exclaimed. "I forgot to order the confounded dinner!"

It was eight o'clock by that time, and as it took an hour at least
after telephoning the order, everybody looked blank when they heard. The
entire family, except Mr. Harbison, who had not appeared again, escorted
Jim to the telephone and hung around hungrily, suggesting new dishes
every minute. And then--he couldn't raise Central. It was fifteen
minutes before we gave up, and stood staring at one another
despairingly.

"Call out of a window, and get one of those infernal reporters to
do something useful for once," Max suggested. But he was indignantly
hushed. We would have starved first. Jim was peering into the
transmitter and knocking the receiver against his hand, like a watch
that had stopped. But nothing happened. Flannigan reported a box of
breakfast food, two lemons, and a pineapple cheese, a combination that
didn't seem to lend itself to anything.

We went back to the dining room from sheer force of habit and sat around
the table and looked at the lemonade Flannigan had made. Anne WOULD talk
about the salad her last cook had concocted, and Max told about a little
town in Connecticut where the restaurant keeper smokes a corn-cob pipe
while he cooks the most luscious fried clams in America. And Aunt Selina
related that in her family they had a recipe for chicken smothered in
cream. And then we sipped the weak lemonade and nibbled at the cheese.

"To change this gridiron martyrdom," Dallas said finally, "where's
Harbison? Still looking for his watch?"

"Watch!" Everybody said it in a different tone.

"Sure," he responded. "Says his watch was taken last night from the
studio. Better get him down to take a squint at the telephone. Likely he
can fix it."

Flannigan was beside me with the cheese. And at that moment I felt Mr.
Harbison's stolen watch slip out of my girdle, slide greasily across
my lap, and clatter to the floor. Flannigan stooped, but luckily it had
gone under the table. To have had it picked up, to have had to explain
how I got it, to see them try to ignore my picture pasted in it--oh, it
was impossible! I put my foot over it.

"Drop something?" Dallas asked perfunctorily, rising. Flannigan was
still half kneeling.

"A fork," I said, as easily as I could, and the conversation went on.
But Flannigan knew, and I knew he knew. He watched my every movement
like a hawk after that, standing just behind my chair. I dropped my
useless napkin, to