Scribner's Magazine/Volume 65/Number 5/Wrong Number

by Meredith Nicholson

 

WRONG NUMBER

By Meredith Nicholson

Illustrations by Will Foster

I

THEY called him Wrong Number in the bank because he happened so often and was so annoying. His presence in the White River National was painful to bookkeepers, tellers, and other practical persons connected with this financial Gibraltar, because, without having any definite assignment, he was always busy. He was carried on the rolls as a messenger, though he performed none of the duties commonly associated with the vocation, calling, or job of a bank messenger. No one assumed responsibility for Wrong Number, not even the cashier or the first vice-president, and such rights, powers, and immunities as he enjoyed were either self-conferred or were derived from the president, Mr. Webster G. Burgess.

Wrong Number's true appellation as disclosed by the pay-roll was Clarence E. Tibbotts, and the cynical note-teller averred that the initial stood for Elmer. A small, compact figure, fair hair, combed to onion-skin smoothness, a pinkish face and baby-blue eyes—there was nothing in Wrong Number's appearance to arouse animosity in any but the stoniest heart. Wrong Number was polite, he was unfailingly cheerful, and when called upon to assist in one place or another he responded with alacrity, and no one had reason to complain of his efficiency. He could produce a letter from the files quicker than the regular archivist, or he could play upon the adding-machine as though it were an instrument of ten strings. No one had ever taught him anything; no one had the slightest intention of teaching him anything, and yet by imperceptible degrees, he, as a free-lance, passed through a period of mild tolerance into acceptance as a valued and useful member of the staff. In the Liberty Loan rushes that well-nigh swamped the department, Wrong Number knew the answers to all the questions that were fired through the wickets. Distracted ladies who had lost their receipts for the first payment and timidly reported this fact found Wrong Number patient and helpful. An early fear in the cages that the president had put Wrong Number into the bank as a spy upon the clerical force was dispelled when it became known that the young man did, on several occasions, conceal or connive at concealing some of those slight errors and inadvertences that happen in the best-regulated of banks. Wrong Number was an enigma, an increasing mystery, nor was he without his enjoyment of his associates' mystification.

Wrong Number's past, though veiled in mist in the White River National, may here be fully and truthfully disclosed. To understand Wrong Number one must also understand Mr. Webster G. Burgess, his discoverer and patron. In addition to being an astute and successful banker, Mr. Burgess owned a string of horses and sent them over various circuits at the usual seasons, and he owned a stock-farm of high repute, as may be learned by reference to any of the authoritative stud-books. If his discreet connection with the race-track encouraged the belief that Mr. Burgess was what is vulgarly termed a "sport," his prize-winning shorthorns in conjunction with his generous philanthropies did much to minimize the sin of the racing-stable.

Mr. Burgess "took care of his customers," a heavenly attribute in any banker, and did not harass them unnecessarily. Other bankers in town who passed the plate in church every Sunday and knew nothing of Horse might be suspicious and nervous and even disagreeable in a pinch, but Mr. Burgess's many admirers believed that he derived from his association with Horse a breadth of vision and an optimism peculiarly grateful to that considerable number of merchants and manufacturers who appreciate a liberal line of credit. Mr. Burgess was sparing of language, and his "yes" and "no" were equally pointed and final. Some of his utterances, such as a warning to the hand-shaking vice-president, "Don't bring any anæmic people into my office," were widely quoted in business circles. "This is a bank, not the sheriff's office," he remarked to a customer who was turning a sharp corner. "I've told the boys to renew your notes. Quit sobbing and get back on your job."

It was by reason of their devotion to Horse that Burgess and Wrong Number met and knew instantly that the fates had ordained the meeting. Wrong Number had grown up in the equine atmosphere of Lexington—the Lexington of the Blue Grass, and his knowledge of the rest of the world was gained from his journeys to race-meets with valuable specimens of the horse kind. Actors are not more superstitious than horsemen, and from the time he became a volunteer assistant to the stablemen on a big horse-farm the superstition gained ground among the cognoscenti that the wings of the Angel of Good Luck had brushed his tow head and that he was a mascot of superior endowment. As he transferred his allegiance from one stable to another luck followed him, and when he picked, one year, as a Derby winner the unlikeliest horse on the card and that horse galloped home an easy winner, weird and uncanny powers were conceded to Wrong Number.

