"Quite so," says he, almost crackin' a smile; "one belt too many, I fancy." Say, that was a real puncherino, eh? I ain't sure but what he got off more along the same line, for some of them British kind is hard to know unless you see 'em printed in the joke column. Anyway, we has quite a chin, and before he left we got real chummy. He had a right to be feelin' gay, though; for he'd come over to marry a girl with more real estate deeds than you could pack in a trunk. Some kin of Pinckney's, this Miss Cornerlot was; a sort of faded flower that had hung too long on the stem. She'd run across Sir Hunter in London, him bein' a widower that was willin' to forget, and they'd made a go of it, nobody knew why. I judged that Pinckney was some relieved at the prospects of placin' a misfit. He'd laid out for a little dinner at the club, just to introduce Sir Hunter to his set and brace him up for bein' inspected by the girl's aunt and other relations at some swell doin's after. I didn't pay much attention to their program at the time. It wa'n't any of my funeral who Pinckney married off his leftover second cousins to; and by evenin' I'd clean forgot all about Twiggle; when Pinckney 'phones he'd be obliged if I could step around to a Broadway hotel right off, as he's in trouble. Pinckney meets me just inside the plate glass merry go round. "Something is the matter with Sir Hunter," says he, "and I can't find out from his fool man what it is." "Before we gets any deeper let's clear the ground," says I. "When you left him, was he soused, or only damp around the edges?" "Oh, it's not that at all," says Pinckney. "Sir Hunter is a gentleman--er, with a wonderful capacity." "The Hippodrome tank's got that too," I says; "but there's enough fancy drinks mixed on Broadway every afternoon to run it over." Sir Hunter has a set of rooms on the 'leventh floor. He wa'n't in sight, but we digs up Rinkey. By the looks, he'd just escaped from the chorus of a musical comedy, or else an Italian bakery. Near as I could make out he didn't have any proper clothes on at all, but was just done up in white buntin' that was wrapped and draped around him, like a parlour lamp on movin' day. The spots of him that you could see, around the back of his neck and the soles of his feet, was the colour of a twenty-cent maduro cigar. He was spread out on the rug with his heels toward us and his head on the sill of the door leadin' into the next room. "Back up, Pinckney!" says I. "This must be a coloured prayer meetin' we're buttin' into." "No, it's all right," says Pinckney. "That is Sir Hunter's man, Ringhi Singh." "Sounds like a coon song," says I. "But he's no valet. He's a cook; can't you see by the cap?" "That's a turban," says Pinckney. "Sir Hunter brought Ringhi from India, and he wears his native costume."