"Aw, I didn't do anything to get sent up for," said the burglar disgustedly. "I did cop a medal thing one of them guys was wearing on his watch chain, but I was going to give it right back to him. That weighing machine of theirs was a crazy way to test speed. I wanted to show 'em what quick really meant. So I copped this medal thing off the one they call Mr. Virtue. Then I flashed it, and was going to explain. They didn't give me no chance. They just jumped on me and said I'd been and done sacri-sacri-something or other, and that was all."
"They was just waitin' for a chance to land you," commented Miss Skidoo wisely. "They didn't mean you should have that job really. Sooner or later they'd have framed you. Say, folks, let's set on the floor and fight this thing out right."
Acquiescing willingly enough, Terence and Viola between them related the various events occurring between Drayton's departure from the Green Room and his return in the custody of Mercy. The story of cold-blooded cruelty, the hints of internecine warfare among the Servants and Superlatives-united only against their common enemy, the Numbers-was interesting and startling enough to call forth many exclamations from Drayton and Bertram. Miss Skidoo, however, listened with the bored look of one who hears an oft-told and wearisome tale.
"Say," she commented at the end, "a ordinary person like you or us"-indicating herself and Bertram-"got no business mixing in with that gang of highbinders. They're always layin' for each other an' scrapping among themselves; but say, a snowball's got a better chance in a bucket of hot water than a straight guy or a plain Number around this joint. As I've been telling Bert here-"
"Pardon me," interrupted Drayton curiously, "but where did you happen to meet Mr. Bertram?"
She flushed so red that Drayton wished he had not asked the question. Catching the look in the lawyer's eye, Bertram bristled instantly.
"Say," he blurted, "I want you to know that Miss Skidoo here is a straight, nice kid. I was in a movie last night, and she was there with her dad. I got talking to the old man. He says, come along and get some home cooking; them hotels ain't no good. I stayed so late-talkin' and playin' seven-up-that they let me bunk out in the spare room. That's all. Straight, decent folks, just like there used to be, even if they are tagged with numbers instead of proper monikers. Get me?"
They got him. Drayton apologized silently with his eyes for the equally unvoiced suspicion.
It seemed that Bertram had bragged to these chance acquaintances of his pull with the Superlative, Cleverest. Miss Skidoo had warned him earnestly against any attempt to supersede the chief of police, no matter what his pull might be. The present Quickest, it seemed, like the musical director and most of the other Superlatives, was a distant connection of "Penn Service." She revealed to him many facts regarding that "democratic institution," Superlativism-how every man of the Superlatives, save Cleverest, held his job by pure favor, aided by the pull he could exercise through family connections.
"Cleverest, he's a Servant by birth," the girl explained. "He only took on that Superlative job because the next Justice Supreme can't be chose from the Servants in office. He's the old man's nephew. When the old man dies Cleverest will chuck the law and run this city. He was aimin' to marry Loveliest because he wants to be high man anywhere he is, and the Loveliest's husband, when she has one, is supposed to run this town, outside of the Service. But I guess he meant to chuck her as soon as the old man passes over.