"Now!" whispers Dan to the stout dame, "speak quick!"
At that minute, Dan looked like a guy with a ticket on a hundred to one shot, watchin' it breeze into the stretch leadin' by by a city block.
"Is--is that you Henery?" squeaks Cleopatra in a tremblin' voice.
They's a rustle in the cabinet and then _this_ comes out over the top.
"Generous gobs of Gazoopis! Our employees is ready, reckless and Russian. This guy is crooked, crazy and careless. He will take you for your beautiful, bulgin' bankroll and--"
"Why, Henery!" squawks the dame, jumpin' up off the chair.
I heard the well known dull thud on the other side of the cabinet, and I guess it was Professor Parducci fallin' senseless on the floor. I thought Honest Dan had dropped dead from the way he was hung over a sofa.
"Each and every day," goes on the voice in the cabinet, "each and every day we ship a million lovely loaves--"
"Merciful Heavens!" yells the dame. "A sign! Henery, shall I go back?"
"Back is right!" says the voice. "These guys is cheap crooks and they ain't no Marc Anthony!"
The lights go out and Honest Dan comes to, rushin' over to the stout dame with a million alibis tryin' to be first out of his mouth. I beat it around to the back, but the professor has gone somewheres else while the goin' was fair to medium.
"You have deceived me, you wretch!" screams the stout dame. "You have--"
That's as far as she got, because right in the middle of it she pulls a faint, and daughter eases her to the floor. The Kid hops out of the cabinet and grabs Honest Dan.
"Beat it, you rat," bawls Scanlan, "before I commit mayhem!"
From the way Honest Dan went out of that room, he must have passed Samoa, the first hour!
Daughter reaches up and grabs the Kid's hand.
"I--I--want to thank you," she says, "for saving my mother. I--I don't know what might have happened, if you hadn't been here!"
"That's all right!" pipes the Kid. "D'ye want us to do anything else?"
"Yes," she says. "Will you tell me where you heard that--that description of the--the million lovely loaves?"
"Sure," answers the Kid. "When we was comin' East, we stopped off at a hick burg somewheres and a guy took us over a bakery--"
"Poetic justice!" she says. "That explains everything. My poor, dear father founded that bakery, and those were the last advertisements for it he wrote!"