a cute one, though. When he gets a glimpse of my sunset top piece he sings out:

"O-o-o-o, mama! Burny, burn!"

"Why, Hemmingway!" says she. "I am surprised. Naughty, naughty!"

"Don't worry, lady," says I. "The kid's got it dead right--it's one of them kind."

Then I wets my finger and shows him how it'll go "S-z-z!" when I touch it off. That gets a laugh out of little Hemmingway, and in a minute we're all good friends.

She's Mrs. Piddie, of course, and she's a brick. Say, how is it these two-by-fours can pull out such good ones so often? Why, if she'd been got up accordin' to this year's models, and could have thrown the front she ought to, she'd have been fit for a first-tier box at the grand op'ra.

"Chee!" thinks I. "Did she pick Piddie in the dark?"

She'd come in to drag him out shoppin' and hypnotize him into loosenin'

up. It was a case of gettin' things for little Hemmingway.

"Me, I go have new s'oes, an' new coat wif pockets too," says he.

Say, they wins me, kids like that do. There's some I ain't got any use for, the kind brought up in hotels and boardin' houses that learn to play to the gallery before they can feed themselves, and others I could name; but clean, grinnin' youngsters, with big eyes that take in everything, they're good to have around. And, little Hemmy was a star. I got so int'rested showin' him things in the office that I clean forgot about Piddie and what he was up to.

"He will be back soon, won't he?" says Mrs. Piddie.

Now if you give me time I can slick up an answer so it'll sound like the truth and mean something else; but as an offhand liar I'm a frost.

Somehow I always has to swaller somethin' before I can push out a cold dope. Course, I knew he'd got to be back before long; but I see right off that this wa'n't any day for a fam'ly reunion. Piddle wa'n't goin'

to be any too sociable by dinner time that night, 'less'n he'd hit up the bucketshop, which the chances was against. So it was my turn to make a foxy play.

"He's due here before long, that's a fact," says I, "but there's no tellin'. You see, there's a big deal on, and Mr. Piddie's gone downtown, and----"

"Oh!" says Mrs. Piddle, her eyes shinin'. "Then he has some important business engagement?"

You couldn't help seein' how she had it framed up,--the whole Corrugated Trust and half of Wall Street holdin' its breath while hubby, J.

Hemmingway Piddie, Esq., worked his giant intellect for the good of the country.

"That's it," says I. "I couldn't say pos'tive that he'd be as late as four o'clock; but----"

"Oh! then we'll not wait," says she, "Come, Hemmingway, we must go home."

"Don't I det my new s'oes?" says Hemmy.

There was a proposition for you! The kid was runnin' true to form and stickin' to the main line. No side issues for him! Pop might be a big man, and all that; but his size didn't cut much ice alongside of the new-shoes prospect. Things was beginnin' to look squally, and Mrs.

Piddie's mouth corners was saggin' some, when I has a thought.

"Hold on," says I. "Maybe he's left a note or something for you."

See what it is to have a little wad stowed away in the southwest corner of your jeans? I slips through into the main office, gets one of the typewriter girls to address an envelope to Mrs. Piddie, jams a sawbuck into it, and comes out smilin'.

"Maybe this'll do as well as Pop himself," says I. "Feels like it had long green in it," and the last I heard of little Hemmy he was tellin'

the elevator man about the "new s'oes" that was comin' to him.

"It's a fool way to lend out coin," thinks I; "but what's the diff? That kid's got his hopes set on bein' shod to-day, and Piddie's bound to make good sometime."

Piddie didn't look it, though, when he drifts in about one-thirty. If he'd had a load on his mind earlier in the day, he'd got somethin' more now. Just sittin' at the desk doin' nothin made the dew come out on his n.o.ble brow like it was the middle of August. He was too much of a wreck to stand any joshin'; so I let him alone, not even tellin' him about the fam'ly visit.

The first thing I knows he comes over to me, his jaw set firmer'n I ever see it shut before, and a kind of shifty look in his eyes. He hands me a letter and a package.

"Torchy," says he, "take these down to that address just as soon as you can. You've got to go quick. Understand?"

"Fourth speed, advanced spark, that's me!" says I, grabbin' my hat and coat. "Free track for the Piddie special! Honk, honk!" and I jams him up against the letterpress as I makes a rush for the door.

When I gets into the subway I sizes up the stuff I'm carryin'. Well say, it ain't often I gets real curious; but this was one of them times. I started in by rollin' a pencil under the envelope flap while the gum was moist. Not that I'd made up my mind to rubber; but just so's I could if I took the notion. And, sure enough, I got the notion, or it got me.

Chee! I near slid off the rattan seat when I reads that note. Guess I must have sat there, starin' bug-eyed and lookin' batty, from 14th to Wall. Do you know what that mush-head of a Piddie was at? He was givin'

an order to bolster up Blitzen by buyin' up to a hundred thousand shares, and in the package was a bunch of gilt-edged securities to cover the margins.

Now wouldn't that jiggle the grapes on sister's new lid? Piddie, a narrow-gauge, dime-pinchin' ink-slinger, doin' the bull act like he was a sooty plute from Pittsburg! That's what comes of swallowin' the get-rich-fast bug.

Well, when I gets out at the Street I didn't have any programme planned.

First I strolls down to the number on the letter and takes a look at the buildin'. That was enough. There was some good names on the hall directory; but most of 'em was little, two-room, fly-by-night firms, with a party 'phone for a private wire and a mail-order list bought off'm patent medicine concerns. The people Piddie was doin' business with was that kind.

Next I takes a walk around into Broad-st., where the mounted cops keep the big-wind bunch roped in so's they can't break loose and pinch the doork.n.o.bs off the Subtreasury. The ear-m.u.f.f brigade was lettin'

themselves out in fine style, tradin' in Ground Hog bonds, Hoboken gas, Moonshine preferred, and a whole lot of other ten-cent shares, as earnest as if they was under cover and biddin' on Standard Oil firsts.