Cosmopolis
shoes left outside bedroom doors are not cleaned."

"Then I think the Cosmopolis is a bally rotten hotel!"

Mr. Brewster's compact frame quivered. The unforgivable insult had been
offered. Question the legitimacy of Mr. Brewster's parentage, knock Mr.
Brewster down and walk on his face with spiked shoes, and you did not
irremediably close all avenues to a peaceful settlement. But make a
remark like that about his hotel, and war was definitely declared.

"In that case," he said, stiffening, "I must ask you to give up your
room."

"I'm going to give it up! I wouldn't stay in the bally place another
minute."

Mr. Brewster walked away, and Archie charged round to the cashier's
desk to get his bill. It had been his intention in any case, though for
dramatic purposes he concealed it from his adversary, to leave the hotel
that morning. One of the letters of introduction which he had brought
over from England had resulted in an invitation from a Mrs. van Tuyl to
her house-party at Miami, and he had decided to go there at once.

"Well," mused Archie, on his way to the station, "one thing's certain.
I'll never set foot in THAT bally place again!"

But nothing in this world is certain.

CHAPTER II. A SHOCK FOR MR. BREWSTER

Mr. Daniel Brewster sat in his luxurious suite at the Cosmopolis,
smoking one of his admirable cigars and chatting with his old friend,
Professor Binstead. A stranger who had only encountered Mr. Brewster in
the lobby of the hotel would have been surprised at the appearance of
his sitting-room, for it had none of the rugged simplicity which was the
keynote of its owner's personal appearance. Daniel Brewster was a man
with a hobby. He was what Parker, his valet, termed a connoozer. His
educated taste in Art was one of the things which went to make the
Cosmopolis different from and superior to other New York hotels. He had
personally selected the tapestries in the dining-room and the various
paintings throughout the building. And in his private capacity he was an
enthusiastic collector of things which Professor Binstead, whose
tastes lay in the same direction, would have stolen without a twinge of
conscience if he could have got the chance.

The professor, a small man of middle age who wore tortoiseshell-rimmed
spectacles, flitted covetously about the room, inspecting its treasures
with a glistening eye. In a corner, Parker, a grave, lean individual,
bent over the chafing-dish, in