"It ain't reg'lar," says I, "but I s'pose there's no dodgin' her. Tell her to come ahead."
Say, I wa'n't just fixed up for receivin' carriage comp'ny. When I writes and figures I gets more mussed up than as if I'd been in a free-for-all. I'd shed my coat on one chair, my vest on another, slipped off my suspenders, rumpled my hair, and got ink on me in seventeen places. But I didn't have sense enough to say I was out.
In a minute or so there was a click-click on the stairs, I gets a whiff of l'Issoir Danube, and in comes a veiled lady. She was a brandied peach; from the outside lines, anyway. Them clothes of hers couldn't have left Paris more'n a month before, and they clung to her like a wet undershirt to a fat man. And if you had any doubts as to whether or no she had the goods, all you had to do was to squint at the big amethyst in the handle of the gold lorgnette she wore around her neck. For a Felix-Tiffany combination, she was it. You've seen women of that kind—reg'lar walkin' expense accounts.
"So you are Shorty McCabe, are you?" says she, givin' me a customs inspector look-over, and kind of sniffin'.
"Sorry I don't suit," says I.
"How odd!" says she. "I must make a note of that."
"Help yourself," says I. "Is there anything else?"
"Is it true," says she, "that you have bought The Toreador?"
"Who's been givin' you that?" says I, prickin' up my ears.
"Mr. Ogden," says she.