Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 147: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A PORTRAIT OF HOPE. It’s too late to see this Miller fellow, but I got to him next morning. He was a swell guy, just as the hasher says, good and straight all the way through, and wise like a fish. So I don’t do no stalling, but asks if I can get his ear in his private office for a minute. ‘““What’s the big idea?” he says, giving - me the up and down with a pair of clear, pray lamps. ‘ Billy Winston,” I says. Miller’s face lights up and he whistles soft and lowlike. ‘‘ Come along,” he says, “and travel fast,” giving me the east and west and leading me inte a little cubby-hele he had screened off at the back of the store. ‘What about Billy?” he says, pushing a box of ropes toward me as I sat dewn. I tells him all I knows and he listens close, asking a question now and then. It don’t seem to worry him none that I’m a yegg, and he gets enough out of the tale to ‘make me all right. Anyway, he goes out of the reom a couple of times to attend to something or other he can’t stall off, leaving a roll of bills on his desk where they were laying when he came in. And they were all grands, too. He calls up on the telephone after he gets all the story and gives a number. When he gets it he says: “ Good morning, Hepe!”’ looking over at me and smiling, and then he tells her to ask the doc to come to the phone. When the doc answers, he tells him not to say anything before Hope, but he has news of Billy Winston, and for the doc to ‘beat “it down to the store. : _ T hears the doc yell “‘ The hell you say!” happy as a kid, and slam up the receiver, and I'll bet it wasn’t three minutes before he comes in the store, looking happy as a chicken with a new pair of silk ‘stockings. Miller intreduces me, and [ tells the ' story again, adding what Derner said about Winston. The two guys nod over this like they was wise, and then the doc asks for the name of the hospital in Denver, and puts in a long distance call for the dump. We sit around for a while, and the two guys asks questions about what we’d been doing, and I knows they’re both right and tells them the truth. It don’t seem to bother 621 them none, and they laughs hearty when I tell them how we has to educate Hooch to be a regular ’bo. Pretty soon Denver comes on the wire, and Doc Seymour talks to the doc in the hospital, and it happens they know each ‘other. Anyway, it seems that Hooch is coming along fine and dandy, and Seymour says to keep him a few days longer and he and Miller will come out after him. Nothing will do but that I has to go to lunch with the two chaps, and we goes dewn to the restaurant where I saw. the Derner guy. He’s putting on the feed-bag as we come in, and nods to the doc, but has nothing fer Miller, and when he sees - me with the two jobbies I guess he gets a man’s-sized hunch, for he loses his interest in the eats, and beats it out pretty sudden- like. I wises Miller to his play, and he and the doc has a good laugh, and even the hasher slips me a side-look that says he’s on. . I’m fixed up for a theater party that night, with the two gents and Miss Hope is along. Doc wises me that I am to be her escort in the place of Hooch, and say! maybe I didn’t have te do some running around. I asks the doc, as man to man, if I’m dolled up right for the doings, and as man to man, he tells me that my collar is too low, and-my tie is too passionate to be good form, so I gets fixed up right. But never again with a manicure! Little Blon- die at the barber shop tries to correct and make up for years of neglect, and my fin- gers are so sore that I can’t hardly light a match, let alone pick up change. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken, but it’s fierce getting started right. It was some feed, believe me. There was things to eat and drink that I never heard of, and they were all good. When I thinks of the scoffings I has to put up with half the time, just because I’m a yegg and pretty much of a bum, and when I lamps around the dump and sees all the well- dressed men, and the dolled-up janes tak- ing in the grub, and the music and the lights as a matter of course, it makes me think that the doc at the Denver hospital is right when he says I’m a chump and nothing will do me any good. All these happy hours is COM ElOO® Colin