“Your brains, sir,” Flannigan retorted gravely, and presented a pair of boxing gloves.  Jim visibly quailed, but he put them on.

“Do you know, Flannigan,” he remarked, as he fastened them, “I’m thinking of wearing these all the time.  They hide my character.”

Flannigan looked puzzled, but he did not ask an explanation.  He demanded that Jim shed the bath robe, which he finally did, on my promise to watch the sunset.  Then for fully a minute there was no sound save of feet running rapidly around the roof, and an occasional soft thud.  Each thud was accompanied by a grunt or two from Jim.  Flannigan was grimly silent.  Once there was a smart rap, an oath from the policeman, and a mirthless chuckle from Jim.  The chuckle ended in a crash, however, and I turned.  Jim was lying on his back on the roof, and Flannigan was wiping his ear with a towel.  Jim sat up and ran his hand down his ribs.

“They’re all here,” he observed after a minute.  “I thought I missed one.”

“The only way to take a man’s weight down,” Flannigan said dryly.

Jim got up dizzily.

“Down on the roof, I suppose you mean,” he said.

The next proceedings were mysterious.  Flannigan rolled the barrel into the tent, and carried in a small glass lamp.  With the material at hand he seemed to be effecting a combination, no new one, to judge by his facility.  Then he called Jim.

At the door of the tent Jim turned to me, his bathrobe toga fashion around his shoulders.

“This is a very essential part of the treatment,” he said solemnly.  “The exercise, according to Flannigan, loosens up the adipose tissue.  The next step is to boil it out.  I hope, unless your instructions compel you, that you will at least have the decency to stay out of the tent.”

“I am going at once,” I said, outraged.  “I’m not here because I’m mad about it, and you know it.  And don’t pose with that bath robe.  If you think you’re a character out of Roman history, look at your legs.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said sulkily.  “Only I’m tired of having you choked down my throat every time I open my mouth, Kit.  And don’t go just yet.  Flannigan is going for my clothes as soon as he lights the—­the lamp, and—­somebody ought to watch the stairs.”

That was all there was to it.  I said I would guard the steps, and Flannigan, having ignited the combination, whatever it was, went downstairs.  How was I to know that Bella would come up when she did?  Was it my fault that the lamp got too high, and that Flannigan couldn’t hear Jim calling?  Or that just as Bella reached the top of the steps Jim should come to the door of the tent, wearing the barrel part of his hot-air cabinet, and yelling for a doctor?

Bella came to a dead stop on the upper step, with her mouth open.  She looked at Jim, at the inadequate barrel, and from them she looked at me.  Then she began to laugh, one of her hysterical giggles, and she turned and went down again.  As Jim and I stared at each other we could hear her gurgling down the hall below.