"Say, Garvey," says Major Brooks Keating, "we must have you and Mrs. Ballard play for us at our next Country Club dinner dance after the fool musicians quit. Will you, eh? Not a member? Well, you ought to be. I'll see that you're made one, right away." I don't know of anyone who was more pleased at the way things had turned out than Vee. "There, Torchy!" says she. "I've always said you were a wonder at managing things." "Why shouldn't I be?" says I, givin' her the side clinch. "Look at the swell assistant I've got." CHAPTER VIII NICKY AND THE SETTING HEN Honest, the first line I got on this party with the steady gray eyes and the poker face was that he must be dead from the neck up. Or else he'd gone into a trance and couldn't get out. Nice lookin' young chap, too. Oh, say thirty or better. I don't know as he'd qualify as a perfect male, but he has good lines and the kind of profile that had most of the lady typists stretchin' their necks. But there's no more expression on that map of his than there would be to a bar of soap. Just a blank. And yet after a second glance you wondered. You see, I'd happened to drift out into the general offices in time to hear him ask Vincent, the fair-haired guardian of the brass gate, if Mr. Robert is in. And when Vincent tells him he ain't he makes no move to go, but stands there starin' straight through the wall out into Broadway. Looks like he might be one of Mr. Robert's club friends, so I steps up and asks if there's anything a perfectly good private sec. can do for him. He wakes up enough to shake his head. "Any message?" says I. Another shake. "Then maybe you'll leave your card?" says I. Yes, he's willin' to do that, and hands it over. "Oh!" says I. "Why didn't you say so? Mr. Nickerson Wells, eh? Why, you're the one who's going to handle that ore transportation deal for the Corrugated, ain't you?" "I was, but I'm not," says the chatterbox. "Eh?" says I, gawpin'. "Can't take it on," says he. "Tell Ellins, will you?" "Not much!" says I. "Guess you'll have to hand that to him yourself, Mr. Wells. He'll be here any minute. Right this way." And a swell time I had keepin' him entertained in the private office for half an hour. Not that he's restless or fidgety, but when you get a party who only stares bored at a spot about ten feet behind the back of your head and answers most of your questions by blinkin' his eyes, it kind of gets on your nerves. Still, I couldn't let him get away. Why, Mr. Robert had been prospectin' for months to find the right man for that transportation muddle and when he finally got hold of this Nicky Wells he goes around grinnin' for three days.