y I had long ago found was the least exhausting, if one has to
stand at all. But, by Jove, the fellow was right in my face now, almost!
Devilish annoying!

"Did you hear me, you glass-eyed fool?" he barked in my ear. "You
masher! By George, _I'll_ mash you!"

And he looked at Frances again and laughed, but she was looking away off
up at the big stone castle on the Pocantico Hills behind. And I just
reveled in her glorious profile, splashed bright by the golden sunshine
reflected from the Tappan Zee opposite. Incidentally, I was trying in my
mind the three arm movements that must be made as one, and for which, to
learn, I had paid the great master, Galliard of Paris, a thousand francs
in gold.

The car began to edge away.

"All right--coming!" he yelled; and then he launched his blow. But so
rapid--instantaneous, in fact--are the famous three movements of the
great scientist, I don't remember that my eye even shifted its grip
upon the monocle. Therefore, as I came back into the same position again
as his shoulder hit the ground, I was in time to catch my darling's eye
at last just as they curved. And, by Jove, she looked amused--and
pleased.

As for the frump, she frankly and harshly laughed, and then moved up a
speed, just as a south-bound express took the station.

And I swung aboard it, back for little old New York. Didn't see what the
chauffeur did. Wasn't interested, you know, about that.

CHAPTER XV

BILLINGS' SYMPTOMS ALARM ME

"Most infernal outrage of the century, I tell you!" Billings stormed.
For an hour I had sat there in my rooms, limp and bewildered under the
tempest of his wrath. The wild and incoherent sputter over the 'phone
that Jenkins reported upon my return had sent me on a hunt for my
friend. I had found him sullenly dining alone over at the club, and as
soon as I entered he started to bolt from the room. Only through the
greatest pleading had I managed to coax him back to my chambers, hoping
I might screw out of him some explanation.

I had received it, by Jove!

Of course, I recognized it all as impossible and crazy, you know, but
when I said so to Billings his remarks were so violent, and he turned
such a dangerous apoplectic purple, dashed if I didn't renege.

"But then the old man, you know!" I protested weakly.

Billings leveled his big arm at me, mouthing wordlessly for a minute.

"That--that'll do, about that old man!" he choked at last. "Not--not
another word about