you've got a line on him and a hook in it.

After I ate my supper I relieved Amanda King, who runs the newsstand in the daytime when she isn't laid off with the toothache.

Mr. Sam was right. All the women had on their puffs, and they were sitting in a half-circle on each side of the door. Mrs. Sam was there, looking frightened and anxious, and standing near the card-room door was Miss Patty. She was all in white, with two red spots on her cheeks, and I thought if her prince could have seen her then he would pretty nearly have eaten her up. Mr. Thoburn was there, of course, pretending to read the paper, but every now and then he looked at his watch, and once he got up and paced off the lobby, putting down the length in his notebook. I didn't need a mind-reader to tell me he was figuring the cost of a new hardwood floor and four new rugs.

Mr. Sam came to the newsstand, and he was so nervous he could hardly light a cigarette.

"I've had a message from one of the detectives," he said. "They've traced him to Salem, Ohio, but they lost him there. If we can only hold on this evening--! Look at that first-night audience!"

"Mr. Pierce is due in three minutes," I told him. "I hope you told him to kiss his sister."

"Nothing of the sort," he objected. "Why should he kiss her? Mrs. Van Alstyne is afraid of the whole thing: she won't stand for that."

"I guess she could endure it," I remarked dryly.

"It's astonishing how much of that sort of thing a woman can bear."

He looked at me and grinned.

"By gad," he said, "I wouldn't be as sophisticated as you are for a good deal. Isn't that the sleigh?"

Everybody had heard it. The women sat up and craned forward to look at the door: Mrs. Sam was sitting forward clutching the arms of her chair. She was in white, having laid off her black for that evening, with a red rose pinned on her so Mr. Pierce would know her. Miss Patty heard the sleigh-bells also, and she turned and came toward the door. Her mouth was set hard, and she was twisting the ruby ring as she always did when she was nervous. And at the same moment Mr. Sam and I both saw it; she was in white, too, and she had a red rose tucked 

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