Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/340

 "What do you think of that for a fairy tale? But that's not half. This baboon—"

"You said gorilla before."

"Well, gorilla, then; it doesn't matter in a nightmare like that. He held a china soup-plate in one hand, and in the other a black bag, a cloth bag. By Jove! that much I can swear to myself! I've seen it. Well, the chimpanzee thing—"

"I thought it was a baboon."

"How the blazes do I know? I wasn't there, and if I had been I shouldn't have known the difference. It may have been a monkey or an anthropoid ape, for all I know. Anyway, it set the soup-plate down on the dressing-table, and tipped its hat and said, 'Miss Ethel Shaw, I believe?

"Ah!" said Astro. "Now we're getting warmer!"

"Warm! He's made it hot enough for poor Ethel, I can tell you! Then, without waiting for an answer,—Ethel was out of her wits by this time, though she half suspected a practical joke, too,—the orang-utan—"

"Or monkey," Astro interjected, smiling.

"Yes, or gibbon perhaps—held out the bag to her. It said, 'From your friends and well-wishers in the lunatic asylum.' Then it did a graceful two-step over to the window, recited '$$x^2$$ plus 2xy plus $$y^2$$,' and vanished on to the balcony. My sister was so frightened that she dropped the bag, and—bing!—out dropped Mrs. Landor's pearls and brooches and rings and things all over the floor. Now I ask you what kind of a story is that to get all about town?" He stared at the Master of Mysteries gloomily.

"Well, it certainly would add to the gaiety of nations," Astro remarked quietly; "but it looks like a