Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 149: what you’re looking at

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

By HARRY ADLER S I rang the bell of the tall, old-fash- A ioned house in Washington Square no faintest premonition stirred with- in me of the mysterious entanglements and the life of amazing adventure upon which that door was to admit me. I was here on the quite unromantic, prosaic mission of ap- plying for a job. The applicant’s specifications, as listed with the agency that had sent me, were, it is true, strange. Strange, too, was the name of the person sending in the call to the agency. Z. Zea, read the name on the note of introduction I carried, matching the inscription on the old-fashioned plate on the door. Z. Zea! To what sort of person could that bizarre cognomen be attached? The position, rather vaguely described, appeared to be a sort of personal secretary- ship. The applicant must be a young man of pleasing personality, of good breeding and refinement. He must be capable of mix- ? a 99 ing easily either in the tea room of the Ritz or among the stevedores on the docks. Evening clothes or corduroys must drape his form with equal ease. He should be a college man, in first class health, and athletic. Great stress had been laid on the applicant’s alertness and keenness of per- ception. Surely a strange list of qualifica- tions needed to perform the duties of a secretary. Yet, their very strangeness was my hope. For the ordinary secretaryship I had little to commend me, having just emerged from college with the doubtful attribute of an A. B. degree. The purposeless son of a supposedly wealthy father, I had sauntered indifferently through college, to be brought up with a shock some eight months ago by my father’s sudden death and the subse- quent discovery that unfortunate speculat- tions in his last years had wiped out his fortune, leaving barely enough to permit me Go NOOK (C@