do something useful for once," Max suggested. But he was
indignantly hushed. We would have starved first. Jim was peering
into the transmitter and knocking the receiver against his hand,
like a watch that had stopped. But nothing happened. Flannigan
reported a box of breakfast food, two lemons, and a pineapple
cheese, a combination that didn't seem to lend itself to
anything.

We went back to the dining room from sheer force of habit and sat
around the table and looked at the lemonade Flannigan had made.
Anne WOULD talk about the salad her last cook had concocted, and
Max told about a little town in Connecticut where the restaurant
keeper smokes a corn-cob pipe while he cooks the most luscious
fried clams in America. And Aunt Selina related that in her
family they had a recipe for chicken smothered in cream. And then
we sipped the weak lemonade and nibbled at the cheese.

"To change this gridiron martyrdom," Dallas said finally,
"where's Harbison? Still looking for his watch?"

"Watch!" Everybody said it in a different tone.

"Sure," he responded. "Says his watch was taken last night from
the studio. Better get him down to take a squint at the
telephone. Likely he can fix it."

Flannigan was beside me with the cheese. And at that moment I
felt Mr. Harbison's stolen watch slip out of my girdle, slide
greasily across my lap, and clatter to the floor. Flannigan
stooped, but luckily it had gone under the table. To have had it