“If it’s that fish pier——”
“Is it the fish pier?” the young man asked of two or three men around, but nobody seemed to know.
Tish cast a desperate glance about her.
“I may have made a mistake,” she said, “but would it mean anything to you if I said ‘Good evening, dearie’?”
“Why, it would mean a lot,” he said politely. “Any term of—er—affection, you know. I’m a soft-hearted man in spite of my business.”
But Tish was eying him, and now she leaned over the desk and asked very clearly:
“Have you got a closet where, neatly looped and tagged,
You keep the sturdy symbols of the game you’ve bagged?”
Suddenly all the guards laughed, and so did the young man.
“Well, well!” he said. “So that’s what brought you here, Miss Carberry? And all of us hoping you’d come for a nice little stay! Jim, take the ladies to the closet.”