Burgess had found him sitting on an upturned pail in front of the stable that housed "Lord Templeton" at six o'clock of the morning of the day the stallion strode away from a brilliant field and won an enviable prestige for the Burgess stables. Inspired by Wrong Number's confidence, Burgess had backed "Lord Templeton" far more heavily than he had intended, and as a result was enabled to credit a small fortune to his stable account. For four seasons the boy followed the Burgess string, and in winter made himself useful on the Burgess farm somewhere north of the Ohio. He showed a genius for acquiring information, and was cautious in expressing opinions; he was industrious in an unobtrusive fashion; and he knew all there is to know about the care and training of horses. Being a prophet, he saw the beginning of the end of the horse age, sniffed gasolene without resentment, and could take an automobile to pieces and put it together again, Burgess was his ideal of a gentleman, a banker, and a horseman, and he carried his idolatry to the point of imitating his benefactor in manner, dresss and speech. Finding that Wrong Number was going into town for a night course in a business college, Burgess paid the bill, and seeing that Wrong Number at twenty-two had outgrown Horse and aspired to a career in finance, Burgess look him into the bank with an injunction to the cashier to "let him run loose in the lot."

Illustration: Burgess had found him sitting … in front of the stable that housed "Lord Templeton."—Page 550.

While Mrs. Burgess enjoyed the excitement and flutter of grand-stands, her sense of humor was unequal to a full appreciation of the social charm of those gentlemen who live in close proximity to Horse. Their ways and their manners and their dialect did not, in fact, amuse her, and she entertained an utterly unwarranted suspicion that they were not respectable. It was with the gravest doubts and misgivings that she witnessed the rise of Wrong Number, who, after that young gentleman's transfer to the bank, turned up in the Burgess town-house rather frequently and had even adorned her table.

On an occasion Webster had wired her from Chicago that he couldn't get home for a certain charity concert, which she had initiated, and suggested that she commandeer Wrong Number as an escort; and as no other man of her acquaintance was able or willing to represent the shirking Webster, she did, in fact, utilize Wrong Number. She was obliged to confess that he had been of the greatest assistance to her and that but for his prompt and vigorous action the programmes, which had not been delivered at the music-hall, would never have been recovered from the theatre to which an erring messenger had carried them. Wrong Number, arrayed in evening dress, had handed her in and out of her box and made himself agreeable to three other wives of tired business men who loathed concerts and pleaded important business engagements whenever their peace was menaced by classical music. Mrs. Burgess's bitterness toward Webster for his unaccountable interest in Wrong Number was abated somewhat by these circumstances, though she concealed the fact and berated him for his desertion in an hour of need.

Webster G. Burgess was enormously entertained by his wife's social and philanthropic enterprises, and he was proud of her ability to manage things. Their two children were away at school and at such times as they dined alone at home the table was the freest confessional for her activities. She never understood why Webster evinced so much greater interest and pleasure in her reports of the battles of warring factions than in affairs that moved smoothly under her supreme direction.

"You know, Web," she began on an evening last September, after watching her spouse thrust his fork with satisfaction into a pudding she had always found successful in winning him to an amiable mood; "you know, Web, that Mrs. Gurley hasn't the slightest sense of fitness—no tact—no delicacy!"

"You've hinted as much before," said Webster placidly. "Cleaned you up in a club election?"

"Web!" ejaculated Mrs. Burgess disdainfully. "You know perfectly well she was completely snowed under at the Women's Civic League election. Do you think after all I did to start that movement I'd let such a woman take the presidency away from me? It isn't that I cared for it; heaven knows I've got enough to do without that!"

"Right!" affirmed Burgess readily. "But what's she put over on you now?"

