"Was the conditions right?" she asked.
"They have been, at least _so_ far," replied the professor crisply, with
a side-glance at Bean who seemed on the point of leaving.
"Say, friend, I guess you're forgetting something, ain't you?" demanded
the Countess archly.
And Bean perceived that he had indeed forgotten something. He rectified
the oversight with blushing apologies, while the professor inspected the
mantel ornaments with an absent air. What was twenty dollars to a king
and a sire of kings? He bowed himself from the room.
They listened until the hall door closed.
"There's yours, Ed. You earned it all right, I'll say that. My! don't I
wish I was up on that dope."
"You were the wise lady to send for me, Lizzie. You'd have killed him
off right here. As it is, he'll come back. He's a clerk somewhere,
drawing twenty-five a week or so. He ought to give up at least five of
it every week; cigarette money, anyway. Anything loose in the house?"
"They's a couple bottles beer in the icebox. Gee! ain't he good, though!
If he only had the roll some has!"
* * * * *
In his little room far up under the hunched shoulders of the house,
Bunker Bean sat reviewing his Karmic past. Over parts of it he
shuddered. That crafty Venetian plotting to kill, trifling wickedly with
the inlaid dagger; the brutal Roman, ruling by fear, cutting off heads!
And the blind poet! He would rather be Napoleon than a blind poet, if
you came down to that.
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