"Hope I reached you just at the close of the funeral."
"What funeral?" I asked.
"Say, see here, Hopkins, I want you to talk fair and square with me—no nonsense, you understand. You know of the funeral—Mrs. Browning's—and if you weren't there you know when it was over and when Hosley returned. I am pretty hot in the collar over this business; all happened right under my nose; never thought of such a thing happening; but I'm not too late to stop this infernal impostor, not too late! Of course you don't know anything about my end of it, Hopkins, and I know that you, too, have been fooled at your end, for I've looked you up. I have reports from a dozen business men who say you are perfectly square and that is why I send for you now that we may work together and make the greatest headway. Do you know that the scoundrel Hosley has become infatuated with my daughter?—a pretense for criminal purposes, of course. To-day he seeks me out to tell me they are engaged! A few hours later I hear he is crying at the funeral of his wife!"
There was some French in Tescheron after all, for he waved his arms and danced about like a man whose tongue won't wag fast enough to please him.
If Jim had dealt with large business concerns as an inspector, instead of corner grocerymen and small storekeepers, they might have saved him. The business men whom Tescheron had consulted regarding me, I afterward learned, were the manufacturers whose plants I had investigated for the city. Some of the best families in New York are connected with Newtown Creek glue and they, it seems, had stuck to me in this emergency. A fish man will believe anything a glue man tells him; I don't know why, but it's so, and the fact was certainly to my advantage.
When Tescheron had calmed I broke out with a hiss and a stutter; it wasn't a laugh, for I haven't laughed in years. All my laughing since 1889 has been a strictly intellectual process; but I did have an awful pain because I could not digest his statement with a bouncing laugh. All I could do was to stammer and splutter like a bass viol tuning up, while I sozzled around in my chair trying to break in with something that would count. Why should a man of my temperament take a hand in love, war or diplomacy? As a theoretical manipulator of fathers-in-law, as a text-book writer on the subject, I was in the extra fancy class, but the part of Daniel in the lion's den could not be played by me unless I agreed to step in the marble-lined vestibule of open jaws and get kicked down the back stairs after a thorough overhauling. On the firing line my plans did not fit and I became a failure.
A smell of fish in the room restored me. I knew not whence it came, but its soft presence yielding to my keen detector restored my professional pride and self-respect. I then felt I was something of a detective after all. I eyed a revolving ventilator in the window-pane as a possible avenue of its entrance from the culinary department. I did not suspect Tescheron.
"I see you are not inclined to side with me in this matter," he rattled on. "To-night I notify the coroner. I—"
"Are you a fool?" I blurted with that rare presence of mind which will some day save me by putting me in jail. "Are you an idiot? You seem to be gone in the head. Call a dozen coroners, by all means, and be the laughing-stock of the town. Drag your whole family into the illustrated newspapers. Go ahead and have a good time at your own expense. Get out the fire department and have them squirt on you!" I was surprised at the string of sarcasm which rolled forth when I did start.
Tescheron danced a first-class vaudeville turn and shouted: "Say what you please, I notify the coroner! Hosley killed his wife so that he might marry my daughter; I have had detectives out, so I know and you don't. I—"