Mrs. Burgess lifted her head quickly from a scrutiny of the percolator flame.

"Put over! Don't you think I'd give her any chance to put anything over! I wouldn't have her think for a minute that she was in any sense a rival."

"No; nothing vulgar and common like that," agreed Webster.

"But that woman's got the idea that she's going to entertain all the distinguished people that come here. And the Gurleys have been here only two years and we've lived here all our lives! It's nothing to me, of course, but you know there is a certain dignity in being an old family, even here, and my great-grandfather was a pioneer governor, and yours was the first State treasurer, and that ought to count and always has counted. And the Gurleys made all their money out of tomatoes and pickles in a few years; and since they came to town they've just been forcing themselves everywhere."

"I'd hardly say that," commented Burgess. "There's no stone wall around this town. I was on the committee of the Chamber of Commerce that invited Gurley to move his canning factory here."

"And after that he was brazen enough to take his business to the Citizen!" exclaimed Mrs. Burgess.

"That wasn't altogether Gurley's fault, Gertie," replied Burgess softly.

"You don't mean, Web——"

"I mean that we could have had his account if we'd wanted it."

Illustration: "We thought the commission would be tired of the train."—Page 558

.

"Well, I'm glad we're under no obligations to carry them round."

"We're not, if that's the way you see it. But Mrs. Gurley wears pretty good clothes," he suggested, meditatively removing the wrapper from his cigar.

"Webster Burgess, it can't be possible that you mean——"

"I mean that she's smartly set up. You've got to hand it to her, particularly for hats."

"You never see what I wear! You haven't paid the slightest attention to anything I've worn for ten years! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! That woman buys all her clothes in New York, every stitch and feather, and they cost five times what I spend. With the war and everything, I don't feel that it's right for a woman to spread herself on clothes. You know you said yourself we ought to economize, and I discharged Marie and cut down the household bills. And Marie was worth the fifty dollars a month I paid her for the cleaner's bills she saved me."

Mrs. Burgess was at all times difficult to tease, and Webster was conscious that he had erred grievously in broaching the matter of Mrs. Gurley's apparel, which had never interested him a particle. He listened humbly as Mrs. Burgess gave a detailed account of her expenditures for raiment for several years, and revealed what she had never meant to tell him, that out of her personal allowance she was caring for eight French orphans in addition to the dozen she had told him about.

"Well, you're a mighty fine girl, Gertie. You know I think so."

The tears in Mrs. Burgess's eyes made necessary some more tangible expression of his affection than this, so he walked round and kissed her, somewhat to the consternation of the darky butler who at that moment appeared to clear the table.

"As to money," he continued when they had reached the living-room, "I got rid of some stock I thought was a dead one the other day, and I meant to give you a couple of thousand. You may consider it's yours for clothes or orphans or anything you like."

She murmured her gratitude as she took up her knitting, but he saw that the wound caused by his ungallant reference to Mrs. Gurley's wardrobe had not been healed bv a kiss and two thousand dollars. Gertrude Worthington Burgess was a past mistress of the art of extracting from any such situation its fullest potentialities of compensation. And Webster knew as he fumbled the evening newspaper that before he departed for the meeting of the War Chest Committee that demanded his presence down-town at eight o'clock he must make it easy for her to pour out her latest grievances against Mrs. Gurley. He is a poor husband who hasn't learned the value of the casual approach. To all outward appearances he had forgotten Mrs. Gurley and for that matter Mrs. Burgess as well when, without looking up from the government estimate of the winter-wheat acreage, he remarked with a perfectly feigned absent air:

"By the way, Gertie, you started to say something about that Gurley woman. Been breaking into your fences somewhere?"

"If I thought you would be interested, Web——"

This on both sides was mere routine, a part of the accepted method, the established technic of mollification.

"Of course, I want to hear it," said Webster, throwing the paper down and planting himself at ease before her with his back to the fire.

"I don't want you to think me unkind or unjust, Web, but there are some things, you know!"

He admitted encouragingly that there were indeed some things and bade her go on.

