Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/59

 from the dead. After a long moment he pounded on the table with his fist.

“Well, if I’m not the daddy of all the dumbbells in the world!” he burst out. “Of course—the Fm Vice-President of the corporation—all I have to do is walk in and pick out my information, if any. To-morrow morning, first thing, Eddie. Why⸺”

“Dessert, sir?” asked Eddie again, impassively.

Wallace Chillingham, editor of the, busily engaged on a manuscript, looked up irritably when the door of his private office opened. He had distinctly instructed his office boy that he was to be permitted to work in peace, without let or hindrance, or interruption of any kind. And now here he was bothering him again by⸺”

“Get out of here before I hit you so hard that your whole family will feel sick, you little beast⸺” he rasped at the boy, and then looked up in astonishment, because it wasn’t his office boy at all. It was Valentine Morley.

“Hello, Wally,” he smiled, seating himself on a corner of the other’s flat-topped desk and lighting a cigarette. “I see that you’re your own good-natured self, as usual.” He shook his head lugubriously in mock concern at the editor. “What a disposition! If I had a disposition like that I’d swap it for a bulldog and drown the poor mutt.”

The editor laughed, “How’d you get in?”

“I had to kill a couple of office boys and other menials—but I’m feeling full of pep this morning, so that’s all right. How’s every little darn thing with you?”