y here.

--Certainly, I don't want to spoil everything.

--Have I an engagement? I should say I have. Just you call up Joshua
Barnes and ask for the dope on it--a whole flock of engagements
bunched into one large contract, the biggest I ever tackled.

--No, I guess it won't prevent me from meeting you. Not unless I
happen to see her on the way uptown.

--Blessed if I know her any more than you. Wish I did, but whoever she
is she's got to be pretty awful horrible nice.

--Have I been drinking? No; but you better have one ready for me. Seen
any of the chaps at the club? What's that? You gave it a wide berth.
This is beginning to sound like a detective novel or a breach of
promise case.

--You don't tell me. Really, I'd never looked at myself in that light
before. Sure, I'm stuck on myself. Head over heels in love with
myself. I'm a classy little party, I am, and you better make the best
of me while I'm here. Where am I going? Nowhere in particular. Just
going to merge my individuality, bite a chunk out of an apple and get
kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

--Now you're sure I'm piffled. No such luck. Trav--that is, Mr.
Smith--Mr. Thomas Smith! Shall I ask for Smith when I drop up at that
little marble palace of yours? No. Oh, Bateato will be there if you
happen to be delayed. How is the little son of Nippon? Oh, that's
good. Five sharp. Tata, Smitty, old chap. By Jove, he's rung off with
a curse----

CHAPTER VI.

OFFICER 666 ON PATROL.

Michael Phelan had been two years on the force and considered himself
a very fly young man. He had lost something of his romantic outline
during the six months he pounded the Third avenue pave past two
breweries and four saloons to a block, and it was at his own request,
made through his mother's second cousin, District Leader McNaught,
that he had been provided with a saloonless beat on Fifth avenue.

A certain blue-eyed, raven-haired nursemaid, who fed a tiny
millionaire with a solid gold spoon and trundled an imported
perambulator along the east walk of Central Park, may have had
something to do with Patrolman Phelan's choice of beat, but he failed
to mention the fact to his mother. He laid it all on the breweries and
the temptations they offered.

Humble as was Michael Phelan's station on the force, he was already
famous from the wooded wastes of Staten Island to the wilds of the
Bronx. Even the graven-featured chief inspector permitted himself to
smile when th