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prove that he was guilty? Did they have witnesses who would swear to the fact in court? No? "Well, skew oo, mithter!" And if they did have proof, they still received no satisfaction.
           "Looky, mithter," he would explain. "Iss isn't any store—iss a doddam bookteepin tumpny. Oo uh hell oo donna sue, anyway? Oo dit anyfing out uh iss doddam outfit I'll split wif oo."
           Except for me, to whom he was always kind, Carl had not a pleasant word for anyone. But he was at his most insulting when dealing with the home office or its representatives. "Now, ess dit one fing straight," he would say, addressing some traveling auditor or supervisor. "I'm wunnin iss doddam place, an I don't need any fuddin assho like oo to tell me how. I do as I doddam pwease, see? Oo don't like at oo can skwew orself and I'll quit."
           The home office chose to like it. Very wisely. Carl worked for a pitifully low salary, and despite his drinking he was by far the best auditor in the chain. He could and did do the work of three men, and with an expertness, an unfailing accuracy, which surpassed genius.
           Day after day, I saw him so drunk that his eyes were glazed and his head jerked and rolled on his neck in alcoholic spasms; I saw him weave in his chair, tilt perilously backward and forward and from side to side. And with all that I never saw him hesitate in his work or make one single, solitary error! Sometimes I would have to put a pen in his hand, and place his other hand on the comptometer. But once that was done, he needed no further assistance. His left hand would flick over the keys of the machine, veritably playing a tune on it; his right hand would roam over the ledger, inscribing it with long columns of always accurate, excruciatingly neat figures. As often as I watched the miracle, I remained amazed by it.
           "Nuffin to it, Tompn," Carl would lisp, grinning at me devilishly. "Jus a matter of teepin in tundishun. Just dotta live wight, ats all."
           This "teepin in tundishun" and "livin wight" was (or so Carl advised me) only part of his formula for doing highly complex work while stumbling-blind drunk. The truly important thing, he said, was to "fine 'em, fud 'em and fordet 'em," or, perhaps, to "skwew 'em all an the easy ones twice."
           "Pith on 'em, Tompn," he declared a dozen times a day. "Hang it out uh window and skwew uh whole doddam world."
           He was such a wonderfully good accountant and had followed the profession for so many years that, I suppose, he could have done his job in his sleep. He didn't need to think about it, in the ordinary sense of the word. Too drunk to see straight, or even to see at all, he was carried through one intricate task after another by his subconscious mind.
           I wondered what he was doing in such a job as this one, why he drank as he did. Late one afternoon, some six weeks after the beginning of our association, I found out. I had been smiling about something, some joke one of the clerks had told me. Apparently I had been doing it for some time, and since our desks faced each other Carl got the notion that I was smiling at him.
           "Sumpn funny, Tompn?" he demanded, his normally flushed face turning white. "Whynt oo laugh out loud? Did it out uh oore doddam skwewin system!"
           "W-why, Carl," I stammered. "I was just—"
           "Do ahead!" he lisped angrily. "Evey one else does, doddam wotten son-a-bitsin bastuhds! Tant do anywhere, tant say anything, without some fuddin skwewball laughin his doddam head off...Look like uh Devil, don't I? Look like uh Devil and talk like a skewin doddam baby! Tant dit a doddam decent job. Tant even thay hello to a doddam woman..."
           He raved on, cursing and spilling out obscenities, inviting me to "do ahead an have a dood laugh." Thus, at last, I saw why things were as they were with him—that his arrogance was only a cloak for a shamed