A Fool and His Money

by George Barr McCutcheon

"Send Mr. Poopendyke to me, Hawkes, immediately after I've finished my breakfast."

"Very good, sir. Oh, I beg pardon, sir. I am forgetting, Mr. Poopendyke is out. He asked me to tell you he wouldn't return before eleven."

"Out? What business has he to be out?"

"Well, sir, I mean to say, he's not precisely out, and he isn't just what one would call in. He is up in the—ahem!—the east wing, sir, taking down some correspondence for the—for the lady, sir."

I arose to the occasion. "Quite so, quite so. I had forgotten the appointment."

"Yes, sir, I thought you had."

"Ahem! I daresay Britton will do quite as well. Tell him to—"

"Britton, sir, has gone over to the city for the newspapers. You forget that he goes every morning as soon as he has had his—"

"Yes, yes! Certainly," I said hastily. "The papers. Ha, ha! Quite right."

It was news to me, but it wouldn't do to let him know it. The countess read the papers, I did not. I steadfastly persisted in ignoring the Paris edition of the New York Herald for fear that the delightful mystery might disintegrate, so to speak, before my eyes, or become the commonplace scandal that all the world was enjoying. As it stood now, I had it all to myself—that is to say, the mystery. Mr. Poopendyke reads aloud the baseball scores to me, and nothing else.