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THE MADNESS OF MAY

by

MEREDITH NICHOLSON

With illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele







[Illustration: "I didn't know it was _your_ moon," he said.
[_Page_ 60]]


Upon the morn they took their horses with the queen, and rode
a-maying in woods and meadows, as it pleased them.
                                        --The Age of Chivalry.

New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1917

Copyright, 1917, by
Charles Scribner's Sons

Published March, 1917



TO
MRS. CHARLES THOMAS KOUNTZE



ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                                  PAGE

"I didn't know it was _your_ moon," he said.            _Frontispiece_

"The young person left in haste, that's clear enough,"
remarked Hood.                                                      30

"I make it a rule never to deny food to any applicant,
no matter how unworthy. You may remain."                           123

"Throw up your hands, boys; it's no use!" cried Hood
in mock despair.                                                   166






THE MADNESS OF MAY

I


Billy Deering let himself into his father's house near Radford Hills,
Westchester County, and with a nod to Briggs, who came into the hall to
take his hat and coat, began turning over the letters that lay on the
table.

"Mr. Hood has arrived, sir," the servant announced. "I put him in the
south guest-room."

Deering lifted his head with a jerk. "Hood--what Hood?"

"Mr. Hood is all I know, sir. He said he was expected--you had asked him
for the night. If there's a mistake----"

Deering reached for his hat and coat, which Briggs still held. His face
whitened, and the outstretched hand shook visibly. Briggs eyed him with
grave concern, then took a step toward the stairway.

"If you wish, sir----"

"Never mind, Briggs," Deering snapped. "It's all right. I'd forgotten I
had a guest coming; that's all."

He opened a letter with assumed carelessness and held it before his eyes
until the door closed upon Briggs. Then his jaws tightened. He struck his
hands together and mounted the steps doggedly, as though prepared for a
disagreeable encounter.

All the way out on the train he had feared that this might happen. The
long arm of the law was already clutching at his collar, but he had not
reckoned with this quick retribution. The presence of the unknown man in
the house could be explained on no other hypothesis than the discovery of
his theft of two hundred thousand dollars in gilt-edged bonds from the
banking-house of Deering, Gaylord & Co. It only remained for him to kill
himself and escape from the shame that would follow exposure. He must do
this at once, but first he would see who had been sent to apprehend him.
Hood was an unfamiliar name; he had never known a Hood anywhere, he was
confident of that.

The house was ominously quiet. Deering paused when he reached his own
room, glanced down the hall, then opened the door softly, and fell back
with a gasp before the blaze of lights. There, lost in the recesses of a
comfortable chair, with his legs thrown across the mahogany table, sat a
man he had never seen before.

"Ah, Deering; very glad you've come," murmured the stranger, glancing up
unhurriedly from his perusal of a newspaper.

He had evidently been reading for some time, as the floor was littered
with papers. At this instant something in the page before him caught his
attention and he deftly extracted a quarter of a column of text, pinched
it with the scissors' points and dropped it on a pile of similar cuttings
on the edge of the table.

"Just a moment!" he remarked in the tone of a man tolerant of
interruptions, "and do pardon me for mussing up your room. I liked it
better here than in the pink room your man gave me--no place there to put
your legs! Creature of habit; can't rest without sticking my feet up."

He opened a fresh newspaper and ran his eyes over the first page with the
trained glance of an expert exchange reader.

"The Minneapolis papers are usually worthless for my purposes, and yet
occasionally they print something I wouldn't miss. I'm the best friend
the 'buy your home paper' man has," he ran on musingly, skimming the page
and ignoring Deering, who continued to stare in stupefied amazement from
the doorway. "Ah!"

The scissors flashed and the unknown added another item to his
collection.

"That's all," he remarked with a sigh. He dropped his feet to the floor,
rose, and lazily stretched himself.

Tall, compactly built, a face weather-beaten where the flesh showed above
a close-clipped brownish beard, and hair, slightly gray, brushed back
smoothly from a broad forehead--these items Deering noted swiftly as he
dragged himself across the threshold.

"Really, a day like this would put soul into a gargoyle," the stranger
remarked, brushing the paper-shavings from his trousers. "Motored up from
Jersey and had a grand time all the way. I walk, mostly, but commandeer a
machine for long skips. To learn how to live, my dear boy, that's the
great business! Not sure I've caught the trick, but I'm working at it,
with such feeble talents as the gods have bestowed."

