"Shorty," says he, givin' me the friendly palm, "I owe you a lot more than apologies." "Well, I ain't no collection agency," says I. "Sponge it off." "I was looking for the Elixir," says he, "and--and I found it." "I can get all the 'Lixir I want," says I, "between the East River and the North, and I don't need no cork-puller, either." That's me. I've been back a week now, and even the screech of the L trains sounds good. Everything looks good, and smells good, and feels good. You don't have to pinch yourself to find out whether or not you're alive. You know all the time that you're in New York, where there's somethin' doin' twenty hours in the day. It'ly! Oh, yes, I want to go there again--when I get to be a mummy. CHAPTER III Say, you can't always tell, can you? Here a couple of weeks back I thought I'd wiped It'ly off the map. We'd settled down in this little old burg, me and the Boss and Mister 'Ankins, nice and comfortable, and not too far from Broadway. And we was havin' our four o'clock teas with the mitts, as reg'lar as if there was money comin' to us for each round, when this here Sherlock proposition turns up. Mister 'Ankins, he was the first to spot it, and he comes trottin' in where we was prancin' around the mat, his jaw loose, and his eyebrows propped up like Eddie Foy's when he wears his salary face. "Hit's most hunnacountable, sir," says he. "Time out!" says I, blockin' the Boss's pet upper cut. "Mister 'Ankins seems to have something on the place where his mind ought to be." "Hankins," says the Boss, putting down his guard reluctant, "haven't I told you never to----" "Yes, sir; yes, sir," says Mister 'Ankins, "but there's that houtrageous thing fawst to the door and, Lor' 'elp me, sir, Hi cawnt pull it hoff." The Boss he looks at me, and I looks at the Boss, and then we both looks at Mister 'Ankins. Seein' as how he couldn't reveal much with that cheese pie face of his, we goes and takes a look at the door. It was the outside one, just as you gets off the elevator. And there _was_ something there, too; the dizziest kind of a visitin' card that was ever handed out, I suspicion, in those particular swell chambers for single gents. It was a cuff, just a plain, every day wrist chafer, pinned up with the wickedest little blood letter that ever came off the knife rack. Half an inch of the blade stuck through the panel, so the one who put it there must have meant that it shouldn't blow away. The Boss jerks it loose, sizes it up a minute, and says: "Stiletto, eh? Made in Firenze--that's Florence. Shorty, have you any friends from abroad that are in the habit of leaving their cutlery around promiscuous?" "I know folks as far west as Hoboken, if that's what you mean," says I, "but there ain't none of them in the meat business." Well, we takes the thing inside under the bunch light and has another squint. "Here's writin' in red ink," says I, and holds up the cuff. "Read it," says the Boss.