"And it took you all night and the next day to find that out?" exclaimed Boggs in a tone of assumed contempt. "Really, gentlemen, this whole afternoon should go on record as the proceedings of a kindergarten. Just think what rot we've had: Lonnegan promises a poor workingman a job and takes to his heels to cheat him out of his pay; Marny, who, like Mac, poses as a philanthropist, and claims to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, refuses shelter to two half-drowned tourists who come up to see the sunrise, and instead of hustling round to get 'em hot tea and grub, he posts his big brother in a corner with a gun where he can blow the tops of their heads off. Rot--all of it! But what I object to most is the 'let-down' at the tag-end of each of these yarns. You work up to a climax, and nothing happens. Just like one of these half-baked modern plays we've been having--all the climax in the first act, and a dreary drivel from that on till the curtain drops. I expected Marny's yarn would taper off in a hand-to-hand death struggle; both men thrown over the cliff; the finding of their mangled bodies, impaled on the trees, by the sheriff, who had tracked them for years, and who promptly identified both scoundrels, one as 'Dead House Dick' and the other as 'Murder Pete'; a vote of thanks to the two heroes by the State legislature, one of whom, thank God! is still with us"--and he bowed grandiloquently at Marny--"and a ring-down with a beautiful, unknown woman, supposed to be an heiress, creeping in at twilight to weep over their graves, all the stage lights turned down and a low tremolo going on in the orchestra. Tamest, deadest lot of twaddle I've heard around this fire! Now let me tell you a yarn that _means_ something. Blood this time--red blood. None of your dress-suit and warmed-up tea and toy-pistol adventures." Everybody straightened up in his chair to get a better view of Boggs. The Chronic Interrupter was about to appear in a new rôle. The speaker opened his coat, tossed back the lapels as if to give his plump body more room, and rose slowly to his feet, his black diamond-pointed eyes glistening, his lips quivering with suppressed merriment. It was evident that Boggs was loaded to the muzzle; it was also evident, from the unusual earnestness of his manner, that he was about to fire off something of more than usual importance. "No preliminaries, mind you. Right to the spot in a jump. This happened in Stamboul the winter I made those sketches of the mosques." Mac looked up, an expression of surprise in his face. He thought he knew every act of Boggs's life from his cradle up--they being bosom chums. That Boggs had even been in the East was news to him. Boggs caught the look and repeated his opening in a louder voice.