Page:The Gentle Grafter (1908).djvu/146

 “‘Andy had his plan all ready, and I’ll tell you how we carried it out.

“I got a pair of blue spectacles, put on my black frock coat, rumpled my hair up and became Prof. Pickleman. I went to another hotel, registered, and sent a telegram to Scudder to come to see me at once on important art business. The elevator dumped him on me in less than an hour. He was a foggy man with a clarion voice, smelling of Connecticut wrappers and naphtha.

“‘Hello, Profess!’ he shouts. ‘How’s your conduct?’

“I rumpled my hair some more and gave him a blue glass stare.

“‘Sir,’ says I. ‘Are you Cornelius T. Scudder? Of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania?’

“‘I am,’ says he. ‘Come out and have a drink.’

“‘I have neither the time nor the desire,’ says I, ‘for such harmful and deleterious amusements. I have come from New York,’ says I, ‘on a matter of busi—on a matter of art.

“‘I learned there that you are the owner of an Egyptian ivory carving of the time of Rameses II., representing the head of Queen Isis in a lotus flower. There were only two of such carvings made. One has been lost for many years. I recently discovered 134