“I hope you won’t,” his host assured him. “I’d hate to think of Lambart having a really good night’s rest.” He pointed to an alarm on the wall by the door. “But don’t get up half asleep and push that red thing over there.”
“What on earth is it?” Monty asked. “It looks like a hotel fire-alarm—‘Break the glass in case of fire.’”
“It’s a burglar-alarm that wakes the whole house.”
“What?” Denby cried, suddenly interested. “You don’t really expect burglars?”
“I know it’s funny,” Michael said, “and a bit old maidish, but I happen to be vice-president of the New York Burglar Insurance Company, and I’ve got to have their beastly patents in the house to show my faith in ’em.”
“I’ll keep away from it,” Denby assured him, looking at it curiously.
“The last man who had this room sent it off by mistake. Said a mosquito worried him so much that he threw a shoe at it. He missed the mosquito—between you and me,” Michael said confidentially, “we haven’t any out here at Westbury—but he hit the alarm. I’m afraid Hazen had been putting too many nightcaps on his head and couldn’t see straight. Mrs. Harrington made me search the whole house. Of course there wasn’t anyone there and Alice seemed sorry that I’d had my hunt in vain. The beauty of these things,” the vice-president commented, “is that they warn the burglars to get out and so you don’t get shot as you might if you hadn’t told ’em you were coming.”
Michael took up the second glass and had barely taken a sip when quick, light footfalls approached.
“Good Lord,” said he, “my wife! Here, Monty, quick,” placing the half-emptied glass in Denby’s hand and the one from which he had first drunk in Monty’s, “I count on you, boys,” he whispered, and then strode to the door and flung it open.
“Are we intruders?” his wife asked.