glad to do that, for I figure she
has learned a lesson."

"You won't want to question her, then, after she has been revived?"

"It's quite unnecessary. I have the other ends of the case in my hands.
And besides I must go outside to meet our dear friend Geltmann when he
arrives. He should be driving up to the house pretty soon--I had a
telephone message five minutes ago telling me to expect him shortly. So
I'm going out to break some sad news to him on the sidewalk. He doesn't
know it yet, but he's starting to-night on a long, long trip; a trip
that will take him clear out of this country--and he won't ever, ever be
coming back.

"But I'll call on you to-morrow, if I may--after I've seen to getting
him off for the West. I want to thank you again in behalf of the Service
for the wonderful thing you've done so wonderfully well. And I want to
hear more from you about that game you played."

"I'll do better than that," she promised: "I'll let you read about it in
a book--an old secondhand book, it is; you saw it yesterday. Maybe I can
convert you to reading old books; they're often full of things that
people in your line should know."

"Lady," he said reverently, "you've made a true believer of me
already."

CHAPTER IX

THE BULL CALLED EMILY

We were sitting at a corner table in a certain small restaurant hard by
where Sixth Avenue's L structure, like an overgrown straddlebug, wades
through the restless currents of Broadway at a sharpened angle. The dish
upon which we principally dined was called on the menu _Chicken a la
Marengo_. We knew why. Marengo, by all accounts, was a mighty tough
battle, and this particular chicken, we judged, had never had any
refining influences in its ill-spent life. From its present defiant
attitude in a cooked form we figured it had pipped the shell with a
burglar's jimmy and joined the Dominecker Kid's gang before it shed its
pin-feathers. There were two of us engaged in the fruitless attack upon
its sinewy tissues--the present writer and his old un-law-abiding
friend,--Scandalous Doolan.

For a period of minutes Scandalous wrestled with the thews of one of the
embattled fowl's knee-joints. After a struggle in which the honours
stood practically even, he laid down his knife and flirted a thumb
toward a bottle of peppery sauce which stood on my side of the table.

"Hey, bo," he requested, "pass the liniment, will you? This sea gull's
got the rheumatism."

The purport of