Cupid's Middleman

by Edward B. Lent

"Justice demands that I be heard. Unfortunately, I deserve nothing here, for I have done about all a fool could reasonably be expected to do to upset my own and others' plans. And now I demand but a few minutes of your time to square the account. My point is that every dog has his day. I shall have had mine as a meddler in the affairs of my friend when I am through here. James Hosley, for whom I appear, is charged with something by somebody, he doesn't know what or by whom, and he was convicted by your father, and the conviction has finally been sustained on appeal to you. As you alone exercise the pardoning power, I come before you to-day to have the case reopened for the presentation of new evidence. Would it not seem ridiculous to blast your lives or even to upset the plans of the caterer now forming for the great event next Wednesday, if on the morning following that date we should read in the papers the true story of this affair in place of the usual formal wedding notice? Would it not seem cruel to have it published that jealousy, founded on love-letters the man never wrote, turned the woman from him at the very altar? Yes, he never wrote a line of that gush—that silly drivel—it was a joke; but it was as nothing to the culmination of the villainy of those detectives who have swindled your father, for it now threatens to ruin two lives."

Briefly I ran over the account of our trip to farther Mount Vernon, and of the effect of the third degree's pressure on Jim.

Mr. MacDonald relaxed control of his dignity, and burst into a hearty laugh. Gabrielle blushed deeply and faltered until I proceeded a few sentences farther.

"Yes, Jim's old love-letters that I wrote for literary exercise years ago, failed to impress the girls, who returned them. At the fire they proved to be fireproof, and fell through the floor. The sneaking detectives found them and brought them to me. Jim is now at my room, completely ignorant of the charges against him, poor abandoned wretch!"

I then subsided and reviewed carefully all the particulars, concluding with the statement:

"I submit to your honors that there is no getting around my proposition that every dog has his day."

As I closed, Gabrielle hastily withdrew. Her face told the story. She passed out, my card tightly held in her hand. I knew I had won the verdict.

Mr. MacDonald chatted with me for a few minutes, and thanked me for my promptness in sending that telegram the night before, for without it the postponement of the wedding would have revealed an absurd situation and held us all up to public ridicule.

"I liked the way you put this thing," said he, as we parted. "Let me see you again."

I now figure that the cash I paid Obreeon I would have won back at that interview a good hundredfold, in view of what MacDonald has done for me since, had there been no other developments.