hat do you mean by lying here on a lace
spread with your feet tied and your head scarred?"

Jokai of Vienna stirred and moaned. Aunt Agatha fumbled for her
smelling salts and administered a most heroic draft. Sputtering, Jokai
awoke from his restless stupor and stared.

From the room adjoining came again the dull, choking rasp of Hunch's
heavy slumber. Fluttering hurriedly to the doorway, Aunt Agatha stared
in horror at the littered room and Hunch, the latter no reassuring
sight at his best, and thence with fascinated gaze at Jokai of Vienna.
With wild imploring eyes Jokai glanced at his hands and feet.
Miraculously Aunt Agatha understood. After an interval of petrified
indecision, during which she trembled violently and made inarticulate
noises in her throat, she fluttered excitedly from the room and
returned with a pair of scissors. Urged to noiseless activity by
Jokai's fear of the sleeper in the farther room, she cut the ropes
which bound him and led him stealthily to the hall below.

"You poor thing!" whispered Aunt Agatha in hysterical sympathy.
"You're as pale as a ghost. I don't wonder--"

But Jokai of Vienna was already bolting wildly through the street door
and down the steps. Aunt Agatha burst into aggrieved tears.

"I don't in the least know what it's all about," she sniffed, greatly
frightened, "but what with the immigrant bolting out of the house in
his shirt sleeves without so much as a word of thanks--such a nice
distinguished fellow as he was, too, for all he smelt of liquor!--and
Carl nowhere in sight--and a fat young man, with a hairy chest exposed,
sleeping on a whiskey bottle and snoring like a prisoner file, it does
seem most mysterious--that's a fact! And my knees have folded up and I
can't budge. Mother's knees used to fold up this way, too. God bless
my soul!" wept the unfortunate lady. "I do wish I were dead."

With a desperate effort Aunt Agatha unfolded her knees sufficiently to
bear her weight and turning, screamed wildly. Hunch Dorrigan was
stealing catlike down the stairs, his bloated vicious face leering
threateningly at her over the railing.

"You old she-wolf!" roared that elegant young man. "Where's His Nibs?"

Aunt Agatha moistened her dry lips and, gurgling fearfully, fainted.
When at length she became conscious again. Hunch, glowering fiercely,
was returning from a futile chase. With a resentful flash of brutality
he towered suddenly above her and began to cur