The thing I wanted to find out was, of course, just what the average
is of replies to one paging trip. So I got around it in this manner:
offering him another piece of chocolate almond-bar, I said, slyly:
"Just what is the average number of replies to one paging trip?"
I think that he had suspected something at first, but this question
completely disarmed him, and, leaning against an elderly lady patron,
he told me everything.
"Well," he said, "it's this way: sometimes I find a man, and sometimes
I can go the rounds without a bite. To-night, for instance, here I've
got four names and one came across. That's about the average--perhaps
one in six."
I asked him why he had given Mr. Kenworthy such a handicap at the
start.
A faint smile flickered across his face and then flickered back again.
"I call the names I think will be apt to hang round in the part of the
hotel I'm in. Mr. Kenworthy would have to be in the dressy dining-room
or in the lobby where they wait for ladies. You'd never find him in
the bar or the Turkish baths. On the other hand, you'll never find a
man by the name of Blevitch anywhere except in the bar. Of course, I
take a chance and call every name once in so often, no matter where I
am, but, on the whole, I uses my own discretion."
I gave him another piece of chocolate and the address of a good
bootmaker and left him. What I had heard had sobered me, and the
lights and music suddenly seemed garish. It is no weak emotion to feel
that you have been face to face with a mere boy whose chances of
success in his work are one to six.
And I found that he had not painted the lily in too glowing terms. I
followed other pages that night--some calling for "Mr. Strudel," some
for "Mr. Carmickle," and one was broad-minded enough to page a "Mrs.
Bemis." But they all came back with that wan look in their eyes and a
break in their voices.
And each one of them was stopped by the man in the business suit in
the downstairs dining-room and each time he considered it a personal
affront that there wasn't a call for "Studz."
Some time I'm going to have him paged, and when he comes out I shall
untie his necktie for him.
XIV
FOOTBALL; COURTESY OF MR. MORSE
Sunday morning these fine fall days are taken up with reading about
the "40,000 football enthusiasts" or the "gaily-bedecked crowd of
60,000 that watched the game on Saturday." And so they probably did,
unless there were enough men in big fur coats who jumped up at every
play and yelled "Now we're off!" thus obstructing the view of an
appreciable percentage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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