Almost had me tongue-tied for a minute, he shoots it at me so sudden.  “Eh?” says I.  “T.  Virgil?  Why, he’s the sculptor poet.”

“So I gather from this thing,” says he, wavin’ a thin book bound in baby blue and gold.  “But what in the name of Sardanapalus and Xenophon is a sculptor poet, anyway?”

“Why, it’s—­it’s—­well, that’s the way the papers always give it,” says I.  “Beyond that I pass.”

“Humph!” grunts Old Hickory.  “Then perhaps you’ll tell me if this is poetry.  Listen!

  “’Like necklaces of diamonds hung
  About my lady sweet,
  So do we string our votive area
  All up and down each street. 
  They shine upon the young and old,
  The fair, the sad, the grim, the gay;
  Who gather here from far and near
  To worship in our Great White Way.’

“Now what’s your honest opinion of that, Son?  Is it poetry?

“Listens something like it,” says I; “but I wouldn’t want to say for sure.”

“Nor I,” says Mr. Ellins.  “All I’m certain of is that it isn’t sculpture, and that if I should read any more of it I’d be seasick.  But in T. Virgil Bunn himself I have an active and personal interest.  Anything to offer?”

“Not a glimmer,” says I.

“And I suppose you could find nothing out?” he goes on.

“I could make a stab,” says I.

“Make a deep one, then,” says he, slippin’ over a couple of tens for an expense fund.

And, say, I knew when Old Hickory begins by unbeltin’ so reckless that he don’t mean any casual skimmin’ through club annuals for a report.

“What’s the idea?” says I.  “Is it for a financial rating or a regular dragnet of past performances?”

“Everything you can discover without taking him apart,” says Old Hickory.  “In short, I want to know the kind of person who can cause a fifty-five-year-old widow with grown sons to make a blinkety blinked fool of herself.”

“He’s a charmer, eh?” says I.

“Evidently,” says Mr. Ellins.  “Behold this inscription here, ’To dear Inez, My Lady of the Unfettered Soul—­from Virgie.’  Get the point, Son?  ‘To dear Inez’!  Bah!  Is he color blind, or what ails him?  Of course it’s her money he’s after, and for the sake of her boys I’m going to block him.  There!  You see what I want?”

“Sure!” says I.  “You got to have details about Virgie before you can ditch him.  Well, I’ll see what I can dig up.”

Maybe it strikes you as a chesty bluff for a juvenile party like me to start with no more clew than that to round up in a few hours what a high-priced sleuth agency would take a week for.  But, say, I didn’t stand guard on the Sunday editor’s door two years with my eyes and ears shut.  Course, there’s always the city and ’phone directories to start with.  Next you turn to the Who book if you suspect he’s ever done any public stunt.  But, say, swallow that Who dope cautious.  They let ’em write their own tickets in that, you know, and you got to make allowances for the size of the hat-band.