"My friends," he began, "it is no secret to some of you that Mr. Hammer has not been pleased with the way things are going in the company. He has felt that there has been a great deal of waste of time and money; that neither the volume of business nor the profits on it are what they should be. He has commissioned me to find out what is wrong in the company and to put pep, efficiency, enthusiasm into our organization."

He smiled a modest smile.

"I rather fancy," he continued, "that I'll succeed. I have been conducting the tests with which you are all doubtless familiar through reading my books, 'Pep, Personality, Personnel,' and 'How to Enthuse Employees.' I have made a most interesting and startling discovery. Most of you are in the wrong jobs!"

He paused. The men and women looked at each other uneasily. Then he went on.

"I'll cite just one instance. Yesterday I tested the mentality of one of you. I found that he was of the cage, or solitary, type of worker. See Page 239 of my book on Getting Into Men's Brains. But he was already working in a cage! Here was a problem. Could it be that that was where he would do best? No! Then a happy solution struck me. He was in the wrong cage. So I am going to transfer him from a mathematical cage to a mechanical cage. I am going to transfer him to be an elevator operator. This may surprise you, my friends, but science is always surprising. Just fancy! This man has been working with figures for more than twenty years, and I discover by measuring that his thumbs are of the purely mechanical type, and all that time he would have been much happier running an elevator. Now by an odd coincidence I found that one of the elevator operators has a pure type of mathematical ear, so I am transferring him to the cashier's cage. He may seem a bit awkward there at first, but we shall see, we shall see."

He turned on his smile. But the eyes of the employees had turned sympathetically to the pale face of Horace Nimms. How old and tired Uncle Horace looked, they thought. In a nightmare Horace heard his doom pronounced. After twenty-one years! His temple of figures!

S. Walmsley Cowan unconcernedly began one of his celebrated pep-and-punch talks calculated to send morale up as a candle sends up the mercury in a thermometer.

"Friends," he said, thumping the table before him, "when Opportunity comes to knock be on the front porch! Don't hold back! He who hesitates is lost. It may be that the humble will inherit the earth, but that will be when all the bold have died. Don't hide your light under a basket; don't keep your ideas locked up in your skulls. Bring 'em out! Let's have a look at them. You wouldn't wear a diamond ring inside your shirt, would you? Be sure you're right, then holler your head off. Get what is coming to you! Nobody will bring it on a platter; you've got to step up and grab it. When you have an impulse, think it over. If it looks like the real goods, obey it. Get me? Obey it! Nobody will bite you. Think all you like, but for heaven's sake, act!"

It was for such talks that Mr. Cowan was famous. Even Horace Nimms forgot his impending fall as the efficiency expert extraordinary declaimed the gospel of action and boldness.

But when the meeting was over, silent misery came into the heart of the little cashier and like an automaton he stumbled into the Subway. He ate his bread pudding without tasting it and tried to talk to Polly about the proposed living room in the Long Island cottage. He hadn't the courage to tell her what had happened; indeed he hardly realized what had happened himself.

In the morning he tried to pretend to himself that it was all a joke; surely Mr. Cowan couldn't have meant it. But when he reached his cage he saw another figure already in that temple of addition and subtraction. He rattled the wire door timidly. The figure turned.

"Wadda yah want?" it asked bellicosely.

Horace Nimms recognized the bluish jaw of Gus, one of the elevator men.

Sick at heart, Horace turned away. In the blur of his thoughts was the one that he must keep his job, some job, any job. One can't save much on forty a week in Flatbush. And that he should work for any one but the Amalgamated Soap Corporation was unthinkable. So without knowing exactly how it happened, he found himself in a blue-and-gray uniform clumsily trying to vindicate his mechanical hands and attempting to stop his car within six inches of the floors. All morning he patiently escorted his car up and down the elevator shaft—twenty stories up, twenty stories down, twenty stories up, twenty stories down. He thought of the Song of the Shirt.

At noon he stopped his car at the eighteenth floor and two passengers got on. Horace recognized them. One was Jim Wright, assistant to President Hammer; the other was Mr. Perrine, Western sales manager. They were in animated conversation.

"That fellow has the crust of a mud turtle and the tact of a rattlesnake," Mr. Perrine was saying.

"Remember," Jim Wright reminded him, "he is an efficiency expert extraordinary. The big boss seems to have confidence in him."

"He won't have quite so much," said Mr. Perrine, "when he hears that he put an elevator man in as cashier. I hear he walked off with six hundred dollars before he'd been on the job an hour."

Horace pricked up his ears. He made the car go as slowly as possible.

"He did?" Jim Wright was excited. "And this is one of the boss' bad days too! Just before I left him he was saying, 'The Amalgamated has about as much system as a piece of cheese. Why, these high-salaried executives can't tell me how much it costs them to make and sell a cake of soap!'"

Then Horace reluctantly let them out of the elevator at the street floor.

All that afternoon he struggled with an impulse. The words of Mr. Cowan's oration of the night before began to come back to him. If only he had obeyed his impulses——

As he was a new man, they gave him the late shift. At one minute to six the indicator in his car gave two short, sharp, peremptory buzzes. Horace, who was mastering the elements of elevator operating, shot up to the eighteenth floor. A single passenger got on. With a little gasp Horace recognized the cutaway coat and top hat of the president of the Amalgamated.

Horace set his teeth. His small frame grew tense. He turned the lever and the car started to glide downward. Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve! Then with a quick twist of his wrist Horace stalled the car between the twelfth and eleventh floors and slipped the controlling key into his pocket. Then he turned and faced the big president.

"You don't know a hell of a lot about running an elevator," remarked Oren Hammer.

"No, I don't," said Horace Nimms in a strange, loud voice that he didn't recognize. "But I do know how much it costs a cake to make Pink Petal Toilet."

"What's that? Who the devil are you?" The great man was more surprised than angry.

"Nimms," said Horace briefly. "Office cashier on seventeenth floor twenty-one years. Elevator operator one day. Mr. Cowan's orders."

Mr. Hammer's brow contracted.

"So you think you can tell me how much Pink Petal costs a cake to make, eh?" he said.

He had the reputation of never overlooking an opportunity.

The imaginary conversations that Horace had been having crowded back into his mind.

"Now, looky here, Mr. Hammer," he began. "The Western works made 9,576,491 cakes of Pink Petal Toilet last year. Now the cost a cake was—" and so on. Horace was on familiar ground now. Figures and statistics tripped from his tongue; the details he had bottled up inside him so long came pouring forth. He knew the business of the Amalgamated down to the last stamp and rubber band. Oren Hammer, listening with keen interest, now and then put in a short, direct question. Horace Nimms snapped back short, direct answers. Once launched, he forgot all about the cutaway coat and the dazzling top hat and even about the big-jawed man who washed the faces of forty million people every morning. Horace was talking to get back into his cage and words came with a new-found eloquence.

