Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine, Vol. 107 No. 3 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

ALIAS THE ANGLEWORM. 399 Jimmy, therefore, walked straight back to the Mansion House without more ado. Then, as all good angleworms should, he - paid for supper, lodging, and breakfast in advance from a roll of bills that he pro- duced, and from which he tendered a twen- ty, and received the key to room No. 36 on the floor above the office, in the rear. ‘Will you please have my bag and case sent up while I eat the alleged supper?” he asked. The clerk, noting various Greeklike symbols on the register, assured him they would be in his room ere he emerged. Then he cogently observed that “ busi- ness must be good in Coalport,” while giv- ing Jimmy change for a five-dollar bill, after asking him if he didn’t have some- thing smaller than a twenty. When Jimmy again emerged from the dining-room, after having been duly warned by Miss Murphy, the Hebe who served him, that the “ griddle for the flannel-cakes got cowld at nine o’clock sharp ivery morn- ing,” he reached for his hat on the rack by the door, prior to starting for the reg- ister desk to pluck a young toothpick from a great, circular forest growing near the clerk’s favorite lounging place. A sandy-haired, slender young man not as tall as himself was standing where Jim- my stood when registering, talking to the clerk; and the way he suddenly lowered his voice when Jimmy picked up his headgear made Jimmy look at his feet. ~ The sandy-haired young man bore but- toned shoes. CHAPTER V. CHIEFLY “ ANGLEWORM GOLF.” AMES INDIGO STUART walked straight over toward the desk. As he did so, the sandy-haired young man walked away, moving toward the street door leading into the lobby. ‘“ Night, Tim,” said the departing youth. “Night, Mike,” said Clerk Timothy, as Jimmie selected his toothpick and started to roll a birdshot commandeered from the round pit where the pen stood, over the leaves of the register. ‘““ Ever play golf?” he asked the clerk. ‘* Never had no time for it.” The smile accompanying the remark, al- though bland, was a little too bland for the type of face the clerk wore — at least it seemed so from the view-point of a blue angleworm. ‘Well, I played it on some good links out near Monterey Bay, which is in golden California. If you ever saw that golf-links, with the blue bay in the background, and then had to stay overnight in Coalport to catch up with your business, you’d play golf like I’m playing it now.” ‘“T never could spare the time from my business to play no sech game as golf,” said his vis-d-vis, “ although I have played a lit- tle poker now and then.” “Well, business is a shy bird some- times,”’ said Jimmy. “I’m going to try a new course — the rain made this page so damp that it interferes with my stroke.” He turned back the register aimlessly a few leaves. | The clerk sighed, but whether at the memory of the jack-pots that had bloomed and died or because he had never played golf at Monterey, it was impossible to say. *““ Smoke?”’ said Jimmy, as he saw the clerk clawing for his pipe. “ Thanks.” “By the way,” said Jimmy casually, ““may I ask your surname? I heard that little bantam rooster that just went out | call you ‘ Tim,’ so I infer that you were christened after the tall grass.” ““ Bugbee is my fambly name,” said the clerk, as Jimmy laid his birdshot on a line and, after bending the toothpick at the thick end in the form of a driver which only an angleworm would use, suddenly sent the shot over—and into the ink-well. “You see,” said Jimmy, “the course isn't very well laid out, but I ‘holed in one,’ just the same. He pointed to a name, “¢ Jason Tredway,” which happened to lie near where he had posed his birdshot for the strike which had sent it spinning into the ink-well. ‘“‘ There’s a lot in names,” went on the angleworm confidentially, apropos of noth- ing in particular. ‘And there’s a lot in handwriting. I heard a lecture on it once.” COMICEDOO© ‘eo S Co mM