In a minute or so there was a click-click on the stairs, I gets a whiff
of l'Issoir Danube, and in comes a veiled lady. She was a brandied
peach; from the outside lines, anyway. Them clothes of hers couldn't
have left Paris more'n a month before, and they clung to her like a wet
undershirt to a fat man. And if you had any doubts as to whether or no
she had the goods, all you had to do was to squint at the big amethyst
in the handle of the gold lorgnette she wore around her neck. For a
Felix-Tiffany combination, she was it. You've seen women of that
kind--reg'lar walkin' expense accounts.

"So you are Shorty McCabe, are you?" says she, givin' me a customs
inspector look-over, and kind of sniffin'.

"Sorry I don't suit," says I.

"How odd!" says she. "I must make a note of that."

"Help yourself," says I. "Is there anything else?"

"Is it true," says she, "that you have bought The Toreador?"

"Who's been givin' you that?" says I, prickin' up my ears.

"Mr. Ogden," says she.

"He's an authority," says I, "and what he says along that line I don't
dispute."

"Then you _have_ bought it?" says she. "How exasperating! I was going
to get Mr. Ogden to let me have The Toreador this week."

"The whole of it?" says I.

"Why, of course," says she.

"Gee!" thinks I. "It can't be an apartment house, then. Maybe it's an
oil paintin', or a parlor car."

"But there!" she goes on. "I suppose you only bought it as a
speculation. Now what is your price for next week?"

Say, for the love of Pete, I couldn't tell what it was gave me a grouch.
Maybe it was only the off-hand way she threw it out, or the snippy
chin-toss that goes with it. But I felt like I'd been stroked with a
piece of sand paper.

"It's too bad," says I, "but you've made a wrong guess. I'm usin' The
Toreador next week myself."

"_You!_" says she, and through the gauze curtain I could see her hump
her eyebrows.

That finished the job. Even if The Toreador turned out to be a new opera
house or a tourin' balloon, I was goin' to keep it busy for the next
seven days.

"Why not me?" I says.

"All alone?" says she.

Well, I didn't know where it would land me, but I wa'n't goin' to have
her tag me for a solitaire spender.

"Not much," says I. "I was just makin' up my list. How do you spell Mrs.
Twombley-Crane's last name--with a k?"

"Really!" says she. "Do you mean to say that _she_ is to be one of your
guests? Then you must be going just where I'd p