ed terribly excited.

"You are the gentleman who occupies number six?"

"Yes, sir. This is my apartment. You have come in regard to a hat?"

"Yes, sir. My name is Chittenden. Our hats got mixed up at Martin's this
evening; my fault, as usual. I am always doing something absurd, my
memory is so bad. When I discovered my mistake I was calling on the
family of a client with whom I had spent most of the afternoon. I missed
some valuable papers, legal documents. I believed as usual that I had
forgotten to take them with me. They were nowhere to be found at the
house. My client has a very mischievous son, and it seems that he
stuffed the papers behind the inside band of my hat. With them there was
a letter. I have had two very great scares. A great deal of trouble
would ensue if the papers were lost. I just telephoned that I had
located the hat." He laughed pleasantly.

Good heavens! here was a howdy-do.

"My dear Mr. Chittenden, there has been a great confusion," I faltered.
"I had your hat, but--but you have come too late."

"Too late?" he roared, or I should say, to be exact, shouted.

"Yes, sir."

"What have you done with it?"

"Not five minutes ago I gave it to a Frenchman, who seemed to recognize
it as his. It was the Frenchman, if you will remember, who sat near your
table in the cafe."

"And this hat isn't yours, then?"--helplessly.

"This" was a flat-brimmed hat of the Paris boulevards, the father of all
stovepipe hats, dear to the Frenchman's heart.

"Candidly, now," said I with a bit of excusable impatience, "do I look
like a man who would wear a hat like that?"

He surveyed me miserably through his eye-glasses.

"No, I can't say that you do. But what in the world am I to do?" He
mopped his brow in the ecstasy of anguish. "The hat must be found. The
legal papers could be replaced, but.... You see, sir, that boy put a
private letter of his sister's in the band of that hat, and it must be
recovered at all hazards."

"I am very sorry, sir."

"But what shall I do?"

"I do not see what can be done save for you to leave word at the cafe.
The Frenchman is doubtless a frequenter, and may easily be found. If you
had come a few moments sooner...."

With a gurgle of dismay he fled, leaving me with a half-finished
sentence hanging on my lips and the Frenchman's chapeau hanging on my
fingers. And _my_ hat; where was _my_ hat? (I may as well add here, in
parenthesis, that the disappearance of my eight-doll