I took the message down to Martin, the chauffeur myself. It was a straight call on the carpet. "Tell Cousin Inez the boss wants to see her before she goes out this afternoon," says I, "and wait with the limousine until she comes." Old Hickory was pacin' his private office, scowlin' and grouchy, as he sends the word, and it didn't take any second sight to guess he was peeved about something. I has to snicker too when Cousin Inez floats in, smilin' mushy as usual. She wa'n't smilin' any when she drifts out half an hour later. She's some flushed behind the ears, and her complexion was a little streaked under the eyes. She holds her chin up defiant, though, and slams the brass gate behind her. She'd hardly caught the elevator before there comes a snappy call for me on the buzzer. "Boy," says Old Hickory, glarin' at me savage, "who is this T. Virgil Bunn?" Almost had me tongue-tied for a minute, he shoots it at me so sudden. "Eh?" says I. "T. Virgil? Why, he's the sculptor poet." "So I gather from this thing," says he, wavin' a thin book bound in baby blue and gold. "But what in the name of Sardanapalus and Xenophon is a sculptor poet, anyway?" "Why, it's--it's--well, that's the way the papers always give it," says I. "Beyond that I pass." "Humph!" grunts Old Hickory. "Then perhaps you'll tell me if this is poetry. Listen! "'Like necklaces of diamonds hung About my lady sweet, So do we string our votive area All up and down each street. They shine upon the young and old, The fair, the sad, the grim, the gay; Who gather here from far and near To worship in our Great White Way.' "Now what's your honest opinion of that, Son? Is it poetry? "Listens something like it," says I; "but I wouldn't want to say for sure." "Nor I," says Mr. Ellins. "All I'm certain of is that it isn't sculpture, and that if I should read any more of it I'd be seasick. But in T. Virgil Bunn himself I have an active and personal interest. Anything to offer?" "Not a glimmer," says I. "And I suppose you could find nothing out?" he goes on. "I could make a stab," says I. "Make a deep one, then," says he, slippin' over a couple of tens for an expense fund. And, say, I knew when Old Hickory begins by unbeltin' so reckless that he don't mean any casual skimmin' through club annuals for a report. "What's the idea?" says I. "Is it for a financial rating or a regular dragnet of past performances?" "Everything you can discover without taking him apart," says Old Hickory. "In short, I want to know the kind of person who can cause a fifty-five-year-old widow with grown sons to make a blinkety blinked fool of herself." "He's a charmer, eh?" says I.