Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

DIRTY wanted, at first, to believe in your concern and in consequence I did. But you sent me no advices about your activities. All you did was to waltz off with my check and cash it, as I found out when I tried to stop it. “It’s the mystery about the whole thing that gets my goat. What is this concern? Who’s the head, the brains of it? Where in hell’s bells does he get his efficiency? His men? : * Coral Isle must be swarming with them, working day and night, to get the load you’ve got aboard. I must run over and see.” “ You must do nothing of the sort,” said Sparks. “Because he wouldn’t like it.” cee He ~ “ The chief.” “ Give him a name, can’t you?” said Mr. Vail testily. ce No.’’ “Why not?” “Tt’s part of his efficiency. It’s the reason he is able to accomplish what he does.” “How does he figure that out?” “Tt’s simple. Take any great man. If you met him personally and knew him as well as you know, say your own daughter, there wouldn’t be much of a halo about him, would there?” “Certainly not!” exclaimed Mr. Vail with decision. . “ Rulers pull the same sort of stuff. The more symbolic a person makes himself, the more difficult he is of approach, and the more he leaves himself to the imagination of his dependents, the greater and more un- assailable is his power. “ Any chump knows that a man will work ten times harder for an ideal, for some in- visible power, than he will for Tom, Dick or Harry. It’s just the old story over again of intimacy breeding contempt, whereas aloofness inspires awe, fear, any of the stronger and more desirable emotions. “Such a man, of course, requires able lieutenants—like me. You can call the chief, for want of a name, the Invisible Mohammed until he moves that mountain into your back lot.” WORK. 215 “And then?” Mr. Vail found himself strangely, and uncomfortably, in the rdéle of questioner rather than his habitual one of expounder. ** Perhaps I'll introduce you to him.” Mr. Vail checked himself on the very point of answering, “If you would be so kind.” He offered, instead, a non-commital grunt. “T’ll ask you to step ashore now,” said Sparks. ‘I’ve got to pitch in and I can’t have people around bothering me.” It was the shock of Mr. Vail’s life when he suddenly found himself walking, with: his back to the Princess, pensively home- ward across his own green lawn. CHAPTER XI, *“ CLOTHES DO NOT—” ETC. ARIPOSA TIBBET eyed Miss Vail Mi sternly, and tightly compressed her thin lips into a straight line. Tibbet had been in Miss Vail’s service for many years, in fact since a brief few days after Miss Vail had been born. At first as a nurse, at present as a maid, and always— as Miss Vail was wont indignantly to re- mark—as her severest critic and most un- compromising Nemesis. “If you put them there things on, miss, I leaves!” said Tibbet feelingly, as she pointed a bony finger accusingly toward cer- tain-garments spread out upon the bed. “What your ma wouldn’t say if she found out about it I cannot think.” “ Neither can I,” agreed Miss Vail com- placently. ‘‘ But as she won’t find out about it until after it’s done, what’s the row?” : “Think of your conscience,” urged Tibbet impressively. “Bother my conscience, Tibby. Go get me a collar button.” ‘Strike me dead if I stir from this spot on any such errand as that,” Tibbet im- plored a vague Providence with her eyes. “Tf you don’t get off your high horse, Tibby, and get me that collar button at once I'll make it a point to scatter certain hints, certain dark hints,” Miss Vail paused to give weight to her threat and succeeded Go OOOKS AMUG (C@