Page:The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1916).djvu/278

ing, out of the tail of his eye, and strolled off to meet her. To his surprise she passed him by and he was turning to follow when an unfriendly hand gripped him by the arm.

"Mr. Fisher, I believe," said a pleasant voice.

"What do you mean?" said the man, struggling backward.

"Are you going quietly?" asked the pleasant Superintendent Mansus, "or shall I take my stick to you?"

Mr. Fisher thought awhile.

"It's a cop," he confessed, and allowed himself to be hustled into the waiting cab.

He made his appearance in T. X.'s office and that urbane gentleman greeted him as a friend.

"And how's Mr. Fisher?" he asked; "I suppose you are Mr. Fisher still and not Mr. Harry Gilcott, or Mr. George Porten."

Fisher smiled his old, deferential, deprecating smile.

"You will always have your joke, sir. I suppose the young lady gave me away."

"You gave yourself away, my poor Fisher,"