The Argosy, April 1916 — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

66 too hard. You’ve got to know too much. And—this above all—the luck just must run in your direction; the majority of acci- dents have got to be with you and not against you. _ “T wasn’t so sure of this in those days as I am now; but the rough and tumble way of doing things out West had taught me a lot; so had the awful howls that went up every time I wanted to spend a dollar. And I was good and ready for a change, didn’t have any strings tied to me. I came East feeling that I had the punch. “Y didn’t keep the feeling very long. ‘“‘About the first night that I was in New York I felt as if I’d like to take one of the old property Colts out of my trunk and shoot somebody. ‘‘T’d had a date to see President Arnitz at nine o’clock in the morning. I'd gone around to his office all spruced up. I meant to make a good impression on him. I had it all doped out to get the jump on him from the start. *“*Where are you stopping, Mr. Moore?’ he would ask. “Oh, I have taken a small suite for the time being at the Pazzaza,’ I’d tell him. “And of course he would see right away that I was a top-notcher. The Pazzaza wasn’t the name of the hotel, but its prices were so fancy you might have called it that. It was almost the best hotel in town. ‘‘All dressed up, I mosied around to Presi- dent Arnitz’s office promptly at nine o’clock, with my smile all ready for him. Perhaps you remember. | “In those days the outer office of the Daguerre was about as big as a hall bed- room. In one corner of it there was a tele- phone switchboard with a small boy in charge, and this boy held people up while he telephoned back into the rest of the es- tablishment to find out whether the visitors were welcome or not. “T told him who I was and whom I wished to see. I was feeling pretty chesty, although I confess that the sight of that outer office had given me something of a shock. It wasn’t precisely what I had ex- pected. ‘“‘All the way from Sacramento I had been talking to myself and imagining things about that million-dollar corporation and the luxurious East and the palatial offices of President Arnitz. You know how a young fellow lets himself go when he starts out on his first rainbow trail. THE ARGOSY. . “The kid telephoned to some place or other back of the board partition and told me: ‘President Arnitz says that he’s busy and if you'll sit down for a while.’ I sat down. ‘There was one other chair in the place besides the one that the boy occupied. “There was a dollar alarm clock on top of the switchboard, and I watched the hands. I watched them for seven minutes, and each second of those seven minutes I was expecting President Arnitz to come out of the door in the board partition and apolo- gize for keeping me waiting. “Then an old woman came in. I recog- nized the type. She was seedy. Her nose was red and her skirt dragged, but she was an actress. The good Lord only knows where a lot of these poor old has-beens earned anything at all before the movies gave them a chance to pick up a dollar now and then. “She waited. I gave her my chair. About a minute later an Indian chief came in. He had his long hair tucked up into an imitation Stetson, but otherwise he was dressed like a white man. He grunted something; the boy telephoned, and Deer- foot decided to wait. “After that they began arriving thick and fast—-women with babies, old men, young men with velour hats and too much hair, young girls and then girls who tried to look young. And all this time no sign of Mr. Arnitz. -“T was pretty sore. I had about decided to be a little offish when Arnitz finally did begin to apologize. Still, I kept my temper and went on waiting—I don’t know for how long. I was hot, but I had plenty to look at. ‘‘T had never seen so many girls in my life with curly hair. They all had curly hair, except the blondes; and they were all wear- ing it Mary Pickford style down their backs. There had always been plenty of girls hang- ing around the studios out in Santa Bar- bara, but here the types were different, and I was wondering if they were going to be as hard to manage. “Finally, the crowd got so big that it was filling up the hall outside and part of the stairway. - For the last half-hour I had been getting a cramp in one leg and another in my disposition. Just along about the time that I had decided to start something rough, the crowd pressed back to leave an open passage, and a gorgeous bird-of-paradise ac- tress came Sweeping in. MICLOOOK C@