llustration]

X

THE LID OFF

_An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive_

Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.

For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then,
as though arousing from a bad dream:

"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is
bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and--and then what?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that
ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl--that is the thing
which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."

His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.

"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am
I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and
let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed
asleep and the whole thing is off."

Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.

"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on
alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things
up with the Carringtons, do you?"

"Brown, _do_ you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of
you? _Do_ you?"

"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever
before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"

"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't
suppose _she_ has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"

"Anything to do with it? How?"

"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that
this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, _might_ be a--a--one
of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and
get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes
and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."

He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.

"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself
into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."

He waited, but Brown made no reply.

"Oh, very well," he said, coldly. "I'll take a cab back to the boat."

No observation from Brown.

"So, _good_-by, old fellow"--with some emotion.

"Good-by," said Beekman Brown, absently.

In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left
the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of
thought which tantalized him, mocked h