Joe turns around and straightens up, for once in his life lookin' like the real thing.

"I love her!" he says. That was all--but the way he pulled it was a plenty!

The Kid grunts and tosses away the pill. Then he walks over to Joe and slaps him on the back.

"Listen!" he says. "You ain't a bad guy at that. I'm gonna give you somethin' I never took in my life--advice! Why don't you lay off lyin'

about yourself, kid? Why don't you can that four-flush thing?"

The effect of them simple words on Joe was remarkable. He swung around on us so quick that we both ducked, thinkin' he was comin' back with a wallop--but his hands was sunk so deep in his coat pockets they liked to pushed through the linin' and his face was as hard and white as an iceberg.

"Because!" he shoots out through his teeth. "_Because I can't_!"

Y'know the change was so sudden, I remember lettin' out a little nervous laugh, and then sidesteppin' a vicious left the Kid sent at me.

Scanlan had turned as serious as the other guy.

"What d'ye mean, you _can't_?" he says, grabbin' Joe by the arm and holdin' him fast. Joe's face showed how hard he was fightin' to keep from fallin' apart.

"You won't understand!" he answers in a hard voice. "But I'll tell you. The thing has grown upon me until I cannot shake it off! I guess I was born a liar and probably four-flushed my nurse when I was three days old. When I was a boy, my incessant lying, although it harmed no one but myself, kept me in countless sc.r.a.pes. As I grew older, the habit grew stronger and I lost girls, jobs, friends and opportunities with breath-taking rapidity. Time after time I have sworn to rid myself of the thing and speak nothing but the undiluted truth, and the first time I open my mouth I find myself unconsciously telling the most astounding falsehoods about myself with an ease that nauseates me!" He tore himself loose from the Kid and kicked a innocent tomato can down the canyon. "I know I'm nothing but a big four-flusher," he winds up, "and I can't help it!"

Right then and there I warmed up to Joe Trout like I never had before.

After all, Miss Vincent had the right dope--he was nothin' but a big kid at that, and any guy that will come right out in public and admit he's a false alarm, deserves credit!

"Well," he says after a minute, "I suppose you're both through with me now, eh?"

"Do I look like a quitter?" demands the Kid.

"I'm still here, ain't I?" I chimes in.

Joe coughs and took hold of our hands.

"Thanks!" he mutters. "And now---"

"Listen!" interrupts the Kid. "I got the whole thing doped out. When is this dame of yours due to hit Film City?"

"She'll be here on that one o'clock train," moans Joe.

"Fine!" says the Kid. "Now get this! De Vronde is supposed to do a fall from a horse in 'The End of the World' and the big yellow b.u.m won't do it. They're lookin' for some guy that will take his place, just for that one flash, see? Now suppose I fix it so you get that chance and when the dame comes on, there you are playin' the lead as far as she can see, in the best part of the frolic. How's that?"

I thought Joe was gonna kiss him!

"I'll never forget it!" he hollers. "You have saved my life! What can I do to repay you?"

"Stop four-flushing," comes back the Kid, "and be on the level!"

"I'll do it, if it kills me!" promises Joe--and I don't know whether he meant the fall or the other.

"Can you ride a horse?" the Kid asks him as we start back.

"Can _I_ ride a horse?" repeats Joe, stoppin' short. "What a question!

Why at home I was the champion--"

"Now, now!" b.u.t.ts in the Kid. "There you go again!"

"Pardon me!" says Joe, gettin' red--and he quits!

Well, the Kid fixed it all right, so's Joe could double for De Vronde in that one place where he did the fall. I don't know how he did it any more than I know how Edison come to think of the phonograph, but he did! All my suspicions as to who the dame was come true when Gladys hops off the one o'clock train that afternoon. I seen her talkin' to Eddie Duke near the African Desert, and I immediately went scoutin'

around for Joe, because Eddie liked him the same way the brewers is infatuated with the Anti-Saloon League and I knowed if Eddie got a chance to harpoon Joe with Gladys, he'd do that thing.

