Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/355

 McGraw motioned to Valeska, and nodded toward Thirty-seventh Street.

"Well, I'll have to go," she said, smiling. "You'd better be careful, officer; he may be dangerous." And so saying she walked away with Shaw, who was too nearly hysterical with mirth to speak for a while. When he did, it was to say:

"Will you kindly inform Astro when you see him that I take back what I said about horoscopes and occultism? I am quite sure he will understand."

She repeated the message next day, when she and Astro found themselves alone in the studio. Astro smiled. "If they were all like John Wallington Shaw," he said, "you and I wouldn't make much of a living, little girl." Then he added irrelevantly, "I understand that the Count D'Ampleri is to sail on the Germanic next week."

"Oh. Then McGraw let him off?"

"All McGraw wanted was to get his thousand out of Mrs. Landor, and the less talk about it the better. He telephoned me this morning to say that she gave him a very lively half-hour, but paid. By the way, I wonder if Shaw told his sister Ethel how the matter was solved?"

"He said he intended to, before he went to bed."

"Then we may consider the episode closed." Astro took down a volume of Immanuel Kant. Before he began his reading he remarked casually, "It was a narrow escape for all three. I don't know exactly which one to congratulate the most."

"I'd congratulate the old lady with the white duck