Madeline, the waitress, reported further particulars as she ministered to the creature-comforts of the traveling gentlemen dining alone among the funeral-baked meats. So interested and excited did these gentlemen become that they determined to interview, or at least to see, their mysterious fellow guests.
When their elaborate supper had reached its apotheosis of stewed prunes and blue-boiled rice, Hawley and Mead had gone out for a meditative and tobacco-shrouded stroll. They passed through the hall and inspiration awoke in Jimmie.
"By gum," said he, "I know them now. I suspicioned them from the first by what Horace told me. But now I've got them sure. You mind that time I was down to New York and was showed over Police Headquarters, by professional etiquette?"
"Sure," they all agreed. It was indeed a reminiscence, the details of which had been playing havoc with Rapidan's nerves for the past fifteen years. They felt that they could not bear it now.
"Well," continued Jimmie, gathering his auditors close about him by the husky whisper he now adopted, "I see them two fellers then. Mebbe 'twas in the Rogue's Gallery and mebbe it was in the cells. I ain't worked it down that fine yet, but I'll think and pray on it and let you know when I get light."
When the staff and the commercial guests of the Empress Hotel were waiting to see illumination burst through the blue-shrouded protector, the bridal party was veering momentarily further from the normal. For the deserted bride, alone in the desolate best sitting-room, laid her head upon her arms and laughed and laughed. She had made one cautious descent to the ground floor in search of diversion, and meeting Jimmie, she found it. After a conversation strictly categorical upon his side and widely misleading upon hers, she had gone up stairs again and halted in the upper hall just long enough to hear Jimmie's triumphant:
"Well, we know her name anyway."
"What is it?" hissed Horace, while the porter relieved himself of a quid of tobacco so that nothing should interfere with his hearing and attention.
"Huh!" ejaculated Jimmie, "you bin a hotel clerk two years and sold seegars all that time (when you could) and you don't know Ruby Mandeville when she stands before you."
A box of the "Flor de" that gifted songstress, was soon produced and pried open, and the effulgent charms of its godmother compared with the less effulgent, but no less charming figure which had just trailed away.