Moloch: Or, This Gentile World Read Online Free PDF Page B

bureau. He looked at the clock impatiently.
    Opposite him at the big, double desk sat his friend and assistant. Matt Reardon. Reardon was incompetent, recalcitrant, and temperamental. Moloch had given him the job out of friendship.
    It was apparent that Reardon was excited about something.
    “We just had a helluva time here a few minutes ago,” he said breathlessly.
    Matt had an endless string of anecdotes, none of them particularly beguiling.
    “Hold it, Matt … later. I’ve a lot of work to plow through first.”
    Matt glowered rebelliously and turned sour. Moloch was forever squelching him, as if he were the office boy and not the assistant employment manager.
    “And look here,” Moloch fired, without the least regard for his friend’s injured feelings, “tell Lawson to get rid of that gang out there. This place looks like a waxworks exhibit!”
    “ You’re making this place an Eden Musée, not I,” thought Matt, as he rose, sullen and dispirited, to carry out instructions. He was bitterly opposed to Moloch’s high-handed way of doing things. He had a dozen arguments up his sleeve, but none of them were worth a damn. He was tired of arguing; they did nothing else but wrangle the whole day long. And in the end, Moloch always had his way. Moloch could be one god-damned son-of-a-bitch, when he wanted to....
    Matt Reardon approached the railing which separated the applicants from the office staff, and began telling off the youngsters one at a time. He puffed away at a cigarette as he disposed of one batch after another. “Make it snappy!” he growled, chafing over the tedious drift of each appeal. About a minute and a half was allotted to each plea, followed by a brusque “Tomorrow morning at eight sharp!”
    “Say, Matt, what the hell’s the matter with you, anyway? Didn’t I tell you to let Lawson take care of that? What’s he here for?” shouted Moloch, suddenly observing Matt’s tactics.
    Matt grumbled and got off something about Lawson taking all day to do a trifle. “Besides,” he went on, “I think we ought to show these kids a little courtesy. They’re not asking for a handout. They want jobs.”
    “Who’s running this joint?”
    “Aw, hell, don’t be a crab,” said Matt coaxingly. “Do you know you’re getting to be an old crab? I say,” he cooed, “you missed something funny. You got here ten minutes too late.”
    Moloch’s irritation was increasing. “Well, get it off your chest … what was it?”
    “Ah, can that! ” said Matt. “Listen a minute, like a regular guy, will you? I had a guy in here after you left—see? I spotted him right away. At first I didn’t say much to him … let him fill the application out in the usual way. Every now and then I’d throw out a harmless question. He was leery of me all right, I could see that, but after a while when he saw how damn nice I treated him he didn’t know what the hell to think. Anyhow we chewed the fat a while, about this and that—Christ, I dragged in everything I could think of except what was on my mind…. All of a sudden I says to him, ‘Let me look at your throat.’ He jumped when I said that, but I passed right over it and mumbled something about having his tonsils removed. What I was after, of course, was to get a good look at his tongue.”
    Moloch smiled a caustic smile. Matt always thought he knew so god-damned much. He was like a young intern.
    “Sure enough,” Matt continued, “his tongue was all scarred.”
    “Ah … the hell with it,” blurted Moloch. “I don’t give a damn about the rest of it.”
    “No, wait a minute—let me finish…. What was I saying? Oh, yes! Listen, are you following me? As 1 was telling you, I was kiddin’ him along nicely, pattin’ him on the back and tellin’ him what a good egg he was.... Jesus! it was a shame to do it! Well, anyhow, I’m talkin’ to him in a calm, even voice—just like I’m talkin’ to you now—and suddenly I pop this at him: ‘ When did you