"New government automatic, Bubbles," he said, "and the funny part of it is they've only been issued to officers so far, and the factory hasn't put 'em on sale yet."
"Must have been stole from an officer, then," said Bubbles.
"You steal her jewels from an actress," said Lichtenstein, "her mite from the widow, its romances from the people, but you don't steal his side arms from an American army officer. No. Somebody in the factory has let the weapon that fired this slip out. It doesn't matter--it's just a little link in the long chain."
He seated himself calmly at the table and set down in black and white the fact that he had been very nearly murdered by a bullet fired from the new army pistol. Then he began to gather up the sheets of his manuscript.
"Now I wonder," he said, "where I can go to finish this document? I don't want them to 'get' me until I've paved the way for the man that comes after me. Now then--the secret passage isn't only for the wicked."
Kneeling on the clean hearth, Mr. Lichtenstein caused the ornamental cast-iron back of the fireplace to swing outward upon a hinge. Reaching a long arm into the disclosed opening, he unfastened and pushed ajar the iron back of a fireplace in the next house.
Bubbles, crawling through first, found himself in a somewhat overdressed pink and blue bedroom. The lace curtains were too elaborate. The room was luxurious and vulgar. Among the photographs on the centre-table reposed a champagne-bottle, three parts empty, and two glasses, in which a number of flies were heavily crawling.
Lichtenstein, having carefully replaced the fire-backs, rose smiling, and clapped a hand upon Bubbles's shoulder.
"Now then, Bubbles," he said, "push that bell-button by the door four times, and we'll see what Mrs. Popple can do to get us out of this. Never met Mrs. Popple? She's one of us, and at heart a good one."
The lady in question came swiftly in answer to the four rings. At first sight she passed for a woman of hard and forbidding aspect; filmy laces and a clinging kimona of rose-pink silk neither softened nor made feminine the alabaster-colored face with its thin, straight mouth, heavy hairy eyebrows, and clean-cut Greek nose. Only her costume and her hair, indescribably fine, and indescribably yellow, betrayed that there were follies in her nature. But the moment she spoke you liked her. She had a slow, deep, beautiful voice, and the slowness of her speech was offset by the fewness of her words.