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He looked at P. Gubb out of the corner of his eye.

“Why, I remember one time,” he said briskly, “I was asked to the Dook’s palace to a swell party. Me and Shermlock was both asked, because they knew one of us wouldn’t go unless the other did. Well, sir, I had been out detecting in a tramp disguise that day–findin’ stolen jools and murderers and that sort of business–and I went and took my bath and rigged all up in swell clothes, and called my limmy-seen automobile, and when the feller I hired to drive the limmy-seen come to open the door of the car at the Dook’s palace I dodged. Yes, sir, I dodged like I thought he was going to hit me because I hadn’t no business in my own limmy-seen automobile. That was funny, wasn’t it? So I went up the steps into the Dook’s palace, and the gentleman he had to open the door opened the door, and he called out my name and up come the Dookess–Mrs. Dook of Sluff, as they call her, but I always called her Maggie, like she called me Mike. So she says to me, ‘Mike, I’m mighty glad to see you here. We’re going to have a swell party.’ And I started to say back something pleasant, but what I said was, ‘Please, missus, won’t you give a poor cove a hand-out?'”

“What seemed to be the reason you said that?” asked Philo Gubb with interest.

“That’s what worried me,” said Chi Foxy. “I didn’t mean to say it. I just said it against my will, as you might say. But I guess she thought I was tryin’ to be smart, for she just says, ‘Naughty, naughty, Mike,’ and whistled to the Dook to come and blow me off to the feeds. So the Dook come and led me into the dining-room, and stacked me up against the table for a stand-up feed. Swell feed, bo! Samwiches till you couldn’t rest–ham samwiches and chicken samwiches and tongue samwiches and club samwiches and–and all kinds of samwiches. And what did I do? I grabbed half a dozen of them samwiches and rammed them into my pants pocket, just like a tramp would do it. The Dook looked surprised, but he begun to haw-haw, and he slapped me on the back and said, ‘Good joke, ol’ chap, good joke!’ So that passed off all right. Then I went into the jool room, because the Dook had told me his son, the Dookette, or what you might call the little Dookerino, was in there. So in I went, and the first thing I knew I was hiding one of the Dook’s gold crowns inside my vest. In a minute in come the Dook to pick out a crown to wear at dinner–“

“I thought you said they had a stand-up dinner at the table,” said Philo Gubb.

“Pshaw, that was nothing but the appetizer,” said Chi Foxy. “Well, in he come and began lookin’ through his crowns for the one he wanted, and all at once he saw how my vest bulged out, and he knew by the rough edges of the bulge it wasn’t samwiches because them dookal samwiches is all boneless. So he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, ‘Mike, ain’t you carryin’ the joke a bit too far?’ That’s what he says, and I wish you could have heard how sad his voice was. He says, ‘You know me, Mike, and you know that anything I’ve got is yours–except that crown you’ve got inside your vest.’

“For a minute I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t in tramp disguise and I thought he would think I was a thief in real life, so I says, ‘Dook, search me!’ ‘I don’t have to search you,’ he says, ‘for I can see my favorite crown bulging out your vest.’ ‘I don’t mean that, Dook, old chap,’ I says; ‘I mean take me up to your bood-u-war or the bathroom and give me the twice-over. Something’s wrong with me, and I don’t know what, but some of my tramp disguise must be sticking to me somewhere.’ So we went up to the bathroom and he went over me with this one-eyed monocule he always wore, and then he went over me with a reading-glass, and then he went over me with a microscope, but he couldn’t see a speck of tramp disguise on me. Not a speck. ‘Keep lookin’!’ I says. ‘It must be there somewhere, Dook,’ I says, ‘or I wouldn’t act so pernicious.’ So he begun again, and all at once I hear him chuckle. He was lookin’ in my ear with the microscope.”