When the last word of the interview had been pronounced, Witherspoon grunted and lay back with his hands clasped under his head.

“What do you think of it?” Henry asked.

“There’s hardly any room for thinking.”

But he did think, and a few moments later he said:  “Of all the cold-blooded scoundrels I ever heard of, he takes the lead.  And just to think what I have done for him!  I don’t think, though, that he has robbed us of much.  He didn’t have the handling of a great deal of cash.  Still I can’t tell.  My, how sharp he is!  He didn’t mention the Colossus.  But what difference Would it make?” He sat up.  “What need I care how often he mentions it?  The public knows me.  Nobody ever had cause to question my credit.  Why should I have been worried over him?  Henry, you are right; my trouble is the result of a physical cause.  Caroline, I’m going in to dinner with you.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

POINTS OUT HER BROTHER’S DUTY.

In the afternoon of the day that followed the publication of the confession Flummers minced his way into the Press Club.  He wore a suit of new clothes, and although the weather was warm, he carried a silk-faced overcoat.  Before any one took notice of him he put his coat and hat on the piano, and then, with a gesture, he exclaimed: 

“Wow!”

“Why, here’s Kittymunks!  Helloa, Kit!” one man shouted.  “Have you identified Brooks?” some one else cried, and a roar followed.

For a moment Flummers stood smiling at this raillery; then suddenly, and as though he would shut out a humiliating scene, he pressed his hands across his eyes.  But his hands flew off into a double gesture—­into a gathering motion that invited every one to come into his confidence, and solemnly he pronounced these words: 

“He made a monkey of me.”

“I should say he did!” Whittlesy cried.  “Oh, you’ll hold me in the hollow of your hand, will you?”

Flummers looked at Whittlesy and scalloped the forerunner of a withering speech; but, thoughtful enough suddenly to remember that at this solemn time his words and his eyes belonged not to one man, but to the entire company, he withdrew his gaze from Whittlesy, and in his broad look included every one present.

“He made a monkey of me.  He stopped me on the street one evening—­I had boned him for an advertisement when I was running The Art of Interior Decoration—­and was so polite that I said to myself:  ’Papa, here’s another flip man thirsting for recognition.  Put him on your staff.’  Well, we had a bowl or two at Garry’s, and the first thing I knew he began to remind me that I remembered a fellow who must be Kittymunks, and I said, ‘Hi, gi, here’s a scoop.’  And it was.  Oh, it’s a pretty hard matter to scoop papa”—­(tapping his head).  “Papa knows what the public wants, and he serves it up.  Some of you dry-dock conservative ducks would have let it go by, but papa is nothing if not adventurous.  Papa knows that without adventure you make no discoveries.  But, wow! he did make a monkey of me.  Just think of a floor-walker making a monkey of papa!” He pressed his hand to his brow.  “Why, a floor-walker has been my especial delicacy—­he has been my appetizer, my white-meat—­but, wow! this fellow was a gristle.”