The Boss's Breeches

Peter Duane Van Dyck paid very little attention to his underwear. His shorts received almost no thought whatever. He disregarded them. He changed them automatically. Not every day, like other nice men of his station, but whenever the idea occurred to him. Sometimes he lost his shorts; that is, misplaced them, forgot where he had seen them last.

That is what had happened on this particular morning. With exasperated diligence he searched for his drawers, completely blind to the fact that he had lazily left them crumpled in his trousers upon retiring the previous night. It was not a Van Dyck trait, this leaving his shorts in his trousers. It was a habit characteristic of Peter, however -- one of his little labor-saving devices which would have been revolting to the long line of Van Dycks from which he had sprung without any great show of agility.

Abandoning all hope of ever seeing his drawers again, Peter put on a new pair and dragged on his trousers after them. The fact that the old pair remained untidily wedged in his trousers caused him no discomfort at the moment. He ascribed the slight fullness on the right side--a tendency to bind, as it were -- to some inexplicable caprice of his shirt tail. He would deal with his shirt tail later if in the meantime it did not adjust itself of its own accord. Shirt tails usually did in the course of a day, he had found. He hoped this one would, because he hated to trouble himself with such matters. It would have been wiser if he had done so.

He did things to his sandy-colored hair, decided after a quick scrutiny of his vaguely blue eyes that they had a peculiarly harassed appearance, wiped some dried soap off his right ear, and left the room wearing two pairs of drawers and carrying one towel. On the Van Dyck landing he became conscious of the towel still clutched in his hand. Draping it over the bare expanse of a statue of an Aphrodite seemingly seized with qualms or cramps in a near-by niche. Peter Van Dyck permitted his five feet ten inches of body to find its way downstairs unassisted by any mental effort.

He entertained hopes of filling this body with coffee and lots of breakfast. Peter was thirty-four. Also, he was hungry.

• • •

At about the same time, in another part of town, Miss Josephine Duval rolled a body of the most disconcerting loveliness out of its bed. It was Jo's own body, and she sat with it in lazy companionship on the bed's edge while she permitted several tremendous yawns to escape her recklessly red and rebellious lips. After this she stretched, and the effect was devastating. For a moment even the world must have paused in its revolutions. As the girl's small and not unbecoming feet sought with all their ten useless toes a pair of mules that were a sheer waste of time, her cool white arm automatically reached out and the hand on the end of it affixed itself to a pair of silken panties. Bending a dark red head of tousled hair over her trophy, she allowed her brown eyes to consider them none too favorably.

They were far from being the panties of her choice. However, many a girl would have thought herself fortunate to have been caught in a gale in such a pair. In a nutshell, which would nearly have accommodated them, they were good, middle-class business-like-looking panties without a great deal of foolishness about them, yet sufficiently attractive to do justice to their owner. Josephine's French blood cried for fairer panties, while her French sense of thrift assured her that for a hard-working secretary who spent most of her time sitting they were altogether adequate.

"If I didn't have to work so darned hard and scrimp so much," yawned Jo to herself, "I'd buy me some bang-up underthings, wouldn't I just! Regular knockouts. Black and very-very bad."

With a supple flexing of her body she shook off her nightgown and stepped into the silken undergarment.

"Pay day today," she gloated. "I'll buy a new pair of panties tonight as soon as the office closes. Black ones! Even though a girl should be good, she doesn't have to feel that way. Funny thing, I always feel at my best when I'm feeling thoroughly depraved. There's no use of a girl trying to tell herself anything different, either. Women are born that way."

It was then that Jo thought of Peter Duane Van Dyck. Peter was Josephine's employer -- her boss. She was his secretary, and it would not have required much enterprise on his part to make her even more. As it was, he admired the young lady for her efficiency, but was alarmed by her bold eyes, which to his way of thinking had a suspiciously bad look about thm. They were not good for business -- he was certain of that.

"He's an old fud," Jo decided as she tightened up her stockings so that they gleamed on her well-turned legs. "Doesn't seem to know I have these. Not an eye in his stupid head. I'll make him know, doggone it."

And Jo defty curbed her abundance within the delicate web of a brazen brassiére.

• • •

As Peter Van Dyck left his house in the West Seventies he was wondering vaguely why his eyes had such a harassed expression and his coffee such a comfortless flavor. The season of the year was propitious -- late spring with summer lounging among the buds. Business not too bad when compared with that of his competitors. As a matter of fact, the morning paper had announced the untimely end of one of his closest rivals, yet even this gratifying occurrence failed to lend (continued on next page) zest to Peter's day. Something was radically wrong with him.

Then, suddenly, a thought rose bleakly from his subconscious mind and flopped down heavily on his conscious one, where it lay like a dead weight. This afternoon his Aunt Sophie, his statuesque and painfully modern Aunt Sophie who presided over his household, was giving a cocktail party for Yolanda Bates Wilmont. And at this party the cat which had long since been out of the bag was obligingly going to crawl back into it again to permit itself to be officially released. After today he, Peter, would no longer be a freelance in the courts of light dalliance. He would be irrevocably engaged to Yolanda with all her beauty and wealth and firmly rooted convictions. This knowledge somehow failed even more lamentably than had the sudden departure of his business rival to add zest to Peter's day.

Yes, there was no doubt about it. Something was radically wrong with him. His responsive faculties seemed to have become strangely atrophied by the thought of life and Yolanda Wilmont.

For a few brief moments Peter's troubled blue eyes dwelt on the lines of a well-formed girl sitting opposite him in the downtown subway express. Little suspecting the highly improper trend of his thoughts, Peter felt that he would like to lie down quietly somewhere with that girl and talk the situation over. He felt the need of a female confessor as well as entertainer. There had been too few women in his life. With a sense of panic he began to realize this as the imminence of his official bethrothal confronted him. Quickly he averted his eyes. The girl was chewing gum. This girl, in spite of her lines, was definitely out of the picture. Well, was not life exactly like that? At its most alluring moments it suddenly began to chew gum in one's face. Revolting, Peter shrank slightly and returned to his paper.

It was not until he had reached the seclusion of his private office that the extra pair of shorts he was unconsciously wearing began to manifest themselves. Even then he was not aware of the exact nature of his difficulties. He experienced merely a sense of unwanted fullness -- a growing sensation of insecurity. Suddenly, however, as the drawers gathered headway his alarm and discomfort became acute. In his anxiety forgetting that his office though private was not quite impenetrable, Peter allowed his trousers to descend several inches, the better to deal with the perplexing situation.

Miss Josephine Duval, armed with the morning mail, entered the room quietly and closed the door behind her. For a moment she allowed her cool but curious gaze to dwell on the orange and black stripes decorating all that could be seen of the southern exposure of Mr. Peter Van Dyck's shorts.

"Looks like summer awnings," she observed more to herself than to her employer. 'And to think I never suspected!"

With a low moan of distress, Peter's body went into a huddle as only a body can when plunged into such a situation.

"Haven't you got sense enough to get out?" he demanded, twisting a strained but indignant face over his shoulder.

"I have the sense, but not the power," Miss Duval retorted calmly. "Your condition has robbed me of that."

"For God's sake," the man almost chattered, "hurry! Suppose someone should come in and find you here?"

