tened?"

"He listened from out there." The musician pointed to the other room.

"How long?"

"Different times," was the placid reply.

"But he was always in the other room."

"Always. And I play Egypt. Like this."

"No!" said Average Jones, as the other stretched out a hopeful hand.

"He liked it--Egypt," said the German wistfully. "He said: 'Bravo!
Encore! Bis!' Sometimes nine, sometimes ten times over I play it, the
chorus."

"And then he sent you home?"

"Then sometimes something goes 'sping-g-g-g-g!' like that in the back
room. Then he comes out and I may go home."

"Um--m," muttered Average Jones discontentedly. "When did you begin to
play in the street?"

"After a long time. He take me away to Brooklyn and tell me, 'When you
see the feet iss in the window you play hard!"'

There was a long pause. Then Average Jones asked casually:

"Did you ever notice a big easy chair here?"

"I do not notice nothing. I play my B-flat trombone."

And there his limitations were established. But the old lady had
something to add.

"It's all true that he said," she confirmed. "I could hear his racket
in the front room and Mr. Ransom working in the back and then, after the
old man was gone, Mr. Ransom sweeping up something by himself."

"Sweeping? What--er--was he--er--sweeping?"

"Glass, I think. The girl used to find little slivers of it first in one
part of the room, then in another. I raised the rent for that and for
the racket."

"The next thing," said Average Jones, "is to find out where that big
easy chair went from here. Can you help me there?"

The old lady shook her head. "All I can do is to tell you the near-by
truck men."

Canvass of the local trucking industry brought to light the conveyor of
that elegant article of furniture. It had gone, Average Jones learned,
not to the mansion of the Honorable William Linder, as he had fondly
hoped, but to an obscure address not far from the Navy Yard in Brooklyn.
To this address, having looked up and gathered in the B-flat trombonist,
Average Jones led the way. The pair lurked in the neighborhood of the
ramshackle house watching the entrance, until toward evening, as the
door opened to let out a tremulous wreck of a man, palsied with debauch,
Schlichting observed:

"That iss him. He hass been drinking again once."

Average Jones hurried the musician around the corner into concealment.
"You have been here before to meet Mr. Ransom?"

"No."

"Where di