"By George," exclaimed President Hammer, "you know more about the business than I do myself! And Cowan told you you didn't have a figuring mind, did he? I want you to report at my office the first thing to-morrow morning."

Horace Nimms, in the black suit he saved for funerals and weddings, and a new tie, was ushered into the big office of President Hammer the next morning. Outwardly, it was his hope, he was calm; inwardly, he knew, he was quaking.

"Have a cigar, Nimms," said Oren Hammer, passing Horace one of the presidential perfectos of his dreams. Then he summoned a secretary.

"Ask Mr. Cowan to come in, will you?" he said.

The efficiency expert extraordinary entered, beaming affably.

"Good morning to you, Mr. Hammer," he called out in a cheery voice. Then he stopped short as he recognized Horace.

"Oh, come here, Cowan," said President Hammer genially. "Before you go I want you to meet Mr. Nimms. He is going to install a new cost-accounting system for us. Just step down to the cashier's cage with him, will you, and get your salary to date."

VII: Where is the Tropic of Capricorn?

To be taken "on the cops"—the phrase is departmental argot and is in common use by those who enjoy that distinction—this had been the ideal of Peter Mullaney since the days when he, an undersized infant, had tottered around his Christopher Street back-yard, an improvised broom-stick billy in his hand, solemnly arresting and incarcerating his small companions. To wear that spruce, brass-button studded blue uniform, and that glittering silver shield, to twirl a well-trained night-stick on its cord, to eye the layman with the cold, impassive eye of authority, to whisper mysterious messages into red iron signal boxes on street-corners, to succor the held-up citizen and pursue the crook to his underworld lair, to be addressed as "Officer"—he had lived for this dream.

And here he was, the last man on a row of thirty panting, perspiring probationary patrolmen, ranged, according to height, across the gymnasium of the police training school. From big Dan Mack, six feet four in his socks, they graded down as gently as a ramp to little Peter on the end of the line a scant, a bare five feet five and seven-eighths inches tall including the defiant bristle of his red pompadour.

Peter was happy, and with reason. It was by no generous margin that Peter had gained admission to the school that was to prepare him for his career. By the sheerest luck he had escaped being cast into the exterior darkness; by the slimmest degree he had wiggled into the school, and whether he could attain the goal on which he had kept his eye for twenty years—or ever since he was four—was still decidedly in doubt. The law said in plain, inexorable black and white that the minimum height a policeman can be is five feet and six inches. Peter Mullaney lacked that stature by the distance between a bumble-bee's eyes; and this, despite the fact that for years he had sought most strenuously, by exercise, diet and even torture to stretch out his body to the required five feet six. When he was eighteen and it seemed certain that an unsympathetic fate had meant him to be a short man, his father found him one day in the attic, lashed to a beam, with a box full of window-weights tied to his feet, and his face gray with pain.

"Shure, me bye," remarked old man Mullaney as he cut Peter down, "are ye after thinkin' that the Mullaneys is made of Injy rubber? Don't it say in the Bible, 'What man by takin' thought can add a Cupid to his statue?'"

Peter, in hot and anguished rebellion against this all too evident law of nature had sought relief by going straight out of the house and licking the first boy he met who was twice as big as he was, in a fight that is still remembered in the Second Ward. But stretching and wishing and even eating unpleasant and expensive tablets, alleged by their makers to be made from giraffes' glands, did not bring Peter up to a full and unquestionable five feet six.

When Peter came up for a preliminary examination which was to determine whether he possessed the material from which policemen are made, Commissioner Kondorman, as coldly scientific as his steel scales and measures, surveyed the stricken Peter, as he stood there on the scales, his freckles in high relief on his skin, for he was pale all over at the thought that he might be rejected.

"Candidate Mullaney," said the Commissioner, "you're too short."

Peter felt marble lumps swelling in his throat.

"If you'd only give me a chance, Commissioner," he was able to gulp out, "I'd——"

Commissioner Kondorman, who had been studying the records spread on his desk, cut the supplicant short with:

"Your marks in the other tests are pretty good, though you seem a little weak in general education. But your strength test is unusually high for a small man. However, regulations are regulations and I believe in sticking to them. Next candidate!"

Peter did not go.

"Commissioner," he began urgently, "all I ask is a chance——"

His eyes were tense and pleading.

The Chief Inspector, grizzled Matthew McCabe, plucked at the Commissioner's coat-sleeve.

"Well, Chief?" inquired Commissioner Kondorman, a little impatiently.

"He's a good lad," put in the Chief Inspector, "and well spoke of in the Second Ward."

"He's under height," said the Commissioner, briefly.

"But he knows how to handle his fists," argued the old Chief Inspector.

"Does he?" said the Commissioner, skeptically. "He looks rather small." He examined Peter through his eye-glasses; beneath that chill and critical gaze Peter felt that he had shrunk to the size of a bantam rooster; the lumps in his throat were almost choking him; in an agony of desperation, he cried,

"Bring in the biggest man you got. I'll fight him."

The Commissioner's face was set in hard, and one would have thought, immovable lines, yet he achieved the feat of turning up, ever so slightly, the corners of his lips in an expression which might pass as the germ of a smile, as he gazed at the small, nude, freckled figure before him with its vivid shaving-brush hair, its intense eyes and its clenched fists posed in approved prize-ring form. Again the official bent over the records and studied them.

"Character recommendations seem pretty good," he mused. "Never has used tobacco or liquor——"

"'Fraid it might stunt me," muttered Peter, "so I couldn't get on the cops."

The commissioner stared at him with one degree more of interest.

"Give the lad a chance," urged the Chief Inspector. "He only lacks a fraction of an inch. He may grow."

"Now, Chief," said the Commissioner turning to the official by his side, "you know I'm a stickler for the rules. What's the good of saying officers must be five feet six and then taking men who are shorter?"

"You know how badly we need men," shrugged the Chief Inspector, "and Mullaney here strikes me as having the making of a good cop. It will do no harm to try him out."

The Commissioner considered for a moment. Then he wheeled round and faced Peter Mullaney.

"You've asked for a chance," he shot out. "You'll get it. You can attend police training school for three months. I'll waive the fact that you're below the required height, for the time being. But if in your final examinations you don't get excellent marks in every branch, by the Lord Harry, you get no shield from me. Do you understand? One slip, and good-by to you. Next candidate!"

They had to guide Peter Mullaney back to his clothes; he was in a dazed blur of happiness.

Next day, with the strut of a conqueror and with pride shining from every freckle, little Peter Mullaney entered the police training school. To fit himself physically for the task of being a limb of the law, he oned, twoed, threed and bent by the hour, twisted the toes of two hundred pound fellow students in frantic jiu jitsu, and lugged other ponderous probationers about on his shoulders in the practice of first aid to the injured. This physical side of his schooling Peter enjoyed, and, despite his lack of inches, did extremely well, for he was quick, tough and determined. But it was the book-work that made him pucker his brow and press his head with his hands as if to keep it from bursting with the facts he had to jam into it.

