I urged them to get over their rebel yell and come back to the subject of the bear.
"Well, Mr. Tompkins," Harcourt explained. "It's this way. Up in the Smokies we have a special way of cooking bear. All you need is a bear, a bee-tree, a two-handed saw and a stick of dynamite. First, you kill your bear. That's mighty important. You skin him and you gut him and truss him up like a chicken. Then you ram him up as far as you can deep inside a bee-tree, just below the honey, and wedge him in so he won't slip. Then you start a slow fire underneath him inside the tree. The fire sort of slow-cooks the bear, like a Dutch oven, drives off the bees and melts the honey-comb. The honey just naturally drips down on the bear meat while she's cooking. Just about the time the tree's ready to fall—course, I should have explained you saw off the trunk just above the honey so the bees can get away from the smoke and the old tree will draw like a chimney—you set a fuse to a stick of dynamite, toss it in the fire and run like hell. Well, sir, the dynamite goes off and just naturally shoots the old roast bear out the tree like a projectile. Then you pick it up, lug it back to the picnic grounds, and I tell you, Mr. Tompkins, it's mighty sweet eating. Now this time we nigh hit the Governor of North Carolina, he was making a political speech over at the old fair grounds, and—"
"I think I get the picture, Harcourt," I said, cutting in on him rapidly. "We did pretty much the same thing with baby seals and popcorn in the Aleutians. When we were after Jap subs, the depth-charges killed no end of baby seals—concussion, I guess. So we'd pick 'em up in a life-boat, clean them, stuff them with unpopped popcorn, and stick them in the fourteen-inch guns. Then we'd touch off a reduced charge behind 'em. Seals are naturally oily so they went out the muzzle like a regular shell. The intense heat of the explosion not only cooked the seal but popped the popcorn. That puffed out, set up air resistance and reduced trajectory. Then we'd send a helicopter out to pick 'em up and have 'em in mess. Cold with chili sauce, they were delicious. One time when we were bombarding Attu, the crew of No. 3 turret forgot we had a seal in the center gun and fired it at a Jap redoubt. It hit—"
"I can see," Arthurjean remarked, "that I've been missing a lot of fun here in New York, though I'll never forget the time we pretended we found a dead mouse in a mince pie at the Waldorf—Now, who in hell can that be?"
The door-bell rang insistently.
Harcourt looked a little uneasy. "I thought it might save a lot of time and trouble," he said, "if I asked Mrs. Tompkins to meet us here. I told her that Miss Briggs was a friend of mine—sugar, you'd better go in the other room and put on red night-things—so you don't need something more de trop than those to worry, Mr. Tompkins."
"That's just dandy, Harcourt," I agreed. "Did you ever see a wife who couldn't spot a sex-situation at a hundred yards up-wind on a dark and rainy night?"
"Can't say I did," the Special Agent admitted, "but I've never had but one wife and she's busy with the kids."
There was a knock on the door and Harcourt opened it with a courtly manner.
"Come right in, Mrs. Tompkins," he said. "My friend, Miss Briggs, is in the other room and will be out in a moment. Mr. Tompkins and I—"