or heaven's sake, save my reputation!"

"Get who?" I demanded, for I saw it was her room key.

"I have been coming here for ten years," she groaned, out of the
comfort, "and now, to be bandied about by the cold breath of scandal!"

I shook her by the shoulder

"The cold breath you are raving about is four degrees below zero. If you
can't tell me what's the matter I'm going back to bed and cover my
feet."

She got up at that and stood swaying, with her nightgown flapping around
her like a tent.

"I have locked a man in my room!" she declared in a terrible voice, and
collapsed into the middle of the bed.

Well, I leaned over and tried to tell her she'd made a mistake. The more
I looked at her, with her hair standing straight out over her head, and
her cambric nightgown with a high collar and long sleeves, and the hump
on her nose where her brother Willie had hit her in childhood with a
baseball bat, the surer I was that somebody had made a mistake--likely
the man.

Now there's two ways to handle a situation like that: one of them is to
rouse the house--and many a good sanatorium has been hurt by a scandal
and killed by a divorce; the other way is to take one strong man who can
hold his tongue, find the guilty person, and send him a fake telegram
the next morning that his mother is sick. I've done that more than once.

I sat down on the side of the bed and put on my slippers.

"What did he look like?" I asked. "Could you see him?"

She uncovered one eye.

"Not--not distinctly," she said. "I--think he was large, and--and rather
handsome. That beast of a dog must have got in my room and was asleep
under the bed, for it wakened me by snarling."

There was nothing in that to make me nervous, but it did. As I put on my
kimono I was thinking pretty hard.

I could not waken Mr. Pierce by knocking, so I went in and shook him.
He was sound asleep, with his arms over his head, and when I caught his
shoulder he just took my hand and, turning over, tucked it under his
cheek and went asleep again.

"Mr. Pierce! Mr. Pierce!" He wakened a little at that, but not enough
to open his eyes. He seemed to know that the hand wasn't his, however,
for he kissed it. And with that I slapped him and he wakened. He lay
there blinking at my candle and then he yawned.

"Musht have been ashleep!" he said, and turned over on his other side
and shut his eyes.

It was two or three minutes at least before I had him sitting on the
side