It was the boast of Commissioner Kondorman that he was making his police force the most intelligent in the world. Give him time, he was fond of saying, and there would not be a man on it who could not be called well-informed. He intended to see to it that from chief inspector down to the greenest patrolman they could answer, off-hand, not only questions about routine police matters, but about the whole range of the encyclopedia.

"I want well-informed men, intelligent men," he said. "Men who can tell you the capital of Patagonia, where copra comes from, and who discovered the cotton-gin. I want men who have used their brains, have read and thought a bit. The only way I can find that out is by asking questions, isn't it?"

The anti-administration press, with intent to slight, called the policemen "Kondorman's Encyclopedias bound in blue," but he was not in the least perturbed; he made his next examination a bit stiffer.

Peter Mullaney, handicapped by the fact that his span of elementary schooling had been abbreviated by the necessity of earning his own living, struggled valiantly with weighty tomes packed with statutes, ordinances, and regulations—what a police officer can and cannot do about mayhem, snow on the sidewalks, arson, dead horses in the street, kidnaping, extricating intoxicated gentlemen from man-holes, smoking automobiles, stray goats, fires, earthquakes, lost children, blizzards, disorderly conduct and riots. He prepared himself, by no small exertion, to tell an inquiring public where Bedford street is, if traffic can go both ways on Commerce street, what car to take to get from Hudson street to Chatham Square, how to get to the nearest branch library, quick lunch, public bath, zoo, dispensary and garage, how to get to the Old Slip Station, Flower Hospital, the St. Regis, Coney Island, Duluth and Grant's Tomb. He stuffed himself with these pertinent facts; he wanted to be a good cop. He could not see exactly how it would help him to know in addition to an appalling amount of local geography and history, the name of the present ruler of Bulgaria, what a zebu is, and who wrote "Home, Sweet Home." But since questions of this sort were quite sure to bob up on the examination he toiled through many volumes with a zeal that made his head ache.

When he had been working diligently in the training school for three months lacking a day, the great moment came when he was given a chance to put theory into practice, by being sent forth, in a uniform slightly too large for him, to patrol a beat in the company of a veteran officer, so that he might observe, at first hand, how an expert handled the many and varied duties of the police job. Except that he had no shield, no night stick, and no revolver, Peter looked exactly like any of the other guardians of law. He trudged by the side of the big Officer Gaffney, trying to look stern, and finding it hard to keep his joy from breaking out in a smile. If Judy McNulty could only see him now! They were to be married as soon as he got his shield.

But joy is never without its alloy. Even as Peter strode importantly through the streets of the upper West Side, housing delicious thrills in every corpuscle from the top of his blue cap to the thick soles and rubber heels of his shiningly new police shoes, a worry kept plucking at his mind. On the morrow he was to take his final examination in general education, and that was no small obstacle between him and his shield. He had labored to be ready, but he was afraid.

That worry grew as he paced along, trying to remember whether the Amazon is longer than the Ganges and who Gambetta was. He did not even pay close attention to his mentor, although on most occasions those five blue service stripes on Officer Gaffney's sleeve, representing a quarter of a century on the force, would have caused Peter to listen with rapt interest to Officer Gaffney's genial flow of reminiscence and advice. Dimly he heard the old policeman rumbling:

"When I was took on the cops, Pether, all they expected of a cop was two fists and a cool head. But sthyles in cops changes like sthyles in hats, I guess. I've seen a dozen commissioners come and go, and they all had their own ideas. The prisint comish is the queerest duck of the lot, wid his "Who was Pernambuco and what the divil ailed him, and who invinted the gin rickey and who discovered the Gowanus Canal." Not that I'm agin a cop bein' a learned man. Divil a bit. Learnin' won't hurt him none if he has two fists and a clear head."

He paused to take nourishment from some tabloid tobacco in his hip-pocket, and rumbled on,

"Whin I was took on the cops, as I say, they was no graduatin' exercises like a young ladies' siminary. The comish—it was auld Malachi Bannon—looked ye square in the eye and said, 'Young fella, ye're about to go forth and riprisint the majesty of the law. Whin on juty be clane and sober and raisonably honest. Keep a civil tongue in your head for ivrybody, even Republicans. Get to know your precinct like a book. Don't borrow trouble. But above all, rimimber this: a cop can do a lot of queer things and square himself wid me afterward, but there's one sin no cop can square—the sin of runnin' away whin needed. Go to your post.'"

Little Peter nodded his head.

They paced along in silence for a time. Then Peter asked,

"Jawn——"

"What, Pether?"

"Jawn, where is the Tropic of Capricorn?"

Officer Gaffney wrinkled his grey eyebrows quizzically.

"The Tropic of Whichicorn?" he inquired.

"The Tropic of Capricorn," repeated Peter.

"Pether," said Officer Gaffney, dubiously, scratching his head with the tip of his night-stick, "I disrimimber but I think—I think, mind ye, it's in the Bronx."

They continued their leisurely progress.

"'Tis a quiet beat, this," observed Officer Gaffney. "Quiet but responsible. Rich folks lives in these houses, Pether, and that draws crooks, sometimes. But mostly it's as quiet as a Sunday in Dooleyville." He laughed deep in his chest.

"It makes me think," he said, "of Tommie Toohy, him that's a lieutinant now over in Canarsie. 'Tis a lesson ye'd do well to mind, Pether."

Peter signified that he was all ears.

"He had the cop bug worse than you, even, Pether," said the veteran.

Peter flushed beneath his freckles.

"Yis, he had it bad, this Tommie Toohy," pursued Officer Gaffney. "He was crazy to be a cop as soon as he could walk. I never seen a happier man in me life than Toohy the day he swaggers out of the station-house to go on post up in the twenty-ninth precinct. In thim days there was nawthin' up there but rows of little cottages wid stoops on thim; nawthin but dacint, respictable folks lived there and they always give that beat to a recruity because it was so quiet. Well, Toohy goes on juty at six o'clock in the evenin', puffed up wid importance and polishing his shield every minute or two. 'Tis a short beat—up one side of Garden Avenue and down on the other side. Toohy paces up and down, swingin' his night-stick and lookin' hard and suspicious at every man, woman or child that passes him. He was just bustin' to show his authority. But nawthin' happened. Toohy paced up and back, up and back, up and back. It gets to be eight o'clock. Nawthin happens. Toohy can stand it no longer. He spies an auld man sittin' on his stoop, peacefully smokin' his evenin' pipe. Toohy goes up to the old fellow and glares at him.

