“I was thinking,” said Mrs. Burgess, with a far-away look in her eyes, “how charming the folk dances would be and I must see the settlement house superintendent about choosing just the right children. But, Web, is it possible to do this so no one will know?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he assured her. “Arrange your luncheon and do it right. I’ve heard somewhere that a great delicacy in Illyria is broiled grasshoppers, or maybe it’s centipedes. Better look that up to be sure not to poison our faithful ally. You’d better whisper to Mrs. Eastman that you’ll want the Governor, but tell her it’s to meet a prison reformer or a Congo missionary; Eastman is keen on those lines. And ask a few pretty girls and look up the Illyrian religion and get a bishop to suit.”
“But you haven’t told me how you mean to do it, Web. Of course we must be careful——”
“Careful!” repeated Burgess shaking himself into his top coat in the hall door. “My name is discretion. You needn’t worry about that part of it! The whole business will be taken care of; dead or alive you shall have the Illyrians.”
II
Wrong Number, locked up in the directors’ room of the White River National, studied timetables and maps and newspaper clippings bearing upon the Western pilgrimage of the Illyrian Commission. In fifty words Webster G. Burgess had transferred to his shoulders full responsibility for producing the Illyrians in the Burgess home, warning him it must be done with all dignity and circumspection.
“That’s for expenses,” said Burgess, handing him a roll of bills. “This job isn’t a bank transaction—you get me? It’s strictly a social event.”
Wrong Number betrayed no perturbation as the president stated the case. Matters of delicacy had been confided to him before by his patron—the study of certain horses he thought of buying and wished an honest report on, the cautious sherlocking of a country-town customer who was flying higher than his credit; the disposal of the stock of an automobile dealer whose business had jumped ahead of his capital;—such tasks as these Wrong Number had performed to the entire satisfaction of his employer.
In a new fall suit built by Burgess’s tailor, with a green stripe instead of a blue to differentiate it from the president’s latest, and with a white carnation in his lapel (Mrs. Burgess provided a pink one for Web every morning), Wrong Number brooded over this new problem for two days before he became a man of action.
His broad democracy made him a familiar visitor to cigar stands, billiard parlors, gun stores, soft drink bars and cheap hotels where one encounters horsemen, expert trap shooters, pugilists, book-makers, and other agreeable characters never met in fashionable clubs. After much thought he chose as his co-conspirator, Peterson, a big Swede, to whom he had advanced money with which to open a Turkish bath. As the bath was flourishing the Swede welcomed an opportunity to express his gratitude to one he so greatly admired; and besides he still owed Wrong Number two hundred dollars.