“Yes, sir! As you say, sir,” replied the valet with alacrity. “But, begging your pardon, sir, the gentleman did promise to send another case yesterday; and, begging your pardon, sir, I believe he would have done so, if the federal officers had not raided him and put him in jail.”
For a moment Algernon stared at his valet in a speechless rage that partly sobered him. Then the words came in a torrent of choice but incoherent invective.
“Whazzat!” he cried. “Thosh—curs gesh my booshlegger! I gesh them quick!”
He paused a second for breath, eyeing his valet the while with maudlin profundity, and then he continued:
“Shay you monkey-face’ weptile, whash shtaring me for?” he exploded. “Gesh bishy! Gesh bishy on ’phone. Use p’vate code. Tell nash’nal schief t’ call hish dogs of my booshlegger a’ once. Tell him I get his scalp shure. Tell him thish Alg’non Shid’ey Shaint Shons’one. Y’un’erstan’? Alg’non Shid’ey Shain’ Shons’one!”
With a “Yes, sir! At once, sir! As you say, sir!” the valet obeyed promptly, and was soon buried in his master’s private code-book; while Algernon, now considerably sobered by his rage, became fully conscious of the peculiar buzzing sensation in the region of his upper left-hand vest pocket—and of the fact that this buzzing indicated beyond a doubt that his fiancee, Esmeralda Clementine Jones-Bronson, desired to communicate with him.
Well versed as he was in the art of “managing” the “female-of-the-species” in the infinite variety of moods to which she is addicted, a quizzical smile played for a moment around his lips as he realized that his inadvertent delay in answering his Esmeralda’s “call,” had accidentally turned out a masterstroke. She had “ridden her high horse” in the recent row, had flaunted a daring defiance of his most earnest wishes in his very face, and had finished by throwing her engagement-ring contemptuously at his feet! Presumably she was contrite now, and ready for a reconciliation. But he well knew that, if he would not be bullied through life by his future wife, he must maintain the upper hand throughout the engagement period; and—his delay in answering would have a chastening effect!
The row had started when he presented Esmeralda, as a birthday present, with one of two specially-designed miniature radio receiving-and-broadcasting sets. His own carried the equipment in a small gold case in his vest pocket; while the wiring, the antenna, and the steel frame which held the head-phone in place with microphone pendant before the mouth, was coiled and folded in a tiny golden receptacle on the outside of the pocket. The steel wiring was “Electro re-tempered” by a new process, which increased its tensile strength one hundred fold; while the copper was first tempered by the re-discovered process which for centuries had been a “lost art,” and then “Electro re-tempered” the same as the steel. So that, while of gossamer-like delicacy in appearance, the whole apparatus was in fact much stronger than the old styles. Both sets were permanently adjusted to the delicately-complicated, alternating “E.V.R.-X.Y.Z.” wavelength, which the makers believed proof against duplication, and which they guaranteed against static within a radius of 10,000 miles under any possible conditions. The cover of the outer receptacle of his own set was in shape a gold shield, with a “spread-eagle” engraved rampant upon a South Sea Island golden-sunset field on its face. This was liable to be mistaken, by its appearance, for a decoration of European royalty; and Esmeralda had agreed with him that it was quite nifty.
But hers was contained in the back of a “veri-thin” wrist watch, and that was where the trouble started. She wanted a lavalliere as a decoration for her bosom! And, growing sarcastic towards the last, he had admitted that that portion of her anatomy did need some kind of covering; but he had denied the efficacy of the “lavalliere” idea for that special purpose. He had contended that both the décolletté in the front and the “open-back” features of her gowns, should stop at the “lines of curvature.” He had even launched into a general tirade against a number of her recent costumes, and had called them “picture-frame” conceptions; because “they performed a similar function,” in that “they merely furnished the setting for emphasizing the details of the things revealed.”