ise might have saved him, it seems to me, even if the
entire police force of the city had been after him, for normally Mr.
Tescheron was one of the tidiest little men. He usually shined like a
new hat out of a bandbox. He was patent-leathered, smooth-jowled, rosy,
crisp, pretty-nailed, creased, stick-pinned and embossed on the vest.
Nothing that a steam laundry and the latest machinery for
man-embellishing, from custom tailoring to Staten Island and hair
dyeing, could do to obliterate the fish business from his personality
had been omitted in compiling this _de luxe_, numbered and signed copy
of a man. But my investigations lead me to believe that Mr. Tescheron
was not exceptional in this respect at the market. Like Napoleon, the
wholesale fish dealers all fit circumstances to obstacles. A man who
slips and skids around all day in a wholesale fish market is usually
rich and, I find, makes up his average on pulchritude after business
hours.

Mr. Tescheron maintained a high record. When he was not in his shop togs
you would not recognize him any more than the made-over old family
umbrella that has ten times recovered its ribs and boldly fronted the
hilarious wind, ever ready to blow it off. It was always surprising to
me how he could produce such marvelous synthetic effects from the
elemental forms found on the Monday morning's clothes-line.

I don't know how true it is, but a chap down in the market once told me
that all the members of the Market Men's Association found it annoying
to remove the flies that had been blinded by the glint of their bosoms
and had slipped and broken necks on the starchy glaciers of those Alpine
precipices of dazzling shirting displayed at the annual dinners of the
society. It is only natural that the market flies should want to attend,
for they stick closer than a brother to the members of this brotherhood.
Mr. Tescheron's sartorial perfection was only an exigency of his
business, and if his armor was more striking than that of the ordinary
man, I, for one, was ready to forgive him. The fact must remain that
the best dressed men of New York are the wholesale fish dealers of
Fulton Market--after business hours--when they transform to escape the
torments of a perennial fly-time.

Gabrielle did confide in her mother, but her father was none the wiser.
He listened to Smith, and concluded that Hosley had skipped, having
learned in some way that the authorities were after him. If he should be
fo