help, I had to stick around until it was
all over. So I was there when she staggers towards Tessie and leans
heavy on her shoulder.

"They--they've all gone, haven't they?" she asks. "I--I'm so tired
and--and so happy! It has been the most successful Wednesday I've had
for some time, hasn't it?"

"Has it?" says Tessie. "Why, Auntie, this was a knockout, one of the
kind you read about. Honest, even when I was fittin' corsets for the
carriage trade, I never got so close to such a spiffy bunch. But we
had the goods to hand 'em--caviar sandwiches, rum for the tea, fizz in
the punch. Believe me, the Astors ain't got anything on us now."

Mrs. Bagstock don't seem to be listenin'. She's just gazin' around
smilin' vague.

"Music, wasn't there?" she goes on. "I had really forgotten having
ordered an orchestra. And such lovely roses! Let me take one more
look at the dear old drawing-room. Yes, it was a success, I'm sure.
Now you may ring for my maid. I--I think I will retire."

As they brushed past me on their way to the stairs I took a chance on
whisperin' to Tessie.

"Hadn't you better ring up the doc?" I suggests.

"Maybe I had," says she.

Perhaps she did, too. I expect it didn't matter much. Only I was
peeved at that boob society editor, after all the trouble I took to get
the story shaped up by one of my newspaper friends and handed in early,
to have it held over for the Sunday edition. That's how it happens the
paper I takes in to Mr. Ellins Monday mornin' has these two items on
the same page--I'd marked 'em both. One was a flossy account of Mrs.
Theodore Bayly Bagstock's third Wednesday; the other was six lines in
the obituary column. Old Hickory reads 'em, and then sits for a
minute, gazin' over the top of his desk at nothing at all.

"Poor Natalie!" says be, after a while. "So that was her last."

"Nobody ever finished any happier, though," says I.

"Hah!" says he. "Then perhaps that balances the account."

Saying which, he clips the end off of a fat black perfecto, lights up,
and tackles the mornin' mail.

CHAPTER VII

TORCHY FOLLOWS A HUNCH

It was a case of local thunderstorms on the seventeenth floor of the
Corrugated Trust Building. To state it simpler, Old Hickory was
runnin' a neck temperature of 210 or so, and there was no tellin' what
minute he might fuse a collar-button or blow out a cylinder-head.

The trouble seemed to be that one of his pet schemes was in dange