"I'm all right," said Miss Duval. "It's you who would give rise to comment."

Something was slipping farther and farther down the right leg of Peter's trousers, slipping stealthily but relentlessly to the floor. And the trouble was that Peter, not suspecting the presence of a stowaway, visualized the worst. What a fearful picture he must be presenting from the rear, yet the front view would not improve matters any. How could such a demeaning thing happen to a man in this day and age?

"Won't you please go away?" he asked in an agitated voice. "What would people think?"

"Well," replied Jo with dispassionate deliberation, "from the trouble you seem to be having with your trousers, people might get the impression you'd asked me in here to watch you do tricks with your shorts."

"What's that!" exclaimed Peter, more upset by the girl's attitude than by her words. "Oh, you're fired. There's no doubt about that. This time you're through for good."

"Do you realize that I could play you a decidedly dirty trick?" Jo inquired lightly.

"What do you mean?" asked Peter, his fingers furtively fumbling with various buttons.

"If I should scream now --" began Jo, but was interrupted by Peter's heartfelt, "Oh, my God!"

"If I should begin to shout and rush about," she continued, as if savoring the idea, "there's not a jury in the world that wouldn't convict you of at least breach of promise."

"Swear to God I never knew there was such a woman in the world," Peter Van Dyck replied in an emotional voice as if appealing to some unseen audience. "If you'll only go away and let me finish what I'm doing you'll not be fired."

"How about all this mail?" she demanded.

"Am I in a condition to go into that now?"

"I should say not," said the girl. "You don't know how awful you are."

"Then don't trouble to tell me. I can very well imagine."

"Before I go," Josephine continued, placing the letters on the desk, "would you mind explaining what was in your mind when you got yourself into this terrible condition?"

"I don't know," Peter answered. "And I fail to see how it's any of your business."

"Well, it's a sight a young lady doesn't see every day of her life," replied Jo. "Especially in an office building and at this time of day."

"I don't make a practice of it," Peter retorted, with an attempt at dignity.

"I wouldn't," Miss Duval assured him. "There's an unpleasant suggestion of senility about it. And by the way, if you're looking for an extra pair of shorts you'll find them sticking out of the right leg of your trousers. Although why you want two pairs I can't for the life of me understand. The ones you have on are giddy enough."

As the door closed quietly on his tormentor, Peter Van Dyck reached down and, seizing the offending shorts, hurled them furiously in the general direction of the waste basket, upon the edge of which they sprawled unbecomingly.

"Damn my absent mind," he muttered, "and damn that woman's impudence. What a decidedly unpleasant occurence! She actually seemed to enjoy it. These modern girls ..."

A few minutes later Jo briskly followed her perfunctory knock into the room and found her employer wearily seated at his desk. He was gloomily scanning a letter. "Oh," exclaimed Miss Duval amicably. "Quite an improvement. All tucked in, I see."

Peter didn't look up. He mumbled something into the papers he was holding. Miss Duval seated herself beside the desk.

"Peter," she said.

"Yes." Grudingly. "Mr. Van Dyck to you."

"Your father called you Peter."

"Well, you're not my father."

"But I helped to bring you up in the business. It's been three years."

"Seems longer."

"Does it? Well, it hasn't been long enough to make a business man of you."

"Is that so?"

"Yes that's so. You're a hell of a business man."

Peter looked pained. "It doesn't speak well for your teaching," he said.

"You never give me a tumble. Don't even call me Jo. Everybody else in the office calls me Jo."

"What do I call you?"

"You don't call me anything. It's 'Please take a letter,' or 'How do you feel today?' or 'Sorry to keep you late.' Never any name. To you I'm a nameless woman. Might just as well be a -- a -- little bastard for all you care."

"Don't use bad language," he said.

"Why not use bad language?" she retorted. "You flaunt your shorts in my face!"

"Is that quite fair?" he asked her. "You stormed in here. Didn't stop to knock. And there I was. That's all there was to it."

"You never notice me," she pouted.

"I notice you," he said, continuing to look at his papers.

"The old duffers that come in here -- they notice me. The bankers, and buyers, and business tycoons."

Peter humphed into his papers.

"I've a good mind to sell my body to an international banker," she said.

"I wish to God you'd sell it to an international vivisectionist and have done with it," Peter asserted brutally.

"Why?" she inquired. "Does my body bother you?"

"Not at all. It means nothing to me."

"You mean you can take it or leave it -- just as you please?"

"Will you kindly keep quiet? I've a lot of things to think about. If I could take it and leave it somewhere else I'd feel much better."

Jo's perfume was in the air. Peter liked that perfume, and the fact that he suspected he also liked its owner a little more than was seemly made him deliberately hostile.

"Take a letter," he said. Then, after a long pause, "Damn it -- I can't think of any letters."

"Something on your mind?" she asked.

"Nothing definite," said Peter, allowing his gaze to rest on the girl for the first time since she had returned to his office. "I was thinking about -- about a cocktail party I've got to go to -- a stupid thing."

"Today?" she asked.

"After office," said Peter. "My aunt's doing it for Yolanda Wilmont. We get engaged at it -- officially engaged and all that."

"All what?" she inquired suspiciously.

"Oh, just all that."

"I hope you don't mean what I'm thinking," said Jo.

"At my lowest moments," he replied, "I never could mean what you're thinking."

"Thanks," murmured Jo. "What's she like? Of course, I've seen her pictures in the society columns -- at all the ritziest affairs. They've given me a good laugh."

"You're just envious," retorted Peter, hardly spirited enough to be stung to a defense of his fiancée.

"I might possibly be envious about all that," she admitted, "but certainly not about being engaged to you." And then, "You don't look very happy."

"I am too," he snapped. "As a matter of fact, I'm very happy. I'm a decidedly lucky man."

"Of course you are, Peter," she assured him.

"An exceptionally lucky man," he reiterated with quite unnecessary emphasis. "Getting far more than I deserve, in fact."

"Now you're talking," said Jo. "Much more than you deserve!"

"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"I don't mean anything, Peter. I'm agreeing with you."

"Well don't. I dislike the way you do it. Take a letter ..."

• • •

Peter had lunch at the little coffee shop on the corner. Back at the office, he again thought of the engagement party and Yolanda Wilmont, but for some reason his mind kept wandering to Josephine Duval. Damn it -- he knew he was in love with Yolanda -- had been in love with her for years. That was all settled, one of the established facts of life. She was beautiful, she was cultured, and she seemed to find nothing especially wrong with him. Of course, she had never allowed either herself nor him to become in any sense intimate on the strength of this engagement of their. She was not at all like that. Just the opposite of this Duval woman. That was something to be thankful for -- but was it? Peter wondered. On the other hand he seriously doubted if one man could last long with an oversexed creature like Josephine without calling in outside assistance, which did not make for a happy married life. Josephine was impossible. He failed to know why he was thinking about her at all. What business had that brazen vixen preening herself in his thoughts? She was merely his private secretary, an efficient one but forward. She, too, had become a fixture in his life. His father had found (continued on page 12) Boss's Breeches (continued from page 9) her amusing, but then, the elder Van Dyck had been a loose liver after office hours. He had found any good-looking wench amusing. Peter was not like that. He had never had the chance. As he sat there thinking, he found himself rather envying his father's disregard of convention. Closer than had any other Van Dyck immortalized in the family record, the old gentleman had approached the open ground of disreputability. He had been keenly alert to every female leg in the office, and he had personally seen to it that every leg in the office was first-rate. Yet everyone had been fond of old Peter Van Dyck, including his son. Young Peter had been too greatly occupied fearing the consequences of his father's ambitious but questionable experiments to embark on any of his own. Many a father has lost his morals in saving those of a son, although it is highly problematical that the elder Van Dyck had this idea in mind as he tidily tottered among his vices. His interest in Jo Duval, however, had been restrained to one of fatherly admiration mixed with a little fear and respect, emotions few women had ever inspired in him.

