“‘Get anything out of that?’ I asks.
“‘That reminds me,’ says he; ‘add $8.50 for pepsin. Yes, I got indigestion.’
“‘How am I supposed to push along your scramble for prominence?’ I inquires. ‘Contrast?’
“‘Something of that sort to-night,’ says Vaucross. ‘It grieves me; but I am forced to resort to eccentricity.’ And here he drops his napkin in his soup and rises up and bows to a gent who is devastating a potato under a palm across the room.
“‘The Police Commissioner,’ says my climber, gratified. ‘Friend’, says I, in a hurry, ‘have ambitions but don’t kick a rung out of your ladder. When you use me as a stepping stone to salute the police you spoil my appetite on the grounds that I may be degraded and incriminated. Be thoughtful.’
“At the Quaker City squab en casserole the idea about Artemisia Blye comes to me.
“‘Suppose I can manage to get you in the papers,’ says I—‘a column or two every day in all of ’em and your picture in most of ’em for a week. How much would it be worth to you?’
“‘Ten thousand dollars,’ says Vaucross, warm in a minute. ‘But no murder,’ says he; ‘and I won’t wear pink pants at a cotillon.’
“‘I wouldn’t ask you to,’ says I. ‘This is honorable, stylish and uneffeminate. Tell the waiter to bring a demi tasse and some other beans, and I will disclose to you the opus moderandi.’
“We closed the deal an hour later in the rococo rouge et noise room. I telegraphed that night to Miss Artemisia in Salina. She took a couple of photographs and an autograph letter to an elder in the Fourth Presbyterian Church in the morning, and got some transportation and $80. She stopped in Topeka long enough to trade a flashlight interior and a valentine to the vice-president of a trust company for a mileage book and a package of five-dollar notes with $250 scrawled on the band.