THE PURPLE PARASOL


GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON




THE PURPLE PARASOL




Young Rossiter did not like the task. The more he thought of it as he
whirled northward on the Empire State Express the more distasteful it
seemed to grow.

"Hang it all," he thought, throwing down his magazine in disgust, "it's
like police work. And heaven knows I haven't wanted to be a cop since we
lived in Newark twenty years ago. Why the dickens did old Wharton marry
her? He's an old ass, and he's getting just what he might have expected.
She's twenty-five and beautiful; he's seventy and a sight. I've a notion
to chuck the whole affair and go back to the simple but virtuous
Tenderloin. It's not my sort, that's all, and I was an idiot for mixing in
it. The firm served me a shabby trick when it sent me out to work up this
case for Wharton. It's a regular Peeping Tom Job, and I don't like it."

It will require but few words to explain Sam Rossiter's presence in the
north-bound Empire Express, but it would take volumes to express his
feelings on the subject in general. Back in New York there lived Godfrey