Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 28, 1928 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

THIEVES’ MARKET. It was nothing more nor less than a cold, nauseating fear which clung to him after he had climbed into his seat, after the plane had started its bump- ing course across the field, but which left him the moment that bumping. ceased and he realized that he was off. Then he became cool, poised, and un- afraid. He wondered now if he would have a similar reaction when the door to Hamilton’s private office opened and he received his summons. Barry Rand had sought ’this inter- view with the president of the Atlas Casualty Insurance Company himself, and sought it ina daring fashion. For a year he had been a minor employee of the firm, a filing clerk. For a year he had taken orders and run errands for the oily little individual in a pinch back suit who was his immediate chief. A man who might have been his order- ly some years back. A man who took an unholy delight in asserting his au- thority over Rand. Rand was not popular in the office. In the first place, he dressed entirely too well for a filing clerk, and, to add insult to injury, he carried a stick. Pure swank this was, in the eyes of the other clerks. The possibility that he might not have the price of a satisfactory dinner in the pockets of those well cut trousers never occurred to them. Rand had taken his job at the Atlas out of sheer necessity. Like so many other men who came back from the late lamented, he had no position to return to. Moreover, he had not served in our armies. Being several years on the adoles- cent side of the age limit, he had gone up to Canada, where at that time boys who had scarcely turned twenty, boys with deep lines in their faces and per- haps a touch of gray already appear- ing about the temples, found them- selves holding positions of high rank and grave responsibility. Rand had won his wings and his 435 commission, had done his fighting, and had come back with the idea of looking in a leisurely fashion for just that special niche into which he was particu- larly made to fit. But the niche was not so easily found. When his somewhat meager finances had been drained to the bot- tom, he took a job at what our busi- ness executives are pleased to call a “living wage ’’—a job which would “tide him over” until he found the right thing. Quickly dissatisfied, he jumped to something else. Thus there followed a succession of unimportant jobs, with the right thing never appearing. Finally he reached the Atlas Casual- ty Insurance Company. Then he tried to face facts. Perhaps there was no right place for him. Perhaps his only chance was to go into a big concern of this sort and work up. At any rate, he would give it a whirl. And now he was sick of the whole ” thing. He was sick of being ordered about by that overfed swine down- stairs. He was sick of listening to the hope held out to him by his friends. If he did his work exceptionally well, some executive would pick him out for a better position. Just how one could do anything ex- ceptional about filing insurance policies and letters, he had not been able to discover. He was sick of being hungry. He was sick of the dingy hall bedroom in which he was forced to live. In desperation he had written a let- ter to old man Hamilton. He had told his position and what he thought his capabilities were. He added that he felt there must be a real job for a man of his sort. 3 If there were dangerous jobs, jobs that required real courage and incurred real risk, he was willing to take them. He would rather be dead than stay in this rut. If there was nothing for him, he wanted to quit. It was without doubt an impertinent letter for a twenty-five-dollar-a-week Go NOOLKS AMG (E@)