And it was a lovely sample of arrested mental anguish that I has before me for the next hour or so,—­this Popokoulis gent, with his great, doughy face frozen into a blank stare, about as expressive as a half-baked squash pie, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, and only now and then a spasm in his throat showin’ that he was still thinkin’ an occasional thought.

Course, Piddie discovers him after a while and demands pettish, “That person still here!  Who is he?”

“Club waiter with a mislaid job,” says I.

“What!” says Piddie.  “A waiter?  Just a common waiter?”

I couldn’t begin to put in all the deep disgust that Piddie expresses; for, along with his fondness for gettin’ next to swell people, he seems to have a horror of mixin’ at all with the common herd.  “Waiters!” he sniffs.  “The scum of mankind.  If they had a spark of courage, or a gleam of self respect, or a teaspoonful of brains, they wouldn’t be waiters.  Bah!”

“Also I expect,” says I, “if they was all noble specimens of manhood like us, Sherry’s and Rector’s would have to be turned into automatic food dispensaries, eh?”

“No fear!” says Piddie.  “The lower classes will always produce enough spineless beings to wear aprons and carry trays.  Look at that one there!  I suppose he never has a thought or an ambition above——­”

Bz-z-z-zt! goes the buzzer over my desk, and I’m off on the jump for Mr. Robert’s room.  I wa’n’t missin’ any of his calls that mornin’; for a partic’lar friend of mine was in there—­Skid Mallory.  Remember Skid, the young college hick that I helped find his footin’ when he first hit the Corrugated?  You know he married a Senator’s daughter, and got boosted into an assistant general manager’s berth.  And Skid’s been making good ever since.  He’d just come back from a little trip abroad, sort of a delayed weddin’ tour, and you can’t guess what he’d pulled off.

I’d only heard it sketched out so far, but it seems while him and young Mrs. Mallory was over there in Athens, or some such outlandish place, this late muss with the Turks was just breakin’ loose.  Skid he leaves Wifey at the hotel one mornin’ while he goes out for a little stroll; drifts down their Newspaper Row, where the red ink war extras are so thick the street looks like a raspberry patch; follows the drum music up as far as City Hall, where the recruits are bein’ reviewed by the King; listens to the Greek substitute for “Buh-ruh-ruh!  Soak ’em!” and the next thing he knows he’s wavin’ his lid and yellin’ with the best of ’em.

It must have stirred up some of that old football fightin’ blood of his; for he’d organized a regular cheerin’ section, right there opposite to the royal stand, and was whoopin’ things up like it was fourth down and two to go on the five-yard line, when all of a sudden over pikes a Colonel or something from the King’s staff and begins poundin’ Skid on the back gleeful.