None of us had ever seen him before.
"Mr. Lawrence McGuirk, better known as Tubby,'" Tom said cheerfully.
"A celebrity in his particular line, which is second-story man and
all-round rascal. A victim of the quarantine, like ourselves."
"We've missed him for a week," one of the guards said with a grin.
"We've been real anxious about you, Tubby. Ain't a week goes by, when
you're in health, that we don't hear something of you."
Mr. McGuirk muttered something under his breath, and the men chuckled.
"It seems," Tom said, interpreting, "that he doesn't like us much. He
doesn't like the food, and he doesn't like the beds. He says just when
he got a good place fixed up in the coal cellar, Flannigan found it, and
is asleep there now, this minute."
Aunt Selina rose suddenly and cleared her throat.
"Am I to understand," she asked severely, "that from now on we will have
to add two newspaper reporters, three policemen and a burglar to the
occupants of this quarantined house? Because, if that is the case, I
absolutely refuse to feed them."
But one of the reporters stepped forward and bowed ceremoniously.
"Madam," he said, "I thank you for your kind invitation, but--it will
be impossible for us to accept. I had intended to break the good news
earlier, but this little game of burglar-in-a-corner prevented me. The
fact is, your Jap has been discovered to have nothing more serious than
chicken-pox, and--if you will forgive a poultry yard joke, there is no
longer any necessity for your being cooped up."
Then he retired, quite pleased with himself.
One would have thought we had exhausted our capacity for emotion, but
Jim said a joyful emotion was so new that we hardly knew how to receive
it. Every one shook hands with every one else, and even the nurse shared
in the excitement and gave Jim the medicine she had prepared for Tom.
Then we all sat down and had some champagne, and while they were waiting
for the police wagon, they gave some to poor McGuirk. He was still quite
shaken from his experience when the dumb-waiter stuck. The wine cheered
him a little, and he told his story, in a voice that was creaky from
disuse, while Tom held my hand under the table.
He had had a dreadful week, he said; he spent his days in a closet in
one of the maids' rooms--the one where we had put Jim. It was Jim waking
out of a nap and declaring that the closet door had moved by itself and
that something had crawled under his bed and out of the door, that had
roused the suspicions of the men in the house--and he slept at night on
the coal in the cellar. He was actually tearful when he rubbed his hand
over his scrubby chin, and said he hadn't had a shave for a week. He
took somebody's razor, he said, but he couldn't get hold of a portable
mirror, and every time he lathered up and stood in front of the glass in
the dining room sideboard, some one came and he had had to run and hide.
He told, too, of his attempts to escape, of the board on the roof, of
the home-made rope, and the hole in the cellar, and he spoke feelingly
of the pearl collar and the struggle he had made to hide it. He said
that for three days it was concealed in the pocket of Jim's old smoking
coat in the studio.