Peter's thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of Josephine Duval. Wtihout so much as favoring him with a glance, she marched up to his desk, smacked down on it an intra-office memorandum, then turned and retraced her steps. At the door she paused and fixed him with a pair of glittering eyes. Peter quailed before their malevolence. In the way she closed the door behind her there was a suggestion of a challenge.

Why was this creature so disturbing? Peter wondered. At times, when it so pleased her mood, she acted exactly as if she were in a play. It wasn't natural. Imagine! This stalking into a man's office, then stalking out again with never a word. And what a look she had left behind -- what a downright sinister look! What had she meant by that?

With the least interest in the world in intra-office routine Peter picked up the memorandum and glanced at it. Quite suddenly his bored expression changed to one of consternation. He read:

To Peter Van Dyck, President:

The moment you consummate your marriage with Yolanda Wilmont I want my resignation to take affect. However, until that moment it's still anybody's game, catch-as-catch-can, and you're It.

Respectfully yours, Josephine Duval

P. S. A carbon of this memorandum will be found in my files under "Unfinished Business."

As if it were scorching his fingers, Peter hastily destroyed the compromising slip of paper. This was going too far. He rang for his secretary. "Haven't you got any better sense than to start playing childish games with me?" he demanded.

"The games I intend to play with you will be far from childish," she assured him.

Peter began to think this over, then decided it would be better to leave it alone. "Sit down," he said in a reasonable voice, "and let's try to get things straight."

Josephine flopped down and recklessly tossed one silken leg over the other.

"In the first place," began Peter, "why have you selected today of all days to deport yourself in an especially hellish manner?"

"I'm like this every day, only some days I let go," she told him.

Peter considered this for a moment. "Do you mean you're like this with everybody," he inquired, "or just with me?"

"Just with you," she confided. "If I was like this with everybody I'd have a much nicer time."

"You don't mean nicer," said Peter. "You mean better, perhaps."

"It's too fine a distinction for me to understand," she replied. "But it's the truth just the same. I let go only with you."

"Why with me, may I ask? Do you regard me in the light of a small office boy -- a person to tease?"

"Hardly," she said. "I regard you as a weak but adult male."

"Apparently," replied Peter. "But would you mind not letting go with me, or try letting go with someone else, for a change?"

She looked at him thoughtfully. "I'd rather not," she said.

"So would I," replied Peter, not realizing what he was saying.

"You mean you'd care if I let go with someone else?" she asked.

"Certainly not," replied Peter. "I don't care if you let go with Albert Einstein, with all due respect to that gentleman. But you'll have to stop letting go with me or I'll let go with you."

"I'd like that," replied the girl quite seriously.

"I mean, I'll have to let you go," he corrected himself.

"You haven't even got me yet," she answered.

"And I don't even want you," said Peter.

"How do you know?" she demanded. "You don't know anything about me. You don't know I live in New Jersey, that I support a drunken uncle, that I'm an orphan on both sides and sleep on the left. You don't know that I love salted almonds and that I don't earn enough money here to keep myself in nice underthings. You wear pure silk drawers. Don't tell me -- I saw them with my own two eyes. What sort of drawers do you think I wear? Answer me that. What sort of drawers do you think I wear? Pure silk? Bah!"

"I'm sure I don't care to know that," Peter interrupted. "And please don't keep repeating the question."

"No," she sneered, "you don't care to know. You're too much of a coward. Well, if you must know, I'll tell you. They're artificial silk -- not all silk like yours -- but the lace on 'em is real."

"Must I know all these things?" asked Peter weakly.

"Certainly you must," she snapped. "You're dealing in human souls."

"I had hoped to deal in stocks and bonds," he replied with a show of bitterness, "but you don't give me time to sell a share."

"I wouldn't be found dead in those things you have on," she continued. "Mine are better for less money."

"No doubt," Peter said coldly. "But did it ever occur to you that I have no desire to be found dead in yours?"

"Of course you wouldn't," she flung back. "Not dead."

Here she laughed significantly -- suggestively, in fact. Peter Van Dyck was most unpleasantly impressed by the insinuating look that followed. Helplessly he turned his eyes to the window.

"I fail to see where all this is leading to," he said at length. "Hadn't you better take a couple of letters?"

"All right," she retorted. "Give me a couple of letters. It's better than getting nothing. But while we're on the subject, there's another thing you don't know."

"I'm off the subject. Most definitely off it."

"Well, you've got to know this," she continued. "One of the last things your father asked me to do was to make a man of you."

"If you followed his ideas on that subject," said Peter, "you'd make a wreck of me instead of a man, I'm afraid."

"You're certainly not the man he was," she admitted with uncomplimentary readiness, "but I'm going to do my best with the little there is."

"That's very gracious of you. I'm sure. But let me get this straight. Do you intend to make a man of me or a wreck?"

"I'm going to wreck you," said the girl, "and enjoy myself doing it."

"A nice young girl!" murmured Peter Van Dyck. "An admirable character all round!"

"And while you're talking of nice young girls," said Jo, "you might as well know your father wasn't any too fond of that nice young girl of yours with the name of a fairy princess. And as for an admirable character -- pish! I'd rather have a swell shape."

"Couldn't you strive to develop both?"

"I'm fully developed as it is," she asserted. "If anything, a little too much so in places, but you'd never know that."

"I have no desire to be further enlightened," Peter hastened to assure her.

"You have no ambition," said Jo.

"How about a couple of letters?" he asked.

"All right. How about 'em? I'd almost given those letters up."

"And will you take the carbon of that memorandum out of your files?" he asked her.

"If you don't hurry up with those letters," Jo replied, "I'll take it out of the files and tack it on the bulletin board."

This threat so upset Peter that he in turn upset a box of paper clips. As he bent over to pick them up, he came face to face with Josephine Duval's knee. Some artists claim that the knee of a woman is not an object of beauty. No such claim could be made against Josephine Duval's knee. If an artist lived who, upon seeing Josephine's knee, did not want to do something more than paint it, he was not worthy of his brush. And the wonder of it was that Josephine had two knees. Peter Van Dyck was gazing at them both. It was an experience he never forgot -- a revelation. For the first time in his life he realized that a woman's knees and legs were capable of expressing personality. And with this realization came the explanation of his distaste for the cocktail party and what it represented. In the course of his life he had seen a lot of Yolanda's legs, but never once during the period of this long association with them had he been moved by a desire to do anything other than look at them, and not so strongly moved at that. As Peter sat half crouching in his chair, it came to him, with a sense of having been cheated, that Yolanda's legs had never meant anything more to him than something to separate her body from the ground, something to move her about on from place to place. They might as well have been a pair of stilts or a couple of wheels. In spite of their gracious proportions they were totally lacking in personality. They exercised no fascination, no irresistible appeal. They were cold but beautiful legs. Josephine's legs were different. The more Peter looked at them the more he wanted to see of them. He frankly admitted this. Not only were they beautiful but also extremely interesting -- breath-taking legs, legs seen once in a lifetime. He wondered what had been wrong with him not to have noticed them before. Why had he made this startling discovery at this late date, virtually at the very moment when he was going to become officially engaged to an altogether different pair of legs -- to legs he would have to live with for the remainder of his days?

