"Is it?" said I, and my voice sounded gloomier than his. I was not sure of it, but it seemed to me that he made a movement with his hand as if about to put it to his lips. Seeing that I was regarding him rather fixedly, he allowed it to remain suspended a little above his hip, quite on a line with the other one. His elbows were crooked at the proper angle I noticed, so I must have been doing him an injustice. He couldn't have had anything disrespectful in mind. "Send Mr. Poopendyke to me, Hawkes, immediately after I've finished my breakfast." "Very good, sir. Oh, I beg pardon, sir. I am forgetting, Mr. Poopendyke is out. He asked me to tell you he wouldn't return before eleven." "Out? What business has he to be out?" "Well, sir, I mean to say, he's not precisely out, and he isn't just what one would call in. He is up in the--ahem!--the east wing, sir, taking down some correspondence for the--for the lady, sir." I arose to the occasion. "Quite so, quite so. I had forgotten the appointment." "Yes, sir, I thought you had." "Ahem! I daresay Britton will do quite as well. Tell him to--" "Britton, sir, has gone over to the city for the newspapers. You forget that he goes every morning as soon as he has had his--" "Yes, yes! Certainly," I said hastily. "The papers. Ha, ha! Quite right." It was news to me, but it wouldn't do to let him know it. The countess read the papers, I did not. I steadfastly persisted in ignoring the Paris edition of the _New York Herald_ for fear that the delightful mystery might disintegrate, so to speak, before my eyes, or become the commonplace scandal that all the world was enjoying. As it stood now, I had it all to myself--that is to say, the mystery. Mr. Poopendyke reads aloud the baseball scores to me, and nothing else. It was nearly twelve when my secretary reported to me on this particular morning, and he seemed a trifle hazy as to the results of the games. After he had mumbled something about rain or wet grounds, I coldly enquired: "Mr. Poopendyke, are you employed by me or by that woman upstairs?" I would never have spoken of her as "that woman," believe me, if I had not been in a state of irritation. He looked positively stunned. "Sir?" he gasped. I did not repeat the question, but managed to demand rather fiercely: "Are you?" "The countess had got dreadfully behind with her work, sir, and I thought you wouldn't mind if I helped her out a bit," he explained nervously. "Work? What work?" "Her diary, sir. She is keeping a diary." "Indeed!" "It is very interesting, Mr. Smart. Rather beats any novel I've read lately. We--we've brought it quite up to date. I wrote at least three pages about the dinner last night. If I am to believe what she puts into her diary, it must have been a delightful occasion, as the newspapers would say." I was somewhat mollified. "What did she have to say about it, Fred?" I asked. It always pleased him to be called Fred.