Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/476

 Cries of "Hear, hear!" interrupted him, and after they were stilled Brigham went on.

"The event is now a piece of the history of the Pi Rho Nu; but I'll briefly state the facts. Two years ago I was married."

"How delightful to be married!" the crowd began to sing.

"And it was my fond intention to pass my honeymoon in an automobile. In fact, it was begun all right, and I'd have been safe if I had contented myself with driving only daytimes. But on my very first evening—we were married at noon—I was held up by a band of desperadoes on the road from Albany to Troy. I should have been able to take care of all of them with my fists; but I could never look a gun in the muzzle calmly. The result was that I was tied up with Mrs. Brigham and carried into a lonely house. She was put into one room, and I into another. Gentlemen, I ask you to picture my feelings that night, as I heard scream after scream coming from the room adjacent for hours unending. It was only because I knew my bride had been carried safely away to the nearest hotel that I was able to sleep at all. So, gentlemen, I demand the penalty of—"

"Death!" shouted the rest in a chorus of laughter, after which there were calls for "Doc Hanbury." Hanbury was invisible from Astro's peep-hole, but his voice rose clearly.

"I also was married," he began, and was also interrupted by the popular chorus; "but under painful and embarrassing circumstances," he continued. "The afternoon of the wedding my flat was entered and I was garroted by two masked men. I was tied to a