He filled a pipe deftly from a canvas bag, and drew the strings together
with white, even teeth.

This cool, lounging stranger was playing a trick of some kind; Deering
was confident of this and furious at his utter inability to cope with
him. He clung to the back of a chair, trembling with anger.

"My name," the visitor continued, tossing his match into an ash-tray, "is
Hood--R. Hood. The lone initial might suggest Robert or Roderigo, but if
your nursery library was properly stocked you will recall a gentleman
named Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest. I don't pretend to be a
descendant--far from it; adopted the name out of sheer admiration for one
of the grandest figures in all literature. Robin Hood, Don Quixote, and
George Borrow are rubricated saints in my calendar. By the expression on
your face I see that you don't make me out, and I can't blame you for
thinking me insane; but, my dear boy, such an assumption does me a cruel
wrong. Briefly, I'm a hobo with a weakness for good society, and yet a
friend of the under dog. I confess to a passion for grand opera and
lobster in all its forms. Do you grasp the idea?"

Deering did not grasp it. The man had protested his sanity, but Deering
had heard somewhere that a confident belief in their mental soundness is
a common hallucination of lunatics. Still, the stranger's steady gray
eyes did not encourage the suspicion that he was mad. Deering's own
reason, already severely taxed, was unequal to the task of dealing with
this assured and cheerful Hood, who looked like a gentleman but talked
like a fool.

"For God's sake, who are you and what do you want?" he demanded angrily.

Hood pushed him gently into a chair, utterly ignoring his fury.

"What time do we dine? Seven-thirty, I think your servant told me. I
shan't dress if you don't mind. Speaking of clothes, that man of yours is
a very superficial observer; let me in on the strength of my automobile
coat, and I suppose the machine impressed him too. If he'd looked under
the surface at these poor rags, I'd never have got by! That illustrates
an ancient habit of the serving class in thinking all is gold that
glitters. Snobs! Deplorable weakness! Let's talk like sensible men till
the gong sounds."

Deering shook himself impatiently. This absurd talk, carefully
calculated, he assumed, to prolong his misery, had torn his nerves to
shreds. Hood sat down close to him in a straight-backed chair, crossed
his legs, and thrust his hands into his coat pockets.

"My dear boy, in the name of all the gods at once, cheer up! To satisfy
your very natural curiosity, I'll say that I fancied you were in trouble
and needed a strong arm to sustain you in your hour of trial. Laudable
purpose--ah, I see you begin to feel more comfortable. I have every
intention of playing the big brother to you for a few hours, weeks, or
months, or till you come out of your green funk. You wonder, of course,
what motive I have for intruding in this way--lying to your servant, and
making myself at home in your house. The motive, so far as there is any,
is the purely selfish one of finding enjoyment for myself, while
incidentally being of service to you. And you're bound to admit that
that's a fair offer in this world of greed and selfishness. The great
trouble with most of us is that the flavor so soon wears out of the
chewing-gum. Do you remember the last time you had a good, hearty laugh?
I'll wager you don't!"

Deering scowled, but Hood continued to expound his philosophy:

"The world's roaring along at such a rate we can't find happiness
anywhere but in the dictionary. It's worrying me to death, just the
spectacle of the fool old human race never getting a chance to sit down
by the side of the road and pick the pebbles out of its shoes.
Everybody's feet hurt and everybody's carrying a blood pressure that's
bound to blow the roof off. I tell you, Deering, civilization hasn't got
anything on the gypsies but soap and sanitary plumbing, I'm just
forty-five and for years I've kept in motion most of the time. Alone of
great travellers William Jennings Bryan has reviewed more water-tanks
than I. I find the same delight in Butte, Peoria, Galesburg, Des Moines,
Ashtabula, and Bangor, in Tallahassee, Birmingham, and Waco, that others
seek in London, Paris, and Vienna--and it's all American stuff--business
of flags flying and Constitution being chanted offstage by a choir of a
million voices! I've lived in coal-camps in Colorado, wintered with Maine
lumbermen, hopped the ties with hobos, and enjoyed the friendship of
thieves. I don't mean to brag, but I suppose there isn't a really
first-rate crook in the country that I don't know. And down in the
underworld they look on me--if I may modestly say it--as an old reliable
friend. I've found these contacts immensely instructive, as you may
imagine. Don't get nervous! I never stole anything in my life."

