"What is your authority for that?" Phil turned a large, bizarre ring
round on his slender left little finger and the whole room waited,
testing this positive-spoken outsider.

"Well," drawled Carl, "I have fairly good authority. Walter
MacMonnies, for instance, and he is probably the best flier in the
country to-day, except for Lincoln Beachey."

"Oh yes, he's a good flier," said Phil, contemptuously, with a shadowy
smile for Ruth. "Still, he's no better than Aaron Solomons, and he
isn't half so great a flier as that chap with the same surname as your
own, Hawk Ericson, whom I myself saw coming up the Jersey coast when
he won that big race to New York.... You see, I've been following this
aviation pretty closely."

Carl saw Ruth's head drop an inch, and her eyes close to a slit as
she inspected him with sudden surprise. He knew that it had just
occurred to her who he was. Their eyes exchanged understanding. "She
does get things," he thought, and said, lightly:

"Well, I honestly hate to take the money, Mr. Dunleavy, but I'm in a
position to know that MacMonnies is a better flier to-day than Ericson
is, be----"

"But see here----"

"----because I happen to _be_ Hawk Ericson."

"What a chump I am!" groaned the man in tortoise-shell spectacles. "Of
course! I remember your picture, now."

Phil was open-mouthed. Ruth laughed. The rest of the room gasped.
Mason Winslow, long and bald, was worrying over the question of How to
Receive Aviators at Tea.

And Carl was shy as a small boy caught stealing the jam.

CHAPTER XXX

At home, early that evening, Carl's doctor-landlord gave him the
message that a Miss Gertrude Cowles had called him up, but had
declined to leave a number. The landlord's look indicated that it was
no fault of his if Carl had friends who were such fools that they
didn't leave their numbers. Carl got even with him by going out to the
corner drug-store to telephone Gertie, instead of giving him a chance
to listen.

"Hello?" said Gertie over the telephone. "Oh, hello, Carl; I just
called up to tell you Adelaide is going to be here this evening, and I
thought perhaps you might like to come up if you haven't anything
better to do."

Carl did have something better to do. He might have used the whole
evening in being psychological about Ruth and Phil Dunleavy and
English-basement houses with cream-colored drawing-rooms. But he went
up to Gertie's.

They were all there--Gertie and Adela