Mrs. Severance went back to her chair and Oliver sank into the chair that had been previously occupied by Mr. Piper. As he stretched back luxuriously something small and hard and bulging made him aware of itself in his pocket. “Oh Lord, I forgot I still had that gun of Mr. Piper's!” said Oliver inconsequentially.
“Have you?” said Mrs. Severance. The fact did not seem to strike her as being of any particular importance. They both drank long and frankly and thirstily, as if they were drinking well-water after having just come in from a hot mountain trail. And again, and for a considerable time, neither spoke.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Severance finally, with a blur of delicate scorn, “I suppose our friend Mr. Billett—got away safely?”
Her words brought up a picture of Ted to Oliver,—Ted netted like a fish out there on the fire-escape, swaddled up like a great papoose in all the towels and dish-cloths Oliver had been able to find. The release was too sudden, too great—the laughter came—the extreme laughter—the laughter like a giant. He swayed in his chair, choking and beating his knees and making strange lion-like sounds.
“Ted,” he gasped. “Ted! Oh, no, Mrs. Severance, Ted didn't get away! He didn't get away at all—Ted didn't! He didn't because you see he couldn't. He's out on the fire-escape now—oh, wait till you see him, oh Ted, oh Glory, oh what a night, what a night, what a night!”
XLII
It took a good deal of explaining, however, to make Ted understand. He was still tightly bound, though very angrily conscious when they found him and his language when Oliver removed the improvised gag was at first of such an army variety that Oliver wondered doubtfully if he hadn't better replace it until he got Ted alone. Also Oliver was forced to curse himself rather admiringly for the large number of unnecessary knots he had used, when he started to unravel his captive.
When they finally got him completely untangled Ted's first remarks were hardly those of gratitude. He declared sulkily that his head felt as if it were going to split open, that he must have a bump on the back of it as big as a squash and that it wasn't Oliver's fault if he hadn't caught pneumonia out on that fire-escape—the air, believe him, was cold!
Mrs. Severance, however, and as usual, rose to the occasion and produced a bottle of witch-hazel from the bathroom with which she insisted on bathing the bump till Ted remarked disgruntledly that he smelt like a hospital. Oliver watched the domestic scene with frantic laughter tearing at his vitals—this was so entirely different and unromantic an end to the evening from that from which Oliver had set out to rescue Ted like a spectacled Mr. Grundy and which Ted in his gust of madness had so bitterly and grandiosely planned.