# Notes: Torchy stories 36-54, volume 3 (*Torchy, Private Sec.*, 1917), chunks 481-737, 257 records I wrote these by reading every scene myself. No inference was used, and I did no grouping. Below are the recurring situations I noticed, as input for the grouping pass. The chunk ids are examples, not complete lists. Chunks 736 and 737 are the publisher's advertising. Each has a record saying it belongs in no group. Chunk 735 is summarised from its story part only; the advertising that follows it is ignored. ## Recurring situations 1. **Newly promoted, and meeting the old hierarchy from the other side.** The new boy in his old seat calls him Sir (494). The stiff senior clerk who used to order him about now defers to him, and Torchy wins him over by refusing the deference (495-496). A senior manager wanted the post for his own relative, predicts Torchy will not last, and takes away his only assignment (497-498). The old head comes back, knows nothing of the promotion, and orders him about as the office boy again (524-526). 2. **Contradicting a senior authority, and winning.** He backs an overlooked inventor against a senior colleague's dismissal. He learns the subject overnight and argues it before the people at the top (499-507). This is the story in which he earns the promotion, not just receives it. 3. **The door to the boss: receiving callers with tact.** He handles an insistent visitor smoothly (487-488). He entertains two ill-matched visitors (606-608). He soothes a furious figurehead (633-635). A smooth promoter wants him to open doors to rich men (646-649). Panicky backers besiege his desk (721-722). He used to guard a door. Now he is the one that callers try to use. 4. **The sweetheart's guardian, who objects to his standing.** She cross-examines him on his lowly job (485-486). She arrives to expose him and finds him at a desk (492). She rations his visits (565, 568). She uses his advice and then bars him from her event (623-625). She calls him a nameless waif (666). She catches him holding her ward's hand (668-669). She is struck dumb when his family name is revealed (673). He also rescues her fortune, and she has to thank him grudgingly (508-522). **This is the spine of the volume.** 5. **A rival suitor or rival guest in the room.** The guardian's favoured young man is already installed (566-568). He turns out to love someone else, and Torchy warms to him at once (571-573). 6. **Meddling in the boss's own love life.** This is new with the promotion. He finds the boss's keepsake (675-677). He plants a reminder in the boss's mail (680). He sends flowers in the boss's name (683-686). He explains the boss's case to the woman (691-694). He goes through the boss's files to see why the romance failed (694-695). He lectures the boss on courtship (696-697 and 698-700, where the advice backfires). He removes a flirt who is monopolising the boss (712-720). He is put in charge of the boss's wedding (728-735). 7. **Private errands for the boss's family.** He decides the son-in-law's telegram for him (537-539). He removes the daughter's hired dance partner (557-564). He steers the son-in-law away from a courting couple (711). He fetches an uninvited guest (712-714). 8. **Coaching a timid man to face a bully or a tyrant.** A suitor faces the girl's roaring father (546-549). A frail man stands up to a bully's prank (614-617). The boss is urged to pursue the woman as he would a deal (696-697). In each case the coached man wins by not flinching. 9. **A snob humbled by someone of humble origin.** The guardian patronises a shop assistant who owns the chain (626-631). A daughter's polish is newly bought, and her plain mother is moved by the respect a suitor shows her (569-575). The guardian learns who the nameless suitor is (673). The reverse also occurs: an upstart who snubs his family is scared out the back door by his sister, who is there as a servant (552-563). 10. **Using what he knew on the bottom rung.** He bribes a messenger boy into revealing a hidden entrance (531-532). He goes to his old newspaper contacts (598-599, 731-732). He knows the runners' slang and their stations. 11. **Championing an overlooked colleague or outsider.** The inventor (499-507). The plain typist the office laughs at, who becomes a star (577-590). 12. **Rescuing a stray dependent and a desperate man.** The runaway child, her jailed father and the hidden money (591-605). 13. **Old loves reunited late.** Two elderly sweethearts elope forty years after a relative stopped them (639-645). The boss and the singer (675-735). 14. **Origins and identity.** A shabby claimant says he is the relative who abandoned Torchy (650-653). The real family is revealed through an old man's story and a locket (657-662). Torchy stages his own arrival under his real name (672-673). A foundling's lack of a name is what the guardian holds against him (666). 15. **Removing an embarrassing guest quietly.** The hired dancer (560-564). The flirt, scared off by a staged half-truth (718-719). 16. **Rewarded with rank or pay.** He is promoted on the spot (491, 493). He is told he is needed (507). The old head doubles his salary (536). ## Torchy's standing per story | Story | Standing | Why | | --- | --- | --- | | 36 | low to middle | Office boy for four years. He is promoted at the end. | | 37 | middle | New in the post and challenged by seniors. He wins his place. | | 38 | middle | He is trusted with an urgent errand. | | 39 | middle | He is left in charge, then treated as the boy again. His pay is doubled at the end. | | 40 | middle | A guest of the boss's family. | | 41 | middle | Invited to the family's dance as a real guest. | | 42 | middle | A suitor on rationed visits. | | 43 | middle | Now senior enough to befriend the office outcast. | | 44 | middle | An errand for his sweetheart. | | 45 | middle | He hosts the boss's callers. | | 46 | middle | Sent in the boss's place. The guardian first bars him, then invites him. | | 47 | middle | His nominal superior turns up. | | 48 | middle to high | He learns his family. His nominal superior is his great-uncle. | | 49 | high | His name ends the guardian's objection. | | 50 | high | He sits in on directors' meetings as acting head of the subsidiary. | | 51 | high | He advises the boss as a near equal. | | 52 | high | He is a guest on the boss's trip. | | 53 | high | The old head asks him about the heir. | | 54 | high | Best man, and in full charge of the boss's wedding. | ## What the promotion changes - **The rival is no longer his supervisor. It is senior colleagues and old hands who resent the jump.** That friction appears only in the first stories (37, 39). After that nobody in the office challenges him again, and by 54 the nervous directors come to his desk. - **The work largely leaves the office.** Only 36, 37, 39, 43, 50 and 54 have much business in them. Most of the volume is the boss's family life and Torchy's courtship. - **The direction of favours reverses.** In the earlier volumes the boss helped him with his girl. From story 50 on, Torchy manages the boss's romance: he advises, plots, explains, clears the field and runs the wedding. He knows the boss's private files and heart better than anyone. "Someone junior who meddles in the boss's private life" is the volume's commonest new move. - **The title does not settle his standing outside the office.** The guardian's objection moves from his job ("still an office boy") to his birth ("a nameless waif"). The promotion answers the first objection (492). Only the discovery of his family answers the second (673). Grouping may want to keep "judged by rank" and "judged by birth" apart. - **He is now addressed with respect.** The new boy and the old clerk call him Sir. The boss's family invite him as a guest, not as a messenger. His old low-rank knowledge becomes a tool he uses from above (10). - **Fewer "called in to be fired" scenes.** The only threat to his job is his own threat to quit (490). His fear is now of looking like a dummy in the post (498), not of the sack.