"Huh!" says I. "Don't try to pull any steam yachts or French limousines on me this time. The kind stuff goes, remember."
"To your acute sense of fitness in such matters, McCabe," says he, "I bow profoundly," and with a jaunty wave of his hand he drifts out.
Honest, compared to the shifty-eyed, suspicious-actin' party that blew into my studio a few weeks back, he seems like a kid on a Coney Island holiday. I expect it's the prospects of easy money that's chirked him up so; but he sure is a misfit to be subbin' on a deeds-of-kindness job. That ain't my lookout, though. All I got to do is pass on his plans and see that he carries 'em out accordin' to specifications. So I don't even look up this tank station on the map.
A couple of days go by, three, and no bulletin from J. Bayard. Then here the other mornin' I gets a long distance call. It's from Steele.
"Eh?" says I. "Where the blazes are you?"
"Oh!" says I. "Still there, are you? Found Pedders?"
"Ye-e-es," says he; "but I am completely at a loss to know what to do for him. I say, McCabe, couldn't you run up here? It's a curious situation, and I--well, I need your advice badly. There's a train at eleven-thirty that connects at Danbury. Couldn't you?"
Well, I hadn't figured on bein' any travelin' inspector when I took this executor job; but as J. Bayard sends out the S O S so strong I can't very well duck. Besides, I might have been a little int'rested to know what he'd dug up.
So about three-fifteen that afternoon finds me pilin' off a branch accommodation at Tullington. Mr. Steele is waitin' on the platform to meet me, silk lid and all.
"I want you to see him first," says J. Bayard.
"In a town of this size," says he, "everyone is on exhibition continuously. It's the penalty one pays for being rural, I suppose. I've been here only two days; but I'll venture to say that most of the inhabitants know me by name and have made their guess as to what my business here may be. It's the most pitiless kind of publicity I ever experienced. But come on up to the postoffice, and I'll show you Pedders."
"Twice a day he comes for the mail," says J. Bayard. "Your train brought it up. He'll be on hand."
So we strolls up Main street from the station, while Steele points out the brass works, the carpet mill, the opera house, and Judge Hanks' slate-roofed mansion. It sure is a jay burg, but a lively one. Oh, yes! Why, the Ladies' Aid Society was holdin' a cake sale in a vacant store next to the Bijou movie show, and everybody was decoratin' for a firemen's parade to be pulled off next Saturday. We struck the postoffice just as they brought the mail sacks up in a pushcart and dragged 'em in through the front door.