the mat, his jaw loose, and his eyebrows
propped up like Eddie Foy's when he wears his salary face.

"Hit's most hunnacountable, sir," says he.

"Time out!" says I, blockin' the Boss's pet upper cut. "Mister 'Ankins
seems to have something on the place where his mind ought to be."

"Hankins," says the Boss, putting down his guard reluctant, "haven't I
told you never to----"

"Yes, sir; yes, sir," says Mister 'Ankins, "but there's that houtrageous
thing fawst to the door and, Lor' 'elp me, sir, Hi cawnt pull it hoff."

The Boss he looks at me, and I looks at the Boss, and then we both looks
at Mister 'Ankins. Seein' as how he couldn't reveal much with that
cheese pie face of his, we goes and takes a look at the door. It was
the outside one, just as you gets off the elevator.

And there _was_ something there, too; the dizziest kind of a visitin'
card that was ever handed out, I suspicion, in those particular swell
chambers for single gents. It was a cuff, just a plain, every day wrist
chafer, pinned up with the wickedest little blood letter that ever came
off the knife rack. Half an inch of the blade stuck through the panel,
so the one who put it there must have meant that it shouldn't blow away.
The Boss jerks it loose, sizes it up a minute, and says:

"Stiletto, eh? Made in Firenze--that's Florence. Shorty, have you any
friends from abroad that are in the habit of leaving their cutlery
around promiscuous?"

"I know folks as far west as Hoboken, if that's what you mean," says I,
"but there ain't none of them in the meat business."

Well, we takes the thing inside under the bunch light and has another
squint.

"Here's writin' in red ink," says I, and holds up the cuff.

"Read it," says the Boss.

"I could play it better on a flute," says I. "You try."

We didn't have to try hard. The minute he skinned his eye over that his
jaw goes loose like he'd stopped a body wallop with his short ribs.

"It's Tuscan," says he, "and it means that someone's in trouble and
wants help."

"Do they take this for police headquarters, or a Charity Organization?"
says I. "Looks to me like a new kind of wireless from the wash lady. Why
don't you pay her?"

"That's one of my cuffs," says the Boss.

"It's too well ventilated to get into the bag again," says I.

"Shorty," says he, lettin' my Joe-Weber go over his shoulder, "do you
know where I saw that cuff last? It was in North Italy!"

Then he figured out by the queer laun