"'What are you doin' there?' says Toohy.

"'Nawthin,' says the auld man.

"'Well,' says Toohy, wid a stern scowl, shakin' his night-stick at the scared auld gazabo, 'You go in the house.'"

Peter chuckled.

"But Toohy lived to make a good cop for all that," finished the veteran. "Wid all his recruity monkey-shines, he never ran away whin needed."

"I wonder could he bound Bolivia," said Peter Mullaney.

"I'll bet he could," said Officer Gaffney, "if it was in his precinct."

Late next afternoon, Peter sat gnawing his knuckles in a corner of the police schoolroom. All morning he had battled with the examination in general education. It had not been as hard as he had feared, but he was worried nevertheless. So much was at stake.

He was quivering all over when he was summoned to the office of the Commissioner, and his quivering grew as he saw the rigid face of Commissioner Kondorman, and read no ray of hope there. Papers were strewn over the official desk. Kondorman looked up, frowned.

"Mullaney," he said, bluntly, "you've failed."

"F-failed?" quavered Peter.

"Yes. In general education. I told you if you made excellent marks we'd overlook your deficiency in height. Your paper"—he tapped it with his finger—"isn't bad. But it isn't good. You fell down hard on question seventeen."

"Question seventeen?"

"Yes. The question is, 'Where is the Tropic of Capricorn?' And your answer is"—the Commissioner paused before he pronounced the damning words—"'The Tropic of Capricon is in the Bronx.'"

Peter gulped, blinked, opened and shut his fists, twisted his cap in his hands, a picture of abject misery. The Commissioner's voice was crisp and final.

"That's all, Mullaney. Sorry. Turn in your uniform at once. Well?"

Peter had started away, had stopped and was facing the commissioner.

"Commissioner," he begged——

"That will do," snapped the Commissioner. "I gave you your chance; you understood the conditions."

"It—it isn't that," fumbled out Peter Mullaney, "but—but wouldn't you please let me go out on post once more with Officer Gaffney?"

"I don't see what good that would do," said Commissioner Kondorman, gruffly.

Tears were in Peter's eyes.

"You see—you see——" he got out with an effort, "it would be my last chance to wear the uniform—and I—wanted—somebody—to—see—me—in—it—just—once."

The Commissioner stroked his chin reflectively.

"Were you scheduled to go out on post for instruction," he asked, "if you passed your examination?"

"Yes, sir. From eight to eleven."

The Commissioner thought a moment.

"Well," he said, "I'll let you go. It won't alter the case any, of course. You're through, here. Turn in your uniform by eleven thirty, sure."

Peter mumbled his thanks, and went out of the office with shoulders that drooped as if he were carrying a safe on them.

It was with heavy steps and a heavier heart that little Peter Mullaney, by the side of his mentor, passed the corner where Judy McNulty stood proudly waiting for him. He saluted her gravely with two fingers to his visor—police officers never bow—and kept his eyes straight ahead. He did not have the heart to stop, to speak to her, to tell her what had happened to him. He hadn't even told Officer Gaffney. He stalked along in bitter silence; his eyes were fixed on his shoes, the stout, shiny police shoes he had bought to wear at his graduation, the shoes he was to have worn when he stepped up to the Commissioner and received his shield, with head erect and a high heart. His empty hands hung heavily at his sides; there was no baton of authority in them; there never would be. Beneath the place his silver shield would never cover now was a cold numbness.

"Damn the Tropic of Capricorn," came from between clenched teeth, "Damn the Tropic of Capricorn."

Gaffney's quick ears heard him.

"Still thinkin' about the Tropic of Capricorn?" he asked, not knowing that the words made Peter wince. "Well, me bye, 'twill do no harm to know where it is. I'm not denyin' that it's a gran' thing for a cop to be a scholar. But just the same 'tis me firm belief that a man may be able to tell the difference bechune a begonia and a petunia, he may be able to tell where the—now—Tropic of Unicorn is, he may know who wrote "In the Sweet Bye and Bye," and who invented the sprinklin' cart, he may be able to tell the population of Peking and Pann Yann, but he ain't a cop at all if he iver runs away whin needed. Ye can stake your shield on that, me bye."

His shield? Peter dug his nails into the palm of his hand. Blind hate against the Commissioner, against the whole department, flared up in him. He'd strip the uniform off on the spot, he'd hurl it into the gutter, he'd——

Officer Gaffney had stopped short. A woman was coming through the night, running. As she panted up to them in the quiet, deserted street, the two men saw that she was a middle-aged woman in a wrapper, and that she was white with fright.

"Burglars," she gasped.

"Where?" rapped out Officer Gaffney.

"Number 97."

"Be calm, ma'am. What makes ye think they're burglars?"

"I heard them.... Moving around.... In the drawing room.... Upstairs."

"Who are you?" asked the old policeman, imperturbably.

"Mrs. Finn—caretaker. The family is away."

"Pether," said Officer Gaffney, "you stay here and mind the beat like a good bucko, while I stroll down to ninety-sivin wid Mrs. Finn."

"Let me come too, Jawn," cried Peter.

Gaffney laid his big hand on little Peter's chest.

"'Tis probably a cat movin' around," he said softly so that Mrs. Finn could not hear. "Lonely wimmin is always hearin' things. Besides me ambitious but diminootive frind, if they was yeggs what good could ye do wid no stick and no gun? You stay here on the corner like I'm tellin' you and I'll be back in ten minutes by the clock."

Peter Mullaney waited on the corner. He saw the bulky figure of Officer Gaffney proceed at a dignified but rapid waddle down the block, followed by the smaller, more agitated figure of the woman. He saw Officer Gaffney go into the basement entrance, and he saw Mrs. Finn hesitate, then timidly follow. He waited. A long minute passed. Another. Another. Then the scream of a woman hit his ears. He saw Mrs. Finn dart from the house, wringing her hands, screaming. He sprinted down to her.

"They've kilt him," screamed the woman. "Oh, they've kilt the officer."

"Who? Tell me. Quick!"

"The yeggs," she wailed. "There's two of them. The officer went upstairs. They shot him. He rolled down. Don't go in. They'll shoot you. Send for help."

Peter stood still. He was not thinking of the yeggs, or of Gaffney. He was hearing Kondorman ask, "Where is the Tropic of Capricorn?" He was hearing Kondorman say, "You've failed." Something had him tight. Something was asking him, "Why go in that house? Why risk your life? You're not a cop. You'll never be a cop. They threw you out. They made a fool of you for a trifle."

Peter started back from the open door; he looked down; the street light fell on the brass buttons of his uniform; the words of the old policeman darted across his brain: "A cop never runs away when needed."

He caught his breath and plunged into the house. At the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor he saw by the street light that came through the opened door, the sprawling form of a big man; the light glanced from the silver badge on his broad chest. Peter bent over hastily.

