inted the
impressive finger of Fate at Crime, "_That thing that I have to do is
about done!_" referred to Doctor Athelstone's silly negotiations. The
letter must have been from him. Now, who could have known that a grown
man would indulge in such fool monkey-business as writing love-letters
in hieroglyphics to his own wife?... And that blame black mummy. Back to
darkest Africa for his! If any one ever said mummy to him there'd be
murder done, all right. Oh, for the happy ignorance of those days when
he knew nothing about Egypt except that it was the place from which the
cigarettes came!... Brander, no doubt, had gone out to send a cablegram
of congratulation to Doctor Athelstone, and while he was away the woman
had started in to repair a crack in that precious old Amosis of hers.
Perhaps the moths had got into him! "And she thought that I was crazy,
and was stringing me along, waiting till the Nile Duck got back,"
muttered the reporter, stopping short in his agony. "Oh! you're guessing
good now, Simp., all right, because there's only one way to guess." And
as he started along again he concluded: "Damn it! even the cat came
back!"

If there was one thing in all the world that Simpkins did not want to
see it was a copy of the _Banner_ with that awful story of his
staring out at him from the first page, headed and played up with all
the brutal skill in handling type of which Naylor was a master; but he
felt himself drawn irresistibly to the Grand Central Station, where the
Boston papers would first be put on sale.

Half an hour to wait. Gad! He could never go back and face Naylor!...
Libel! Why, there wasn't money enough in the world to pay the damages
the Athelstones would get against the paper. He'd take just one look at
it and then catch the first train for Chicago. Perhaps he could get a
job there digging sewers, or selling ribbons in Fields', or start a
school of journalism. Any old thing, if they didn't nab him and put him
in Bloomingdale before he could get away.... He made for the street
again. He wouldn't look at the _Banner_. What malignant little
devils the types were when they shouted your sins, not another fellow's,
from the front page, or whispered them in a stage aside from some little
paragraph in an obscure corner of the paper--a corner that the whole
world looked into. Hell, he'd get out of the filthy business! Think of
the light and frolicsome way in which he'd written up domestic scandals,
the enterta