The inspector unlocked the door and entered the office. It was hot with
the close heat of a room that has been locked up overnight. Just inside
the door the inspector stopped and sniffed suspiciously. No express
office should have smelled as that one smelled.

"Wan minute!" cried Flannery, pulling away from the inspector's grasp.
"Wan minute! I have a hint there be a long-haired cat near by. Wance ye
have been near wan av thim ye can niver mistake thim Angora cats. I
w'u'd know th' symbol av thim with me eyes shut. 'T is a signal ye c'u'd
tell in th' darrk."

He hurried to the back door. The cat was there, all right. A little
deader than it had been, perhaps, but it was there on the step, long
hair and all.

"Hurroo!" shouted Flannery. "An' me thinkin' I w'u'd niver see it again!
Can ye smell th' proof, Misther Inspictor? 'T is good sthrong proof fer
ye! An' I sh'u'd have knowed it all th' while. Angora cats I know not be
th' spicial species, an' th' long-haired breed av cats is not wan I have
associated with much, an' cats so dang dead as this wan I do not kape
close in touch with, ginerally, but all cats have a grrand resimblance
t' cats. Look at this wan, now. 'T is just like a cat. It kem back."

II

THE THREE HUNDRED

There was a certain big sort of masterfulness about the president of the
Interurban Express Company that came partly from his natural force of
character and partly from the position he occupied as head of the
company, and when he said a thing must be done he meant it. In his own
limited field he was a bigger man than the President of the United
States, for he was not only the chief executive of the Interurban
Express Company, but he made its laws as well. He could issue general
orders turning the whole operation of the road other end to as easily as
a national executive could order the use of, let us say, a simplified
form of spelling in a few departments of the Government. He sat in the
head office of the company at Franklin and said "Let this be done," and,
in every suburban town where the Interurban had offices, that thing was
done, under pain of dismissal from the service of the company. Even
Flannery, who was born rebellious, would scratch his red hair in the
Westcoate office and grumble and then follow orders.

Old Simon Gratz came into the president's office one morning and sat
himself into a vacant chair with a grunt of disapprobation, the same
grunt of disapprobation that had