extras,
sir. Would you wish one?"

Circuitously, through the open door, the cat, her tail in the air,
approached and wowed.

Jones leaned over and tickled her in the stomach. The cat hopped up on
him. He put a finger to his forehead, held it there, removed it and
looked at the man.

"In war-time, with the price of everything going up, it is a criminal
waste of money to buy an extra--particularly when you know what isn't in
it."

"Yes, sir."

Jones motioned. "Look through the old newspapers. Among the March issues
there is one that has an article entitled 'The Matter of Ziegler.' Let
me have it."

The cat, now on his shoulder, purred profusely in his ear. Raising a
hand, he tickled her again.

"Mimi-Meow, this Matter of Ziegler may interest us very much and after
we have looked it over, I will attend to our friend von Lennox, who
seems to have become a Hun."

XXIX

Already over the picked-up codfish, flapjacks, Hamburg steaks and
cognate enticements on which the Bronx and Harlem breakfasts, the news
of it had buttered the toast, flavoured the coffee, added a sweetness to
this April day and provided a cocktail to people who did not know
Paliser from the Pierrot in the moon. That he was spectacularly wealthy
was a tid-bit, that he had been killed at the Metropolitan was a
delight, the war news was nothing to the fact that the party with the
stiletto had escaped "unbeknownst." These people were unacquainted with
Paliser. But here was a young man with an opera-box of his own, and
think of that! Here was the mythological monster that the Knickerbocker
has become. Here was the heir to unearned and untold increments. These
attributes made him as delectable to the majority who did not know him,
as he had become to the privileged few who did.

Elsewhere, and particularly in and about fashion's final citadel which
the Plaza is, solemn imbeciles viewed the matter vehemently. "Young
Paliser! Why, there is no better blood in town! By Jove, I believe we
are related!"

Or else: "That's M. P.'s son, isn't it? Yes, here it is. I never met the
old cock but I heard of him long before we came East. A damned outrage,
that's what I call it."

Or again: "Dear me, what is the world coming to? What a blessing it is
we were not there. They might have come and murdered us all!"

Adjacently, in clubland, old men with one foot in the grave and the
other on Broadway, exchanged reminiscences of the nights when social New
Yo