"Just like him, too!" Blue Serge observed with a flash of indignation: "his kind, I mean--less burglars than bunglers, with no professional pride, no decent instincts, no human consideration. _They_ never stop to think it's tough enough for a householder to come home to a cracked crib without finding a total stranger to boot--a man he's never even _seen_ before, like as not--ah--weltering on the premises--" "Oh, do be serious!" "Must I? If you wish." The man composed his features to a mask of whimsical attention. "What--what did you do with him?" the girl stammered after a pause during which consciousness of her disadvantage became only more acute. "Our active little friend, the yegg? Why, I didn't do anything with him." "You didn't leave him there'?" "Oh, no; he went away, considerately enough--up-stairs and out through the scuttle--the way he broke in, you know. Surprisingly spry on his feet for a man of his weight and age--had all I could do to keep up. He did stop once, true, as if he'd forgotten something, but the sword ran into him--I happened thoughtlessly to be carrying it--only a quarter of an inch or so--and he changed his mind, and by the time I got my head through the scuttle he was gone--vanished utterly from human ken!" "He had broken the scuttle open, you say?" "Pried it up with a jimmy." "And you left it so? He'll go back." "No, he won't. I found hammer and nails and made all fast before I left." "But," she demanded, wide-eyed with wonder, "why did you take that trouble?" "My silly conceit, I presume. I couldn't bear the thought of having that roughneck return and muss up one of my neatest jobs." "I don't understand you at all," she murmured, utterly confounded. "Nor I you, if it matters. Still, I'm sure you won't keep me much longer in suspense, considering how open-faced I've been. But here's that animal of a waiter again." She was willingly silent, though she exerted herself to seem at ease with indifferent success. The voice of her companion was like a distant, hollow echo in her hearing; her wits were all awhirl, her nerves as taut and vibrant as banjo-strings; before her vision the face of Blue Serge swam, a flesh-tinted moon now and again traversed by a flash of white when he smiled. "Come!" the man rallied her sharply, if in an undertone, "this will never do. You're as white as a sheet, trembling and staring as if I were a leper--or a relation by marriage or--something repulsive!" She sat forward mechanically and mustered an uncertain smile. "Forgive me. I'm a little overwrought--the heat and--everything." "Not another word, then, till you've finished. I'll do the talking, if it's all the same to you. But you needn't answer--needn't listen, for that matter. I've no pride in my conversational powers, and you mustn't risk losing your appetite."