Jones," said the owner, "do you know you
haven't once disappointed me in speech or action during our short but
rather eventful acquaintance?"

"I hope you'll be able to say the same ten years from now," he returned
significantly.

She flushed a little at the implication. "What am I to do next?" she
asked.

"Do as you would ordinarily do; only don't take Peter Paul, into
the street, or you'll have a score of high-school boys trailing you.
And--this is the most important--if the dog fails to answer your call at
any time, and you can't readily find him by searching, telephone me, at
once, at my office. Good-by."

"I think you are a very staunch friend to those who need you," she said,
gravely and sweetly, giving him her hand.

She clung in his mind like a remembered fragrance, after he had gone
back to Astor Court Temple to wait. And though he plunged into an
intricate scheme of political advertising which was to launch a new
local party, her eyes and her voice haunted him. Nor had he banished
them, when, two days later, the telephone brought him her clear accents,
a little tremulous now.

"Peter Paul is gone."

"Since when?"

"Since ten this morning. The house is in an uproar."

"I'll be up in half an hour at the latest."

"Do come quickly. I'm--I'm a little frightened."

"Then you must have something to do," said Average Jones decisively.
"Have you been keeping an eye on the garden?"

"Yes."

"Go through it again, looking carefully for signs of disarranged earth.
I don't think you'll find it, but it's well to be sure. Let me in at the
basement door at half-past one. Judge Ackroyd mustn't see me."

It was a strangely misshapen presentation of the normally spick-and-span
Average Jones that gently rang the basement bell of the old house at the
specified hour. All his pockets bulged with lumpy angles. Immediately,
upon being admitted by Miss Graham herself, he proceeded to disenburden
himself of box after box, such as elastic bands come in, all exhibiting
a homogeneous peculiarity, a hole at one end thinly covered with a
gelatinous substance.

"Be very careful not to let that get broken," he instructed the
mystified girl. "In the course of an hour or so it will melt away
itself. Did you see anything suspicious in the garden?"

"No!" replied the girl. She picked up one of the boxes. "How odd!" she
cried. "Why, there's something in it that's alive!"

"Very much so. Your friends, the beetles, in fact."