"Yep," says I.
"Dash it all!" says he. "That's Marjorie, though! Any word from the Consolidated Bridge people yet?"
"Not yet," says I, and slam goes his door.
Took me three minutes by the clock to dope out the combination too, which shows how gummed up my gears was. But when I'd fitted them two remarks together, about Marjorie and the bridge people, and had remembered the cablegram from Sister Marjorie sayin' how their party'd been broken up on account of sickness and she was comin' home alone—why, it was all like readin' it off a bulletin. Marjorie's arrivin' durin' business hours was likely to mess up the schedule. Course, if the bridge concern didn't send word——
I'd got to that point, when in drifts my old A. D. T. runnin' mate, Hunch Leary, draggin' his feet behind him and chewin' gum industrious. Now Hunch don't look like a tempter. He's plain homely, that's all. But comin' just as he did, with Piddie over there glarin' at me suspicious—well, I just had to do it.
"Sure I got blanks on me?" says Hunch. "Wot then?"
Right under Piddie's nose he fixes it up too, and waits while I takes the phony message in to Mr. Robert. It wa'n't such a raw one, either; not as if it had sent him off to wait at some hotel. "Will try to get around about two-thirty Trimble," was all it said. And how did we know Trimble wouldn't try, anyway?
"That settles it," says Mr. Robert, crumplin' the yellow sheet. "Torchy, you must do the family honors."
"Do which?" says I, with business of great surprise.
"Meet my sister Marjorie, see that she gets through the customs without landing in jail, and take her home in a taxi. Think you're equal to it, eh?" says he.