And I gives Piddie the back-out signal.  But you know how much sense he’s got.

“I assure you, Mr. Ellins,” he goes on, “that this is——­”

“S-s-s-st!” says I.  “Boom-boom!  Outside!” and I jerks my thumb towards the door.

That settles Piddie.  He fades.

A minute later Old Hickory gets a lucky carom off a chair leg and holes out in nineteen, with the Doc playin’ twenty-one.

“Ha, ha!” chuckled the boss.  “What’s the matter with my form now, Hirshway?  I’ll go you another hole for the same stake.”

The Doc was sore and eager to get back.  They wa’n’t much more’n fairly started, though, before there’s other arrivals, that turns out to be no less than two of our directors, lookin’ serious and worried.

“Mr. Rawson and Mr. Dunham,” announces the maid.

“Here, Boy!” says the boss, catchin’ me by the elbow.  “What was that you said to Mr. Piddie,—­that ‘Boom-boom!’ greeting?”

I gives it to him and the Doc in a stage whisper.

“Good!” says he.  “Get that, Hirshway?  Now let’s spring it on ’em.  All together now—­S-s-s-st!  Boom-boom!  Outside!”

Say, it makes a hit with the directors, all right.  First off they didn’t seem to know whether they’d strayed into a bughouse, or were just bein’ cheered; but when they sees Old Hickory’s mouth corners they concludes to take it as a josh.  It turns out that both of ’em are golf cranks too, and inside of three minutes they’ve forgot whatever it was they’d come for, they’ve shed their coats, and have been rung into a foursome.

Honest, of all the nutty performances!  For there was no tellin’ where them balls would roll to, and wherever they went the giddy old boys had to follow.  I remember one of ’em was stretched out full length on his tummy in the front hall, tryin’ to make a billiard shot from under a low hall seat, when there’s another ring at the bell, and Marston, with a golf bag still slung over his shoulder, lets in a square-jawed, heavy-set old gent who glares around like he was lookin’ for trouble and would be disappointed if he didn’t find it.

“Mr. Peter K. Groff,” announces Marston.

“Good night!” says I to myself.  “The enemy is in our midst.”

But Old Hickory never turns a hair.  He stands there in his shirt sleeves gazin’ calm at this grizzly old minin’ plute, and then I sees a kind of cut-up twinkle flash in them deep-set eyes of his as he summons his foursome to gather around.  I didn’t know what was coming either, until they cuts loose with it.  And for havin’ had no practice they rips it out strong.

“S-s-s-st!  Boom-boom!  Outside!” comes the chorus.

It gets Peter K.’s goat too.  His jaw comes open and his eyes pop.  Next he swallows bard and flushes red behind the ears.  “Ellins,” says he, “I’ve come fifteen hundred miles to ask what you mean by telling me——­”

“Oh, that you, Groff?” breaks in the boss.  “Well, don’t interrupt our game.  Fore!  You, I mean.  Fore, there!  Now go ahead, Rawson.  Playing eleven, aren’t you?”