Argosy, Vol. 123, No. 1 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

LD Giles is actin’ the brutal employer ° as I come into the office. The ink- stand, pen, papers and other scenery, that he keeps on his desk to impress clrents is jumpin’ around like alive, due to the trip-hammer wallops he’s deliverin’ to his -blottin’ pad. His face is screwed up into an expression like the villain wears in a movie serial, and out of his mouth is issuin’ ‘a stream of speech that would bring the blush of shame to the modest cheek of a coal-barge skipper. If he’d been usin’ them same words to any other man in the world but Ed Taylor, he’d have-been pasted in the eye, strangled and jumped on. Ed, though, is listenin’ like the boss was deliverin’ the lecture that went with a set of colored slides of the Holy Land. Well, I supposé the boss has got to get it off his chest to somebedy. Him, Ed and me make up the Giles Confidential Detec- tive Agency. ' He knows perfectly well / won’t take no lip from him, so Ed’s got to act the appre- Clative audience every time old Giles feels an oration strainin’ in his throat. But any- how— The subject under discussion—from what I can make out as I slip through the door —is a matter of some four hundred dollars that Ed was supposed to collect, and fell down on. You know that’s one of our grafts— collectin’ bum debts for people on a com- mission. It seems Ed had been give a ie Raymond J. Brown bill of four hundred to collect for Flubb & Company, the instalment-plan furniture people, who are our steadiest clients in the collectin’ line. He’d been monkeyin’ around . fortwo weeks and hadn’t even been able to report progress. Since Ed is paid five a day and expenses, and since ten per cent of the bill—forty bucks—was all the agency could possibly get out of the case, the boss figgered he had a kick comm’—and he was deliverin’ it, III say! “You pig-snouted, snivelin’ loon!” he called Ed. “ You ain’t got sense enough to wind a watch! You couldn’t make a livin’ bailin’ water out of the ocean at a dollar a pint! If a cop found you dead, he wouldn’t take the trouble to report it! Your skull is filled with putty! Outside of a gold cigar-cutter you’re the most use- less thing in the world! Two weeks you’ve spent on this case—two weeks; and you ain’t brought in a nickle! You ain’t ever trted! You—” “Aw, boss!” protests Ed weak-like. ¢¢ tS “Shut up!” yelps the boss. “ You ain’t tried, I said! If you’d tried hard, this guy would’ve kicked you down-stairs—and he ain’t done it! You can’t show a single bruise for your two weeks’ work!” That’s old Giles! He sits m a swivel chair, smokin’ cigars, with his feet on the desk, and Ed and me can’t tell him we're workin’ unless we bring home the bacon or a few scars to prove an honest effort! ‘‘ Joe Conner,” says the boss, and I hang MICLOOO© Cc S C@