his unlighted pipe into his hip pocket and mounted the stairs. The young girl who acted as bookkeeper, stenographer, and cashier thrust the letter into his hand.
"Oh, you William!" she cried. "Some girl we don't know anything about."
"Aw!" He studied the envelope doubtfully. "Hargreave, Bell & Davis, attorneys and counselors at law. Say, Susie, have I been buying a sewing-machine, or have I fallen for some nifty book-agent's gab? I don't know any lawyers."
"Open it and see," advised Susie.
The letter was coldly brief. William Grogan was requested to call upon "the undersigned at his earliest convenience." Nothing more than that. William read it over four or five times, and it grew colder and colder with each reading. Lawyers, and after him.
"Where's Burns?" he demanded.
"In the office." Susie returned to her little grilled desk.
William walked down to the rear end of the shop and rapped on the office door. Ordinarily he would have entered without formality.
"Say, Mr. Burns, what kind of bunk is this?" He laid the letter upon his employer's desk.
"Humph!" said Burns, who was practically Dolan & Co. also. "What have you been doing?"
"Who, me? Nothing. They haven't lifted me out of the cradle yet."
"Got any relatives?"
William scratched his head and blinked ruminatively. "Nobody but an uncle in St. Louis, my mother's brother; an old crab, who got sore because mother didn't marry the flannel-mouth he'd picked out for her. Never saw him nor heard from him."
"Well, you take to-morrow morning off and look into it. If there is any money, Bill, you bring it to me. There's nothing to these lawyers. You bring it to me."
"Sure, Mr. Burns. But it's a pipe there's no dough. Maybe they expect me to settle for the funeral; that 'd be my luck."
"Maybe it's a breach-of-promise suit."
"Aw, I couldn't get into the Old Ladies' Home without a jimmy."
"Well, go and see the sharps, and then come to me. Take your mother's marriage certificate along, while you're about it. You got it?"
"Ye-ah. I was only nine when she died, but she was some mother."
"They all are, son, they all are. Haven't put your name on any paper?"
"Haven't had a pen in my hand since I quit night-school last winter."
"You never can tell," said Burns, gravely. "But if you've got tied up any way, I'll see what I can do. See you to-morrow." Burns chuckled as William went out. It was a great world.
William, in a distinctly restless frame of mind, left the shop and walked homeward. He was filled with foreboding. Some lawyers wanted to see him, and cold-blooded ones, too, if letters counted. Burns always said that if you went to court for anything, the lawyers got it. What had he done, anyhow? He combed his near-past thoroughly; but aside from two or three pinochle games over at the engine-house (two bits the corner), his record was as spotless and shiny as new sheet-tin. Oh, well, why borrow trouble? They couldn't get blood out of a turnip, and besides, Burns would see to it that he got a square deal.
Whenever he was worried or in the doldrums, William hied him forth to the near-by moving-picture theater. For an hour and a half he could lose himself completely. He could cast off trouble in the lobby, even if that little old man of the sea jumped on his back again as he went out. It was something to have cheated trouble out of an hour and a half.
Eight o'clock that night found him in his accustomed seat. With his toil-bitten hand propping his chin, he gazed in rapt wonder at a caravan of camels as they came superciliously down the sand-hills of the Libyan desert. Instantly the scene changed. He saw the bewildering peoples of the bazaars. Turbans and tarbooshes, flowing robes and sandaled feet, fruit-sellers and water-carriers, tourists in spotless white linen and sun-helmets; and presently through this swarm came the heroine on a scraggy little donkey. The villain pointed her out to his minions, and stealthily they pursued her until she was safe and happy in her lover's arms.
William wasn't much interested in the exploits of this heroine, whose salary was large enough to support a South American republic; nor was he certain that the Libyan desert and the bazaars were not located south-by-east from Los Angeles. But the camels were real; aye, real enough to whisk him away on one of his carpets from Bagdad, overseas, to that wonderful world he was never to see, much as the Irish soul of him hungered for it.
During the short intermission he idly studied the people about him. At his left sat a pretty young woman, in cool but sensible summer clothes. He spoke to her.
"It's a great business."
"Yes, it is," she replied, fingering the single-sheet program.
"A dime, and you can go anywhere in the world. I've always wanted to see the Orient."
He said nothing more, and gave his attention to the screen where the announcements of coming features were being projected. And because he stopped where he did he aroused a mild curiosity in his neighbor. She recognized that here was no masher type, a phase of the moving-picture theater that had caused her annoyance more than once. He was just a comfortable, every-day sort of young man, who had had a thought and had expressed it aloud to her merely because she happened to be sitting next to him.
A few minutes later she heard him laugh uproariously at the antics of a slap-stick comedian. She laughed, too, not so loudly, perhaps, but quite as heartily and humanly as this unknown red-headed young man. When the comedy was over he tipped back the seats for her, and presently she lost sight of him in the crowd. She forgot all about him, even as William forgot all about her.
The next morning when he entered the outer office of Hargreave, Bell & Davis, a small boy, not at all impressed by the visitor's ready-made tie and celluloid collar, jumped up and confronted him, coldly and alertly.
"Whadjuh want?" he demanded.
"Whadjuh got?" countered William, fiercely.
"Bertie!" called the girl at the typewriter, warningly.
"Oh, so his name is Bertie, huh? Well, Bertie, I eat 'em alive when they call 'em that. I want to see your boss."
"Nothin' leakin' in these offices," flung back the boy, observing William's hands and sniffing the faint odor of gasolene.
"My name is Grogan," said William, giving the honors to the boy because he was in a hurry.
"Oh! Middle door; Mr. Bell," said the girl, her eyes full of sudden interest.
The boy shuffled to the door and opened it. "Mister Grogan," he announced, with fine irony.
"Show him in at once."
As he was passing through the doorway, William turned and lightly blew a kiss toward the boy, who, thorough sportsman that he was, recognized this red-head as a brother.
"Mr. Grogan?"
"Yes."
"Be seated." Mr. Bell was a middle-aged man. "You had an uncle in St. Louis?"
"Ye-ah; Michael Regan."
The lawyer nodded. "Your mother's name?"
"Amelia. Michael was her brother."
"Have you absolute legal proof that you are Amelia Regan's son?"
"Sure!" William produced the marriage certificate, pleased that Burns had suggested bringing it.
Mr. Bell adjusted his glasses. "This is Amelia Regan's certificate of marriage, but that doesn't prove you're her son, Mr. Grogan."
"Turn it over," advised William, wetting his lips and stretching his neck out of his collar, which had grown suddenly tight.
"Ah!"
On the reverse side of the certificate was the date of William's arrival into this