"Then what happened is just this: I wanted to go to that fight last night and Bob wouldn't take me. He was so awfully uppish about it that I decided to go myself; I like a good fight, you know. I didn't dare go as a girl, so I put on Dicky's fishing suit--the old one--and sneaked out the back door, after you thought I was in bed. Then I got a messenger boy and managed to find a ticket for the fight. And I went," said Mary, "and I happened to sit next to Mr. Fry." "You went alone to a prize fight?" her father gasped. "It was horribly tame," said Mary, "but some men started a fight behind us, because Mr. Fry spoke to me, I think, and that wasn't tame at all. For a minute it scared my wits out, because I thought we were all going to be arrested. So when Mr. Fry and Mr. Boller decided to escape in a taxicab, I was mighty glad to go with them. After that Mr. Fry--turned queer," Mary dimpled. "He thought I was a boy and he wanted to offer me the opportunity of a lifetime. "I don't know just what it meant, but I was curious enough to come up here and listen; and when I didn't appreciate what he was offering, Mr. Fry got mad. He told me he'd keep me here until I did, so I--I just went to bed and counted on getting out overnight, somehow. I tried it and I missed fire, and this morning he discovered that I was a girl. That's the whole story; we've all been trying to get me out of here ever since--and I'm still here!" "But the trunk----" Hobart Hitchin put in doggedly. "I was in the trunk," said Mary. "We thought I could get to Felice's room that way, but Felice was gone, so Wilkins brought me back." She looked at her father steadily and almost confidently. "That weird tale about having me drugged was just to save me, dad, and maybe if the door hadn't blown open I'd have been home about three and swearing to it. That's all. Mr. Fry--Mr. Boller, too--have been too nice for words," concluded Mary, stretching a point. "There isn't a thing to blame them for--and I never could have believed that Mr. Fry was capable of a lovely lie like that." Since seven that morning, at which time Mary's absence had been discovered, Theodore Dalton had been breathing in terrible, spasmodic gasps. Now, as he faced Anthony, he breathed deeply--breathed deeply again--and turned Anthony's tottering world quite upside down by suddenly thrusting out his hand. "Well, by gad, Fry!" he bellowed. "I knew you were crazy, but I never suspected you were man enough for that! I'd swallowed that tale almost whole and I'd made up my mind to wipe you and your bottled mess off the map together." "I know," said Anthony. "But if there's one thing that hits me right where I live," vociferated Dalton, "it's a man who will chuck his own every earthly interest aside to save a woman's name and--put it there, Fry! You're a man!" A little uncertainly, because he was dazed and dizzy, Anthony grasped the hairy hand. It was not so, because it was impossible, but--he and Dalton were friends!