Josephine's voice cut in on his meditations. "Have you decided to conduct your business in that weird position?" she asked. "Or have you been seized suddenly by a cramp?"

"I'm not going to be like this long," he answered, "nor am I subject to cramps. I am merely thinking."

"Then I think you're overdoing it," said the girl. "First thing you know you'll be having a rush of blood to the head."

"I have one already," replied Peter in an odd voice.

Slowly he straightened up, then sank back in his chair. Almost immediately he fell into a brown study, and although he was looking directly at Josephine his gaze seemed to pass through and far beyond her. The girl eyed him curiously. What had come over this man? Little did she suspect that what she had so often wanted to happen actually had happened without her knowledge or contrivance.

In the presence of this startling revelation Peter Van Dyck sat bemused. For the first time in his life he concentrated his mental forces on legs. How, he wondered, had a leg, a mere leg, the power to move a man so profoundly -- to revolutionize his entire outlook on such matters? All legs were more or less alike, he argued, so much skin and so much bone. Take his own legs, for example. He had never derived any pleasure or satisfaction in contemplating their hungry contours, if they had any contours to contemplate. He supposed they had, yet he was not in any way moved when he cast his eyes on them unless it was by a feeling of distaste. As a matter of fact, he preferred not to look at his legs at all. He rather avoided them. Yet wherein were they so different from those of Josephine Duval? They were composed of the same elements, served the same purpose, and reacted to the same external influences -- heat, cold, kicks, and bites. Certainly mosquitoes did not differentiate between legs. About Jo's legs there was something impudent and piquant, a devil-may-care attitude. She had, morally speaking, a wicked pair of legs.

"Take a couple of letters," he began in a dull, preoccupied voice.

"That would be amusing for a change," said Jo sweetly.

"Almost anything would be amusing for a change," he agreed. "Get on with it. This is to Mr. Benjamin Clarke. You have his address. Dear Ben." Peter's eyes strayed downward. "Dear Ben," he resumed.

"Dear Ben twice?" asked Jo.

"Once or twice," replied Peter. "It doesn't matter. He knows who he is. Dear Ben: Referring to our recent conversation about knees and legs--"

"Pardon me," smoothly interrupted the girl. "Did I understand you to say knees and legs?"

"Means and ways," corrected Peter.

"Were you and Ben discussing means and ways to knees and legs?" she asked him. "You've got me all mixed up."

"That doesn't matter either," said Peter. "I never discuss such subjects. You should know that."

"It would do you a world of good," she assured him.

"Please keep such advice to yourself."

It was at this moment that Jo became aware of the direction of her employer's intent gaze. "Are you, by any chance, looking at my legs?" she inquired in a pleased voice.

"Yes," he answered. "One can scarcely look at anything else."

"You mean they're so attractive?"

"No. I mean they're literally all over the place."

"If I'm not being too bold," said the girl, "would you mind giving me a rough idea of what you think of them?"

"I don't think of them," he answered coldly. "I look at them the same as I would look at a chair or a desk or -- or -- the Pyramids."

"Go on," she said in a dangerous voice, "Why bring up the Pyramids?"

"I am trying to explain to you the impersonal attitude I take to your legs."

Jo sprang from her chair. Her face was flaming, and from her eyes fire flashed through two angry tears. "And I'd like to explain to you," she said in a low voice, "the personal attitude I take to your words. You may criticize my typing as much as you please, but I won't allow you to say a word against my legs. Your Yolanda may be able to afford better stockings, but taking her leg for leg she's a hunchback compared to me."

"Aren't you getting your anatomy a trifle scrambled?" asked Peter in a collected voice.

"I'd damn well like to scramble yours all over the map," she retorted. "Hitting below the belt."

"Quite," replied Peter, coolly measuring her figure with his eyes. "I should say about twelve inches or more."

"I'm going to get out of this room," she declared, "and never come back into it again. If you want to hurl insults at me and talk in a low, lewd manner you'll have to do it outside where everyone can hear what a lecherous creature you are."

"On your way to your desk," he called after her pleasantly, "will you be so good as to ask Miss Bryant to stop in?"

"Sure," she flung over her shoulder. "I suppose you'll compare hers to Pikes Peak or the Empire State."

"I'll have to consider them first," said Peter.

The sound the door made when it closed had in it the quality of a curse.

• • •

Betty Bryant was not a bad-looking girl. Peter realized this when, a few minutes after Jo's impassioned exit, the young girl entered his office and stood waiting expectantly before his desk. Since the demoralizing revelation of his secretary's knees and legs Peter had begun to feel that he was looking at women through an entirely new and improved pair of eyes. Now, when it was almost too late to take advantage of his clearer vision, he was beginning to regret the opportunities he had missed in the past as well as those he would have to forego in the future. The situation was nothing less than tragic. Life owed him many unclaimed women. The reprehensible blood of the elder Van Dyck throbbed rebelliously in his veins.

"Miss Bryant," he said, protecting sections of his features behind a letter, "I wish you would toss on your hat and buy half a dozen pair of stockings at one of the smarter shops in the district. Would you mind?"

Miss Bryant certainly would not mind. She would be glad to go to even greater lengths for Mr. Peter Van Dyck. She would, however, have been interested to know what clearly impure motives lay behind this unexpected request. From the little she could see of Peter's features she was convinced they did not belong to a thoroughly honest face.

"Have you any particular shade in mind, sir?" she asked him.

"Shade in mind?" repeated Peter. "Er -- oh, yes, of course. Naturally." He laughed for no reason. "Flesh," he announced, coloring slightly. "I mean all shades. You know. All the fashionable shades. Youthful. They're for my Aunt Sophie. She has rather silly ideas -- ambitions, one might say."

"Oh," said Miss Bryant. "So they're for your aunt."

"Yes," retorted Peter. "I said they were for my aunt. Why? Is it funny?"

"No. Oh, no. Not at all. I was wondering what size stocking your Aunt Sophie wears, that's all."

"Any size I give her," replied Peter, striving to maintain a casual note in his voice. "I should say about the same size as that Josephine Duval or any other girl her size.

"I think I understand," said Miss Bryant thoughtfully.

"I was very much afraid you would," remarked Peter as he handed the young lady several crisp notes. "And while you're about it, treat your own legs to a pair on the house," he added. "Fine feathers make fine birds, you know. Ha, ha! Capital!"

With her employer's false laughter ringing in her ears, Miss Bryant departed, wondering why she had never suspected him before of being mentally unsteady. These old families got that way in spots. Too bad.

