lockade at
Forty-second Street, and who had invited her from her motor across the
crupper of a traffic-policeman's horse.

CHAPTER XVIII

BON CHIEN

The chronology of that last dark and bitter week in November might have
been written "necrology."

On Monday Colonel Mallett died about sundown; on Wednesday the Hon. John
D. Ellis, while examining an automatic revolver in his bath-room, met
with one of those unfortunate and fatal accidents which sometimes happen
in times of great financial depression.

Thursday Amos Flack carelessly disappeared, leaving no address; and on
the last day of the week Emanuel Klawber politely excused himself to a
group of very solemn gentlemen who had been assisting him in the
well-known and popular game of "Hunt the Books"; and, stepping outside
the door of the director's office, carefully destroyed what little life
had not already been scared out of his three-hundred-pound person.

It had been raining all day; Dysart had not felt very well, and
Klawber's unpleasant performance made him ill. He stood in the rain
watching the ambulance arriving at a gallop, then, sickened, turned away
through the dark and dripping crowds, crossed the street, and, lowering
his head against the storm, drove both gloved hands deep into the
pockets of his fashionably cut rain-coat, and started for home.

It mattered nothing to him that several hard-working newspaper men might
desire to secure his version of Mr. Klawber's taking off, or of his
explanation for it or his sensations concerning it. It mattered nothing
to him that the afternoon papers reported the arrest of James Skelton,
or that Max Moebus had inadvertently, and no doubt in a moment of
intense abstraction, taken a steamer for Europe and the books of the
Shoshone Bank.

These matters, now seemed a great way off--too unreal to be of personal
moment. He was feeling sick; that occupied his mind. Also the slush on
the sidewalk had wet through his shoes, which probably was not good for
his cough.

It was scarcely two in the afternoon, yet there remained so little
daylight that the electricity burned in the shops along Fifth Avenue.
Through a smutty, grayish gloom, rain drove densely; his hat and
waterproof coat were heavy with it, the bottoms of his trousers soaked.

Passing the Patroons Club it occurred to him that hot whiskey might
extinguish his cough. The liveried servants at the door, in the
cloak-room--the page who took his order, t