This gentleman wrote "James Walsingham Price, N.Y.," on the register, called for a room with a bath, ordered "coffee and rolls" to be sent there at eight-thirty the next morning, and then asked to see the "dinner card." After mine host, Jake Kilburn, had been made to understand what "dinner card" meant, he made Mr.James Walsingham Price understand that there was no dinner card.

This being clear at last, the newcomer said: "Oh, _very_ well! Then just give my order to the head-waiter, will you--there's a good chap--a cup of consomme, a bit of fish, a bird of some sort, broiled, I fancy,--er--potatoes _au gratin_, a green salad of some kind,--serve that with the bird,--a piece of Camembert, if it's in good condition, any _entremet_ you have and a _demi-tasse_.

I'll mix the salad dressing myself, tell him,--oh, yes--and a pint of Chambertin if you've something you can recommend." Billy Durgin, scrutinizing the newcomer in a professional way, told me afterwards that Jake Kilburn "batted his eyes" during this strange speech and replied to it, "like a man coming to"-- "supper in twenty minutes," after which he pounded a bell furiously and then himself showed his new and puzzling guest to a room--but not a room "with a bath," be it understood, for a most excellent reason.
Billy Durgin was excited half an hour later by noting the behavior of the first strange gentleman from the East as his eyes fell upon this second.

He threw both hands into the air, where they engaged in rapid horizontal shakings from his pliant wrists, and in hushed gutturals exclaimed, "My God, my God!" in his own fashion of speech, which was reproduced admirably for me by my informant.

Billy was thus confirmed in his earlier belief that the first strange gentleman was a house-breaker badly wanted somewhere, and he now surmised that the newcomer must be a detective on his trail.