"One more word and you get it!"
"May I sing as I trifle with this frugal fare, dear friend? My heart is so happy that I should love to warble a few wild notes—"
He paused to watch his badgered victim dispose of a Martini.
"I wonder," he mused, "if you'd like me to tell you what a cocktail before breakfast does to the lining of your stomach? Would you?"
"No. I suppose it's what the laundress does to my linen. What do I care?"
"Don't be a short sport, Jack."
"Well, I don't care for the game you put me up against. Do you know what has happened?"
"I really don't, dear friend. The Tracer of Lost Persons has not found her—has he?"
"He says he has," retorted Gatewood sullenly, pulling a crumpled telegram from his pocket and casting it upon the table. "I don't want to see her; I'm not interested. I never saw but one girl in my life who interested me in the slightest; and she's employed to help in this ridiculous search."
Kerns, meanwhile, had smoothed out the telegram and was intently perusing it: