up a bit."

"Quite so," he assented.

He left her at the doors of the Churchill-Fontenay, saying he would idle
about and watch for the others in case they should arrive ahead of time.

Ten minutes later, while she was still trying to make a choice between
three frocks, her telephone rang. She answered the ring; it was Mr.
Murrill, who was at the other end of the line. He was distressed to have
to tell her that word had just reached him that on the way down from
Philadelphia General Dunlap had been taken suddenly ill--an attack of
acute indigestion, perhaps, or possibly a touch of the sun--and the
motor trip had been halted at a small town on the mainland fifteen miles
back of Gulf Stream City. He was starting immediately for the town in a
car with a physician. He trusted the general's indisposition was not
really serious but of course the party would be called off; and the
invalid would return to Philadelphia as soon as he felt well enough to
move. He was awfully sorry--Mr. Murrill was--terribly put out, and all
that sort of thing; hoped that another opportunity might be vouchsafed
him of meeting Mrs. Propbridge; he had enjoyed tremendously meeting her
under these unconventional circumstances; and now he must go.

It was not to be denied that young Mrs. Propbridge felt distinctly
disappointed. The start of the little adventure had had promise in it.
She had forecast all manner of agreeable contingencies as the probable
outcome.

For some reason, though, or perhaps for no definite reason at all, she
said nothing to her husband, on his return from Toledo, of her encounter
with the agreeable Mr. Murrill. Anyway, he arrived in no very affable
state of mind. As a matter of fact he was most terrifically out of
temper. Somebody or other--presumably some ass of a practical joker, he
figured, or possibly a person with a grudge against him who had curious
methods of taking vengeance--had lured him into taking a hot, dusty,
tiresome and entirely useless trip. There was no business conference on
out at Toledo; no need for his presence there. If he could lay hands on
the idiot who had sent him that forged telegram--well, the angered Mr.
Propbridge indicated with a gesture of a large and knobby fist what he
would do to the aforesaid idiot.

The next time Mr. Propbridge was haled to the broiling Corn Belt he made
very sure that the warrant was genuine. One of these wild-goose chases a
summer was quite enough for a man with a si