Didn’t need any seventh-son work to locate him.  The ’phone book shows he lives on Madison Avenue.  Seemed simple enough.  But this was no time to risk bein’ barred out by a cold-eyed butler.  You can’t breeze into them old brownstone fronts on your nerve.  What I needed was credentials.  The last place I’d be likely to get ’em would be Mott, Drew & Mott’s, so I goes there first.  No, I didn’t hypnotize anybody.  I simply wrote out an application for a job on the firm’s stationery, and as they was generous with it I dashes off another note which I tucks in my pocket.  Nothing sleuthy required.  Why, say, I could have walked out with the letter file and the safe combination if I’d wanted to.

So when I rings the bell up at Mr. Pettigrew’s I has something besides hot air to shove at Perkins.  He qualifies in the old fam’ly servant class right off, for as soon as he lamps the name printed on the envelope corner he swings the door wide open, and inside of two minutes I’m bein’ announced impressive in the library at the back:  “From your attorneys, sir.”  Which as far as it goes is showin’ some speed, eh?

Yea-uh!  That’s the way I felt about it.  All I asked was to be put next to this Pettigrew party.  Not that I had any special spell to work off on him; but, as Old Hickory said, he must be human, and if he was, why—­ Well, about then I begun to get the full effect of this weird, double-barreled stare.

Now, I don’t mind takin’ the once-over from a single pair of shell-rimmed goggles; but to find yourself bein’ inspected through two sets of barn windows—­honest, it seemed like the room was full of spectacles.  I glanced hasty from one to the other of these solemn-lookin’ parties ranged behind the book barricade, and then takes a chance that the one with the sharp nose and the dust-colored hair is T. Waldo.

“Mr. Pettigrew?” says I, smilin’ friendly and winnin’.

“Not at all,” says he, a bit pettish.

“Oh, yes,” says I, turnin’ to the broken-nosed one with the wavy black pompadour effect.  “Of course.”

He’s some younger than the other, in the late twenties, I should judge, and has sort of a stern, haughty stare.

“Why of course?” he demands.

“Eh?” says I.  “Why—­er—­well, you’ve got my note, ain’t you, there in your hand?”

“Ah!” says he.  “Rather a clever deduction; eh, Tidman?”

“I shouldn’t say so,” croaks the other.  “Quite obvious, in fact.  If it wasn’t me it must be you.”

“Oh, but you’re such a deucedly keen chap,” protests Waldo.  Then he swings back to me.  “From my attorneys?”

“Just came from there,” says I.

“Odd,” says he.  “I don’t remember having seen you before.”

“That’s right,” says I.  “You see, Mr. Pettigrew, I’m really representin’ the Corrugated Trust and—­”

“Don’t know it at all,” breaks in Waldo.

“That’s why I’m here,” says I.  “Now, here’s our proposition.”