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206 can't bother to order. And two cocktails," he added, as an afterthought.

Martha stared after the disappearing manservant disparagingly.

"Some style," she muttered. "A manservant, eh? Don't know as I ever saw one before off the stage."

"Don't be silly," he remonstrated. "He has four other flats to look after besides mine. It's the way one lives, nowadays, cheaper than ordinary hotels or rooms. Take off your coat."

She obeyed him, depositing it carefully in a safe place. Then she strolled around the room, finding pictures little to her taste, and finally threw herself into an easy-chair.

"Are we going to work before we eat?" she asked.

"No, afterwards," he told her. "Have a cigarette?"

She held it between her fingers but declined a match.

"I'll wait for the cocktails," she decided. "Now listen here, Mr. Ware, there's a word or two I'd like to say to you."

"Go ahead," he invited listlessly.

"You men," she continued, looking him squarely in the face, "think a lot too much of yourselves. You think so much of yourselves that as often as not you've no time to think of other folk. A month or so ago who were you? You were hiding in a cheap tenement house, scared out of your wits, dressed pretty near as shabbily as I was, with a detective on your track, and with no idea of what you were going to do for a living. And now look at you. Who's done it all?"