"Well, what made me very indignant was the way that woman walked off with the Italian countess who was here last week to speak to our Red Cross workers. You know I wired Senator Saybrook to extend an invitation to the countess to come to our house, and he wrote me that he had called on her at the Italian Embassy and she had accepted; and then, when the countess came and I went to the station to meet her, Mrs. Gurley was there all dressed up and carried her off to her house. For sheer impudence, Web, that beat anything I ever heard of. Every one knows our home is always open and it had been in the papers that we were to entertain the Countess Paretti. It was not only a reflection on me, Web, but on you as well. And, of course, the poor countess wasn't to blame, with all the hurry and confusion at the station, and she didn't know me from Adam; and Mrs. Gurley simply captured her—it was really a case of the most shameless kidnapping—and hurried her into her limousine and took her right off to her house!"

Illustration: "It's the best party you ever pulled off."—Page 559.

"Well, after the time you'd spent thinking up Italian dishes for the lady to consume, I should say that the spaghetti was on us," said Burgess, recalling with relief that the countess's failure to honor his home had released him for dinner with a British aviator who had proved to be a very amusing and interesting person. "I meant to ask you how the Gurleys got into the sketch. It was a contemptible thing to do, all right. No wonder you're bitter about it. I'll cheerfully punch Gurley's head if that'll do any good."

"What I've been thinking about, Web, is this," said Mrs. Burgess meditatively. "You know there's an Illyrian delegation coming to town, a special envoy of some of the highest civil and military officials of poor war-swept Illyria. And I heard this afternoon that the Gurleys mean to carry them all to their house for luncheon when the train arrives Thursday at noon, just before Governor Windridge receives them at the State-house, where there's to be a big public meeting. The Gurleys have had their old Congressman from Taylorville extend the invitation in Washington and, of course, the Illyrians wouldn't know, Web."

"They would not," said Webster. "The fame of our domestic cuisine probably hasn't reached Illyria, and the delegation would be sure to form a low opinion of Western victualling if they fed at the Gurleys. The Gurleys probably think it a chance to open up a new market for their well-known Eureka brand of catsup in Illyria after the war."

"Don't be absurd!" admonished Mrs. Burgess.

"I'm not absurd; I'm indignant," Webster averred. "Put your cards on the table and let's have a look. What you want to do, Gertie, is to hand the Gurleys one of their own sour pickles. I sympathize fully with your ambition to retaliate. I'll go further than that," he added with a covert glance at the clock; "I'll see what I can do to turn the trick!"

"I don't see how it can be done without doing something we can't stoop to do," replied Mrs. Burgess with a hopeful quaver in her voice.

"We must do no stooping," Webster agreed heartily. "It would be far from us to resort to the coarse kidnapping tactics of the Gurleys. And, of course, you can't go to the mat with Mrs. Gurley in the train-shed. A rough-and-tumble scrap right there before the Illyrians would be undignified, and give 'em a quaint notion of the social habits of the corn-belt. But gently and firmly to guide the Illyrian commissioners to our humble home, throw 'em a luncheon, show 'em the family album and after the shouting at the State-house give 'em a whirl to the Art Institute, and walk 'em through the Illyrian Relief rooms, where a pretty little Illyrian girl dressed in her native costume would hand 'em flowers—that's the ticket."

"Oh, Web, you are always so helpful when you want to be! That's the most beautiful idea about the flowers. And perhaps a group of Illyrian children would do some folk-dances! I'm sure the visitors would be deeply touched by that."

"It would certainly make a hit," said Webster, feeling that he was once more rehabilitated in his wife's affections and confidence. "You say the Gurleys' publicity agent has already gazetted their hospitable designs? Excellent. The more advance-work they do on the job the better. We'll give a jar to the pickles—that's the game. Did you get that, Gertie? Pickles—a jar of pickles; a jar to the pickle industry?"

"I was thinking," said Mrs. Burgess, with a far-away look in her eyes, "how charming the folk-dances would be and I must see the settlement-house superintendent about choosing just the right children. But, Web, is it possible to do this so no one will know?"

