"Hello, Rolls!" he called out. "You're just the man I want. Will you do me a great favour in a big hurry?"
Petro, whose inmost self had also been absent on some errand, came to earth again with a slight start. "Hello!" he echoed, hastening his steps.
He did not care much for Logan, who had been a classmate of his at college, and whose acquaintance he had not
cultivated since. Still he had nothing against the fellow except that he was a "dude" and something of an ass, whose outlook on life was so different from Petro's that friendship was impossible. They met occasionally at the New Cosmopolitan Club, of which they had both been members for some years, and at houses where their different "sets" touched distantly. If they talked at all, they talked of old times, but each bored the other. Petro, however, could never bear to refuse any one a favour, even if granting it were an uncongenial task. This peculiarity was constitutional and too well known for his comfort.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked in a tone polite, but void of personal interest.
"To come home with me quick and get me out of a horrid scrape. No trouble for you—but a lot for me without a pal to see me through. I won't keep you more than a few minutes, if you're engaged anywhere."
"I'm not engaged. But—" Petro began, only to be cut short.
"Come along, then, for the Lord's sake. Tell you everything when we're there." And taking Rolls affectionately by the arm, the other rushed him out of the club.
"House shut up, you know. But I stay there. My man'll let us in the basement way, if you don't mind," Logan explained disjointedly as they hurried along the street to the dwelling four doors away.
Sims, obedient to instructions flung at him over his master's shoulder when the girl had been let out, now awaited Logan's return at the tradesmen's entrance. The two young men were admitted and the door locked behind