"Is it you, Pether?" breathed Gaffney, with difficulty. "They got me. Got me good. Wan of thim knocked me gun from me hand and the other plugged me. Through the chist. I'm done for, Pether. I can't breathe. Stop, Pether, stop!"

The veteran tried to struggle to his feet, but sank back, holding fiercely to Peter's leg.

"Let me go, Jawn. Let me go," whispered Peter hoarsely.

"They'll murder you, Pether. It's two men to wan,—and they're armed."

"Let me go in, I tell you, Jawn. Let me go. A good cop never runs—you said it yourself—let me go——"

Slowly the grip on Peter's leg relaxed; the dimming eyes of the wounded man had suddenly grown very bright.

"Ye're right, me little bucko," he said faintly. "Ye'll be a credit to the foorce, Pether." And then the light died out of his eyes and the hand that had grasped Peter fell limp to the floor.

Peter was up the stairs that led to the second floor in three swift, wary jumps. He heard a skurry of footsteps in the back of the house. Dashing a potted fern from its slender wooden stand, he grasped the end of the stand, and swinging it like a baseball bat, he pushed through velvet curtains into a large room. There was enough light there from the moon for him to see two black figures prying desperately at a door. They wheeled as he entered. Bending low he hurled himself at them as he had done when playing football on a back lot. There was a flash so near that it burned his face; he felt a sharp fork of pain cross his head as if his scalp had been slashed by a red-hot knife. With all the force in his taut body he swung the stand at the nearest man; it caught the man across the face and he went down with a broken, guttural cry. A second and a third shot from the revolver of the other man roared in Peter's ears. Still crouching, Peter dived through the darkness at the knees of the man with the gun; together they went to the floor in a cursing, grunting tangle.

The burglar struggled to jab down the butt of his revolver on the head of the small man who had fastened himself to him with the death grip of a mongoose on a cobra. They thrashed about the room. Peter had gotten a hold on the man's pistol wrist and he held to it while the man with his free hand rained blow after blow on the defenseless face and bleeding head of the little man. As they fought in the darkness, the burglar with a sudden violent wrench tore loose the clinging Peter, and hurled him against a table, which crashed to the floor with the impact of Peter's one hundred and thirty pounds of muscle and bone.

As Peter hurtled back, his arms shot out mechanically to break his fall; one groping hand closed on a heavy iron candle-stick that had stood on the table. He was up in a flash, the candle-stick in his hand. His eyes were blinded by the blood from his wound; he dashed the blood away with his coat-sleeve. With a short, sharp motion he hurled the candle-stick at his opponent's head, outlined against a window, not six feet away. At the moment the missile flew from Peter's hand, the yegg steadied himself and fired. Then he reeled to the floor as the candle-stick's heavy base struck him between the eyes.

For the ghost of a second, Peter Mullaney stood swaying; then his hands clawed at the place on his chest where his shield might have been as if his heart had caught fire and he wished to tear it out of himself; then, quite gently, he crumpled to the floor, and there was the quiet of night in the room.

As little Peter Mullaney lay in the hospital trying to see through his bandages the flowers Judy McNulty had brought him, he heard the voice of the doctor saying:

"Here he is. Nasty chest wound. We almost lost him. He didn't seem to care much whether he pulled through or not. Was delirious for hours. Kept muttering something about the Tropic of Capricorn. But I think he'll come through all right now. You just can't kill one of these tough little micks."

Peering through his bandages, Peter Mullaney saw the square shoulders and stern face of Commissioner Kondorman.

"Good morning, Mullaney," the Commissioner said, in his formal official voice. "I'm glad to hear that you're going to get better."

"Thank you, Commissioner," murmured Peter, watching him with wondering eyes.

Commissioner Kondorman felt round in an inside pocket and brought out a small box from which he carefully took something that glittered in the morning sunlight. Bending over the bed, he pinned it on the night-shirt of Peter Mullaney. Peter felt it; stopped breathing; felt it again; slowly pulled it out so that he could look at it.

"It was Officer John Gaffney's," said the Commissioner, and his voice was trying hard to be official and formal, but it was getting husky. "He was a brave officer. I wanted another brave officer to have his shield."

"But, Commissioner," cried Peter, winking very hard with both eyes, for they were blurring, "haven't you made a mistake? You must have got the wrong man. Don't you remember? I'm the one that said the Tropic of Capricorn is in the Bronx!"

"Officer Mullaney," said Commissioner Kondorman in an odd voice, "if a cop like you says the Tropic of Capricorn is in the Bronx, then, by the lord Harry, that's where the Tropic of Capricorn is."

VIII: Mr. Braddy's Bottle

There was a shade of envy in Mr. Lum's tone, for Mr. Lum was, or had been, a drinking man; yet Fate, ever perverse, had decreed that Mr. Braddy, teetotaler, should find the ancient bottle while poking about in the cellar of his very modest new house—rented—in that part of Long Island City where small, wooden cottages break out in clusters, here and there, in a species of municipal measles.

Mr. Braddy, on finding the treasure, had immediately summoned Mr. Lum from his larger and more pretentious house near by, as one who would be able to appraise the find, and he and Mr. Lum now stood on the very spot in the cellar where, beneath a pile of old window blinds, the venerable liquor had been found. Mr. Braddy, it was plain, thought very highly of Mr. Lum's opinions, and that great man was good-naturedly tolerant of the more placid and adipose Mr. Braddy, who was known—behind his back—in the rug department of the Great Store as "Ole Hippopotamus." Not that he would have resented it, had the veriest cash boy called him by this uncomplimentary but descriptive nickname to his face, for Mr. Braddy was the sort of person who never resents anything.

"Y'know, Mr. Lum," he remarked, crinkling his pink brow in philosophic thought, "sometimes I wish I had been a drinking man. I never minded if a man took a drink. Not that I had any patience with these here booze fighters. No. Enough is enough, I always say. But if a fella wanted to take a drink, outside of business hours, of course, or go off on a spree once in a while—well, I never saw no harm in it. I often wished I could do it myself."

"Well, why the dooce didn't you?" inquired Mr. Lum.

"As a matter of solid fact, I was scared to. That's the truth. I was always scared I'd get pinched or fall down a manhole or something. You see, I never did have much nerve." This was an unusual burst of confidence on the part of Mr. Braddy, who, since he had moved into Mr. Lum's neighborhood a month before, had played a listening rôle in his conferences with Mr. Lum, who was a thin, waspy man of forty-four, in ambush behind a fierce pair of mustachios. Mr. Braddy, essence of diffidence that he was, had confined his remarks to "You don't tell me!" or, occasionally, "Ain't it the truth?" in the manner of a Greek chorus.

Now inspired, perhaps, by the discovery that he was the owner of a priceless bottle of spirits, he unbosomed himself to Mr. Lum. Mr. Lum made answer.

