in a broken taxicab, and that all the buildings
were pharmacies and numbered eleven twenty-two.

CHAPTER III

NINETY-EIGHT PEARLS

After such a night I slept late. Edith still kept her honeymoon promise
of no breakfast hour and she had gone out with Fred when I came
down-stairs.

I have a great admiration for Edith, for her tolerance with my uncertain
hours, for her cheery breakfast-room, and the smiling good nature of the
servants she engages. I have a theory that, show me a sullen servant and
I will show you a sullen mistress, although Edith herself disclaims all
responsibility and lays credit for the smile with which Katie brings in
my eggs and coffee, to largess on my part. Be that as it may, Katie is a
smiling and personable young woman, and I am convinced that had she
picked up the alligator on the back-stairs and lost part of the end of
her thumb, she would have told Edith that she cut it off with the bread
knife, and thus have saved to us Bessie the Beloved and her fascinating
trick of taking the end of her tail in her mouth and spinning.

On that particular morning, Katie also brought me a letter, and I
recognized the cramped and rather uncertain writing of Miss Jane
Maitland.

"DEAR MR. KNOX:

"Sister Letitia wishes me to ask you if you can dine with us
to-night, informally. She has changed her mind in regard to the
Colored Orphans' Home, and would like to consult you about it.

"Very truly yours,

"SUSAN JANE MAITLAND."

It was a very commonplace note: I had had one like it after every
board-meeting of the orphans' home, Miss Maitland being on principle an
aggressive minority. Also, having considerable mind, changing it became
almost as ponderous an operation as moving a barn, although not nearly
so stable.

(Fred accuses me here of a very bad pun, and reminds me, quite
undeservedly, that the pun is the lowest form of humor.)

I came across Miss Jane's letter the other day, when I was gathering
the material for this narrative, and I sat for a time with it in my hand
thinking over again the chain of events in which it had been the first
link, a series of strange happenings that began with my acceptance of
the invitation, and that led through ways as dark and tricks as vain as
Bret Harte's Heathen Chinee ever dreamed of, to the final scene at the
White Cat. With the letter I had filed away a half dozen articles and I
ranged them all on the desk in front of me: