CHAPTER 12
I DISCOVER “THE QUEER.”
Then Tom Downs was getting married and he asked me to usher, so there I was in Caldon’s, picking out an after-dinner coffee set to be sent to the bride; and a lot I knew about breeds and varieties of Hepplewhite and Colonial and Queen Anne. Now if setter dogs could only be wedding presents, or beans, I’d be right on the spot; or a bag of Rio coffee would be all right; but the coffee container never meant anything to me. So I was about to judge by the good old way, which has proved such a help to the high cost of living, and order the most expensive when I heard a voice that I knew and turned about.
She wasn’t speaking to me but to the clerk at the watch-repair counter, which was just opposite the coffee sets:
“Bad?” she was saying. “Oh, you must mean
