“PATRICK ROONY, Police Officer,

“Police Precinct ——­,

“New York City.

“Attest:  JOHN J. JONES,

“Chief City Magistrate.”

“Well, I never!” she exploded.  “What rubbish!  Four miles an hour!  And ’Maggie’—­as if everybody didn’t know my name was Edna!”

“The whole thing looks a bit phony to me!” muttered Pierpont, worried over the possibility of having wasted a slug of the real thing on an unreal police officer.  “Perhaps that feller wasn’t a cop at all!”

“And who’s William Mul-kay-hay?” she continued.  “I don’t know any such person!  You better call up Mr. Edgerton right away and see what the law is.”

“I hope he knows!” countered Mr. Pumpelly.  “Four miles an hour—­that’s a joke!  A baby carriage goes faster than four miles an hour.  You wouldn’t arrest a baby!”

“Well, call him up!” directed Mrs. Pumpelly.  “Tell him he should come right round over here.”

The summons from his client interrupted Mr. Edgerton in the middle of an expensive dinner at his club and he left it in no good humor.  He didn’t like being ordered round like a servant the way Mrs. Pumpelly was ordering him.  It wasn’t dignified.  Moreover, a lawyer out of his office was like a snail out of its shell—­at a distinct disadvantage.  You couldn’t just make an excuse to step into the next office for a moment and ask somebody what the law was.  The Edgertons always kept somebody in an adjoining office who knew the law—­many lawyers do.

On the Pumpelly stoop the attorney found standing an evil-looking and very shabby person holding a paper in his hand, but he ignored him until the grilled iron cinquecento door swung open, revealing James, the retiring second man.

Then, before he could enter, the shabby person pushed past him and asked in a loud, vulgar tone:  “Does Edna Pumpelly live here?”

James stiffened in the approved style of erect vertebrata.

“This is Madame Pierpont Pumpelly’s residence,” he replied with hauteur.

“Madam or no madam, just slip this to her,” said the shabby one.  “Happy days!”

Mr. Wilfred Edgerton beneath the medieval tapestry of the Pumpelly marble hall glanced at the dirty sheet in James’ hand and, though unfamiliar with the form of the document, perceived it to be a summons issued on the application of one Henry J. Goldsmith and returnable next day, for violating Section Two Hundred and Fifteen of Article Twelve of Chapter Twenty of the Municipal Ordinances for keeping and maintaining a certain bird, to wit, a cockatoo, which by its noise did disturb the quiet and repose of a certain person in the vicinity to the detriment of the health of such person, to wit, Henry J. Goldsmith, aforesaid, and upon her failure to appear, and so on.

Wilfred had some sort of vague idea of a law about keeping birds, but he couldn’t exactly recall what it was.  There was something incongruous about Mrs. Pierpont Pumpelly keeping a cockatoo.  What did anybody want of a cockatoo?  He concluded that it must be an ancestral hereditament from Athens, Ohio.  Nervously he ascended the stairs to what Edna called the saloon.