Chapter XXXII

True to his word he presented himself in Cappy's lair promptly at ten next morning. The old gentleman was sitting rigidly erect on the extreme edge of his chair; in his hand he held a typewritten statement with a column of figures on it, and he eyed Joey very appraisingly over the rims of his spectacles.

"My boy," he said solemnly, "sit down. I'm awfully glad you cabled that hula-hula girl of yours in Reno that the stuff was all off."

Joey's mouth flew open.

"Why--why, how did you know?" he gasped.

"I know everything, Joey. I'm that kind of an old man."

Joey paled.

"Oh, Mr. Ricks," he pleaded, "for heaven's sake don't let a whisper of that affair reach my wife." He wrung his hands. "I told her she was the only girl I had ever loved--that I'd never been engaged before--that I--oh, godfather, if she ever discovers I've lied to her--"

"She'll not discover it. Compose yourself, Joey. I've seen to all that. I knew you'd give Doris the same old song and dance; everybody's doing it, you know, so I took pains to see to it that you'll never have to eat your words."

"I must have been crazy to engage myself to that woman," Joey wailed. "I don't know why I did it--I don't know how it happened--Oh, Mr. Ricks, please believe me!"

"I do, Joey, I do. I understand perfectly, because at the tender age of twenty-four I proposed marriage to a snake-charmer lady in the old Eden Musee. She was forty years old if she was a day, but she carried her years well and hid the wrinkles with putty, or something. Barring a slight hare-lip, she was a fairly handsome woman--in the dark." He reached into a compartment of his desk and drew forth a package of letters tied with red ribbon. "You can have these, Joey," he announced; "only I shouldn't advise keeping them where your wife may find them. They are your letters to your Honolulu lady."

Joey let out a bleat of pure ecstacy and seized them.

"You haven't read them, sir, have you?" he queried, blushing desperately.

"Oh, yes, my boy. I had to, you know, because I was buying something and I wanted to make certain I got value received. Pretty gooey stuff, Joey! Read aloud, they sound like a cow's hoof settling into a wet meadow!"

"I'm so glad she took it sensibly," Joey announced, for he was anxious to change the topic of conversation. "I suppose she saw it was the only way."

"No, she didn't, my son. Don't flatter yourself. On your way out West to join the Tyee you wrote her every day on the train. You told her about your bet with me, and who I was and all about me. Lucky for you that you did, and doubly lucky for you that you cabled her the jilt from Sobre Vista, or she would not have come to me with her