He thrust his fingers into his inside waistcoat pocket, and drew out a
packet of bills, neatly folded, and opened them for Deering's wondering
inspection.

"I beg of you don't jump to the conclusion that I roll in wealth. Money
is poison to me; I hate the very smell of it--haven't a cent of my own in
the world. This belongs to my chauffeur--carry it as a precaution
merely."

Hood relighted his pipe, and dreamily watched the match blacken and curl
in his fingers.

"Your chauffeur?" Deering suggested, like a child prompting a parent in
the midst of an absorbing story.

"Oh, yes! Cassowary"--he pronounced the word lingeringly as though to
prolong his pleasure in it--"real name doesn't matter. His father rolled
up a big wad cutting the forest primeval into lumber, and left it to
Cassowary--matter of a million or two. Cassowary had been driven to drink
by an unhappy love-affair when I plucked him as a brand from burning
Broadway. Nice chap, but too much self-indulgence; never had any
discipline. He's pretty well broken in now, and as we seemed to need each
other we follow the long trail together. Manage to hit it off first-rate.
He's still mooning over the girl; tough that he can't have the only thing
in the world he wants! Obstreperous parent adumbrated in the foreground,
shotgun in hand. I don't allow Cassowary to carry any money--would rather
risk contamination myself than expose him to it. If he stays with me for
a few years, his accumulated income will roll up so that he can endow
orchestras and art museums all through the prairie towns of the West, and
become a great benefactor of mankind."

Hood's story was manifestly absurd, and yet he invested it with a certain
plausibility. Even Cassowary, as Hood described him, seemed a wholly
credible person, and the bills Hood had drawn from his pocket bore all
the marks of honest money.

Dinner was announced, and Hood lounged down-stairs and into the
dining-room arm in arm with Deering. A tapestry on the wall immediately
attracted his attention. After pecking at the edges with his long,
slender fingers he turned to his seat with a sigh.

"Preposterous imitation! I dare say it was passed off as a real Gobelin,
but I know the artist who fakes those things--a New Jersey genius and
very smooth at the game."

Deering had never paid the slightest attention to the tapestry, which had
hung in the room for a dozen years, but he apologized in a vein of irony
for its spuriousness, and steeled himself against complaints of the food;
but after tasting the soup Hood praised it with enthusiasm. He was wholly
at ease, and his table manners were beyond criticism. He seemed
indifferent to the construction Deering or the bewildered Briggs might
place upon his confessions, to which he now glibly addressed himself.

"A couple of years ago I was roaming through the Western provinces with a
couple of old friends who persist--against my advice, I assure you--in
the childish pastime of safe-blowing. We got pinched _en bloc_, and as I
was broke I had to sponge on the yeggs to get me out of jail."

Briggs dropped a plate and Deering frowned at the interruption. Hood went
on tranquilly:

"However, I was immured only three weeks, and the experience was
broadening. That was in Omaha, and I'll say without fear of contradiction
that the Omaha jail is one of the most comfortable in the Missouri
Valley. I recommend it, Deering, without reservation, to any one in
search of tranquillity. After they turned me loose I introduced myself to
an old college classmate--fraternity brother--no danger of exposure. I
had him put me up at the Omaha Club, and then I gave a dinner to the
United States commissioner who heard my case, the district attorney, and
the United States marshal. I wanted to ask the yeggs too--it seemed only
square--but the judge was out of town, and the marshal was afraid his
Honor might cite him for contempt if he brought his prisoners to my
party. These things probably seem to you most banal, but take it all
round I do manage to keep amused. Of course, now and then I pay more for
my fun than it's worth. Last summer I mixed in with some moonshiners in
Tennessee. Moonshining is almost a lost art, and I wanted the experience
before the business became extinct. An unsociable lot, the lone still
boys, and wouldn't warm up to me a bit. The unhappy result was a bullet
through my left lung. I got patched up by a country doctor, but had to
spend two months in a Philadelphia hospital for the finishing touches."

Deering's uneasiness increased. This man who spoke so blithely of
imprisonment and bullets in his lung must have a motive for his visit.
With a jerk of the head he sent Briggs from the room.

