"The telephone!—quick! The telephone—headquarters at once—I've got that guy this time at last! And to think that a damn bird had to find him for me!"
And it was the truth. Frits, far from being an alien, was a good little American parrot and had actually led the cop to the very place he had been looking for all that while, and they arrested two guys and everything!
And after they got through the phone rang and there was Goldringer's voice.
"The aeroplane has come, Miss La Tour," he says. "When will you be over?"
"First thing in the morning!" I says, relieved to think of a quiet day ahead. Ain't it grand to have work you love to do? It's so restful!
VI
THE GLAD HAND
I
I see a piece in the paper where that ex-leading headliner of the old German Big-Time Circuit, William Hohenzollern, him that used to appear in the spiritualistic act known as "Me and God," claims he had no hand in starting those fireworks in Europe which has recently ended in a Fourth of July celebration. And although myself a good American and looking with doubt upon any statement known to be German, I am sort of inclined to believe him. At any rate, to believe that he was not the whole cheese in the matter, but only a sort of limp limberger, or swiss, and full of holes. Because it's my experience personally myself, that a strong personality with a clean-cut idea can usually get a thing done if they elect theirself boss and stick on the job until it is finished, but if they call a committee meeting and discuss the action before them, the whole idea is likely to get stalled. Why, look at Congress! Not that I, being a mere lady of the female sect, know why or how they get stalled, or on just what. But it's a cinch they do and are, and you can prove it by any editorial page in the country. And it seems that Billy the Bone-head, confessed to the reporter, which managed to get this Sunday story printed, that a committee meeting of Yonkers or something was called about the war, he, Bill the Badman, not having the bean to go to it alone, and it was them ruined the war, or so he says. Which goes to show that not alone in the theatrical and moving-picture worlds do the heads of departments alibi their flivvers, but also in the King-business, and it's a habit which may even yet ruin the former, as it pretty near has the latter, unless they quit shirking and deliver better goods. Because if the Head Has-Been had had any real thinker and had thought up the war all by his little self and forced it on his book-keeper, cashier and so forth, he might of got away with it like Napoleon and Rockefeller and Eva Tanguay and a lot of them which has thrust riches and success upon theirselves.