Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 70: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

By JACK BECHDOLT ‘IS name was Daly—Simms Daly. BH He appeared one winter day at the outside of the rail which separates the general public from the office force of the J. K. Blevitt Company, and demanded J. K. Blevitt in a loud, ringing voice. He was not an unusually large man, but he was clad at the moment in a coat of horsy checkered tweeds, a violent caterpillar fur hat, and smallpox-pitted yellow shoes, a bolshevik tie, and various other impedi- menta which expanded him in the shocked vision of the beholders. His face had a ruddy glow, and as he smiled he displayed gleaming teeth that would have done credit to the bogus Grandma in “ Little Red Riding Hood.” J. K. Blevitt chanced to be passing. J. K. Blevitt was a thin, dark, saturnine, nervous business man with a hundred wor- ries and anxieties constantly riding him. ‘At the loud noise Blevitt turned to the rail with a snarl: “I’m J. K. Blevitt, young man!”’ “Good!” cried Simms Daly heartily. 226 “Tt am the man you have been looking for. Mr. Blevitt, I am a go-getter!” Simms Daly leaned across the separating rail before J. K. Blevitt could move, and his hand plucked something from the shoulder of Mr. Blevitt’s coat. “Pardon me, Mr. Blevitt,” Daly said, and ostentatiously deposited the hair he had plucked from Mr. Blevitt’s shoulder far to one side. “Don’t do that!” cried J. K. Blevitt irritably. Simms Daly laughed in high good hu- mor—a ringing, loud, empty laugh, like the guffaw of the happy jackass. “ It’s all right, Mr. Blevitt! It’s all right! It was not a blond hair! No, sir, it was gray. An oldish hair, Mr. Blevitt—one of your own gray locks!” J. K. Blevitt hated to be pawed by strangers. If there was anything he de- spised, it was the imputation that a blond hair might be found on his shoulder. If there was one thing certain to make his blood boil, it was a reference to him as Gon: Gomichboo S