Some Buried Caesar

"Don't bother." I got out the expense wallet and handed him a bill. "I can assure you that I shall come out of here with bugs-"

"Once when I was working for the Austrian government I was thrown into jail in Bulgaria-"

I strode to the door and pulled it open and bellowed into the hall: "Oh, warden! I'm escaping!"

He appeared from somewhere in a lumbering trot, stum- bling. Behind him came Osgood, looking startled. From the other direction came the sound of a gallop, and that proved to be the keeper, with a revolver in his hand. I grinned at them: "April fool. Show me to my room. I'm sleepy. It's the country air."

Osgood rumbled, "Clown." The warden looked relieved. I tossed a cheery good night to Wolfe over my shoulder, and started off down the hall with the keeper trailing me.

Basil was seated on his cot brushing his hair. He asked me what the yelling had been for and I told him I had had a fit. I asked him what time the lights went out and he told me 9 o'clock, so I proceeded to get my bed made. Having had the forethought to order 5 copies of the newspaper, there was more than enough to cover the cot entirely with a double thickness. Basil suspended the brushing momentarily to watch me arranging it with ample laps, and when I was nearly through he observed that it would rustle so much that I wouldn't be able to sleep and neither would he. I replied that when I once got set I was as dead as a log, and he re- marked in a sinister tone that it might not turn out that way in my present quarters. I finished the job anyhow. Down the line somewhere two voices were raised in an argument as to whether February 22nd was a national holiday, and others joined in.

It was approaching 9 o'clock when the key was turned in our lock again and the keeper appeared in the door and told me I was wanted.

"Gripes," Basil said, "we'll have to install a telephone." It couldn't be Wolfe, I thought. There was no one else it could be except Waddell or Barrow, and there wasn't a chance of getting put on the sidewalk by them, and if they wanted to harry me they could damn well wait until morning, I decided to be contrary.

"Whoever it is, tell him I've gone to bed."

Even in the dim light, I seemed to perceive that the keeper looked disappointed. He asked, "Don't you want to see her?"

"Her?"

"It's your sister."

"Oh. I'll be derned. My dear sister."