rooms, but yuh gotta square yerself with that paper. Yuh gotta get
up yer nerve an' hike up there to the brownstone with it.' I ask yuh,"
he finished dramatically, and evidently laboring under the momentary
conviction that Carl, too, was optically afflicted, "I ask yuh, Carl,
to cast yer good lamp over that there paper."

Carl opened the paper and stared.

"Hunch," he exclaimed with an involuntary glance at the mended
candlestick, "where in the devil did you get this?"

"I ask yuh to remember," went on Hunch in some excitement, "that I was
drunk an' the old she-wol--Gr-r-r-r-r!" Hunch cleared his heavy throat
in a panic, with a rasp like the stripping of gears, and corrected
himself. "The Old One," he spoke somewhat as if this singular title
was a degree, "the Old One put one over on me."

"My aunt, I imagine," said Carl, "has given me a fairly accurate
version of His Nibs' escape. I'll admit a pardonable anxiety to
interview you for a while. As a matter of fact there was a night--when
I was not in the Lithia League--that I drove down to look you up. Tell
me," he added, "where you found this."

"It was not, stric'ly speakin', found," said Hunch with a modest cough.
Once more, overwhelmed afresh by Carl's appearance, he let his good eye
go roving.

"Tell it," said Carl with what patience he could muster, "in your own
way."

"I ask yuh to remember," urged Hunch with a firm belief in the dignity
of this phrase, "that I was still drunk an' batty in me thinker when
the old she-wol--Gr-r-r-r-r-r--the Old One told me to dig out. So I
halts on the corner to collect me wits an' by'm'by I sees a guy wid a
darkish face an' lips like Link. He comes along, looks up an' down
suspicious, sees the door ain't tight shut an' heel-taps it up the
steps. He opens the door an' by'm'by he helps the Old One to a taxi
an' makes out to walk off--see--whiles she's a watchin'. Later, when
the taxi turns the corner, back he goes, heel-taps it up the steps
ag'in, an' goes in at the door he ain't locked, though he'd made out he
had. An' right there," said Hunch impressively, "right there is where
yer Uncle Hunch feels a real glimmer in his bean an' goes back.
Thin-lips ain't in sight. Yer Uncle Hunch softly heel-taps it upstairs
an' finds the darkish guy adoptin' a paper with a fatherly pat, which
he slips in his coat pocket. Whereupon--whiles he's lockin' the desk
drawer ag'in, aforesaid uncle slips downstairs an' out. By'm'by