“Can’t you keep still?” asked the stranger crossly. “Don’t you think I know my own name? Phineas—that’s my name, and I know it as well as you do. Phineas Burns.”
“Burke, not Burns,” whispered Billy Gribble.
The stranger turned red with exasperation.
“Look here! Don’t I know my own name?” he asked angrily. “My name is Phineas Burns.”
“All right! All right!” said Billy Gribble. “Have it your own way. You ought to know. Only—you said Burke over at my place.”
Mr. Burke-Burns glared at Billy Gribble.
“Now! There, now!” he cried. “Just for that I’ll tell you you don’t know anything about it. My name isn’t Burke, and it isn’t Burns. It’s—it’s Charles Augustus Witzel. Mr. Gubb, my name is Charles Augustus Witzel.”
“Glad to know your acquaintance, sir,” said Philo Gubb. “Won’t you be seated upon one of them bundles of wall-paper?”
“I’m a detective,” said Mr. Charles Augustus Witzel. “Tell him about me, Gribble.”
“Well, he—whatever his name is, but Burke was what he told me—is a Chicago detective,” said Billy Gribble. “Yes, sir, Mr. Gubb, Mr.—ah, what is it?”