Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
1922
XXXI McADAMS BLOWS IN
West, still attired in khaki uniform, but wearing the red chevron ofhonourable discharge on his left sleeve, sat in the Club writing room,his feet comfortably elevated, endeavouring to extract some entertainmentfrom the evening paper. The news was not particularly interesting,however, and finally, obsessed with the feeling that it would soon betime for him to seriously contemplate the procuring of suitableemployment, the young man turned the sheet about rather idly, and ran hiseyes down the columns devoted to classified advertising.
Half way down the first column, under the head of "miscellaneous," hepaused and read a paragraph with some interest; then read it over again,emitting a soft whistle between his teeth.
"Well, by Jove!" he said to himself slowly, "That doesn't sound so badeither; out of the ordinary, at least. Say, Thompson," and he turned toa tall young fellow busily writing at the adjoining desk, and shoved thepaper under his eyes, pointing at the paragraph which had attractedattention, with one finger, "What do you make out of that, old man?"
The other, rather sober-faced, and slow of speech, read the advertisementword by word, with no change of expression.
"Rot," he said solemnly. "Either a joke, or some scheme on. Why?interested in it?"
"In a measure, yes. Sounds rather business-like to me. I've got a goodmind to answer, and take a chance."
"You're a fool if you do, Matt," decisively, and turning back to h