Turpin lunched downtown.  He came home at 6 to dress for dinner.  They always dined out.  They strayed from the chop-house to chop-sueydom, from terrace to table d’hote, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from cafe to casino, from Maria’s to the Martha Washington.  Such is domestic life in the great city.  Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears dates.  Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne.  For the wedding march you now hear only “Come with the Gypsy Bride.”  You rarely dine at the same place twice in succession.  You tire of the food; and, besides, you want to give them time for the question of that souvenir silver sugar bowl to blow over.

The Turpins were therefore happy.  They made many warm and delightful friends, some of whom they remembered the next day.  Their home life was an ideal one, according to the rules and regulations of the Book of Bluff.

There came a time when it dawned upon Turpin that his wife was getting away with too much money.  If you belong to the near-swell class in the Big City, and your income is $200 per month, and you find at the end of the month, after looking over the bills for current expenses, that you, yourself, have spent $150, you very naturally wonder what has become of the other $50.  So you suspect your wife.  And perhaps you give her a hint that something needs explanation.

“I say, Vivien,” said Turpin, one afternoon when they were enjoying in rapt silence the peace and quiet of their cozy apartment, “you’ve been creating a hiatus big enough for a dog to crawl through in this month’s honorarium.  You haven’t been paying your dressmaker anything on account, have you?”

There was a moment’s silence.  No sounds could be heard except the breathing of the fox terrier, and the subdued, monotonous sizzling of Vivien’s fulvous locks against the insensate curling irons.  Claude Turpin, sitting upon a pillow that he had thoughtfully placed upon the convolutions of the apartment sofa, narrowly watched the riante, lovely face of his wife.

“Claudie, dear,” said she, touching her finger to her ruby tongue and testing the unresponsive curling irons, “you do me an injustice.  Mme. Toinette has not seen a cent of mine since the day you paid your tailor ten dollars on account.”

Turpin’s suspicions were allayed for the time.  But one day soon there came an anonymous letter to him that read: 

“Watch your wife.  She is blowing in your money secretly.  I was
a sufferer just as you are.  The place is No. 345 Blank Street. 
A word to the wise, etc. 

          
                                                            A MAN WHO KNOWS”

Turpin took this letter to the captain of police of the precinct that he lived in.

“My precinct is as clean as a hound’s tooth,” said the captain.  “The lid’s shut down as close there as it is over the eye of a Williamsburg girl when she’s kissed at a party.  But if you think there’s anything queer at the address, I’ll go there with ye.”