"Oh, you'd oughtn't to laugh, Mr. Herrick—and the child so naughty! Why that morning after Mr. Ingham was killed he found it propping open the slit in our letter box." Herrick ceased to laugh. "He was so set on keeping it he made up that story, and then to go to work and lose it, an' it so queer the stones in it was maybe real—"
"He lost it, then?"
"Els't we'd never have known on account of him coming home crying. He lost it in the Park, where he'd been playing train-robber with it an' lots o' the loafers on benches watchin' him. A bigger boy got it away from him, larkin' back an' forth, an' threw it to him, an' just then a horse took fright from an automobile and run up on the grass with its rig. The boys scattered in a hurry an' when they come back the pistol was gone. He hadn't noticed no particular person watching, so he didn't know who was gone, too. I tell him, God took it to punish his lyin'," concluded Mrs. Grubey, with the self-righteousness of perfect truth, "but I certainly would like to know how much it was worth! An' how it ever got there an' who it belonged to."
Herrick had a vision of a comic valentine he had received on the same morning. "I'm afraid it was meant for me!" he said. He knew this could not clear things up much for Mrs. Grubey; and afterward he fell to wondering if the capital "C" scratched on the dummy pistol's golden surface bore any similarity to the slender, pointed lettering which had formed the words "To the Apollo in the bath-robe." He could never remember when the initials rose before him in a new order; the A's blent as one and then the C—A. C.—Oh, madness! Yet, on Friday, he would ask Christina.
One other tribute to his popular fame gave him a new idea. It came from his Yankee woman at the table d'hôte. The night after the attack she motioned him to her as he was leaving and without ceasing to play solitaire she said, "If I was you, young feller, I guess I wouldn't come down here for one while."
His eyes opened in amused surprise. "Why not?"
"Ain't you the one shot a Dago yesterday in the Park? Pshaw, you needn't tell me—I know 'twas 'cause you had t' do it! An' good riddance! But it's healthier for you to stay where you belong."
Herrick looked round him on the good-tempered, smiling people at the little clean tables, and laughed. "But you don't suppose the whole nation is one united Black-Hand, do you? You seem to have a mighty poor opinion of Italians!"
"Well," said the woman, with a grim smile of her own, "I married one. I'd oughta know!"
She finished her game and seeing him still lingering, in enjoyment of her tartness, she said, "All forriners 're pretty poor folks. When I get mad at my children I say it's the streak of forrin' in 'em. Well, my girl's good Yankee, anyhow. Fair as anybody. It's my son's took after his father, poor fellow!"