When she had successfully fulfilled her mission and delivered the stockings to Peter, he summoned his secretary. Although she had flatly announced her intention of never entering his office again, Josephine Duval appeared almost immediately. "What improper suggestions have you been making to that Bryant thing?" she demanded. "She's gone light in the head all of a sudden."

"I know nothing about that," said Peter. "She struck me as being an uncommonly sensible and willing young lady."

"Willing, no doubt," snapped Josephine, and laughed disagreeably.

"I particularly dislike the sound of that laugh," said Peter, "as well as the coarse implications behind it. Here are half a dozen pairs of stockings -- pure silk stockings -- all silk stockings, in fact. Yank a couple of them over your legs and let's hear no more on the subject. This has been a fruitless day, and it's not going to get any better."

Josephine took the extended package and tore off its wrappings. For a moment there was silence in the office as she examined the contents with an experienced and rapidly calculating eye. Presently she turned and looked darkly at Peter Van Dyck. "And for this," she said, "I suppose you expect to own me body and soul."

"I'm not interested in your soul," Peter informed her curtly.

"Oh," said Josephine, momentarily nonplussed. "All right. It's a bargain. We'll let it go at a body."

"I have no idea what you are planning on letting go," Peter replied uneasily, "but I strongly advise you to hold everything. And please get it into your head that I have no desire to own either your body or your soul."

"How about a little loan?" Josephine suggested.

"Will you now go away and stop talking wildly," said Peter. "After all, I am your employer. You're supposed to be working here, you know, and not paying me little visits throughout the day."

Josephine looked at him furiously. "You're going to own my body," she said between her teeth, "if I have to ruin yours in the struggle."

"An edifying picture," Peter dryly observed. "However, I shall keep on the alert."

"If they weren't pure silk I'd cut these stockings to ribbons."

"Glad you like them," said Peter mildly. "If I were you, I wouldn't carry them about with me in the office. People might talk."

"I'll stick 'em down here," she declared, thrusting the six pairs of stockings down the front of her dress, where they produced an interesting, not to say scandalous effect.

"If you go out there in that condition," observed Peter, "people will do more than talk. They'll swoon in your face. Even I, in full possession of all the facts, cannot suppress a pang of uneasiness."

"You're responsible for my condition," she flung back.

"Granted," replied Peter reasonably. "But I'm not responsible for what others might erroneously conclude was your condition."

"Anyway, here I go," said Josephine. "We have a secret between us now."

"It looks as if we have a great deal more than that," Peter replied.

"Nobody will notice anything if I go like this," the girl explained, placing her hands across her stomach.

"Oh, no," agreed Peter. "They'll merely think I kicked you in a moment of playfulness, that's all. Please hurry. It upsets me to look at you the way you are."

At the door Jo turned and glanced back at him. "You can't tell me," she said, "you didn't have something else in your mind when you gave me these."

The door closed behind her, and Peter leaned back in his chair. He was wondering himself exactly what he had in his mind in regard to Jo Duval. Time passed while Peter sat thus steadily accomplishing nothing. He had contributed very little to the success of the Van Dyck coffee business that day. Presently he stirred and reached for his watch. After thoughtfully considering the time of day it announced, he compared it with the clock on his desk.

To make assurance doubly sure, he rose and, opening the door, glanced at the office clock. As he closed the door he got the impression that Betty Bryant was studying him with new interest. Perhaps there were others, he unhappily decided. Crossing the room to the window, he stood looking down on the narrow street. People were already turning their released expressions homeward. They were looking forward to a few hours of personal living, a few hours of individual freedom. Five p.m. was for them a daily declaration of temporary independence. Not so for him. He had to go home presently and let that damn cat out of the bag. He would much rather wring its neck. Was he not voluntarily thrusting his own neck into a noose for life? It was still not too late. Why not take a ferryboat to Staten Island and live among the trees somewhere? Why not cross a bridge and lose himself in a swarm of unfamiliar streets? Why not scuttle through a subway and seek oblivion in a waterfront dive? There were any number of things he could do. As he stood there by the window, he became uneasily aware of the fog drifting through the street. Figures of men and women were cutting through it, zigzagging past one another, going north, going south, ducking down the side streets. Boys were whistling. Boys always were. Why? Why were they always whistling? From two rivers came the haunting voices of ships -- tugs, liners, ferryboats, yachts going up to pleasant moorings. Foggy as hell somewhere. What sort of mooring was he going up to? An anchorage for life. Maybe something would happen. Lots of things could happen in a fog. He turned from the window, walked slowly to the hatrack, and collected his hat and stick. As he bade his office staff good-night, he felt he was saying good-bye. Josephine Duvel had already gone.

The subway crowd was familiar, but not friendly. It was composed of individuals, each having tenaciously held ideas about his or her place on the platform. They knew where they wanted to go and how they wanted to go there, and nothing was going to stop them or change them or soften them. Looking slightly pained, Peter Van Dyck, with a delicate but nevertheless protesting arc in his back, allowed himself to be catapulted into a train in which he stood tightly wedged, suffering from a loss of both dignity and breath. He decided he was lucky to lose no more than that in such a frenzied stampede.

"If you don't stop doing that to me," said a woman's voice somewhere in the neighborhood of his chest, "I'll slap you in the face."

Peter's first reaction was to glance nervously about him to ascertain if the entire car had overheard the woman's intentions. Then he spoke in a low, reassuring voice in which was a note of appeal. "I'm not doing it," he whispered.

"Don't tell me that," said the woman. "Can't I feel? There you go, doing it again. You're getting a lot for a nickel ride, mister."

"My God," thought Peter, striving unsuccessfully to remove himself from the woman, "what a thing for her to say!" Crouching over, he muttered to the top of a small hat, "Madam, I can't help it. I'm --"

"Do you mean you've lost control of yourself?" the woman's voice cut in.

"No," he protested. "I can't think of what I'm doing."

"I don't like to think of what you are doing," the woman continued. "Lay off, that's all. Do you want me to scream for help?"

Straining his neck down and to the side, Peter succeeded in getting a glimpse of his accuser. It was as he had been suspecting for the past few moments. She was there -- Jo. Peter did not know whether to be relieved by this or alarmed.

"Don't go on like that," he pleaded.

"Don't you go on like that," she told him. "Should be ashamed of yourself. Of all the things to do."

"But what in God's name am I doing?" he asked in desperation.

"To explain what you're doing would be even more embarrassing than to submit to it," she told him with elaborate dignity.

"It can't be as bad as all that," he said.

"I'd hate it to get any worse," she replied, "at least with so much public about, I would."

"It is too close for decency," agreed Peter.

"You seem to find it so," she retorted. "Suppose they knew at the office?"

"Knew what?"

"Never mind about what. You know perfectly well. I hate that sort of thing -- that type of man."

"So do I," replied Peter earnestly. "The very idea is revolting to me."

"Then obviously, you don't believe in letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing," she retorted.

"Both of my hands are busy," he declared.

"Don't I know that?" said Jo. "I'd call them frantic. Only married couples should be allowed to travel in the subway during rush hours."

"What did you do with the stockings?" he asked her, hoping to change the subject.

"You couldn't get closer to them unless you put them on," she assured him.

"Then they're still in the same place?"

"Either there or hanging on my backbone."

"How ghastly!"

