“You certainly aren’t. And I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Aw, that’s awright, miss. What else could I do? Our departed friend, Professor Goggle-Eye, when he made his jump, landed right in my shirt front. ‘Take my place,’ he says; ‘I’ve got an engagement.’ Well, I was just moving forward, anyway, so it was no trouble at all, I assure you,” asserted the doughty Cluff, achieving a truly elegant conclusion.
“Most fortunate for me,” said the girl sweetly. “Mr. Perkins scuttled away like one of his own little wretched beetles. When I see him again—”
“Again? Oh, well, if he’s a friend of yours, accourse he’d awtuv stood by—”
“He isn’t!” she declared, with unnecessary vehemence.
“Don’t you be too hard on him, miss,” argued her escort. “Seems to me he did a pretty good job for you, and stuck to it until he found some one else to take it up.”
“Then why didn’t he stand by you?”
“Oh, I don’t carry any ‘Help-wanted’ signs on me. You know, miss, you can’t size up a man in this country like he was at home. Now, me, I’d have natcherly hammered that Von Plaanden gink all to heh—heh—hash. But did I do it? I did not. You see, I got a little mining concession out here in the mountains, and if I was to get into any diplomatic mix-up and bring in the police, it’d be bad for my business, besides maybe getting me a couple of tons of bracelets around my pretty little ankles. Like as not your friend, Professor Lamps, has got an equally good reason for keeping the peace.”
“Do you mean that this man will make trouble for you over this?”
“Not as things stand. So long as nothing was done—no arrests or anything like that—he’ll be glad to forget it, when he sobers up. I’ll forget it, too, and maybe, miss, it wouldn’t be any harm to anybody if you did a turn at forgetting, yourself.”