Curry was grasping his arm. “How did you get aboard?” he cried, a look of honest amazement supreme, now, in his so warmly expressive face.
“I don’t know, sir,” replied Jerome in a rather weak and husky voice.
Genuine pandemonium set in. It was almost a riot. But gradually, as some semblance of law and order returned, Tony Riforto was made out adjuring Alfredo Manuele with the full solemnity of a wagging forefinger:
“You’ve got to help me think, I tell you! How can you expect me to figure the whole thing out myself?”
“Figure what?” voices demanded.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Curry, “I begin to see—you took him in tow—yes, it was you two—at Girardin’s—in the confusion of closing—what then?”
“What then?” spluttered Alfredo. He seemed to grasp at a ray of hope. “There was a cab!”
“That’s it!” cried the other in exultation. “I begin to remember something—we had to take him somewhere—he’d caved in. I remember—”
“Yes,” brightened Alfredo, “we couldn’t take him home. It would never have done, maestro—and that’s the truth indeed!”
No, it would never have done, as he seemed to imply, to wake up a trustful and unsuspecting family to such a spectacle as the clerk had then presented. No one would have had the heart.