"It's your fault if they are," she replied. "Do you still intend to go through that mock engagement announcement?"

"Why not?" demanded Peter.

"Shouldn't think you'd have the nerve after this ride."

"Don't be silly."

"I'm not being silly when I tell you," she replied quite seriously, "that I doubt very much if you get yourself engaged today."

Peter glanced quickly down into her upturned face. In her eyes he read an expression of grim determination. For some reason her portentous threat or warning did not strike the disagreeable note one might have expected. Peter received it almost with a feeling of relief. In fact, he found in her words a fragile straw of salvation. If it would have served to delay the formal bethrothal announcement, Peter would have welcomed a localized earthquake. So far as his engagement to Yolanda was concerned, he found himself strictly neutral. He was on the fence. It was not as if he wanted to call the engagement off definitely and forever. Peter simply did not know. Why had they not gone through with it several years ago, instead of waiting until the idea had grown stale? No. Yolanda had wanted to travel on the Continent unattached. She had wanted to develop her art. She had wanted to enjoy her position as a much sought after débutante. She was one of those young ladies who wanted Life with a capital L, yet who would not know what to do with it should it come to her. She had wanted ever so many things and she had got all of them. And in the background she had also wanted Peter, Peter in a waiting capacity safely packed in ice. She was such a glittering, assured sort of person, so certain to be right, so well versed in all the social amenities. She would be quite a comfort when people called, as they inevitably would call, in droves -- dumb, well-dressed, well-nourished, chatty little droves of really nice people. Peter wondered unhappily in his increasing morbidness what they were going to do with all the people who called. Where were they going to put them? How deal with them? The years ahead presented themselves to Peter as pillars in an endless hall lined with nice people who shook hands and chatted delightfully about non-essentials.

And all the while he was puzzling over these things, Jo was looking up into his troubled, rather sensitive face from beneath the heavy lashes of her amused but devoted eyes.

"Hang it all," he said at last, "why do you like me, anyway? I should think you'd fall for a truck driver or a professional wrestler or a strong man, or for one of those great big silent chaps who make the maximum amount of empire on the minimum amount of words. The movies are full of them. Look at me -- I'm virtually a physical and mental wreck. Might just as well be an idiot. I catch cold almost always, my nose gets red in the winter and even worse in the summer -- frost and sunburn vie for honors -- I probably snore enormously and, as you know for yourself, I don't even know how many pairs of shorts I'm wearing half the time, whereas during the other half I daresay I'm not wearing any shorts at all. I'm quite impossible any way you look at it."

"I realize all that," she said, "but I bet you know a lot of dirty stories, (continued on page 18) Boss's Breeches (continued from page 16) and I fairly wallow in those."

Peter groaned spiritually. This creature was beyond belief -- literally incredible. And to think that he had been in the same office with her for three whole years, and before that his father had been subjected to the same demoralizing influence. Perhaps that accounted for the old gentleman's perennial bloomings.

"Furthermore," the girl's voice continued, "professional wrestlers and strong men and those silent birds you mentioned are notoriously moral. They hold deep-rooted convictions and have exceedingly piggish ways. Now you -- you're quite another proposition. Without realizing it you are so morally flexible that you must have been born corrupted. I'd much rather live amid physical ruins than stagnate amid moral perfection."

"Your sentiments and opinions do us both credit, I'm sure," observed Peter Van Dyck. "What sort of life are you planning for me to live with you -- one of pillage, rape, and arson?"

"Pillage and arson, perhaps," she said briefly. "The other will not be necessary."

"Aren't you getting off soon?" asked Peter.

"Yes," she replied as the train lurched into Times Square. "Right here. Good-bye, for the moment, and don't be surprised at anything that happens. Remember, I'm on your side."

Peter's gaze followed her through the door of the train and out onto the platform. As she looked back at him Josephine decided she had never seen a more lost and miserable expression in any man's eyes. Being of a primitive nature, she still had room for pity. Her scheme for helping this man and at the same time helping herself crystallized there in her mind as Peter's train drew out. Tossing her shopping expedition to the winds, she boarded the next uptown express.

On her way to 72nd Street she revolved many desperate remedies in her mind. At the same time she found occasion to congratulate herself for having come to a decision while still in the subway, for thus she had saved the price of another fare. Jo was passionate about everything -- even thrift.

• • •

Peter wearily climbed the stairs to his rooms, unaware that they were already occupied. A small weasel of a man was busy going through Peter's dresser drawers. The man's name was Little Arthur, and he was a burglar.

Little Arthur heard Peter in the hall and was able to duck behind a window drape in the nick of time. Completely unaware of the visitor, Peter began undressing in order to take a shower.

While this scene was working up to its inevitable climax, Josephine Duval was resolutely ascending the front stoop of the Van Dyck residence. Just what she intended to do when she got inside, she had not the slightest idea. However, Jo was one of the world's most successful opportunists. Something would be sure to turn up. Something always did. But what turned up at first was not any too reassuring. This was no less a personage than Sanders, the Van Dyck butler.

"Would you mind telling your mistress," said Jo, neatly slipping past the great man, "that there's a lady calling on her who is in an interesting condition?"

Now this form of announcing herself, especially in view of the fact that it was entirely misleading if not worse, might strike some as being particularly ill-advised. However, Jo found herself in the position of one suddenly called upon to speak when there is absolutely nothing to say, and so she very wisely decided that it really did not matter much what she said so long as she said something -- anything. Furthermore it cannot be denied that her opening speech was not without an element of surprise. Even the impeccable Sanders found the information difficult to take in his stately stride.

"Thank you, madam," he replied, his suavity jarred a note off key. "Has my mistress any special reason to be interested in your interesting condition, may I ask?"

"No," snapped Jo, "but her nephew has. And while we're on the subject you might as well know that I'm not a madam yet. I'm still a miss, if in name only. And you'd better carry on with a click. My condition grows more interesting by leaps and bounds. Soon it may become engrossing."

Sanders had encountered many extraordinary young women in the course of a long and inactive career but never one quite so buoyantly extraordinary as Josephine. She impressed the astonished butler as being actually exuberant over a situation which any properly constituted girl would have considered, if not desperate, at least disturbing.

"I quite understand, miss," he replied soothingly. "If you'll pardon me a moment I'll withdraw to consult --"

"And if I'm not here when you get back," Jo broke in, "you can look for my body in the nearest river -- which one is that?"

"The Hudson, miss," said Sanders hopefully. "About three blocks over to your left as you go out."

"You're almost too eagerly explicit," Josephine observed as the butler turned a dignified back and departed.

As soon as he had gone, Josephine looked quickly about her. From a room opening off the hall about ten feet away came the hum of conversation. Also the sound of clinking glasses. The cocktail-tea party was already getting under way. Josephine was greatly interested. She yearned to see everything -- how these people lived and what they intended to do to Peter, who by now had become in her illogical mind irrevocably her man. Regardless of the laws of decency and self-respect, she must prevent this engagement. The door to what appeared to be a clothes closet presented itself as the most obvious means to this end. As she slipped into this closet and closed the door behind her, she was still assuring herself that something would turn up to delay the formal announcement of Peter's betrothal to that snake-hipped Yolanda Wilmont. The closet was fairly commodious, but without light. Innumerable unseen coats were hanging on all sides of the girl -- fur coats, storm coats, top coats and overcoats. Thinking how grandly the rich lived, she disappeared behind the coats and temporarily withdrew from active participation in the destiny of the Van Dycks.

