Yet, curiously enough, though we are a long way from where this story opened, it all goes back to Phillips Brooks Vanderbilt and the Fat and Skinny Club and the right to call ourselves by what names we please.  Moreover, as must be apparent, all that happened occurred beyond Miss Wiggin’s sphere of spiritual influence.  Yet, had it not, even she could not have harnessed Leviathan or loosed the bands of Orion—­to say nothing of counteracting the effect of spring.

When Tutt returned with “76 Fed.” after the departure of Mr. Sorg he found his partner smoking the usual stogy and gazing pensively down upon the harbor.  The immediate foreground was composed of rectangular roofs of divers colors, mostly reddish, ornamented with eccentrically shaped chimney pots, pent-houses, skylights and water tanks, in addition to various curious whistle-like protuberances from which white wraiths of steam whirled and danced in the gay breeze.  Beyond, in the middle distance, a great highway of sparkling jewels led across the waves to the distant faintly green hills of Staten Island.  Three tiny aeroplanes wove invisible threads against the blue woof of the sky above the New Jersey shore.  It was not a day to practise law at all.  It was a day to lie on one’s back in the grass and watch the clouds or throw one’s weight against the tugging helm of a racing sloop and bite the spindrift blown across her bows—­not a day for lawyers but for lovers!

“Here’s ’76 Fed.’,” said Tutt.

“What’s become of Sorg?”

“Gone.  Mad.  Says the whole point of the Fat and Skinny Club is in the name.”

“I fancy—­from looking at Mr. Sorg—­that that is quite true,” remarked Mr. Tutt.  He paused and reaching down into a lower compartment of his desk, lifted out a tumbler and his bottle of malt extract, which he placed carefully at his elbow and leaned back again contemplatively.  “Look here, Tutt,” he said.  “I want to ask you something.  Is there anything the matter with you?”

Tutt regarded him with the air of a small boy caught peeking through a knot hole.

“Why,—­no!” he protested lamely.  “That is—­nothing in particular.  I do feel a bit restless—­sort of vaguely dissatisfied.”

Mr. Tutt nodded sympathetically.

“How old are you, Tutt?”

“Forty-eight.”

“And you feel just at present as if life were ’flat, stale and unprofitable?’”

“Why—­yes; you might put it that way.  The fact is every day seems just like every other day.  I don’t even get any pleasure out of eating.  The very sight of a boiled egg beside my plate at breakfast gives me the willies.  I can’t eat boiled eggs any more.  They sicken me!”

“Exactly!” Mr. Tutt poured out a glass of the malt extract.

“I feel the same way about a lot of things,” Tutt hurried on.  “Special demurrers, for instance.  They bore me horribly.  And supplementary proceedings get most frightfully upon my nerves.”