Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/341

 am thanking Heaven that I'm about to go off duty, Pete Kift again slinks up to the board and this time he's got the word "panic" wrote all over his face. He's as nervous as a frightened rabbit and a bit pale and sickly looking. What a swell villain he'd be, I think, but then it's the men who always weaken, isn't it?

"Cutey," whispers Pete, "I have got to let 'at baby out of his cell upstairs, I do for a fact. He's bellerin' and meowin' and kickin' on the door and he's went to work and busted a window on me! He's jazzed around up there so much he's got the people in the adjoinin' rooms all stirred up. All the neighbors' children and the like is outside lookin' up at the windows, and you know what  ' at will lead to. I'd like to go up and cuff some brains into him, but I got to let him out, kid, or the reserves'll be here!"

Well, I'm ready to faint because the grand finale is about to break, but tell Pete to go up and unfock the door. It's twelve o'clock now and by this time Julius must be the talk of Broadway. That being the case, I'm ready to take my medicine, because naturally enough I can't let poor Pete Kift be the goat for a frame-up I planned myself. Anyways, Pete springs for the elevator and is shot up to the tenth floor like a bullet. I'm pinning on my hat when the same elevator door opens and out of it almost falls—not Charlemagne Rutledge, leading man in "The Girl from