"Scared to drink? Scared of anything? Bosh! Tommyrot! Everybody's got nerve. Only some don't use it," said Mr. Lum, who owned a book called "The Power House in Man's Mind," and who subscribed for, and quoted from, a pamphlet for successful men, called "I Can and I Will."

"Mebbe," said Mr. Braddy. "But the first and only time I took a drink I got a bad scare. When I was a young feller, just starting in the rugs in the Great Store, I went out with the gang one night, and, just to be smart, I orders beer. Them was the days when beer was a nickel for a stein a foot tall. The minute I taste the stuff I feel uncomfortable. I don't dare not drink it, for fear the gang would give me the laugh. So I ups and drinks it, every drop, although it tastes worse and worse. Well, sir, that beer made me sicker than a dog. I haven't tried any drink stronger than malted milk since. And that was all of twenty years ago. It wasn't that I thought a little drinking a sin. I was just scared; that's all. Some of the other fellows in the rugs drank—till they passed a law against it. Why, I once seen Charley Freedman sell a party a genuine, expensive Bergamo rug for two dollars and a half when he was pickled. But when he was sober there wasn't a better salesman in the rugs."

Mr. Lum offered no comment; he was weighing the cob-webbed bottle in his hand, and holding it to the light in a vain attempt to peer through the golden-brown fluid. Mr. Braddy went on:

"I guess I was born timid. I dunno. I wanted to join a lodge, but I was scared of the 'nitiation. I wanted to move out to Jersey, but I didn't. Why, all by life I've wanted to take a Turkish bath; but somehow, every time I got to the door of the place I got cold feet and backed out. I wanted a raise, too, and by golly, between us, I believe they'd give it to me; but I keep putting off asking for it and putting off and putting off——"

"I was like that—once," put in Mr. Lum. "But it don't pay. I'd still be selling shoes in the Great Store—and looking at thousands of feet every day and saying thousands of times, 'Yes, madam, this is a three-A, and very smart, too,' when it is really a six-D and looks like hell on her. No wonder I took a drink or two in those days."

He set down the bottle and flared up with a sudden, fierce bristling of his mustaches.

"And now they have to come along and take a man's liquor away from him—drat 'em! What did our boys fight for? Liberty, I say. And then, after being mowed down in France, they come home to find the country dry! It ain't fair, I say. Of course, don't think for a minute that I mind losing the licker. Not me. I always could take it or leave it alone. But what I hate is having them say a man can't drink this and he can't drink that. They'll be getting after our smokes, next. I read in the paper last night a piece that asked something that's been on my mind a long time: 'Whither are we drifting?'"

"I dunno," said Mr. Braddy.

"You'd think," went on Mr. Lum, not heeding, as a sense of oppression and injustice surged through him, "that liquor harmed men. As if it harmed anybody but the drunkards! Liquor never hurt a successful man; no, siree. Look at me!"

Mr. Braddy looked. He had heard Mr. Lum make the speech that customarily followed this remark a number of times, but it never failed to interest him.

"Look at me!" said Mr. Lum, slapping his chest. "Buyer in the shoes in the Great Store, and that ain't so worse, if I do say it myself. That's what nerve did. What if I did used to get a snootful now and then? I had the self-confidence, and that did the trick. When old man Briggs croaked, I heard that the big boss was looking around outside the store for a man to take his place as buyer in the shoes. So I goes right to the boss, and I says, 'Look here, Mr. Berger, I been in the shoes eighteen years, and I know shoes from A to Z, and back again. I can fill Briggs' shoes,' I says. And that gets him laughing, although I didn't mean it that way, for I don't think humor has any place in business.

"'Well,' he says, 'you certainly got confidence in yourself. I'll see what you can do in Briggs' job. It will pay forty a week.' I knew old Briggs was getting more than forty, and I could see that Berger needed me, so I spins on him and I laughs in his face. 'Forty popcorn balls!' I says to him. 'Sixty is the least that job's worth, and you know it.' Well, to make a long story short, he comes through with sixty!"

This story never failed to fascinate Mr. Braddy, for two reasons. First, he liked to be taken into the confidence of a man who made so princely a salary; and, second, it reminded him of the tormenting idea that he was worth more than the thirty dollars he found every Friday in his envelope, and it bolstered up his spirit. He felt that with the glittering example of Mr. Lum and the constant harassings by his wife, who had and expressed strong views on the subject, he would some day conquer his qualms and demand the raise he felt to be due him.

"I wish I had your crust," he said to Mr. Lum in tones of frank admiration.

"You have," rejoined Mr. Lum. "I didn't know that I had, for a long, long time, and then it struck me one day, as I was trying an Oxford-brogue style K6 on a dame, 'How did Schwab get where he is? How did Rockefeller? How did this here Vanderlip? Was it by being humble? Was it by setting still?' You bet your sweet boots it wasn't. I just been reading an article in 'I Can and I Will,' called 'Big Bugs—And How They Got That Way,' and it tells all about those fellows and how most of them wasn't nothing but newspaper reporters and puddlers—whatever that is—until one day they said, 'I'm going to do something decisive!' And they did it. That's the idea. Do something decisive. That's what I did, and look at me! Braddy, why the devil don't you do something decisive?"

"What?" asked Mr. Braddy meekly.

"Anything. Take a plunge. Why, I bet you never took a chance in your life. You got good stuff in you, Braddy, too. There ain't a better salesman in the rugs. Why, only the other day I overheard Berger say, 'That fellow Braddy knows more about rugs than the Mayor of Bagdad himself. Too bad he hasn't more push in him.'"

"I guess mebbe he's right," said Mr. Braddy.

"Right? Of course, he's right about you being a crack salesman. Why, you could sell corkscrews in Kansas," said Mr. Lum. "You got the stuff, all right. But the trouble is you can sell everything but yourself. Get busy! Act! Do something! Make a decision! Take a step!"

Mr. Braddy said nothing. Little lines furrowed his vast brow; he half closed his small eyes; his round face took on an intent, scowling look. He was thinking. Silence filled the cellar. Then, with the air of a man whose mind is made up, Hugh Braddy said a decisive and remarkable thing.

"Mr. Bill Lum," he said, "I'm going to get drunk!"

"What? You? Hugh Braddy? Drunk? My God!" The idea was too much even for the mind of Mr. Lum.

"Yes," said Mr. Braddy, in a hollow voice, like Cæsar's at the Rubicon, "I'm going to drink what's in that bottle this very night."

"Not all of it?" Mr. Lum, as an expert in such things, registered dismay.

"As much as is necessary," was the firm response. Mr. Lum brightened considerably at this.

"Better let me help you. There's enough for both of us. Plenty," he suggested.

"Are you sure?" asked Mr. Braddy anxiously.

