Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/19

 sell wants you to go with him; and a man who's buying your line likes to wait to see you. There's no development in that for you; just a little more money without any more effort. Oh, you don't even know what I'm talking about."

"Of course I do, Bill. You want me to be making effort, for effort's sake, even when it's not necessary; you want"

But Bill had turned in his hopelessness and gone back through the bathroom into his own room, pulling the door firmly shut behind him. Gregg, left alone, put his hand in his pocket over the note from Marjorie Hale, and he was standing at his window looking out at the lights by the breakwater and whistling quietly when somebody tapped cautiously on his door to the hall, opened it and looked in.

He was a compact, alert-looking young man, a few years older than Gregg and Billy; Cuncliffe by name, and the Chicago agent for an Akron tire company. He was wearing a silk hat and had on a dark overcoat above evening clothes, evidently.

"Come in, Jim!" Gregg welcomed him. "When did you drop up? I didn't hear you."

"Um!" CluncliffeCuncliffe [sic] warned, shaking his head and raising his hand toward Whittaker's room as he came in. "I came up during the discussion. What was that Bill's all worked up about anyway, Gregg?"

"Oh," said Gregg. "Just me; another round of the ordinary riot we stage whenever we're bored. Hartford—you know him—made a proposition to me; I mentioned it to Bill and, of course, he thinks I shouldn't go to selling carburetors unless I can feel sort of religious about them; so I could go into a Billy Sunday frenzy for kerosene combustion."