Abovestairs, in his room, Peter was wondering if the shower bath he fully intended to take was going to improve matters any. Did condemned men take showers before they faced the firing squad or marched to the chair? The only condemned man he knew anything about was himself, and what little he knew about him was hardly interesting enough to be told. However, things might be worse. He was not actually getting married today. There was always poison as a last resort. He wondered if he should take it himself or give it to Yolanda.

And while these speculations were passing through Peter's mind, equally perplexing ones were engaging the mind of Sanders as he stood in the hall below and looked round for signs of the vanished Jo. Presently he shrugged his shoulders as if to dismiss the incident. Evidently the young lady had decided in favor of the river. Under the circumstances that was probably the most tactful arrangement for all concerned. In spite of her bold manner the young woman must have had some sense of the fitness of things. Had he said the river was three or four blocks over? He did not quite recall. Too many things to think about. By now she should be quite definitely drowned if she had not changed her mind. She had seemed like a determined character, if a little callous. There were other things to be done. (continued on page 36) Boss's Breeches (continued from page 18) Cocktails to serve. Sanders moved away, leaving the hall deserted.

Several times while undressing, Peter had approached dangerously close to the drape behind which Little Arthur stood concealed. Altogether too close for the peace of mind of that small burglar. Now that his uninvited host was completely naked, there was the possibility he might be prompted by modesty to draw the drapes entirely. That was what Little Arthur would have done had he been in the same condition. Maybe the rich were different. Maybe they did not care. If he could only create some diversion, thought the man behind the drape, some little distraction sufficient to occupy the other's attention long enough to enable one to get out of that fateful room.

What could he do? Peter had turned and was looking intently at the drapery. Had he noticed anything, any slight, betraying movement? Little Arthur broke into a gentle sweat. Those eyes -- those probing eyes. As soon as Peter looked away, the burglar's arm slid from behind the drape and withdrew with a drink siphon. Little Arthur had not the vaguest idea what he intended to do with the bottle, but at least it was better than having nothing at all, better than facing with bare hands an infuriated and naked property owner. Once more Peter's eyes strayed toward the drapes. Why did he look at the one drape always instead of some other? Surely he suspected something. Yes. He did suspect something. He actually knew something. Once more he was approaching the drapery. He was halfway across the room, and naked as a primitive man. Little Arthur was as much unnerved by what he saw as by what he feared. His grip tightened on the object in his hand. Two thirds across the room Peter stopped and, turning his bare back, reached down and meditatively scratched his leg as men will. This was a trick, Little Arthur decided. No man, unless fired by some sinister determination, would permit himself to appear in such an unfavorable light. Futhermore, the rich, if they took advantage of their opportunities, should have no occasion thus to scratch themselves. Little Arthur was not to be deceived. This was a trick. If Peter Van Dyck had been hoping to rattle the small criminal, he had virtually succeeded. To witness these preparations was even worse than facing the attack itself.

It was at this moment that Little Arthur was seized by a mad impulse, an uncontrollable desire to squirt the contents of the siphon on the exposed back of the busily scratching man. It was an impulse not difficult to understand. Virtually everyone is visited by it at least once in the course of his life. Some persons never outgrow it. To them a siphon and a naked back mean only one thing--immediate contact. At the moment Little Arthur had not sufficient mental stamina to resist any impulse. He raised the siphon, drew an accurate bead on the exposed surface, then pressed the lever. The liquid missile splashed smartly against Peter Van Dyck's back and broke into little cascades along the ridges of his spine. The effect was instantaneous. Peter snapped erect and and looked wildly about him. Astonishment, shock, and indignation fought for ascendancy in his eyes. But his gaze encountered nothing enlightening. For a moment he feared for his reason. Was it possible that in his spiritual turmoil he had imagined himself under the shower? The water trickling down his flanks annoyed but reassured him. Then anger mounted within his breast. A Van Dyck would stand for no nonsense, especially a nude Van Dyck. The perpetrator of this outrage against his privacy and person must be concealed somewhere within the room. Probably behind one of those drapes. Almost slithering with excitement, Peter warily advanced upon one of the hangings. That he had selected the wrong one did not rob his activities of interest. Little Arthur was interested and also a bit relieved. As a matter of fact he was even faintly amused. The idea of a naked man stalking an empty drapery had its lighter side.

As Peter, quivering with purpose, sprang upon his drape, Little Arthur, quivering with no less purpose, sprang from behind his and sprinted to the door. Reaching this before Peter had time to turn, the flying burglar dashed out into the hall and slammed the door behind him. The sound of the door brought Peter back to action. Passionately cursing the drape, he sped across the room and threw open the door. The intruder was gone, obviously having succeeded in putting the front flight of stairs between himself and pursuit. This time Peter was right. Little Arthur, tossing discretion to the winds, had nipped down the first flight of stairs that offered itself to his frantic feet. For a brief moment Peter hesitated in the doorway, then, adding decency to discretion, he tossed them both to the winds and took up the chase.

On the landing he ran into the maid.

"Gord, Mr. Peter!" she gasped. "Whacha doing?"

"Running." said Peter briefly. He had no time for explanations.

"I should say," murmured the maid after his bare back. "Running wild like Adam hisself."

Peter's descent into the front hall fortunately went unnoticed. More guests had arrived, and more guests were due to arrive. It was this latter possibility that brought Peter to a full and blinding realization of his position. For the first time he saw himself as indubitably he would appear in the eyes of others. He saw himself not as an innocent man seeking justice, but simply as a stark naked stock broker dazzlingly greeting his guests at the doors of his ancestral home. The picture was somewhat too vivid for his nerves. He delivered the soul of his craven attacker into the arms of divine retribution and flung himself into the clothes closet a split second before Sanders appeared to answer the summons of the doorbell.

Reaching out in the darkness, Peter's hand groped horrifyingly over a face. Now this is a decidedly disagreeable experience, perhaps one of the most disagreeable in the world. It is especially so when one is under the impression that there are no faces about. Even married people, after long years of propinquity, are frequently revolted when in the still hours of the night they inadvertently extend a hand and find themselves fumbling drowsily with the face of a mate. The same holds true even of one's mistress. One receives quite an unpleasant shock. With other parts of the body it is not so bad, but with the face, yes. It was certainly so with Peter. Had it not been for his nakedness, he would have emitted scream upon scream. Little Arthur, too, was far from well.

"Who are you?" demanded Peter, his voice hoarse with consternation.

"I'm Little Arthur," chattered a voice in the darkness. "You know, mister, the guy you was chasing."

If it had not been for the fact that every instinct in Peter's being cried out against further association with any part of Little Arthur, the man would have been strangled there and then in the darkness of the closet.

"Sorry I squirted the water on you, mister," the little crook began in mollifying accents.

"It doesn't matter really," said Peter with false politeness. "I was going to take a shower anyway. May I ask, though what you were doing in my room?"

"I'm a burglar," replied Little Arthur, too depressed to be other than truthful.

"What are you doing in here?" Peter demanded.

