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I grabbed hold, gave a healthy jerk, and she popped up and landed flat against me; and I enclosed her with both arms and planted a thorough one, of medium duration, on her mouth, and let her go.

"Well," she said, with her eyes shining. "You cad."

"Don't count on that as a precedent," I warned her. "I'm overwrought. I may never feel like that again. I'm sore as the devil and had to relieve the tension somehow. May I use your telephone? Mr. Pratt's telephone."

"Go climb a tree," she said, and got her arm through mine, and we went to the house that way, though it is a form of intimacy I don't care for, since I have a tendency to fight shy of bonds. Nor did I respond to the melting quality that seemed to be creeping into her tone, but kept strictly to persiflage.

Caroline was on the terrace, reading, looking even more under the weather than she had that morning, and I paused for a greeting. I didn't see Jimmy anywhere. Lily went with me to the phone in an alcove of the living room, and sat and looked at me with a corner of her mouth turned up, as she had the day before. I got the number of Osgood's place, and was answered by a maid, and asked for Wolfe. His familiar grunt came: "Hello, Archie."

"Hello. Hell all haywire. They already had the fire started and it's like an inferno. What can I do?"

"Confound it. Nothing. Return."

"Nothing at all I can do here?"

"No. Come and help me admire stupidity."

I hung up and turned to Lily: "Listen, bauble. What good would it do if you told anyone that I came here to take a picture of the bull?"

"None whatever." She smiled and ran the tips of her fingers down my arm. "Trust me, Escamillo."

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