"But does not the senora know that Senor Merriam sailed on the _Pajaro_
for Panama at three o'clock of this afternoon?"




II

THE THEORY AND THE HOUND


Not many days ago my old friend from the tropics, J. P. Bridger,
United States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We
had wassail and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed
seeing the Bronxless menagerie by about a couple of nights. And
then, at the ebb tide, we were walking up a street that parallels and
parodies Broadway.

A woman with a comely and mundane countenance passed us, holding in
leash a wheezing, vicious, waddling, brute of a yellow pug. The dog
entangled himself with Bridger's legs and mumbled his ankles in a
snarling, peevish, sulky bite. Bridger, with a happy smile, kicked
the breath out of the brute; the woman showered us with a quick rain
of well-conceived adjectives that left us in no doubt as to our place
in her opinion, and we passed on. Ten yards farther an old woman
with disordered white hair and her bankbook tucked well hidden
beneath her tattered shawl begged. Bridger stopped and disinterred
for her a quarter from his holiday waistcoat.

On the next corner a quarter of a ton of well-clothed man with a