"I did," said Mr. Bugbee. "What's more, I hit something--something in the nature of a solid ivory dome. My darling, congratulate me not only on my accuracy but on my choice of a missile. I am pleased to inform you that I have just beaned the inspired leader of your coterie of private Christmas choristers with a heavy plaster image of dear old Santa Claus.... Let me have a look at this schedule.... Ah, here it is. We can catch a through train at ten-five and--by Jove, look, that's luck!--it will put us into Grand Central in ample time to make the Baxters' Christmas party." "But we've nothing to go in--it's fancy dress. I told you that five minutes ago," protested Mrs. Bugbee. "Don't worry," said Mr. Bugbee. "We'll go just as we are--as a couple of All-Day Suckers!" THREE WISE MEN OF THE EAST SIDE [Decoration] While he was in the death-house Tony Scarra did a lot of thinking. You couldn't imagine a better place for thinking; it goes on practically all the time there and intensively. But no matter where the thoughts range and no matter what elements enter into them--hope or despair, rebellion or resignation, or whatever--sooner or later they fly back, like dark homing pigeons, to a small iron door opening upon a room in which, bolted to the floor, there is a chair with straps dangling from its arms and from its legs and its head-rest--in short, the Chair. This picture is the beginning and the end of all the thinking that is done in the death-house. Such were the facts with regard to Tony Scarra. As nearly as might be judged, he felt no remorse for the murdering which had brought him to his present trapped estate. But he did have a deep regret for the entanglement of circumstances responsible for his capture and conviction. And constantly he had a profound sense of injustice. It seemed to him that in his case the law had been most terribly unreasonable. Statistics showed that for every seventy-four homicides committed in this state only one person actually went to the Chair. He'd read that in a paper during the trial. It had been of some comfort to him. Now he brooded on these figures. Over and over and over again, brooding on them, he asked himself about it. Why should he have to be the unlucky one of seventy-four? Was it fair to let seventy-three other guys go free or let them off with prison sentences and then shoot the whole works to him? Was that a square deal? Why did it have to be that way, anyhow? What was the sense of it? Why pick on him? Why must he go through with it? Why--that was just it--why? The question-marks were so many sharp fishhooks all pricking down into his brain and hanging on. His calling had made a sort of fatalist out of Tony Scarra. His present position was in a fair way to make a sort of anarchist out of him.