EBBTIDE JONES ATOM CONTSTRICTOR It was a marvelous invention. It turned an auto into a thin metal disc that could be filed away. But Trixie Jones had a very poor filing system! TRIXIE GREEN JONES flung off her silver fox furs as she stormed into her husband’s office. Anger burned through her pretty rouged cheeks.
“Ebbtide! Your office boy’s a dope!”
“Which one?” Ebbtide grunted without looking up. He was stuffing papers in a brief case.
“Hercules—the big boy. What’s he walking out for this time of day?”
“Hercules?” Ebbtide blinked his small eyes and smeared his dusty fingers thoughtfully over his long, boney face. “You must mean Pokey, the big dumb one. He probably went out for a coke.”
“Dumb is right. Walked right by me and didn’t even speak. And me, the wife of the richest, most enterprising junk dealer in America—”
“Sit down, Trixie. You’re jumping round like a hooked fish. I got business to talk with you. You’ve got to run things while I’m gone. I’m taking off right away for Siberia and China.”
“The first thing I’ll do is fire Polecat, if he can’t learn some manners—”
“It’s Pokey, not Polecat—”
“He’s just Polecat to me,” Trixie snapped. Her sharp eyes caught on the dust marks on her husband’s cheeks. She leaned over the streamlined desk from her tiptoes and curried his face with a handkerchief. “Maybe he doesn’t know I’m the wife of the famous Ebbtide Jones that saved the day for the Zandonian King and got paid off with a trunkful of jewels. Maybe he thinks I’m just little Trixie Green, the waitress at the Chaw-Chaw Cafe—a
nobody—”
. . .
