"I observed you loitering in the lower corridor," says he. "That is all." "Oh!" says I. "You seen me conversin' with Mr. Leary, eh?" "Mr. Leary!" says Piddie, raisin' his eyebrows. "Well, Hunch, then," says I. "Tryin' to get up a grouch because you wa'n't introduced? Don't take it hard. He's kind of exclusive, Mr. Leary is." Piddie swallows that throat pippin of his two or three times before he can get a grip on his feelings enough to go on with the lesson of the day. "I merely wish to remark," says he, "that evil communications corrupt good manners." "How about court Judges, then," says I, "and these slum missionaries'? G'wan, Piddie! Back to the copybook with your mottoes! I'm a mixer, I am! Would I be chinnin' here with you if I wa'n't?" He sighs, Piddie does, and struts away to freeze the soul of some new lady typist by looking over her shoulder. As an act of charity, they ought to let Piddie fire me about once a month. He'll die of grief if he don't get the chance sometime. And blamed if he don't come near gettin' his heart's desire before the day was over! It all begins about three o'clock, when Piddie comes turkeyin' out of the telephone booth all swelled up with importance and signals me to come on the carpet. "Torchy," says he, "I presume you know where the Metropolitan Building is?" "They ain't moved it since lunchtime, have they?" says I. "That will do!" says he. "Now listen very carefully." You'd thought from his preamble that I was going to be sent up to regulate the clock, or see if the tower was still plumb; but all it simmers down to is that I'm to take a leather document case, hunt up Mr. Ellins, who's attendin' a directors' meetin' over there, and deliver some papers that he's forgot to have his private secretary lug along. "And kindly refrain," he tacks on at the last, "from stopping to talk with any suspicious characters on the way." "Say, Piddie," says I, "if I was you I'd have that printed on a card. Some day you're going to forget to rub that in." Well, I hustles across the square, locates Old Hickory, and delivers the goods without droppin' 'em down a manhole or doin' any of the other awful things that Piddie would have warned me against if he'd had more time. I tucks the empty case under my arm and was for makin' a record trip back, just to surprise Piddie; but while I'm waitin' for that flossy lever juggler on the express elevator to answer my red-light signal I hears this riot break loose on the floor below. And say, I wa'n't missin' any lively disturbance like that; for it listens like a mob scene from one of them French guillotine plays. Mostly it's female voices that floats up, and they was all tuned to the saw-filin' pitch. A pasty-faced young gent wearin' a green eye-shade and an office coat comes beatin' it up the marble steps, and I fires a question at him on the fly. "Is it a gen'ral rough-house number," says I, "or have the suffragettes broke loose again?"