"Then you don't believe what I'm tellin' you?"

"Not one-tenth of one iota of a belief."

George betrayed in a rude, choleric grunt, his disgust to see his splendid fabrication, so painfully concocted for the delusion and discomfiture of P. Sybarite, threatening to collapse of sheer intrinsic flimsiness. He had counted so confidently on the credulity of the little bookkeeper! And Violet had supported his confidence with so much a.s.surance! Disgusting wasn't the word for George's emotions.

In desperation he grasped at one final, fugitive hope.

"All right," he said sullenly: "_all_ right! You don't gotta believe me if you don't wanta. Only wait--that's all I ask--_wait_! You'll see I'm right when she turns down your invite to-night."

P. Sybarite smiled sunnily. "So that is why you thought she wouldn't go with us, is it?"

"You got me."

"You thought she, if Marian Blessington, must necessarily be such a sn.o.b that she wouldn't a.s.sociate with poor devils like us, did you?"

"Wait. You'll see."

"Well, it's none of your business, George; but I don't mind telling you, you're wrong. Quite wrong. In the head, too, George. I've already asked Miss Lessing, and she has accepted."

George's eyes, protruding, glistened with poignant surprise.

"You ast her already?"

"That's why I left you down the street. I dropped into Blessington's for the sole purpose of asking her."

"And she fell for it?"

"She accepted my invitation--yes."

After a long pause George ground his cigarette beneath his heel, and rose.

"In wrong, as usual," he admitted with winning simplicity. "I never did guess _any_thin' right the first time. Only--you just grab this from me: maybe she's willin' to run the risk of bein' seen with us, but that ain't sayin' she's anybody but Marian Blessington."

"You really think it likely that Miss Blessington, hiding from her guardian and anxious to escape detection, would take a job at the glove counter of her own store, where everybody must know her by sight--where her guardian, Shaynon himself, couldn't fail to see her at least twice a day, as he enters and leaves the building?"

Staggered, Bross recovered quickly.

"That's just her cuteness. She doped it out the safest place for her would be the last place he'd look for her!"

"And you really think that she, accustomed to every luxury that money can buy, would voluntarily come down to living here, at six dollars a week, and clerking in a department store--simply because, according to the papers, she's opposed to a marriage that she can't be forced to contract in a free country like this?"

"Wel-l...." George floundered helplessly for a moment; and fell back again upon an imagination for the time being stimulated to an abnormal degree of inventiveness:

"P'raps old Shaynon's double-crossed her somehow we don't know nothin'

about. He ain't above it, if all they tell of him's true. Maybe he's got her coin away from her, and she had to go to work for a livin'.

Stranger things have happened in this burg, P.S."

It was the turn of P.S. to hesitate in doubt; or at all events, so George Bross inferred from a sudden change in the expression of the little man's eyes. Momentarily they seemed to cloud, as if in introspection. But he rallied quickly enough.

"All things are possible, George," he admitted with his quizzical grin. "But this time you're mistaken. I'm not arguing with you, George; I'm _telling_ you: you're hopelessly mistaken."

"You think so--huh?" growled George. "Well, I got eight iron bucks that says Marian Blessington to any five of your money."

He made a bold show of his pay envelope.

"It'd be a shame to rob you, George," said P. Sybarite. "Besides, you're bad-tempered when broke."

"Never you mind about that. Here's my eight, if you've got five that makes a noise like Molly Lessing."

P. Sybarite laughed softly and produced the little wad of bills that represented his weekly wage. At this, George involuntarily drew back.

"And how would you settle the bet?"

"Leave it to her," insisted George in an expiring gasp of bravado.

"You'd ask her yourself?"

"Ye-es--"

"And let it stand on her answer?"

"Wel-l--"

"Here she comes now," added P. Sybarite, glancing up the street.

"Quick, now; you've only a minute to decide. Is it a bet?"

With a gesture of brave decision, George returned his money to his pocket.

"You're an easy mark," he observed in accents of deep pity. "I knew you'd think I meant it."

"But didn't you, George?"

"Nah--nothin' like that! I was just kiddin' you along, to see how much you'd swallow."

"It's all right then," agreed P. Sybarite. "Only--George!"

"Huh?"

"Don't you breathe a word of this to Miss Lessing?"

"Why not?"

"Because I tell you not to--because," said P. Sybarite firmly, "I forbid you."

"You--you forbid me? Holy Mike! And what--"

"Sssh!" P. Sybarite warned him sibilantly. "Miss Lessing might hear you.... What will happen if you disobey me," he added as the shop girl turned in at the gateway, lowering his own voice and fixing the shipping clerk with a steely stare, "will be another accident, much resembling that of this afternoon--if you haven't forgotten. Now mind what I tell you, and be good."

Mr. Bross swelled with resentment; exhibited a distorted and empurpled visage; but kept silence.