"Don't worry about that," he assured her. "Arrange your luncheon and do it right. I've heard somewhere that a great delicacy in Illyria is broiled grasshoppers, or maybe it's centipedes. Better look that up to be sure not to poison our faithful ally. You'd better whisper to Mrs. Windridge that you'll want the governor, but tell her it's to meet a prison reformer or a Congo missionary; Windridge is keen on those lines. Ask a few pretty girls and look up the Illyrian religion, and get a bishop to suit."

"But you haven't told me how you mean to do it, Web. Of course, we must be careful——"

"Careful!" repeated Burgess, shaking himself into his top-coat in the hall-door. "My real name is discretion! You needn't worry about that part of it. The whole business will be taken care of; dead or alive, you shall have the Illyrians."

II

Wrong Number, locked up in the directors' room of the White River National, studied time-tables and maps, and newspaper clippings bearing upon the Western pilgrimage of the Illyrian Commission. In fifty words Webster G. Burgess had transferred to his shoulders full responsibility for producing the Illyrians in the Burgess home, warning him it must be done with all dignity and circumspection.

"That's for expenses," said Burgess, handing him a roll of bills. This job isn't a bank transaction—you get me? It's strictly a social event."

Wrong Number betrayed no perturbation as the president stated the case. Matters of delicacy had been confided to him before by his patron—the study of certain horses he thought of buying and wished an honest report on; the cautious sherlocking of a country-town customer who was flying higher than his credit; the disposal of the stock of an automobile manufacturer whose business had jumped ahead of his capital—such tasks as these Wrong Number had performed to the entire satisfaction of his employer.

In a new fall suit built by Burgess's tailor, with a green stripe instead of a blue to differentiate it from the president's latest, and with a white carnation in his lapel (Mrs. Burgess provided a pink one for Web every morning), Wrong Number brooded over this new problem for two days before he became a man of action.

His broad democracy made him a familiar visitor in cigar-stands, billiard-parlors, sporting-goods emporiums, soft-drink bars, and cheap hotels where one encounters horsemen, expert trap-shooters, pugilists, bookmakers, and other agreeable characters never met in fashionable clubs. After much thought he chose as his co-conspirator, Peterson, a big Swede, to whom he had advanced money with which to open a Turkish bath. As the bath was flourishing, the Swede welcomed an opportunity to express his gratitude to one he so greatly admired; and besides, he still owed Wrong Number two hundred dollars.

"I want a coupla guys that will look right in tall hats," said Wrong Number. "You'll do for one; you'll make up fine for the Illyrian Minister of Foreign Affairs—he's a tall chap; you'll see from that picture of the bunch being received at the New York City Hall. Then you want a little wizened cuss who won't look like an undertaker in a frock coat to stand for the Minister of Finance. We need four more to complete the string and they gotta have uniforms. Comic-opera hats with feathers—you can't make 'em too fancy."

The Swede nodded. The Uniform Rank of the Order of the Golden Buck, of which he was a prominent member, could provide the very thing.

"And I gotta have one real Illyrian to spout the language to the delegation."

What's the matter with Bensaris who runs a candy-shop near where I live? He's the big squeeze among 'em."

"We'll go down and see him. Remember, he don't need to know anything; just do what I tell him. There's a hundred in this for you, Pete, if you pull it right; expenses extra."

"The cops might pinch us," suggested Peterson warily. "And what you goin' to do about the mayor? It says in the papers that the mayor meets the outfit at the Union Station."

"If the cops ask the countersign tell 'em you turned out to meet the remains of a deceased brother. And don't worry about the mayor. He's been over the Grand Circuit with me and brought his money home in a trunk."

He drew a memorandum-book from his pocket and set down the following items:

• Pete. 2 plug hats; 4 uni.
• Band.
• Bensaris.
• Mayor.
• Five touring-cars.

"The honor, it is too much!" pleaded Bensaris when Wrong Number and Peterson had told him all it was necessary for him to know, at a little table in the rear of his shop. "But in the day's paper my daughter read me their Excellencies be met at the Union Station; the arrange' have been change'?"

