unch. Why
not see just how much of a bluff this was about Cousin Abie? So I slips
around by the cigar stand, steps behind a pillar, and keeps him in
range. Three or four minutes I watched Izzy waitin' at the elevator
exit, without seein' him give anyone the fraternal grip. Then he seems
to quit. He drifts back towards the Arcade with the lunch crowd, and I
was about to turn away when I lamps him bein' slipped a piece of paper
by a short, squatty-built guy who brushes by him casual. Izzy gathers it
in with never a word and strolls over to the 'phone booths, where he
lets on to be huntin' a number in the directory. All he does there,
though, is spread out that paper, read it through hasty, and then tear
it up and chuck it in the waste basket.

"Huh!" says I, seein' Izzy scuttle off towards Broadway. "Looks like
there was a plot to the piece. I wonder?"

And just for the fun of the thing I collected them twenty-eight pieces
of yellow paper, carried 'em over to my lunch place, and spent the best
part of my noon-hour piecin' 'em together. What I got was this,
scribbled in lead pencil:

Grebel out. Larkin melding. Teg morf rednu.

"Whiffo!" thinks I. "What kind of a Peruvian dialect is this?"

Course the names was plain enough. Everybody knows Grebel and Larkin,
and that they're the big wheezes in that Philly crowd. But what then?
Had Grebel gone out to lunch? And was Larkin playin' penuchle?
Thrillin', if true. Then comes this "Teg morf rednu" stuff. Was that
Russian, or Chinese?

"Heiney," says I, callin' the dough-faced food juggler. "Heiney," I
repeats solemn, "Teg morf rednu."

Not a smile from Heiney. He grabs the bill of fare and begins to hunt
through the cheese list panicky.

"Never mind," says I, "you won't find it there. But here's another: What
do you do when you meld a hundred aces, say?"

A look of almost human intelligence flickers into Heiney's face.
"_Ach!_" says he. "By the table you pud 'em--so!"

"Thanks, Heiney," says I. "That helps a little."

So Larkin was chuckin' something on the table, was he! But this other
dope, "Teg morf rednu?" Say, I'd come back to that after every bite. I
wrote it out on an envelope, tried runnin' it together and splittin' it
up diff'rent, and turned it upside down. Then in a flash I got it.

When Mr. Robert sails in from the club I was waitin' for him. He'd heard
a rumor that Grebel was to retire soon. Also he'd met young Larkin in
the billiard room, and found t