now. And close the door after you, please."

So I'm shunted back to the front office, so excited over that war story
that I has to hunt up Piddie and pass it on to him. It gets him too.
Anything in the hero line always does, and this noble young Greek doin'
the come-one-come-all act was a picture that even a two-by-four
imagination like Piddie's couldn't fail to grasp.

"By Jove, though!" says he. "The spirit of old Thermopylae all over
again! I wish I could have seen that!"

"As close as Skid did?" says I. "Ah, you'd have turned so green they'd
taken you for a pickled string bean."

"Oh, I don't pretend to be a daredevil," admits Piddie, with a sudden
rush of modesty. "Still, it is a pity Mr. Mallory did not stay long
enough to find out the name of this unknown hero, and give it to the
world."

"The moral of which is," says I, "that all heroes ought to carry their
own press agents with 'em."

We'd threshed it all out, Piddie and me, and I'd gone back to my desk
some reluctant, for this jobless waiter was still sheddin' his gloom
around the reception room, and I was just thinkin' how it would be to
put a screen in front of him, when Mr. Robert and Skid comes out arm in
arm, swappin' josh about that banquet that was to be pulled off.

"Of course you'll come." Mr. Robert is insistin'. "Only a few
directors, you know. No, no set speeches, or anything like that. But