“You move me, I confess,” conceded the professor.  “I will undertake it.”

“How long will it be, do you think?”

“I shall give orders by cable.  A month, possibly, if all goes well.”

“I’ll give you check.”  He gulped at that.  It was the first time he had ever used the words.

The Countess parted the curtains.  Curiously enough she carried a pen and ink, though no one remarked upon the circumstance.

Bean had that morning left a carefully written signature at the bank where his draft had been deposited.  He later wondered how the scrawl he achieved now could ever be identified as by the same hand.

And he was conscious, even as he wrote, that the Countess Casanova and Professor Balthasar were labouring under an excitement equal to his own.  It was a big feat to attempt.

As before, they waited until he had closed the lower door.

“Oh, Ed!” breathed the Countess emotionally.

“Anything loose in the house?” asked the professor.

“They’s a couple bottles beer in the icebox, but Oh, Ed!”

VI

Again we chant pregnant phrases from the Bard of Dress:  “It is cut to give the wearer the appearance of perfect physical development.  And the effect produced so improves his form that he unconsciously strives to attain the appearance which the garment gives him; he expands his chest, draws in his waist, and stands erect.”

A psychologist, that Bard! acutely divining a basic law of this absurd human nature.  In a beggar’s rags few men could be more than beggars.  In kingly robes, most men could be kings; could achieve the finished and fearless behaviour that is said to distinguish royalty.

Bunker Bean, the divinely credulous, now daily arrayed himself in royal vestures, set a well-fashioned crown upon the brow of him and strode forth, sceptre in hand.  Invisible were these trappings, to be sure; he was still no marked man in a city street.  But at least they were there to his own truth-lit eyes, and he most truly did “expand his chest, draw in his waist, and stand erect.”  Yea, in the full gaze of inhumanly large policemen would he do these things.

This, indeed, was one of the first prerogatives his royalty claimed.  He discovered that it was not necessary for any but criminals to fear policemen.  It might still be true that an honest man of moderate physique and tender sensibilities could not pass one without slight tremors of self-consciousness; but by such they were—­a most prodigious thought—­to be regarded as one’s paid employees; within the law one might even greet them pleasantly in passing, and be answered civilly.  Bean was now equal to approaching one and saying, “Good evening, Officer!” He would sometimes cross a street merely to perform this apparently barren rite.  It stiffened his spine.  It helped him to realize that he had indeed been a king and the sire of kings; that kingly stuff was in him.