Here Trenmore glanced quizzically at his friend, and again Drayton blushed. Viola, however, was far too intent on the burglar’s tale to give heed.

”That must have been before my brother and Mr. Drayton opened the vial,” she observed. “How did you come—“

”I’ll get to that in a minute, lady. We’d missed the bottle some way, and the old guy was scared to look any further that night. Next day, though, I goes back on my own, just for a glance around, and there was the front door of your house, Mr. Trenmore, standing wide open. ‘Dear me, but these people are friendly, thinks I. ‘Come at it from the roof or the street, it’s Welcome Home.’ So up I goes, and once inside I seen this here bottle, right out in the middle of the floor. Things seem most too easy, but I picks it up, and then, like the nut I am, I have to go meddling with the gray stuff on the floor, wondering what it is and does the boss want that, too. He’d let on the bottle was full of gray powder.

“Next thing I knowed the room went all foggy. Then I found I was somewhere else than I ought to be, and hell — beg pardon, lady — but honest, if what I went through didn’t send me off my nut nothin’ ever will!”

It seemed he had almost exactly trod in their footsteps so far as the Marker Street Ferry. Beyond that, however, Bertram’s adaptable ingenuity had spared him a duplication of their more painful adventures. Though arrested soon after his arrival, he had escaped with proud ease, legalized his status with the “borrowed” identification button, and shortly thereafter a newspaper flched from a convenient pocket had furnished him with a date. “It put me down for the count,” said Bertram, “but it give me the dope I needed.” That date had been September 21st, 2118.

Related posts:

Memorial Day Comedy of Remarriage Mambo No. 5