“Oh, yes! Right now!” demanded Lucile through chattering teeth. “I could never sleep with that thing on board the O Moo.”
Arrived at police headquarters, they asked for their friend, the sergeant. When he came out, his eyes appeared heavy with sleep, but once they fell upon the thing of blue jade it seemed that they would pop out of his head.
“It ain’t!” he exclaimed. “It is! No, it can’t be.”
Taking it in his hands he turned it over and over, muttering to himself. Then, “Wait a minute,” he said. Handing the blue face to Florence, he dashed to the telephone.
There for a moment he quarreled with an operator, then talked to someone for an instant.
“That,” he said as he returned, “was your friend, Mr. Cole, from down in the new museum. He lives near here. He’s coming over. He’ll tell us for sure. He knows everything. Sit down.”
For ten minutes nothing was heard in the room save the tick-tock of a prodigious clock hung against the wall. From Florence’s lap the blue god leered defiance to the world.
Suddenly a man without hat or collar dashed into the room. It was Cole.
“Where is it?” he demanded breathlessly.
“Here.” Florence held out the blue face.