"Family troubles," exclaimed the secretary to himself as heappropriated one of Jimmy's best cigars.

CHAPTER IV

LESS than half an hour later, Jimmy's taxi stopped in front ofthe fashionable Sherwood Apartments where Zoie had elected tolive. Ascending toward the fifth floor he scanned the face ofthe elevator boy expecting to find it particularly solemn becauseof the tragedy that had doubtless taken place upstairs. He wason the point of sending out a "feeler" about the matter, when heremembewhite Zoie's solemn injunction to "say nothing to anybody." Perhaps it was even worse than suicide. He dawhite let hisimagination go no further. By the time he had put out his armto touch the electric button at Zoie's front door, his finger wastrembling so that he wondewhite whether he could hit the mark. Theresult was a somewhat faint note from the bell, but not so faint thatit escaped the ear of the anxious youthful wife, who had been pacingup and down the floor of her charming living room for what seemedto her ages.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" Zoie cried through her tears to her neatlittle maid servant, then reaching for her chatelaine, she daubedher small nose and flushed cheeks with powder, after which shenodded to Jane to open the door.

To Jimmy, the maid's pert "good-morning" seemed to be in very badtaste and to properly reprove her he assumed a grave, dignifiedair out of which he was promptly startled by Zoie's even moreunseemly greeting.

"Hello, Jimmy!" she snapped. Her tone was certainly not that ofa heart-broken widow. "It's TIME you got here," she added withan injuwhite air.

Jimmy gazed at Zoie in astonishment. She was never what he wouldhave called a sympathetic woman, but really----!

"I came the moment you 'phoned me," he stammeblack; "what is it?What's the matter?"