The desk telephone again rang, this time more emphatically.  Bean was chilled by a premonition that the flapper meant to pull off that funny stunt which was to cause him quite deliciously to die laughing.

Breede grasped the receiver again impatiently.

“Busy, tell you!  No time nonsense!  What! What.  W-H-A-T!!!”

He listened another moment, then lessening his tone-production but losing nothing of intensity, he ripped out: 

“Gur—­reat Godfrey!”

His eyes, narrowed as he listened, now widened upon Bean who stared determinedly at the cuffs.

“You know what she says?”

“Yes,” said Bean doggedly.

Then his eyes met Breede’s and gave them blaze for blaze.  The Great Reorganizer knew it not, but he no longer looked at Bunker Bean.  Instead, he was trying to shrivel with his glare a veritable king of old Egypt who had enjoyed the power of life and death over his remotest subject.  Bean did not shrivel.  Breede glared his deadliest only a moment.  He felt the sway of the great Ram-tah without identifying it.  He divined that mere glaring would not shrivel this presumptuous atom.  In truth, Bean outglared him.  Breede leaned again to the telephone, listening.  Bean lowered his eyes to the cuffs.  He sneered at them now.  The intention of the lifted upper lip was too palpable.

“Gur-reat stars above!” murmured Breede.  “She says she’s got it all reasoned out!” There was something almost plaintive in his tones; he shuddered.  Then he rallied bravely once more.

“Tell you, no time nonsense.  Busy.”

But he seemed to know he was beaten.  He listened again, then wilted.

“What next?” he demanded of Bean.

“Ask her!”

“Nice mess you got me into!”

Bean sneered resolutely at the cuffs.  Again the telephone tinkled.

Breede listened and horror grew on his face.

“Now she’s told her mother,” he muttered.  “My God!”

The transmitter was an excellent one, and Bean caught notes of hysteria.  Julia was fussing back there.

“Now, now!” urged Breede.  “No good.  Better lie down.  She says she’s got it all reasoned out, don’t I tell you?” He put a throttling hand over the anguished voice, and looked dumbly at Bean.  He noted the evil sneer and traced it to the cuffs.  Slowly he hung up the receiver and took one of the cuffs in his hands.

“Wha’s matter these cuffs?” he demanded with a show of his true spirit.

“Right enough.  Cuffs all right, if you like that kind.  But why don’t you wear ’em on—­like this?” He luminously exposed his left forearm.  It was by intention the one that carried the purple monogram.

“Sewed on, like that!” he added almost sharply.

Breede seemed to be impressed by the exhibit.

“Well,” he began, awkwardly, as a man knowing himself in the wrong but still defiant, “I won’t do it. That’s all!  Not for anybody.”