"Flummers, have they raised your salary yet?" some one asked.
"Oh, no, and that's why I am disgusted with the newspaper profession. The country cries out, 'Who is the man?' There is a deep silence. The country cries again, 'Does any one know this man?' And then papa speaks. But what does he get? The razzle. A great scoop rewarded with a razzle. My achievements are taken too much us a matter of course. I don't assert myself enough. I am too modest. Say, I smell liquor. Who's got a bottle? Somebody took a cork out of a bottle. Who was it? Say, Will, have you got a bottle?"
"Thought you said that your doctor told you not to drink."
"He did; he said that I had intercostal rheumatism. He examined me carefully, and when I asked him what he thought, he replied, 'Mr. Flummers, you can't afford to drink.'"
"And did you tell him that you could afford it—that it didn't cost you anything?"
"Oh, ho, ho, no! Say, send out and get a bottle. What are you fellows playing there? Ten cents ante, all jack pots? It's a robbers' game."
In every community a stranger wearing black whiskers was under suspicion. A detective shrewdly suggested that the murderer might have shaved, and he claimed great credit for this timely hint; but no matter, the search for the black-whiskered man was continued. Dave Kittymunks was arrested in all parts of the country, and the head-line writer, whose humor could not long be held in subjection, began to express himself thus: "Dave Kittymunks captured in St. Paul, also seized in New Orleans, and is hotly pursued in the neighborhood of Kansas City."
Witherspoon, sitting by his library fire at night, would say over and over again: "I told him never to keep any money in the house. He was so close, so suspicious; and then to put his money in a safe that a boy might have knocked to pieces!" And it became Mrs. Witherspoon's habit to declare: "I just know that somebody will break into our house next." Then the merchant's impatience would express itself with a grunt. "Oh, it has given you and Ellen a rare chance for speculation. We'd better wall ourselves in a cave and die there waiting for robbers to drill their way in. It does seem to me that they ought to catch that fellow, I told Brooks that he'd better increase the reward to fifty thousand."
Witherspoon and Brooks called at Henry's office. "You may publish the fact that I have offered fifty thousand dollars reward for Kittymunks," said Brooks, speaking to Henry, but looking into the room where Miss Drury was at work.