"My appetite must have been abnormal, I guess."
"Maybe you won't be so glad you came to-day, when you learn what I want you to do."
"Anything short of murder, my dear. What is it?"
Jack told her the story of Miriam and Bobo--with reservations.
"Sure, if it was me, I'd let her marry him. Maybe it would teach the hizzy a lesson. But I suppose you're right. If more hot-blooded young people were locked up at such times, marriage wouldn't be such a joke in the vaudeville houses."
"I've got to be out a good part of the day on business," Jack went on, "so I've got to have somebody to look after him. I asked you to come firstly, because you know the truth about us, and secondly because I thought if he tried to assault you he'd find his match."
"Sure, I'll soothe him like his own mother.--I brought my umbrella. It's a good strong one."
Before going out Jack went into Bobo's room. The plump youth, yawning and stretching, was just beginning to think about getting up.
"Listen, Bobo," said Jack crisply. "You've got to stay in bed to-day. I've hidden all your clothes. I've engaged a nurse to look after you--and she'll see that you get your meals. You'd best take it quietly, for I'm giving it out that you've been on a tear, and if you make a racket people will think it's the D.T.'s."
Jack slipped out before he had fully recovered his power of speech. He delivered the key of his room to Mrs. Regan.
On his way out Jack sought Baldwin the clerk. "Mr. Norman is sick," he said. "To tell the truth, he's been hitting too swift a pace lately. The doctor has ordered absolute quiet, and I want you to see that he is not disturbed under any pretext whatever, while I'm out. I've left him in charge of a nurse."
Baldwin, the discreet, raised no awkward questions about the suddenness of Bobo's attack, nor where the doctor had come from, but assured Jack that his orders would be obeyed.
"You remember the lovely lady we saw yesterday?" Jack went on.
"Supposing she comes here and shows a disposition to make a scene, introduce her to Connolly the house detective, see? Tip Connolly off to ask her if she didn't once go under the name of Beatrice Blackstone and do typewriting work for Silas Gyde here. That ought to calm her."