"
Gerald wildly wondered what magic and how much had been
needed to give history and a past to these two things of yesterday,
the rich Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly. If he could get them away
would all memory of them fade in this boy's mind, for instance, in
the minds of all the people who did business with them in the
City? Would the mahogany-and-clerk-furnished offices fade away?
Were the clerks real? Was the mahogany? Was he himself real?
Was the boy?
"Can you keep a secret?" he asked the other boy. "Are you on for a
lark?"
"I ought to be getting back to the office," said the boy.
"Get then!" said Gerald.
"Don't you get stuffy," said the boy. "I was just a-going to say it
didn't matter. I know how to make my nose bleed if I'm a bit late."
Gerald congratulated him on this accomplishment, at once so
useful and so graceful, and then said: "Look here. I'll give you five
bob honest."
"What for?" was the boy's natural question.
"If you'll help me. "
"Fire ahead."
"I'm a private inquiry," said Gerald.
"Tec? You don't look it."
"What's the good of being one if you look it?" Gerald asked
impatiently, beginning on another bun. "That old chap on the floor
above he's wanted."
"Police?" asked the boy with fine carelessness.
"No sorrowing relations."
"'Return to,'" said the boy; "'all forgotten and forgiven.' I see.
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