like an election night. No. He was usually
readin' seed catalogues and munchin' salted peanuts out of a paper bag.

It was early last spring that he'd bought this Villa Nova place, a mile
or so beyond the Ellinses, and moved out with the bride he'd picked out
of his list of screen stars. I don't know whether he expected the Piping
Rock crowd to fall for him or not. Anyway, they didn't. They just
shuddered when his name was mentioned and stayed away from Villa Nova
same as they had when that Duluth copper plute, who'd built the freak
near-Moorish affair, tried the same act. But it didn't look like the
Zoscos meant to be frozen out so easy. After being lonesome for a month
or so they begun fillin' their 20 odd bedrooms with guests of their own
choosin'. Course, some of 'em that I saw arrivin' looked a bit rummy,
but it was plain the Zoscos didn't intend to bank on the neighbors for
company. Maybe they didn't want us crashin' in either, as Mr. Robert
suggests.

You couldn't worry Mrs. Robert with hints like that, though. She's a
good mixer. Besides, if she'd made up her mind to play that new pipe
organ you could pretty near bet she'd do it. So inside of three minutes
she had us loaded into the car and off we rolls to surprise the Zoscos.

Villa Nova, you know, is perched on the top of quite a sizable hill,
with a private road windin' up from the Pike. As you swing in you pass
an odd-shaped vine-covered affair that I suppose was meant for a
gate-keeper's lodge, though it looks like a stucco tower that had been
dropped off some storage warehouse.

Well, we'd just made the turn and Mr. Robert had gone into second to
take the grade when I gets a glimpse of somebody doin' a hasty duck into
the shrubbery; a slim, skinny party with a plaid cap pulled down over
his eyes so far that his ears stuck out on either side like young wings.
What struck me as kind of odd, though, was his jumpin' away from the
door of the lodge as the car swung in and the fact that he had a basket
covered with a white cloth.

"Huh!" says I, more or less to myself.

"What's the matter?" asks Vee. "Seeing things in the moonlight?"

"Thought I did," says I. "Didn't you, there by the gate!"

"Oh, yes," says she. "Some lilac bushes."

And not being any too sure of just what I had seen I let it ride at
that. Besides, there wasn't time for any lengthy debate. Next thing I
knew we'd pulled up under the porte cochere and was pilin' out. We finds
the big do