hin' doin'. Poked my head in at the writin'
room--same. Ambled into the readin' room--empty. Well, I steered for the
dining room, an' there was the bunch. An' just as I come in they give a
roar, and I started to investigate. Up against the fireplace, with one
hand in his pocket, and the other hanging careless like on the mantel,
stood a man--stranger t' me. He was talkin' kind of low, and quick,
bitin' off his words like a Englishman. An' the boys, they was starin'
with their eyes, an' their mouths, and forgettin' t' smoke, an' lettin'
their pipes an' cigars go dead in their hands, while he talked. Talk!
Sa-a-ay, girl, that guy, he could talk the leads right out of a ruled,
locked form. I didn't catch his name. Tall, thin, unearthly lookin'
chap, with the whitest teeth you ever saw, an' eyes--well, his eyes was
somethin' like a lighted pipe with a little fine ash over the red, just
waitin' for a sudden pull t' make it glow."

"Peter!" I moaned, and buried my face in my hands. Von Gerhard put a
quick hand on my arm. But I shook it off. "I'm not going to faint," I
said, through set teeth. "I'm not going to do anything silly. I want to
think. I want to... Go on, Blackie."

"Just a minute," interrupted Von Gerhard. "Does he know where Mrs. Orme
is living?"

"I'm coming t' that," returned Blackie, tranquilly. "Though for Dawn's
sake I'll say right here he don't know. I told him later, that she was
takin' a vacation up at her folks' in Michigan."

"Thank God!" I breathed.

"Wore a New York Press Club button, this guy did. I asked one of the
boys standin' on the outer edge of the circle what the fellow's name
was, but he only says: 'Shut up Black! An' listen. He's seen every darn
thing in the world.' Well, I listened. He wasn't braggin'. He wasn't
talkin' big. He was just talkin'. Seems like he'd been war correspondent
in the Boer war, and the Spanish-American, an' Gawd knows where. He
spoke low, not usin' any big words, either, an' I thought his eyes
looked somethin' like those of the Black Cat up on the mantel just over
his head--you know what I mean, when the electric lights is turned
on in-inside{sic} the ugly thing. Well, every time he showed signs of
stoppin', one of the boys would up with a question, and start him goin'
again. He knew everybody, an' everything, an' everywhere. All of
a sudden one of the boys points to the Roosevelt signature on the
wall--the one he scrawled up there along with all the other celebri