"This is all very amusing," he remarked with decision as he put down his
salad-fork, "but will you pardon me for asking just why you came here? I
have your own word for it that your favorite amusement is consorting with
criminals, and that money you flashed may have been stolen for all I
know! If you have any business with me----"

"My dear boy, I don't blame you for growing restless," replied Hood
amiably. "Of course, I know that your father and sister are away, and
that you are alone. Your family history I am pretty familiar with; your
antecedents and connections are excellent. Your mother, who died four
years ago, was of the Rhode Island Ranger family--and there is no better
blood in America. Your sister Constance won the Westchester golf
championship last year--I learned that from the newspapers, which I read
with a certain passion, as you have observed. If I hadn't thought you
needed company--my company particularly--I shouldn't have landed on your
door-step. You dined Monday night at the Hotel Pendragon--at a table in
the corner on the Fifth Avenue side, and your dejection touched me
deeply. Afterward you went down to the rathskeller, and sat there all
alone drinking stuff you didn't need. It roused my apprehensions. I
feared things were going badly with you, and I thought I'd give you a
chance to unburden your soul to me, Hood, the enchanted hobo----"

"For sheer cheek--" began Deering hotly.

Hood lifted his hand deprecatingly.

"Please don't!" he remarked soothingly. "With the tinkle of a bell you
can call your man and have me bounced. I repacked my bag after taking a
bath in your very comfortable guest-room, and we can part immediately.
But let us be sensible, Deering; just between ourselves, don't you really
need me?"

His tone was ingratiating, his manner the kindest. Deering had walked the
streets for two days trying to bring himself to the point of confessing
his plight to one of a score of loyal friends--men he had known from
prep-school days, and on through college: active, resourceful, wealthy
young fellows who would risk much to help him--and yet in his fear and
misery he had shrunk from approaching them. Hood, he was now convinced,
was not a detective come to arrest him; in fact his guest's sympathies
and connections seemed to lie on the other side of the law's barricade.

They had coffee in the living-room, where Hood, inspired by specimens of
the work of several of the later French painters, discussed art with
sophistication. Deering observed him intently. There was something
immensely attractive in Hood's face; his profile, clean-cut as a cameo,
was thoroughly masculine; his head was finely moulded, and his gray eyes
were frank and responsive.

"It's possible," said Deering, after a long silence in which Hood smoked
meditatively, "that you may be able to help me."

On a sudden impulse he rose and put out his hand.

"Thank you," said Hood gravely, "but don't tell me unless you really want
to."




II


"So after all the bother of stealing two hundred thousand dollars' worth
of negotiable securities you _lost_ them!" Hood remarked when Deering
ended his recital.

Deering frowned and nodded. Not only had he told his story to this utter
stranger, but he had found infinite relief in doing so.

"Let us go over the points again," said Hood calmly. "You set down your
suitcase containing two hundred K. & L. Terminal 5's in the Grand Central
Station, turned round to buy a ticket to Boston, and when you picked up
the bag it was the wrong one! Such instances are not rare; the strong
family resemblance between suitcases has caused much trouble in this
world. Only the other day a literary friend told me the magazine editors
have placed a ban on mixed suitcases as a fictional device; but of course
that doesn't help us any in this affair. I've known a few professional
suitcase lifters. One of the smoothest is Sammy Tibbots, but he's doing
time in Joliet, so we may as well eliminate Sammy."

"No, no!" Deering exclaimed impatiently. "It was a girl who did the
trick! She was at the local ticket window, just behind me. You see, I was
nervous and after I bought my ticket it dropped to the floor, and while I
was picking it up that girl grabbed my suitcase and beat it for the
gate."

"Enter the girl," Hood muttered. "'Twas ever thus! Of course, you
telegraphed ahead and stopped her--that was the obvious course."

"There you go! If I'd done that, there wouldn't have been any publicity;
oh, no!" Deering replied contemptuously. "People don't carry big bunches
of bonds around in suitcases; they send 'em by registered express. Of
course, if the girl was honest she'd report the matter to the railroad
officials and they'd notify the police, and they'd be looking for the
thief! And that's just what I don't want."

"Of course not," Hood assented readily. "That was Wednesday and this is
Friday, and you haven't seen any ads in the papers about a suitcase full
of bonds? Well, I'd hardly have missed such a thing myself. What did the
girl look like?"

"Small, dressed in blue and wearing a white veil. She made a lively
sprint for the gate, and climbed into the last car just as the train
started. The conductor yelled to her not to try it, but the porter jumped
out and pushed her up the steps."

