Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/178



Honestly, I was positively flabbergasted by this coincidence. Imagine his getting a legitimate cable making him a total loss just after I had faked one doing the same thing! I regarded him coldly.

"Well?" I says.

"Well," says William, "the funny part of this is that I have no father and no mother. I'm an orphan!"

Heavens above!

While all I could do was to stare at him in amazement, William told his tale. It was one for the book, it was for a fact! His name was not William Richardson Van Cleve II, it was William Simmons, and he was by no means the heir to the near-beer billions; he was a waiter!

As if that wasn't enough, this young man calmly tells me he knows I'm a phone operator and no "Calhoun of Virginia" and that Hazel is a show girl, because he saw us both frequently when he worked in the main dining room of the Hotel St. Moe. That's the reason his face was so familiar to me. It also explains his ability to plan a kingly dinner—why shouldn't a waiter know how to order food?

"William," I says, when our hero stopped momentarily for breath, "with your undiluted nerve you should