brick wall that
shut the Dalton back yard from the passing throng. There was a little
electric push beside it, and Wilkins, having laid a finger on it, waited
serenely.

Offhand, it seemed to him, he had saved the day for Anthony Fry. A
smaller, weaker man must have passed up the job of carrying out the
trunk single-handed. Yes, he had saved the day and, also offhand, the
saving should be worth about twenty dollars when he returned to Anthony
and reported. Or possibly, considering the really horrible features of
the case as Wilkins understood them, even fifty dollars.

That was not too much. In fact, the more he thought of it, the more
Wilkins felt that his return would be marked by the sight of a crisp
yellow note from Anthony's prim, well-stocked wallet. Thirty-two of this
should go into the black-and-white pin-checked suit he had been
considering enviously in a Broadway window for nearly a month; ten more
should go into Wilkins's savings-bank account, which was quite a tidy
affair; and he thought that the other eight might as well be sent to his
nephew, who was working his way through a veterinary college in Indiana.

And here the houseman opened the door and looked at Wilkins; and Wilkins
picking up his trunk, stepped through and into the back yard, and then,
the door of the basement laundry being open, into the laundry itself.

Only the under-laundress was present, which caused him to stiffen as he
said coldly:

"For Felice!"

"The--the poor young lady's maid!" said the laundress, with a sudden
snivel.

"I'll take it to her room," Wilkins said. "Where will that be, and where
will I find the young woman herself?"

The under-laundress dried her eyes on one corner of her apron.

"I dunno about Felice," she said uncertainly. "Mebbe Mr. Bates--oh, here
comes Mr. Bates now."

Round, red, highly perturbed, the Dalton butler bustled into the laundry
and looked Wilkins up and down.

"Trunk for the master?" he asked crisply.

"For Felice, the young lady's maid, as I understand," Wilkins said
quietly. "Where shall I find her? It's for herself."

His calm and superior smile warned Bates not to question an affair that
could not possibly concern him--yet the warning missed Bates somehow. He
looked sharply at Wilkins and laughed.

"You'll not find her here!" said he.

"I mean Felice, the maid of----"

"I know the one you mean," Bates said briefly. "She's not here and
she'll not be here again! She's been dism