At Hood's suggestion Deering brought the suitcase that had been exchanged
for his own, and disclosed its contents--a filmy night-dress, a silk
shirt-waist, a case of ivory toilet articles bearing a complicated
monogram, a bottle of violet-water, half empty, a pair of silk stockings,
a novel, a pair of patent-leather pumps, all tumbled together.

[Illustration: "The young person left in haste, that's clear enough,"
remarked Hood.]

"The young person left in haste, that's clear enough," remarked Hood,
balancing one of the pumps in his hand. "'Bonet, Paris,'" he read,
squinting at the lining. "Most deplorable that we have both slippers; one
would have been a clew, and we could have spent the rest of our lives
measuring footprints. Very nice slippers, though; fastidious young person,
I'll wager. The monogram on these trinkets is of no assistance--it might
be R. G. T., or T. G. R., or G. R. T. Monograms are a nuisance, a
delusion, a snare!"

Deering flung the faintly scented violet-tinted toilet-case into the bag
resentfully.

"The silly little fool; why didn't she mind what she was doing!" he
exclaimed angrily, "and not steal other people's things!"

"Pardon me," Hood remonstrated, "but from your story the less you speak
of stealing the better. But it isn't clear yet why you sneaked the bonds.
Your father has a reputation for generosity; you're an only son and
slated to succeed him in the banking-house. Just what was your idea in
starting for Boston with the loot?"

"It was to help Ned Ranscomb, an old pal of mine," Deering blurted--"one
of the best fellows on earth, who has pulled me out of a lot of holes.
He'd taken options on Mizpah Copper for more than he could pay for and
fell on my neck to help him out. And the rotten part of it is that I
can't find him anywhere! I've telephoned and telegraphed all over
creation, but he's fallen off the earth! I tell you everything from the
start has gone wrong. I guess I didn't tell you that I already had a
couple of hundred thousand in Mizpah--all I could put up personally, and
now I've lost the two hundred thousand I stole, and Ned's got cold feet
and drowned himself, and here I'm talking about it to a man who may be a
crook for all I know!"

"This disappearance of Ranscomb has a suspicious look," remarked Hood,
ignoring the fling. "Either money or a woman, of course."

"Ranscomb," Deering retorted savagely, "is all business and never fools
with women. And you can bet that with this big copper deal on he wouldn't
waste time on any girl that ever was born."

"Human beings are as we find them," observed Hood judicially, "but you're
entirely too tragic about this whole business. If it isn't comedy, it's
nothing. I'll wager the girl who skipped with your stolen boodle has a
sense of humor. The key-note to her character is in this novel she
grabbed as she hastily packed her bag--'The Madness of May.' That's one
of the drollest books ever written. A story like that is a boon to
mankind; it kept me chuckling all night. Haven't read it? Well, the
heroine excused herself from a dinner-table that was boring her to death,
ran to her room and packed a suitcase, and that was the last her friends
saw of her for some time. Along about this season it's in the blood of
healthy human beings to pine for clean air and the open road. It's the
wanderlust that's in all of us, old and young alike. It's possible that
the young lady who ran off with your bonds felt the spring madness and
determined to hit the trail as the girl did in that yarn. Finding herself
possessed of a lot of bonds belonging to a stranger, I dare say she is
badly frightened. Put yourself in that girl's place, Deering--imagine her
feelings, landing somewhere after a hurried journey, opening her suitcase
to chalk her nose, and finding herself a thief!"

"Rot!" sniffed Deering angrily.

One moment he distrusted Hood; the next his heart warmed to him. At the
table the light-hearted adventurer had kept him entertained and amused
with his running comment on books, public characters, the world's gold
supply, and scrapes he had been in, without dropping any clew to his
identity. He seemed to be a veritable encyclopaedia of places; apparently
there was not a town in the United States that he hadn't visited, and he
spoke of exclusive clubs and thieves' dens in the same breath. But
Deering's hopes of gaining practical aid in the search for the lost bonds
was rapidly waning.

"There's no use being silly about this; I'm going to telephone to a
detective agency and tell them to send out a good man, right
away--to-night----"

"As you please," Hood assented, "but if you do, you'll regret it to your
last hour. I know the whole breed, and you may count on their making a
mess of it. And consider for a moment that what you propose means putting
a hired bloodhound on the trail of a girl who probably never harmed a
kitten in her life. It would be rotten caddishness to send a policeman
after her. It isn't done, Deering; it isn't done! Of course, there's not
much chance that the sleuths would ever come within a hundred miles of
her, but what if they found her! You are a gentleman, Deering, and that's
not the game for you to play."

