"Why did you not insist on her returning home at once? Couldn't you have gone to another hotel?"
"What good would that have done? She would have followed. When she turned up in Cleveland I handed it to her straight, you may imagine. I didn't mince matters a little bit."
"Was she afraid to go back home?"
"I don't know; she said she'd left for good and that she'd never live with her husband again. I told her she could do as she pleased about that, but I didn't propose to become involved. Then she threatened to commit suicide—throw herself in the lake. I told her to go ahead and then she had hysterics all over the place. I had a fine tea-party, I can tell you.... Somebody sent me a marked copy of the Club Window. I knew, then, it wouldn't be long before her husband would get wise to it and I didn't know what kind of a game he'd spring on me. I guess it's not the first time the lady has kicked over the matrimonial traces, according to reports. Maybe he's looking for just such an opening."
The room was thick with tobacco-smoke. Will was burning up one cigar after another.
"She made a fine spectacle of herself and of me by showing up at the railway station looking like a boiled owl. After our scene she capped the climax by getting a peach of a jag.... By George, I never will hear the last of it from the members of the company." He pulled down a window from the top and stopped at the desk, where he took a telegram from his portfolio—a Christmas present I had made him.
"Yesterday morning I received this." I read the message:
"Call me long distance Friday noon sharp. Important.
(Signed) DOC."
"It was decent of the Doc, wasn't it? Well, I got him on long distance and the first thing he asked me was whether the lady were with me. 'Well, not exactly with me, but I can't shake her,' I shouted back. 'You've got to,' the Doc went on, 'for your wife's sake you mustn't get landed with the goods.' The Doc is one of these 'from-Missouri' gentlemen and wouldn't believe I was innocent under oath. Just the same he's a good fellow. He told me he knew all about my predicament and that he'd taken time by the forelock and got hold of madame's sister, who was standing beside him while he talked. She had her grip with her, ready to start for Cincinnati at once. I told him to send her by the fastest express. The Doc said that madame's husband had returned to town unexpectedly—just as I had anticipated—and after a stay of twenty-four hours had again disappeared. No one at his office or at his home knew where he had gone. The sister said he had called her up and inquired where his wife had gone and had rung off abruptly. Then the Doc quizzed the stenographer, who was an old chum of his, and she confided to him that the husband's secretary had bought a ticket to Cleveland.... 'He's on the trail,' the Doc warned, 'and there's only one thing for you to do ... send for your wife if she's able to travel.... Make her get to Cincinnati before he does. Your wife is a level-headed little woman and if you put it to her straight she'll play up.... Together you can cook up something to placate the irate husband....' Can't you just hear the old Doc roar? Well, I thought his advice good and I wired you at once."