"The papers are never right," declared Wrong Number. "And you don't need to tell 'em anything."

"A lady, Mees Burgett, she come here to arrange all Illyrians go to Relief office to sing the songs of my country. My daughter, she shall dance and hand flowers to their Excellencies!" cried Bensaris beaming.

"The Bensaris family will be featured right through the bill," said Wrong Number.

"You are too much kind," insisted Bensaris. "It is for the mayor you make the arrange'?"

"I represent the financial interests of our city," Wrong Number replied. "You want to go the limit in dressing up the automobiles; make 'em look like Fourth o' July in your native O'Learyo. Where do we doll 'em up, Pete?"

The garage of a friend in the next block would serve admirably and Peterson promised to co-operate with Bensaris in doing the job properly.

"Tail-coat and two-gallon hat for Mr. Bensaris," said Wrong Number. "Pete, you look after that." He pressed cash upon Mr. Bensaris and noted the amount in his book. "We'll call it a heat," he said, and went up-town to pilot Mr. Webster G. Burgess to a ten-round match for points, between two local amateurs, that was being pulled off behind closed doors in an abandoned skating-rink.

III

The Illyrian Commission had just breakfasted when their train reached Farrington on the State-line, where the mayor of the capital city, Mr. Clarence E. Tibbotts, alias Wrong Number, and Mr. Zoloff Bensaris, all in shining hats, boarded the train.

Having studied the portraits of the distinguished Illyrians in a Sunday supplement provided by Mr. Tibbotts, Mr. Bensaris effected the introductions without an error, and having been carefully coached by the same guide, he did not handle his hat as though it were a tray of chocolate-sundaes. The kindness of the mayor and his associates in coming so far to meet the commission deeply touched the visitors. The fourth assistant secretary of state, who was doing the honors for the American Government, heard without emotion of the slights changes in the programme.

"We thought the commission would be tired of the train," explained Wrong Number, who was relieved to find that his cutaway was of the same vintage as the fourth assistant secretary's. "So we get off at the first stop this side of town and motor in."

"Luncheon at Mr. Gurley's," said the secretary consulting a sheaf of telegrams.

"Had to change that, too," said Wrong Number carelessly; "they have scarlet fever at the Gurleys'. The Webster G. Burgesses will throw the luncheon."

The secretary made a note of the change and thrust his papers into his pocket. Mr. Tibbotts handed round his cigarette-case, a silver trinket bearing "Lord Templeton's" head in enamel relief, a Christmas gift from Mr. Webster G. Burgess, and joined in a discussion of the morning's news from the Eastern front, where the Illyrian troops were acquitting themselves with the highest credit.

When the suburban villas of Ravenswood began to dance along the windows, Mr. Tibbotts marshalled his party and as they stepped from the private car a band struck up the Illyrian national hymn. Several dozen students from the near-by college who chanced to be at the station raised a cheer. As the Illyrians were piloted across the platform to the fleet of waiting automobiles, the spectators were interested in the movements of another party—a party fully as distinguished in appearance—that emerged from the station and tripped briskly into a sleeper farther along in the train that had discharged the Illyrians. Here, too, were silk hats upon two sober-looking gentlemen who could hardly be other than statesmen, and uniforms of great splendor upon four stalwart forms, with topping plumes waving blithely in the autumn air. And out of the corner of his eye Mr. Clarence E. Tibbotts, just seating himself in a big touring-car, between the fourth assistant secretary of state and the Illyrian minister of finance, saw Peterson's work, and knew that it was good.

The procession swept into town at a lively clip, set by the driver of the first car, that bore the mayor and the minister of foreign affairs, which was driven by a victor of many motor speed-trials, carefully chosen by Wrong Number for this important service. The piquant flavor of Wrong Number's language as he pointed out objects of interest amused the American secretary, much bored in his pilgrimages by the solemnities of reception committees; but it served also to convince the Illyrian minister of finance of the inadequacy of his own English.

