"How can you, with three or four hundred dollars in your pocket, a return-trip ticket, and no need to spend except for clothes, which are very cheap there? Come next Saturday, but leave your name and address in case we need you. Can we depend on you?" He looked searchingly into the grayish-blue eyes of Lewis J. Wright, and seemed comforted when Lewis J. Wright answered:
"Yes. I'll go on a minute's notice." He wrote his name and address on a slip, gave it to the manager, and went out. Lovell followed him to the outer office and, beckoning to the afflicted nine to draw near, whispered:
"I've hired a man, but I shall need more soon. Write your names and addresses and leave them here. Don't come unless I send for you," and he distributed printed blanks on which each applicant wrote out his name, address, and answers to the questions:
2--Do you object to sitting in comfortable chairs?
3--Do you object to people making remarks about you?
4--Do you object to minding your own business or earning your wages?
Lovell, however, cut him short with a hoarse but peremptory "Don't talk! Can't answer!" pointed to his throat, and disappeared in the inner office, the door of which he closed.
Whereupon the disappointed applicants, expressing their feelings in a series of heartrending jerks, twitches, tremors, and grimaces, trooped out into the hall. There they cross-examined Wright and arrived at the conclusion that they were to be used as living advertisements for the Acme Vibrator. Doctors were employed to boom it and the company supplied dummies or "property" patients.
To the same clerk in the _Herald_ office, a fortnight later, came the same man in black, and whispered something. The clerk recognized him, leaned over, and asked, pleasantly:
"What is it this time?" He had a good memory. He afterward remembered thinking that the hoarseness was chronic.
"How much for one inch in Help Wanted, Male?"
The man nodded eagerly, half a dozen times.
The stranger, in trying to take the exact amount from his pocket, dropped a dime on the floor and had much difficulty in picking it up by reason of his black gloves. This naturally made the clerk remember about the scar, which the man evidently desired to conceal. Carroll, the clerk, alert-minded and imaginative--as are all American Celts--caught a glimpse of the scar between the end of the glove and the beginning of the cuff.