Page:The City of Masks (1918).djvu/126

114 "What's that?" roared the aggrieved one.

"Don't shout like that! People are beginning to stare at—"

"Thank the Lord I had sense enough to engage a private detective and not to call in the police, as you suggested. That would have been the limit. I've a notion to hunt that boy up and tell him the whole rotten story."

"Go ahead and do it," invited Stuyvie, his eyes narrowing, "and I will do a little telling myself. There is one thing in particular your wife would give her ears to hear about you. It will simplify matters tremendously. Go ahead and tell him."

Mr. Carpenter appeared to be reflecting. His inflamed sullen eyes assumed a misty, faraway expression.

"For two cents I'd tell you to go to hell," he said, after a long silence.

"Boy!" called Mr. Smith-Parvis loftily, signalling a passing bell-hop. "Go and get me some small change for this nickel."

Mr. Carpenter's face relaxed into a sickly grin. "Can't you take a joke?" he inquired peevishly.

"Never mind," said Stuyvie to the bell-boy. "I sha'n't need it after all."

"What I'd like to know," mused Mr. Carpenter, later on, "is how in thunder the New York police department got wind of all this."

Mr. Smith-Parvis, Junior, wiped a fine moisture from his brow, and said: "I forgot to mention that I had to give that plain-clothes man fifty dollars to keep him from going to old man Cricklewick with the whole