Lusty cheering greeted the party as it moved slowly through the business district. When the Illyrian minister and the fourth secretary lifted their hats Wrong Number kept time with them; he enjoyed lifting his hat. He enjoyed also a view of half a dozen clerks on the steps of the White River National, who cheered deliriously as they espied their associate, and hastened within to spread the news of his latest exploit through the cages.

It is fortunate that Mr. Tibbotts had taken the precaution to plant a motion-picture camera opposite the Burgess home, for otherwise the historical student of the future might be puzzled to find that the first edition of the Evening Journal of that day showed the Illyrian delegation passing through the gates of the Union Station, with a glimpse of Mrs. Arnold D. Gurley handing a large bouquet of roses to a tall gentleman who was not in fact the Illyrian minister of foreign affairs but the proprietor of Peterson's bath-parlors. The Journal suppressed its pictures in later editions, and printed without illustrations an excellent account of the reception of the Illyrians at Ravenswood and of the luncheon, from facts furnished by Mr. Tibbotts, who stood guard at the door of the Burgess home while the function was in progress.

Who ate Mrs. Gurley's luncheon is a moot question in the select circles of the capital city. Peterson and his party might have enjoyed the repast had not the proprietor of the bath-parlors, after accepting Mrs. Gurley's bouquet at the station-gates, vanished with his accomplices in the general direction of the lodge-room of the Order of the Golden Buck.

When foolish reporters tried to learn at the City Hall why the mayor had changed without warning the plans for the reception, that official referred them to the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, who in turn directed the inquirers to the governor's office; and the governor, having been properly instructed by his wife, knew nothing whatever about it.

As the Burgesses were reviewing the incidents of the day at dinner that evening, Mrs. Burgess remarked suddenly:

"Now that it's all over, Web, do you think it was quite fair, really right?"

"You mean," asked Webster huskily, "that you're not satisfied with the way it was handled."

"Oh, not that! But it was almost too complete; and poor Mrs. Gurley must be horribly humiliated."

"Crushed, I should say," remarked Webster cheerfully. "This ought to hold her for a while."

"But that fake delegation you had at the station to deceive Mrs. Gurley——"

"I beg your pardon," Webster interrupted, "I assure you I had nothing to do with it."

"Well, all I know is that just before dinner Mrs. Windridge called me up and said the governor had just telephoned her that Mrs. Gurley tried to kiss the hand of some man she took for the Illyrian minister of foreign affairs as he went through the station-gates. And the man is nothing but a rubber in a Turkish bath. You wouldn't have played such a trick as that, Web, would you?"

"No, dear, I would not. For one thing, I wouldn't have been smart enough to think it up."

"And you know, Web, I shouldn't want you to think me mean and envious and jealous. I'm not really that way; you know I'm not. And of course if I'd thought you'd really bring the Illyrians here, I should never have mentioned it at all."

Webster passed his hand across his brow in bewilderment. At moments when he thought he was meeting the most exacting requirements of the marital relationship it was enormously disturbing to find himself defeated.

"Your luncheon was a great success; the talk at the table was wonderful; and the girls you brought in made a big hit. It's the best party you ever pulled off," he declared warmly.

"I'm glad you think so," she said slowly, giving him her direct gaze across the table, "but there were one or two things I didn't quite like, Web. It seemed to me your young friend Tibbotts was a little too conspicuous. I'm surprised that you let him come to the house. You couldn't—you wouldn't have let him know how the Illyrians came here! He really seemed to assume full charge of the party, and in the drawing-room he was flirting outrageously with pretty Lois Hubbard, and kept her giggling when I'd asked her specially to be nice to the fourth assistant secretary, who's a bachelor, you know. And if Mrs. Hubbard knew we had introduced Lois to a boy from the race-track——"

"It would be awful," said Webster with one of the elusive grins that always baffled her.

"What would be awful?" she demanded.

"Oh, nothing! I was thinking of Wrong Number, and what a blow it would be if I should lose him. I must remember to raise his salary in this morning."