"In the end?" murmured Bosworth. Miss Downing turned to the fireplace.
"I--I can't tell you about it now," said his father in a constrained manner. "'Gad, it was--it was awful! Bellows! Where the deuce is the man? Ah, here you are. Bellows, call me a cab or something at--"
"Mr. Stokes will be here directly, Miss," said Bellows. "Very good, Mr. Van Pycke. A four-wheeler?"
"Take the subway, dad," interposed Bosworth, glaring at Bellows. "Next corner below. But, think it over. You'd better wait for me."
Stokes came in, and Miss Downing, with a significant glance at Bosworth, retired to the library with the butler.
"Has everybody departed?" asked Bosworth of Bellows, who was turning off some of the lights in the lower end of the room. The young man dropped into a chair, opened his cigaret case, and then, first looking at the portières obscuring the library, yawned prodigiously.
"Yes, sir," said Bellows, caught in the middle of an illy-suppressed yawn. "The detective, my mistress's maid, and Mr. De Foe's man, with the bags, sir, went away with the 'appy couple in your sleigh. It was a bit crowded, sir, for the driver."
"Bellows," hissed Mr. Van Pycke, "who instructed you to take my trousers out to press 'em?"
"They needed it, sir, badly," explained Bellows.
"And my shoes, sir,--I did not ask to have them polished, did I?"
"No, sir. As I remember it, you did not."
"It wouldn't have been so bad," almost moaned the unhappy gentleman, turning to his son, "but I didn't discover their absence until after I had, in my ungovernable rage, thrown those confounded wax figure's garments from an upstairs window. And then, by Gad, sir, I couldn't find my own trousers. What's more, I couldn't find the bell button to call for Bellows. There I was, in a strange bedroom without--Oh, I'll never forget it, Bosworth--never! What the devil are you laughing at, sir?"
Miss Downing had quietly reentered the room and was standing just inside the door, a growing smile of appreciation on her lips.
"Wha--what did you do, sir?" asked Bosworth, controlling himself heroically.
"Do? What could I do? Demmit all, trousers don't grow on chandeliers, do they? I couldn't pick off a pair, à la Santa Claus, could I? There was only one thing left to do. That was to shout for Bellows. Just as I was on the point of stealing out to the head of the stairs, I heard voices--a man's and a woman's. I dashed back into the bedroom. 'Gad, sir, what do you think? Those people were in the next room, and the door, which I hadn't noticed before, was partly ajar. At any minute they might come in and find--ahem! I didn't see you, Miss Downing."