About half a hour later, Genaro asks me to go over and find Potts, because they're ready to start shootin' the picture and when I got near the hotel I seen a couple of people blockin' the little narrow pa.s.sage in back of it. They was Gladys O'Hara and Joe Trout and when I got close up I heard Joseph talkin'. He was goin' like a house on fire and his little old lyin' apparatus was. .h.i.ttin' on all cylinders and runnin'

smooth without a break. He explains to Gladys that he went on only in the important part of the picture which she would see in a minute, and that De Vronde was only one of the cheap help who played the part while _he_ was restin' for the big scene. As soon as that come up--and he said the whole picture was built around it--they give De Vronde the gate and in went the darin' Joe.

He was all dressed up in a Stetson hat, a cute little yellow silk handkerchief twisted around his manly neck and more chaps than any cow puncher ever wore on his legs outside of a movie. He looked like what he'd liked to have been.

"--and not only that," he winds up, "but they are going to feature my name on all the advertising for the picture!"

"Is that all?" asks Gladys in a queer little voice.

Joe looked surprised. I guess it was the first time anybody had asked for more!

"Well--no!" he starts off again briskly. "Of course, I am--"

"Wait!" says Gladys, grabbin' his arm. "Don't tell me any more lies!

They are not featuring you in this or any other picture! You are not the leading man, you are only a super! Your father is not a millionaire and you cannot get me a job with the Maudlin Moving Picture Company! You're simply a big four-flusher and that lets you out!"

Say! On the level, I thought Joe was gonna pa.s.s away on his feet! If I was give to faintin', I'd have been stretched out cold, myself. He got white and then he got red, then he got white again and red again for fully a minute. He tried eighteen times by actual count to say something but that well known tongue of his had laid down at last and quit! He couldn't even raise a whisper.

"I knew you were four-flushin' the first time you started to hand me that stuff!" goes on Gladys, sweetly. "I happen to know the folks here, includin' the leadin' man, De Vronde. He was hangin' around that shirtwaist counter before you knew whether they made pictures here or sponge cake. Also, some of your friends come over from time to time and tipped me off about you, so that I was all set when you started!"

Joe whirls around on her at that, and although this bird had beat me to the wire with Gladys, I felt sorry for him right then. The poor kid was hangin' on the ropes waitin' for somebody to throw in the sponge.

"If you knew all that," he says, kinda choked, "why--why did you let me come over and continue to--to mislead you?"

Gladys coughs and places three or four stray hairs exactly back of her little white ear, gazin' at her wrist watch like it's the first time she ever seen one, and she's wonderin' can it really go. The big b.o.o.b stands there lookin' at her and the chance of a couple of lifetimes is slippin' away. What? Say, listen! I don't know much about women--fighters is my line--but there was a look on Gladys's face that I'd seen Genaro work two hours one time to put on Miss Vincent's when they was takin' a big picture. So you can figure she wasn't registerin' hate!

"Well, why?" demands Joe again.

"This stuff is all new to me," says Gladys, with a sigh, "but I guess I've got to do it!" She gazes at the ground and gets kinda red. "It was not your conversation that made the hit with me!" she winds up softly.

"I'm afraid I don't understand," pipes Senseless Joe.

"Heavens!" remarks Gladys. "There's enough concrete between your neck and your hat to build a bridge over the bay! I can safely say you're the first man I ever proposed to, but somebody's got to do it and I guess I'm the goat!"

"What!" screams Joe, comin' to life at last.

"You--you--forgive--you--" The poor simp gets all excited and once again he can't talk and--I don't blame him. You never seen Gladys, and you don't know how she looked right then!

"Say!" says Gladys. "Am I bein' kidded or--"

Joe might have been a tramp as a movie lover, but take it from me, as the real thing he was no slouch! I hadda stand there and watch it, because I couldn't get past till they got away and if they'd ever seen me, I guess Joe would have bought a gun. Finally, they break, Gladys pushin' Joe away and holdin' him off.