his eyes stickin' out like a couple of peeled
onions, an' a grey parrot hangin' to one ear.

"What's the trouble?" says Purdy.

"Br-r-r!" says Valentine, like a clogged steam whistle. "Where's the
nearest 'orspital? I'm a sick man! Br-r-r-r!"

With that he starts down the stairs, takin' three at a time, bolts
through the front door, and makes a dash down the street, yellin' like
a kid when a fire breaks out.

Purdy and me didn't have any time to watch how far he went, for Aunt
Isabella had keeled over on the rug, the maid was havin' a fit in the
parlour, and the butler was fannin' himself with the card tray. We had
to use up all the alcohol and smellin' salts in the house before we
could bring the bunch around. When aunty's so she can hold her head up
and open her eyes, she looks about cautious, and whispers:

"Has--has he gone, Purdy, dear?"

Purdy says he has.

"Then," she says to me, "bolt that door, and never mention his name to
me again."

Everything's lovely now. Purdy's back to the downy, and Bombazoula's
wiped off the map for good.

And say! If you're lookin' for a set of jungle scenery and stuffed
snakes, I know where you can get a job lot for the askin'.

XIV

A HUNCH FOR LANGDON

Say, the longer I knocks around and the more kinds I meet, the slower I
am about sizin' folks up on a first view. I used to think there was
only two classes, them that was my kind and them that wa'n't; but I've
got over that. I don't try to grade 'em up any more; for they're built
on so many different plans it would take a card index the size of a
flat buildin' to keep 'em all on file. All I can make out is that
there's some good points about the worst of 'em, and some of the best
has their streak of yellow.

Anyway, I'm glad I ain't called on to write a tag for Langdon. First
news I had of him was what I took for inside information, bein' as it
was handed me by his maw. When I gets the note askin' me to call up in
the 70's between five and six I don't know whether it's a bid to a tea
fest or a bait for an auction. The stationery was real swell, though,
and the writin' was this up and down kind that goes with the gilt
crest. What I could puzzle out of the name, though, wa'n't familiar.
But I follows up the invite and takes a chance.

So about five-thirty I'm standin' outside the glass doors pushin' the
bell. A butler with boiled egg eyes looks me over real frosty from
behind the lace curtains;