"Then tell me a better one! In ten days at the farthest father will be
back and what am I going to say to him--how am I going to explain
breaking into his safety box and stealing those bonds?"

"You can't explain it, of course, and it's rather up to you, son, to put
'em back. Every hour you spend talking about it is wasted time. That
girl's had your suitcase two days, and it's your duty to find her.
Something must have happened or she'd have turned it back to the railroad
company. Perhaps she's been arrested as a thief and thrown into jail!
Again, her few effects point to a degree of prosperity--she's not a girl
who would steal for profit; I'll swear to that. We must find that girl!
We'll toss a slipper and start off the way the toe points."

Indifferent to Deering's snort of disgust, Hood was already whirling the
slipper in the air.

"Slightly northeast! There you are, Deering--the clear pointing of Fate!
The girl wasn't going far or she wouldn't have been in the local ticket
line, and even a lady in haste packs more stuff for a long journey. We'll
run up to the Barton Arms--an excellent inn, and establish headquarters.
The girl who danced off with your two hundred thousand is probably around
there somewhere, bringing up her tennis for the first tournaments of the
season. Let's be moving; a breath of air will do you good."

"That's all you can do about it, is it?" demanded Deering. "Let me tell
my whole story--put myself in your power, and now the best you can do is
to flip a slipper to see which way to start!"

"Just as good a way as any," remarked Hood amiably.

He pressed the button, ordered his car, and then led the way back to
Deering's room.

"Throw some things into a bag. You'll soon forget your sordid money
affairs and begin to live, and you'd better be prepared for anything that
turns up. I'll fold the coats; some old fishing-togs for rough work and
jails, and even your dress suit may come in handy."

He fell to work, folding the suits neatly, while Deering moved about like
a man in a trance, assembling linen and toilet articles.

"Something tells me we're going to have a pretty good time," continued
Hood musingly. "I'll show you untold kingdoms, things that never were on
sea or land. We shall meet people worn with the world-old struggle for
things they don't need, and who are out in the tender May air looking for
happiness--the only business, my dear boy, that's really worth while. And
you'll be surprised, son, to find how many such people there are."

"Ah, you're ready, Cassowary!" remarked Hood as they stepped out of the
side door where a big touring-car was drawn up in the driveway. "Just a
moment till I get my stick."

Briggs had placed their bags in the car, and Deering had a moment in
which to observe the chauffeur, who stood erect and touched his cap.
Hood's protege proved to be a tall, dark, well-knit young fellow
dressed in a well-fitting chauffeur's costume.

"It's a good night for a run," Deering suggested, eying the man in the
light from the door.

"Fine, sir."

"I hope the people in the house took good care of you."

"Very good, sir."

There was nothing in Cassowary's voice or manner to indicate that he was
the possessor of the fortune to which Hood had referred so lightly.
Deering's hastily formed impressions of Hood's chauffeur were wholly
agreeable and satisfying.

Hood, lingering in the hall, could be heard warning Briggs against the
further accumulation of fat. He recommended a new system of reducing, and
gave the flushed and stuttering butler the name of a New York specialist
in dietetics whom he advised him to consult without delay.

The chauffeur's lips twitched and, catching Deering's eye, he winked.
Deering tapped his forehead. Cassowary shook his head.

"Don't you believe it!" he ejaculated with spirit.

At this moment Hood appeared on the steps, banging his recovered stick
noisily as he descended.

"The Barton Arms, Cassowary," he ordered, and they set off at a lively
clip.




III


On the steps of the Barton Arms an hour later Hood and Deering ran into
two men who were just leaving the inn. Hood greeted them heartily as old
acquaintances and remained talking to them while Deering went to ask for
rooms.

"The suspicions of those fellows always tickle me," he remarked as he
joined Deering at the desk, where he scrawled "R. Hood, Sherwoodville,"
on the register. "Detectives--rather good as the breed goes, but not men
of true vision. Now and then I've been able to give them a useful
hint--the slightest, mind you, and only where I could divert suspicion
from some of my friends in the underworld. I always try to be of
assistance to predatory genius; there are clever crooks and stupid ones;
the kind who stoop to vulgar gun-work when their own stupidity gets them
into a tight pinch don't appeal to me. My artistic sensibilities are
affronted by clumsy work."

"Perhaps--" Deering suggested with a hasty glance