"Sure," said Mr. Lum.

§2

And he was right. There was more than enough. It was nine o'clock that night when the cellar door of Mr. Braddy's small house opened cautiously, and Mr. Braddy followed his stub nose into the moonlight. Mr. Lum, unsteady but gay, followed.

Mr. Braddy, whose customary pace was a slow, dignified waddle, immediately broke into a brisk trot.

"Doan' go so fas', Hoo," called Mr. Lum, for they had long since reached the first-name stage.

"Gotta get to city, N'Yawk, b'fore it's too late," explained Mr. Braddy, reining down to a walk.

"Too late for what, Hoo?" inquired Mr. Lum.

"I dunno," said Mr. Braddy.

They made their way, by a series of skirmishes and flank movements, to the subway station, and caught a train for Manhattan. Their action in doing this was purely automatic.

Once aboard, they began a duet, which they plucked out of the dim past:

"Oh, dem golden slippers! Oh, dem golden slippers!"

This, unfortunately, was all they could remember of it, but it was enough to supply them with a theme and variations that lasted until they arrived in the catacombs far below the Grand Central Station. There they were shooed out by a vigilant subway guard.

They proceeded along the brightly lighted streets. Mr. Braddy's step was that of a man walking a tight-rope. Mr. Lum's method of progression was a series of short spurts. Between the Grand Central and Times Square they passed some one thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine persons, of whom one thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine remarked, "Where did they get it?"

On Broadway they saw a crowd gathered in front of a building.

"Fight," said Mr. Braddy hopefully.

"'Naccident," thought Mr. Lum. At least a hundred men and women were industriously elbowing each other and craning necks in the hope of seeing the center of attraction. Mr. Braddy, ordinarily the most timid of innocent bystanders, was now a lion in point of courage.

"Gangway," he called. "We're 'tectives," he added bellicosely to those who protested, as he and Mr. Lum shoved and lunged their way through the rapidly growing crowd. The thing which had caused so many people to stop, to crane necks, to push, was a small newsboy who had dropped a dime down through an iron grating and who was fishing for it with a piece of chewing gum tied on the end of a string.

They spent twenty minutes giving advice and suggestions to the fisher, such as:

"A leetle to the left, now. Naw, naw. To the right. Now you got it. Shucks! You missed it. Try again." At length they were rewarded by seeing the boy retrieve the dime, just before the crowd had grown to such proportions that it blocked the traffic.

The two adventurers continued on their way, pausing once to buy four frankfurters, which they ate noisily, one in each hand.

Suddenly the veteran drinker, Mr. Lum, was struck by a disquieting thought.

"Hoo, I gotta go home. My wife'll be back from the movies by eleven, and if I ain't home and in bed when she gets there, she'll skin me alive; that's what she'll do."

Mr. Braddy was struck by the application of this to his own case.

"Waddabout me, hey? Waddabout me, B'lum?" he asked plaintively. "Angelica will just about kill me."

Mr. Lum, leaning against the Automat, darkly considered this eventuality. At length he spoke.

"You go getta Turkish bath. Tell 'Gellica y' hadda stay in store all night to take inventory. Turkish bath'll make you fresh as a daisy. Fresh as a li'l' daisy—fresh as a li'l' daisy——" Saying which Mr. Lum disappeared into the eddying crowd and was gone. Mr. Braddy was alone in the great city.

But he was not dismayed. While disposing of the ancient liquor, he and Mr. Lum had discussed philosophies of life, and Mr. Braddy had decided that his was, "A man can do what he is a-mind to." And Mr. Braddy was very much a-mind to take a Turkish bath. To him it represented the last stroke that cut the shackles of timidity. "I can and I will," he said a bit thickly, in imitation of Mr. Lum's heroes.

§3

There was a line of men, mostly paunchy, waiting to be assigned dressing rooms when Mr. Braddy entered the Turkish bath, egged sternly on by his new philosophy. He did not shuffle meekly into the lowest place and wait the fulfillment of the biblical promise that some one would say, "Friend, go up higher." Not he. "I can and I will," he remarked to the man at the end of the line, and, forthwith, with a majestic, if rolling, gait, advanced to the window where a rabbit of a man, with nose glasses chained to his head, was sleepily dealing out keys and taking in valuables. The other men in line were too surprised to protest. Mr. Braddy took off his huge derby hat and rapped briskly on the counter.

"Service, here. Li'l' service!"

The Rabbit with the nose glasses blinked mildly.

"Wotja want?" he inquired.

"Want t' be made fresh as a li'l' daisy," said Mr. Braddy.

"Awright," said the Rabbit, yawning. "Here's a key for locker number thirty-six. Got any valuables? One dollar, please."

Mr. Braddy, after some fumbling, produced the dollar, a dog-eared wallet, a tin watch, a patent cigar cutter, a pocket piece from a pickle exhibit at the World's Fair in Chicago, and some cigar coupons.

The Rabbit handed him a large key on a rubber band.

"Put it on your ankle. Next," he yawned.

And then Mr. Braddy stepped through the white door that, to him, led into the land of adventure and achievement.

He found himself in a brightly lighted corridor pervaded by an aroma not unlike the sort a Chinese hand laundry has. There were rows of little, white doors, with numbers painted on them. Mr. Braddy began at once a search for his own dressing room, No. 36; but after investigating the main street and numerous side alleys, in a somewhat confused but resolute frame of mind, he discovered that he was lost in a rabbit warren of white woodwork. He found Nos. 96, 66, 46, and 6, but he could not find No. 36. He tried entering one of the booths at random, but was greeted with a not-too-cordial, "Hey, bo; wrong stall. Back out!" from an ample gentleman made up as grandpa in the advertisements of Non-Skid underwear. He tried bawling, "Service, li'l' service," and rapping on the woodwork with his derby, but nothing happened, so he replaced his hat on his head and resumed his search. He came to a door with no number on it, pushed it open, and stepped boldly into the next room.

Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat—it was the shower bath on Mr. Braddy's hat.

"'Srainin'," he remarked affably.

An attendant, clad in short, white running pants, spied him and came bounding through the spray.

"Hey, mister, why don't you take your clothes off?"

"Can't find it," replied Mr. Braddy.

"Can't find what?" the attendant demanded.

"Thirry-sizz."

"Thirry sizz?"

"Yep, thirry-sizz."

"Aw, he means room number thoity-six," said a voice from under one of the showers.

The attendant conducted Mr. Braddy up and down the white rabbit warren, across an avenue, through a lane, and paused at last before No. 36. Mr. Braddy went in, and the attendant followed.

"Undress you, mister?"

The Mr. Braddy of yesterday would have been too weak-willed to protest, but the new Mr. Braddy was the master of his fate, the captain of his soul, and he replied with some heat:

"Say, wadda you take me for? Can undress m'self." He did so, muttering the while: "Undress me? Wadda they take me for? Wadda they take me for?"

