it
was Ballard who said, slowly, as one who weighs his words and the full
import of them: "Mr. Wingfield, you are more different kinds of an ass
than I took you to be, and that is saying a great deal. Out of a mass of
hearsay, the idle stories of a lot of workmen whose idea of humour has
been to make a butt of you, you have built up this fantastic fairy tale.
I am charitable enough to believe that you couldn't help it; it is a
part of your equipment as a professional maker of fairy tales. But there
are two things for which I shall take it upon myself to answer
personally. You will not leave Castle 'Cadia until your time is out; and
you'll not leave this room until you have promised the three of us that
this cock-and-bull story of yours stops right here with its first
telling."

"That's so," added Bromley, with a quiet menace in his tone.

It was the playwright's turn to gasp, and he did it, very realistically.

"You--you don't believe it? with all the three-sheet-poster evidence
staring you in the face? Why, great Joash! you must be stark, staring
mad--both of you!" he raved. And then to Blacklock: "Are you in it, too,
Jerry?"

"I guess I am," returned the collegian, meaning no more than that he
felt constrained to stand with the men of his chosen profession.

Wingfield drew a long breath and with it regained the impersonal heights
of the unemotional observer. "Of course, it is just as you please," he
said, carelessly. "I had a foolish notion I was doing you two a good
turn; but if you choose to take the other view of it--well, there is no
accounting for tastes. Drink your own liquor and give the house a good
name. I'll dig up my day-pay later on: it's cracking good material, you
know."

"That is another thing," Ballard went on, still more decisively. "If you
ever put pen to paper with these crazy theories of yours for a basis, I
shall make it my business to hunt you down as I would a wild beast."

"So shall I," echoed Bromley.

Wingfield rose and put the long-stemmed pipe carefully aside.

"You are a precious pair of bally idiots," he remarked, quite without
heat. Then he looked at his watch and spoke pointedly to Blacklock.
"You're forgetting Miss Elsa's fishing party to the upper canyon, aren't
you? Suppose we drive around to Castle 'Cadia in the car. You can send
Otto back after Mr. Bromley later on." And young Blacklock was so
blankly dazed by the cool impudence of the suggestion that he consented
and l