his
noodle soup. As for me, I was both furious and frightened, for, within
the hearing of several people, Professor Bottomly had remarked in a very
clear voice to her new assistant, Dr. Daisy Delmour, that she intended to
get rid of me for the good of the Bronx because of my reputation for
indiscreet gallantry among the feminine employees of the Bronx Society.

Professor Lezard overhead that outrageous remark and he hastened to
repeat it to me.

I was lunching at the time in my private office in the Administration
Building with Dr. Hans Fooss--he and I being too busy dissecting an
unusually fine specimen of Dingue to go to the Rolling Stone Inn for
luncheon--when Professor Lezard rushed in with the scandalous libel still
sizzling in his ears.

"Everybody heard her say it!" he went on, wringing his hands. "It was a
most unfortunate thing for anybody to say about you before all those
young ladies. Every stenographer and typewriter there turned pale and
then red."

"What!" I exclaimed, conscious that my own ears were growing large and
hot. "Did that outrageous woman have the bad taste to say such a thing
before all those sensitive girls!"

"She did. She glared at them when she said it. Several blondes and one
brunette began to cry."

"I hope," said I, a trifle tremulously, "that no typewriter so far forgot
herself as to admit noticing playfulness on my part."

"They all were tearfully unanimous in declaring you to be a perfect
gentleman!"

"I am," I said. "I am also a married man--irrevocably wedded to science.
I desire no other spouse. I am ineligible; and everybody knows it. If at
times a purely scientific curiosity leads me into a detached and
impersonally psychological investigation of certain--ah--feminine
idiosyncrasies--"

"Certainly," said Lezard. "To investigate the feminine is more than a
science; it is a duty!"

"Of a surety!" nodded Dr. Fooss.

I looked proudly upon my two loyal friends and bit into my cheese
sandwich. Only men know men. A jury of my peers had exonerated me. What
did I care for Professor Bottomly!

"All the same," added Lezard, "you'd better be careful or Professor
Bottomly will put one over on you yet."

"I am always careful," I said with dignity.

"All men should be. It is the only protection of a defenseless coast
line," nodded Lezard.

"Und neffer, neffer commid nodding to paper," added Dr. Fooss. "Don'd
neffer write it, 'I lofe you like I was going to blow up alretty!