I've seen that look on beaten fighters, when the winner is settin' himself for the knockout, and I've seen it on the faces of other guys, when some smug-jowled judge has reached into their lives and took ten or twenty years as a deposit on what they'll do with the rest. It's a look you don't forget right away, take it from me!
Well, this feller that's walkin' up to us had that look. If a director had yelled "Register despair!" at him, he could of just looked natural and they'd of thought he was another Mansfield.
"Pardon me!" he says, takin' off his hat. "Where can I find Mister De Vronde?"
The Kid puts his hand on his arm and swings him around,
"You'll pro'bly find him over behind the Street Scene in Venice," he tells him. "If he ain't there, look around the Sahara Desert for him--know him when you see him?"
The other guy looks at us for a minute like he thinks he's bein' kidded. Then he pulls a slow, tired grin.
When he walks away, I turns to Miss Vincent.
"That's prob'ly Cutey De Vronde's new guardeen," I says. "I guess he--"
"You and the Kaiser is the same kind of guessers!" butts in the Kid. "He guessed we wouldn't scrap! If that guy we was just talkin' to is a lady's maid for Cutey, I can sing like Caruso!"
"He doesn't look like a valet," says Miss Vincent, kinda doubtful.
"I don't blame him!" says the Kid. "And lemme tell you, he never got them muscles from brushin' clothes and buttonin' vests. I felt his arm when I swung him around that time, and this guy is just about as soft as the Rock of Gibraltar!"
"I can't understand," says Miss Vincent, "how a strong, healthy man can be a valet--ugh!" she winds up, with a little shiver.
"That's easy," sneers the Kid. "A _man_ can't!"
Well, a man _did_! Gimme your ears, as the deaf guy said.
The next mornin' it turns out that I can guess like a rabbit can run. The new entry on the payroll borrehs a match from me, and durin' the tête-à-tête that folleyed, I find out that his name is John R. Adams and, as far as the world in general and America in particular is concerned, it could of been George Q. Mud. Durin' the lifetime of twenty-nine years he's been on earth, he's tried his hand at everything from bankin' to bartenderin', and so far the only thing he's been a success at is bein' a failure. At that he leads the league. And now, to top it all off, he's a valet for a movie hero!