Then he strode, a bit uncertainly, out into the corridor, pink, enormous, his key dangling from his ankle like a ball and chain. The man in the white running pants piloted Mr. Braddy into the hot room. Mr. Braddy was delighted, intrigued by it. On steamer chairs reclined other large men, stripped to their diamond rings, which glittered faintly in the dim-lit room. They made guttural noises, as little rivulets glided down the salmon-pink mounds of flesh, and every now and then they drank water from large tin cups. Mr. Braddy seated himself in the hot room, and tried to read a very damp copy of an evening paper, which he decided was in a foreign language, until he discovered he was holding it upside down.

An attendant approached and offered him a cup of water. The temptation was to do the easy thing—to take the proffered cup; but Mr. Braddy didn't want a drink of anything just then, so he waved it away, remarking lightly, "Never drink water," and was rewarded by a battery of bass titters from the pink mountains about him, who, it developed from their conversation, were all very important persons, indeed, in the world of finance. But in time Mr. Braddy began to feel unhappy. The heat was making him ooze slowly away. Hell, he thought, must be like this. He must act. He stood up.

"I doan like this," he bellowed. An attendant came in response to the roar.

"What, you still in the hot room? Say, mister, it's a wonder you ain't been melted to a puddle of gravy. Here, come with me. I'll send you through the steam room to Gawge, and Gawge will give you a good rub."

He led Mr. Braddy to the door of the steam room, full of dense, white steam.

"Hey, Gawge," he shouted.

"Hello, Al, wotja want?" came a voice faintly from the room beyond the steam room.

"Oh, Gawge, catch thoity-six when he comes through," shouted Al.

He gave Mr. Braddy a little push and closed the door. Mr. Braddy found himself surrounded by steam which seemed to be boiling and scalding his very soul. He attempted to cry "Help," and got a mouthful of rich steam that made him splutter. He started to make a dash in the direction of Gawge's door, and ran full tilt into another mountain of avoirdupois, which cried indignantly, "Hey, watch where you're going, will you? You ain't back at dear old Yale, playing football." Mr. Braddy had a touch of panic. This was serious. To be lost in a labyrinth of dressing rooms was distressing enough, but here he was slowly but certainly being steamed to death, with Gawge and safety waiting for him but a few feet away. An idea! Firemen, trapped in burning buildings, he had read in the newspapers, always crawl on their hands and knees, because the lower air is purer. Laboriously he lowered himself to his hands and knees, and, like a flabby pink bear, with all sense of direction gone, he started through the steam.

"Hey!"

"Lay off me, guy!"

"Ouch, me ankle!"

"Wot's the big idea? This ain't no circus."

"Leggo me shin."

"Ouf!"

The "ouf" came from Mr. Braddy, who had been soundly kicked in the mid-riff by an angry dweller in the steam room, whose ankle he had grabbed as he careered madly but futilely around the room. Then, success! The door! He opened it.

"Where's Gawge?" he demanded faintly.

"Well, I'll be damned! It's thoity-six back again!"

It was Al's voice; not Gawge. Mr. Braddy had come back to the same door he started from!

He was unceremoniously thrust by Al back into the steaming hell from which he had just escaped, and once more Al shouted across, "Hey, Gawge, catch thoity-six when he comes through."

Mr. Braddy, on his hands and knees, steered as straight a course as he could for the door that opened to Gawge and fresh air, but the bewildering steam once again closed round him, and he butted the tumid calves of one of the Moes and was roundly cursed. Veering to the left, he bumped into the legs of another Moe so hard that this Moe went down as if he had been submarined, a tangle of plump legs, arms, and profanity. Mr. Braddy, in the confusion, reached the door and pushed it open.

"Holy jumpin' mackerel! Thoity-six again! Say, you ain't supposed to come back here. You're supposed to keep going straight across the steam room to Gawge." It was Al, enraged.

Once more Mr. Braddy was launched into the steam room. How many times he tried to traverse it—bear fashion—he never could remember, but it must have been at least six times that he reappeared at the long-suffering Al's door, and was returned, too steamed, now, to protest. Mr. Braddy's new-found persistence was not to be denied, however, and ultimately he reached the right door, to find waiting for him a large, genial soul who was none other than Gawge, and who asked, with untimely facetiousness, Mr. Braddy thought:

"Didja enjoy the trip?"

Gawge placed Mr. Braddy on a marble slab and scrubbed him with a large and very rough brush, which made Mr. Braddy scream with laughter, particularly when the rough bristles titillated the soles of his feet.

"Wot's the joke?" inquired Gawge.

"You ticker me," gasped Mr. Braddy.

He was rather enjoying himself now. It made him feel important to have so much attention. But he groaned and gurgled a little when Gawge attacked him with cupped hands and beat a tattoo up and down his spine and all over his palpitating body. Wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop wop went Gawge's hands.

Then he rolled Mr. Braddy from the slab, like jelly from a mold. Mr. Braddy jelled properly and was stood in a corner.

"All over?" he asked. Zizzzzzz! A stream of icy water struck him between his shoulder blades.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" he cried. The stream, as if in response to his outcries, immediately became boiling hot. First one, then the other played on him. Then they stopped. An attendant appeared and dried Mr. Braddy vigorously with a great, shaggy towel, and then led him to a dormitory, where, on white cots, rows of Moes puffed and wheezed and snored and dreamed dreams of great profits.

Mr. Braddy tumbled happily into his cot, boiled but triumphant. He had taken a Turkish bath! The world was at his feet! He had made a decision! He had acted on it! He had met the demon Timidity in fair fight and downed him. He had been drunk, indubitably drunk, for the first and last time. He assured himself that he never wanted to taste the stuff again. But he couldn't help but feel that his one jamboree had made a new man of him, opening new lands of adventure, showing him that "he could if he would." As he buried his head in the pillow, he rehearsed the speech he would make to Mr. Berger, the manager, in the morning. Should he begin, "Mr. Berger, if you think I'm worth it, will you please raise my pay five dollars a week?" No, by Heaven, a thousand noes! He was worth it, and he would say so. Should he begin, "See here, Mr. Berger, the time has come for you to raise my salary ten dollars?" No, he'd better ask for twenty dollars while he was about it, and compromise on ten dollars as a favor to his employers. But then, again, why stop at twenty dollars? His sales in the rugs warranted much more. "I can have thirty dollars, and I will," he said a number of times to the pillow. Carefully he rehearsed his speech: "Now, see here, Berger——" and then he was whirled away into a dream in which he saw a great hand take down the big sign from the front of the Great Store, and put up in its place a still larger sign, reading:

BRADDY'S GREATER STORE
Dry Goods and Turkish Baths
Hugh Braddy, Sole Prop.