had to tell you anything, ain't I?
But if the folks will excuse us for half an hour, I'll tell you all I
know about a lot of things."

And, say, Aunty don't even glare after us as we slips through the
draperies into the lib'ry, leavin' 'em to explain to each other how I
come to be on hand so accidental. The only disturbance comes when Selma
butts in pushin' the tea cart, and, just from force of habit, I makes a
panicky breakaway. After she's insisted on loadin' us up with sandwiches
and so forth, though, I slips my arm back where it fits the snuggest.

"Now, Sir," says Vee, "how are you going to hold your cup?"

"I'd be willin' to miss out on tea forever," says I, "for a chance like
this."

CHAPTER XV

MR. ROBERT AND A CERTAIN PARTY

We was havin' a directors' meetin'. Get that, do you? _We_, you know!
For nowadays, as private sec. and actin' head of Mutual Funding, I
crashes into all sorts of confidential pow-wows. Uh-huh! Right in where
they put a crimp in the surplus and make plots to slip things over on
the Commerce Board! Oh my, yes! I'm gettin' almost respectable enough to
be indicted.

Well, we'd just pared the dividend on common and was about breakin' up
the session when Mr. Robert misses some figures on export clearances
he'd had made up and was pawin' about on the table aimless.

"Didn't I see you stowin' that away in one of your desk pigeonholes
yesterday?" I suggests.

"By George!" says he. "Think you could find it for me, Torchy? And, by
the way, bring along my cigarettes too. You will find them in a leather
case somewhere about."

I locates the export notes first stab; but the dope sticks ain't in
sight. I claws through the whole top of the desk before I fin'lly
discovers, shoved clear into a corner, a thin old blue morocco affair
with a gold catch. By the time I gets back he's smokin' a borrowed brand
and tosses the case one side.

Half an hour later the meetin' is over. Mr. Robert sighs relieved,
bunches up a lot of papers in front of him, and begins feelin'
absent-minded in his pockets. Seein' which I pushes the leather case at
him.

"Ah, yes, thanks," says he, and snaps it open careless.

But no neat little row of paper pipes shows up. Inside is nothing but a
picture, one of these dinky portraits on ivory--mini'tures, ain't they?
It shows a young lady with a perky chin and kind of a quizzin' look in
her eyes: not a reg'lar front row pippin', you know, but a fairly good
looker