eported further particulars as she ministered
to the creature-comforts of the traveling gentlemen dining alone among
the funeral-baked meats. So interested and excited did these gentlemen
become that they determined to interview, or at least to see, their
mysterious fellow guests.

When their elaborate supper had reached its apotheosis of stewed prunes
and blue-boiled rice, Hawley and Mead had gone out for a meditative and
tobacco-shrouded stroll. They passed through the hall and inspiration
awoke in Jimmie.

"By gum," said he, "I know them now. I suspicioned them from the first
by what Horace told me. But now I've got them sure. You mind that time I
was down to New York and was showed over Police Headquarters, by
professional etiquette?"

"Sure," they all agreed. It was indeed a reminiscence, the details of
which had been playing havoc with Rapidan's nerves for the past fifteen
years. They felt that they could not bear it now.

"Well," continued Jimmie, gathering his auditors close about him by the
husky whisper he now adopted, "I see them two fellers then. Mebbe 'twas
in the Rogue's Gallery and mebbe it was in the cells. I ain't worked it
down that fine yet, but I'll think and pray on it and let you know when
I get light."

When the staff and the commercial guests of the Empress Hotel were
waiting to see illumination burst through the blue-shrouded protector,
the bridal party was veering momentarily further from the normal. For
the deserted bride, alone in the desolate best sitting-room, laid her
head upon her arms and laughed and laughed. She had made one cautious
descent to the ground floor in search of diversion, and meeting Jimmie,
she found it. After a conversation strictly categorical upon his side
and widely misleading upon hers, she had gone up stairs again and halted
in the upper hall just long enough to hear Jimmie's triumphant:

"Well, we know _her_ name anyway."

"What is it?" hissed Horace, while the porter relieved himself of a quid
of tobacco so that nothing should interfere with his hearing and
attention.

"Huh!" ejaculated Jimmie, "you bin a hotel clerk two years and sold
seegars all that time (when you could) and you don't know Ruby
Mandeville when she stands before you."

A box of the "Flor de" that gifted songstress, was soon produced and
pried open, and the effulgent charms of its godmother compared with the
less effulgent, but no less charming figure which had just trailed away.

"It