I expect it was the roses that set me mullin' the case over again. They was sent over for Vee a couple of days later--half a dozen great busters, like young cabbages, with stems a yard long. They come with the compliments of Mrs. Ben Tupper. "I simply couldn't send them back," says Vee; "and yet----" "I get you," says I. "But don't worry. Let the thing ride a while. I got an idea." It wasn't anything staggerin'. It had just struck me that if Vee had to hand out any social smears she ought to do it on her own dope, and not accordin' to Mrs. Pemmy Foote's say-so. Which is why I begins pumpin' information out of anybody that came handy. Goin' into town next mornin', I tackled three or four on the 8:03 in an offhand way. Oh, yes, the Ben Tuppers! Business of hunchin' the shoulders. No, they didn't belong to the Country Club, nor the Hunt Association, nor figure on the Library or Hospital boards, or anything else. In fact, they don't mingle much. Hadn't made the grade. Barred? We-e-ell, in a way, perhaps. Why? Oh, there was Mrs. Ben. Wasn't she enough? An ex-actress with two or three hubbys in the discard! Could she expect people to swallow that? Only one gent, though, had anything definite to offer. He's a middle-aged sport that seems to make a specialty of wearin' checked suits and yellow gloves. He chuckles when I mentions Mrs. Tupper. "Grand old girl, Clara Belle," says he. "Eh?" says I. "Shoot the rest." "Couldn't think of it, son," says he. "You're too young. But in my day Clara Belle Kinney was some queen." And that's all I can get out of him except more chuckles. I files away the name, though; and that afternoon, while we was waitin' for a quorum of directors to straggle into the General Offices, I springs it on Old Hickory. "Mr. Ellins," says I, "did you ever know of a Clara Belle Kinney?" "Wha-a-at?" he gasps, almost swallowin' his cigar. "Listen to that, Mason. Here's a young innocent asking if we ever knew Clara Belle Kinney. Did we?" And old K. W. Mason, what does he do but throw back his shiny dome, open his mouth, and roar out: "Yure right fut is crazy, Yure left fut is lazy, But if ye'll be aisy I'll teach ye to waltz!" After which them two old cut-ups wink at each other rakish and slap their knees. All of which ain't so illuminatin'. But they keep on, mentionin' Koster Bial's and the Cork Room, until I can patch together quite a sketch of Mrs. Tupper's early career. Seems she'd made her first hit in this old-time concert-hall when she was a sweet young thing in her teens. One of her naughty stunts was kickin' her slipper into an upper box, and gettin' it tossed back with a mash note in it, or maybe a twenty-dollar bill. Then she'd graduated into comic opera. "Was there ever a Katishaw like her?" demands Old Hickory of K. W., who responds by hummin' husky: