Page:Wilson - Bunker bean.djvu/299

Rh "One," said Bean stubbornly.

The attendant was again busy.

"Better be careful," warned the waster. "Those things come to you and steal their hands into yours like little innocent children, but".

They drank. Bean felt himself bold for any situation. He would carry the farce through if they insisted on it. He no longer planned to elude the waster. They were in the speeding car.

"Fumed eggs!" murmured Bean approvingly.

They were inside that desolated house, the door closed fatefully upon them. The waster disappeared, Bean heard the flapper's voice calling cheerily to him from above stairs. A footman disapprovingly ushered him to the midst of an immense drawing-room of most ponderous grandeur, and left him to perish.

He sat on the edge of a chair and tried to clear his mind about this enormity he was going to commit. False pretenses! Nothing less. He was not a king at all. He was Bunker Bean, a stenographer, whose father drove an express wagon, and whose grandmother had smoked a pipe. He had never been anything more, nor ever would be. And here he was pretending.

No wonder Julia had fussed! She had seen through him. How they would all scorn him if they knew what that scoundrelly Balthasar knew. He'd made money, but he had no right to it. He had made that under false pretenses, too, believing money would come naturally to a king. Would they find him out at once, or not until it was too