"Would you now?" said Bones, as if the idea struck him for the first time. "I never have sent for the police you know, and I've had simply terrible offers put up to me."

"Or put it in the waste-paper basket," said Hamilton, and then in surprise: "Why the d.i.c.kens are you asking all these questions?"

"Why am I asking all these questions?" repeated Bones. "Because, old thing, I have a hump."

Hamilton raised incredulous eyebrows.

"I have what the Americans call a hump."

"A hump?" said Hamilton, puzzled. "Oh, you mean a 'hunch.'"

"Hump or hunch, it's all the same," said Bones airily. "But I've got it."

"What exactly is your hunch?"

"There's something behind this," said Bones, tapping a finger solemnly on the desk. "There's a scheme behind this--there's a swindle--there's a ramp. n.o.body imagines for one moment that a man of my reputation could be taken in by a barefaced swindle of this character. I think I have established in the City of London something of a tradition," he said.

"You have," agreed Hamilton. "You're supposed to be the luckiest devil that ever walked up Broad Street."

"I never walk up Broad Street, anyway," said Bones, annoyed. "It is a detestable street, a naughty old street, and I should ride up it--or, at least, I shall in a day or two."

"Buying a car?" asked Hamilton, interested.

"I'll tell you about that later," said Bones evasively, and went on:

"Now, putting two and two together, you know the conclusion I've reached?"

"Four?" suggested Hamilton.

Bones, with a shrug ended the conversation then and there, and carried his correspondence to the outer office, knocking, as was his wont, until his stenographer gave him permission to enter. He shut the door--always a ceremony--behind him and tiptoed toward her.

Marguerite Whitland took her mind from the letter she was writing, and gave her full attention to her employer.

"May I sit down, dear young typewriter?" said Bones humbly.

"Of course you can sit down, or stand up, or do anything you like in the office. Really," she said, with a laugh, "really, Mr. Tibbetts, I don't know whether you're serious sometimes."

"I'm serious all the time, dear old flicker of keyboards," said Bones, seating himself deferentially, and at a respectful distance.

She waited for him to begin, but he was strangely embarra.s.sed even for him.

"Miss Marguerite," he began at last a little huskily, "the jolly old poet is born and not----"

"Oh, have you brought them?" she asked eagerly, and held out her hand.

"Do show me, please!"

Bones shook his head.

"No, I have not brought them," he said. "In fact, I can't bring them yet."

She was disappointed, and showed it.

"You've promised me for a week I should see them."

"Awful stuff, awful stuff!" murmured Bones disparagingly. "Simply terrible tripe!"

"Tripe?" she said, puzzled.

"I mean naughty rubbish and all that sort of thing."

"Oh, but I'm sure it's good," she said. "You wouldn't talk about your poems if they weren't good."

"Well," admitted Bones, "I'm not so sure, dear old arbitrator elegantus, to use a Roman expression, I'm not so sure you're not right.

One of these days those poems will be given to this wicked old world, and--then you'll see."

"But what are they all about?" she asked for about the twentieth time.

"What are they about?" said Bones slowly and thoughtfully. "They're about one thing and another, but mostly about my--er--friends. Of course a jolly old poet like me, or like any other old fellow, like Shakespeare, if you like--to go from the sublime to the ridiculous--has fits of poetising that mean absolutely nothing. It doesn't follow that if a poet like Browning or me writes fearfully enthusiastically and all that sort of thing about a person... No disrespect, you understand, dear old miss."

"Quite," she said, and wondered.

"I take a subject for a verse," said Bones airily, waving his hand toward Throgmorton Street. "A 'bus, a fuss, a tram, a lamb, a hat, a cat, a sunset, a little flower growing on the river's brim, and all that sort of thing--any old subject, dear old miss, that strikes me in the eye--you understand?"

"Of course I understand," she said readily. "A poet's field is universal, and I quite understand that if he writes nice things about his friends he doesn't mean it."

"Oh, but doesn't he?" said Bones truculently. "Oh, doesn't he, indeed?

That just shows what a fat lot you know about it, jolly old Miss Marguerite. When I write a poem about a girl----"

"Oh, I see, they're about girls," said she a little coldly.

"About _a_ girl," said Bones, this time so pointedly that his confusion was transferred immediately to her.

"Anyway, they don't mean anything," she said bravely.

"My dear young miss"--Bones rose, and his voice trembled as he laid his hand on the typewriter where hers had been a second before--"my dear old miss," he said, jingling with the letters "a" and "e" as though he had originally put out his hand to touch the keyboard, and was in no way surprised and distressed that the little hand which had covered them had been so hastily withdrawn, "I can only tell you----"

"There is your telephone bell," she said hurriedly. "Shall I answer it?" And before Bones could reply she had disappeared.

He went back to his flat that night with his mind made up. He would show her those beautiful verses. He had come to this conclusion many times before, but his heart had failed him. But he was growing reckless now. She should see them--priceless verses, written in a most expensive book, with the monogram "W.M." stamped in gold upon the cover. And as he footed it briskly up Devonshire Street, he recited:

"O Marguerite, thou lovely flower, I think of thee most every hour, With eyes of grey and eyes of blue, That change with every pa.s.sing hue, Thy lovely fingers beautifully typing, How sweet and fragrant is thy writing!

He thought he was reciting to himself, but that was not the case.

People turned and watched him, and when he pa.s.sed the green doorway of Dr. Harkley Bawkley, the eminent brain specialist, they were visibly disappointed.

He did not unlock the rosewood door of his flat, but rang the silver bell.

He preferred this course. Ali, his Coast servant, in his new livery of blue and silver, made the opening of the door something only less picturesque than the opening of Parliament. This intention may not have been unconnected with the fact that there were two or three young ladies, and very young at that, on the landing, waiting for the door of the opposite flat to open.