LITMIR.BIZ

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chair, his slippered feet on the table, smiled with beati­tude.

      For their rooms in the extreme pri­vacy of the neat little Hotel de Luxe were marvels of bachelor comfort.

      On the table reposed a tray with fragmentary remnants of a delectable feed—always including Pod’s ultimate joy, rich rice pudding with lots of but­ter and cream, and with fat raisins of the juiciest.

      “Pretty smooth dump, this,” grunt­ed Pod, with another sigh. Dur­ing the past weeks of inactivity and gorging, he had put on a trifle of forty or fifty pounds.

      “Me for the De Looks, every time! Ever since the big gilt dropped into our kicks, after that Vanderpool race, an’ we stowed away, I’ve been strong for the resher-shay stuff they hand out here. The way they act certainly makes a hit with muh!”

      “And no fly-cops butting in, either,” added Ben. “I tell you, Pod, this con-throwing isn’t such a much, beside the real refinements of a home like this. Now that we’ve brought home the bunting, me for squaring it, a bundle of A-1 bonds, and respectability.

      “That’s my dope—that, and a con­tinuation of this chow, with a little something dry on the side. What more could a couple of honest, retired congents require?”

      Pod sighed again, still more deeply; but this sigh held less of happiness than the first.

      Bender’s reference to “home” had stirred the smoldering coals of a new sentiment in his huge heart—love-coals, now being blown upon by Birdy McCue.

      And in Pod’s disturbed mind visions began to rise. Not even the memories of rice and raisins could quite smother the growing flame.

      Birdy was the pals’ own particular waitress. Her complexion was of cream and rose-petals, her eyes a May-sky blue, her luxuriant hair a yellow wherein no H2O2 had ever mingled its corrupting influence.

      Birdy’s bare arm was firm and rounded and very white, also her V-cut waitress’s shirtwaist disclosed a full throat, and her apron-straps rested over a more than Junoesque bosom.

      In addition to all this, an occasional glimpse of her ankle as she swung in and out the double-doors of the dining room disclosed it to be of that trim and silk-stockinged variety which oft-times leads to reveries.

      In fine, Birdy was one buxom, healthy, beautiful young woman, full of life and the joy of life, weighing-one hundred and forty-two, age twen­ty-five, ripe and fair—yes, a peach.

      Pod sighed for the third time, very heavily, and forgot to smoke. Had his rubicund face been capable of it, he would have paled slightly.

      Ben shot a quick, keen glance at him, by the mellow light of the frosted elec­tric table-lamp. His brow wrinkled. Did he, too, sigh; or was it an extra deep inhalation of the perfumed ciga­rette-smoke he loved so well?

      Pod noticed neither the look nor the possible sigh of his running-mate. For he was thinking—of Birdy; pondering on the blissful existence of the past few weeks, so warm, well-fed, and secure, disturbed only by the gnawings of the insistent love-bug which, its period of . . . incubation now past, was beginning to bite in real earnest.

      He was mentally reviewing the sit­uation. He had, well he knew, made no false step; he felt himself in favor with his Juno.

      The first day at the De Luxe he had slipped her a five-spot, from an obese roll.

      “This is just kind of a starter, kid,” he had remarked nonchalantly. “I’m an extensive feeder, an’ I want you to remember me. I can talk to a chicken egg cassy-roll louder than any man in Manhat.

      “I can reach further an’ stab a pie deeper than a Mafia knifing a snitch, an’ I hold the international rice-puddin’ long-distance record, bar none.

      “Crab-meat is where I live, see? I’ll stow away grouse and truffles against all comers. Are you on? You be the fixin’ kid and keep things comin’; shove a little chick lunch up to the room every p.m. about eleven; let me do the bill o’ fare through, an’ repeat, an’ you’ll gather. Got it?”

      “I’m on!” she had smiled with a dazzle of white teeth. “And your friend?”

      “Oh, him? Say, he’s dyspeptic. A good fella, you know, but—It’s me that’s the bear on eats. So chase ’em in lively, kiddo, and—you know!”

      Birdy had remembered, and had chased ’em in. Every night, too, the tray had come up to No. 18 with suc­culent dainties piled; and not once had there been dearth of sugared rice-pud­ding and raisins simply bursting with juice.

      And the love-bug, hidden among all those ambrosial dainties, had bitten deep. Now Pod was simply one vast culture-medium for the virus. Every ounce of his three hundred and fifty-seven pounds was potentially enamored of a goddess who could steer such eats to him. Which made the case extreme­ly serious.

      “Say, Ben!”

      “Huh?”

      Pod only shifted uneasily in the huge chair, and sucked at his smoke, which had gone out.

      “Oh, nothin’,” he mumbled. “I was just thinkin’, that’s all.”

      About a week after this first faint flapping of the wings of self-exposi­tion, a wonderful September moon, full and round and golden, shone through the heat of the city haze and flooded the windows of the pals’ sitting room. They sat smoking, lights out, with their feet on the sill; and the magic of the night, the orb, the breeze, stirred Slats to confidences.

      “Say, Ben,” he commenced once more, embarrassed as a school­boy. He could face the world with a smile, and “con” it without batting an eye; but to open his huge heart to his pal caused the sweat to bead his brow. Un­easily he mopped it. “Ben?”

      “Huh?”

      “Say—you an’ me—we—you know.”

      “Know what? Uneasy? Want to beat out on the pike again, and put the trimming tools to work once more? Forget it! All off, Bo! We—”

      “Back up! You’re in wrong! You an’ me, we’ve been runnin’-mates now for ten or twelve years. We’ve nicked high an’ panhandled low. Sometimes we’ve been on the outside, lookin’ in, sometimes the reverse.

      “We’ve got ours in about every known country in the world, an’ some unknown countries; we’ve laid on vel­vet an’ again on the rods. Our little mob of two has certainly been some swell mob, an’ you’ve been one classy pal, but—well—”

      “Well, what?” demanded Ben, with a sharp, half-guilty glance at the huge bulk beside him in the moonlight. “What you got on your chest?”

      “I—this—I mean, this single life proposition ain’t the silky frame-up it’s touted to be, after all,” Pod continued hoarsely.

      “When a gink is young an’ everythin’s fallin’ his way, he naturally rolls away from anythin’ permanent in the skirt line. All right! But when the ivories begins to shy off and the noble brow begins to connect with the neck, right over the dome of the bean—aw, nothin’ to it, kid, nothin’ to it!”

      Slats made an out-sweep with his huge fist, as though to drive dull bach­elorhood away, and sighed powerfully. “It’s then a man gets ripe to tumble for something smooth in the she-line, Ben! It’s then he’s the fall guy for the cozy home idea! Say! Ain’t you never framed it, what? Ain’t you never fell for none o’ this here cream stuff, yourself?”

      Ben only shifted uneasily in his chair, and grunted something unintel­ligible.

      One might have thought a sudden chill of hostility had all at once fallen over him; but if so, Slats took no heed. Instead, with a rapt smile at the moon and a new timbre in his mighty voice, he went on re­sistlessly:

      “Love, ah, love! It’s some best bet, believe me. It’s a right steer, an’ no come-back! Love builds the cottage where the birds do a warble an’ they’s ivy round the door, like in

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