Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/140

128 ("Just five minutes?")

"Not one second!" But the receiver half way back to the hook, was replaced at his ear.

("Cost yuh something if yuh don't.")

"You threaten? Why, that's blackmail!—I'll call the police."

("Wouldn't you like to know the name an' number?") This sally being accompanied by laughter unmistakably feminine but suggesting bronze rather than any precious metal.

Now it is maddening to be jeered at by someone who stands incog. at the other end of a wire, and the old gentleman fumed.

"I can find it, young woman, and when I do, you'll be run out of town."

("All right, dearie, but lissen,—before you do, just take your bunch of keys an' unlock that closet an' give the little ol' skeleton the O. O. If he looks good to you, all right, for we're goin to 'xhibit him on Preble Street, sure as you're bald an got false teeth an' one foot in the grave.")

The only reply now was the receiver's click, and as Master Philip returned to his grooming, suddenly beset was he with impulses for reform, quite as elusive as that collar-button.

Now these implements of torture were troubling many good citizens of the town that night, but that such should disturb Master Phil, the dapper, the immaculate, was indeed surprising. However, it takes but a trifle to suggest a horror. And now somehow, by a strange association, as he