"The same thing as you, sir. Keeping out of the public eye."

A moment's silence then Peter's voice, nervously: "You seem to be in (continued on page 41) Boss's Breeches (continued from page 36) front of me, and yet I distinctly feel you breathing heavily on my back. How do you manage that?

"I'm not doing it mister," said Little Arthur. "I ain't got strength enough left to do any breathing at all."

"No?" replied Peter, turning. "That's funny. Oh, my God! I'm surrounded." He had thrust one of his fingers into Josephine's mouth, and she had instinctively bitten it for lack of anything better to do.

"Remove your finger from my mouth this instant," she gabbled furiously.

Peter's hand was quicker than the eye. "What are you doing in here with Little Arthur?" he demanded, nursing his damaged finger.

"I hadn't thought of doing anything with Little Arthur," Jo retorted. "Don't even know what to do with myself much less with anyone else. He must have come in here after me."

"The dirty little crook!" said Peter. "I'll strangle him with these two bare hands right here in cold blood."

Little Arthur closed his eyes, yet still saw two bare hands floating through the darkness.

"Go on and do it," urged Josephine. "There are too many of us in this closet already."

"I don't want to be in here with you alone," Peter told her. "And the dead body of a criminal, perhaps."

"It won't make any difference so long as the body is good and dead," Jo explained.

"Oh, what a terrible woman," Little Arthur chattered from his corner. "Where did she come from?"

"Don't know why you followed her in the first place," said Peter.

"I won't ever again," vowed the little man. "Didn't even know she was here."

"He's a nasty little liar," whispered Josephine. "He deliberately came in after me."

"Don't you believe her, mister," Little Arthur pleaded. "She's trying to turn you against me just as we were getting along, like. I know her game."

"Shut up, you rat!" the girl flung at him. "I'll claw your wicked tongue out."

"Don't let her at me, please, mister," Little Arthur put in. "She wants to get us both in trouble."

"We are in trouble," Peter reminded him. "Terrible trouble. Suppose someone should come barging into this closet?"

"I'll swear I was lured in," said Jo.

"On what pretext?" Peter demanded.

"A fur coat," she answered readily.

"Wouldn't speak well for your morals," he snapped.

"Nor any better for yours," she replied. "But if you don't like that, I'll say that the two of you dragged me in."

"Wouldn't put it past her, mister," warned Little Arthur. "She's a bad one, she is. Glad I can't see her."

"You horrid little crook!" shrilled Jo. "Where do you get off?"

"I'll have to ask you both to shut up," said Peter. "You'll be having the whole damn house in."

"Oh, dear," murmured Jo. "Here I am cooped up in a closet with a naked man and a thief. I don't know which way to turn."

"Well, don't turn this way," said Peter. "And how do you know I'm naked? Oh, for God's own sake, is that your hand? I've been thinking it was mine all the time. I'm so upset. No wonder you know how I am."

In the darkness Jo laughed evilly. "I saw your impassioned entrance," she gloated.

"If you don't keep your hands off, you'll see my impassioned exit," he retorted.

"All women seem ter be loose these days," observed Little Arthur. "Weren't like that when I was a boy."

"You're no bigger than a nipper now," retorted Jo.

"Perhaps not," said the burglar, "but I got more sense. Why don't you keep your bold hands off the gentleman? He don't understand your common ways."

"I'll make them unmistakable," said the girl.

"What are you going ter do, mister?" Little Arthur asked hopelessly. "There ain't no good in her."

"Why don't you do something?" demanded Peter. "You got me into this."

"No, I didn't," the burglar protested. "I was trying to get away and you insisted on following me."

"Naturally," replied Peter.

"Must have wanted me mighty bad," observed Little Arthur, "to have followed me in your condition."

"I wanted to kill you," admitted Peter, "and I'm not at all sure I won't."

"Don't think about it any more," said Little Arthur soothingly.

"My, you're thin," said Jo in a surprised voice.

"Take your hand from my ribs," Peter commanded. "Haven't you any shame?"

"No," answered Jo promptly. "Not since you started in. This morning in the office you try to take off your pants. On the way home you practically assault me in the subway. And now to cap the damn climax you follow me nakedly into a dark closet. How do you expect a girl to have any shame left when you act like that?"

"Is that right, lady?" asked Little Arthur, thinking that indeed he had got himself into bad company. "Did he do all them things, taking off his pants and all?"

"Sure, I'm right," said Jo. "It was just his pants this morning. That seemed to satisfy him. Now it's all or nothing. Don't know what he'll think of doing next."

"Hope he stops thinking altogether if he's going ter carry on like that," said Little Arthur, making no attempt to disguise his disappointment in Peter.

"Someone will have to do some inspired brainwork to think us out of this place," Peter announced to his unseen companions.

"Does your spine begin there?" Josephine suddenly asked in an interested voice.

"No," replied Peter passionately. "That's where it ends."

"Oh," said the girl rather hurriedly. "I'm sorry."

"Then why don't you keep your hands to yourself?" demanded Peter.

"Thank Gord it's dark in here," murmured Little Arthur. "I wouldn't know where to look if it wasn't."

"Throw the little beggar out on his ear," urged Jo.

"Think I'll get out myself, naked as I am," declared Peter. "It's better than staying in here and being explored like a map."

For some minutes Sanders had been evincing an unusual interest in the closet. Aunt Sophie, sailing from the drawing room with a group of guests at her elbows, chief among whom was Yolanda, actually saw the man with his ear almost if not quite pressed to the door.

"What on earth are you doing there, Sanders?" she inquired fussily. "You look as if you had seen a ghost."

Sanders nodded his sleek head wisely.

"I believe I'm hearing them, madam," he vouchsafed in a low voice. "This closet suddenly seems to be endowed with the gift of speech."

"Nonsense!" the splendid lady tossed out. "You're running down, Sanders. Closets don't talk."

"This one does," Sanders assured her. "It carries on a three-cornered conversation in as many different voices, madam. One sounds strangely like a woman's."

"What?" exclaimed Aunt Sophie. "A woman in that closet? That is queer."

"Perhaps Sanders had better look," Yolanda Wilmont suggested. "Sneak thieves, you know."

"Sneak thieves are not given to holding animated conversations in closets," objected Mr. Prescott Gates who, because of his remote connection with a law firm, felt that his knowledge of sneak thieves was more extensive than the others.

"We're not acquainted with the habits of sneak thieves," Yolanda contributed coldly. "However, I do believe that closet should be investigated. There are several valuable furs inside."

"By all means," agreed Miss Sophie Van Dyck. "Open the door immediately, Sanders."

But the door, when Sanders endeavored to carry out this order, seemed inclined to argue the point. For several moments it quivered elastically like a thing of life and purpose in the hands of the butler; then, with a groan of utter despair which sounded hollowly in the hall, it flew partly open. Sanders recoiled as if from the pit of hell itself. Instantly the door closed of its own volition with a bang of remonstrance. Inarticulate sounds issued from the closet, sounds of whining protest.

"What on earth is it, Sanders?" Aunt Sophie demanded in a strained voice. "Sounds like an animal."

"Must I say, Miss Van Dyck?" asked Sanders in a cornered voice.

"Certainly you must," she retorted. "What would Mr. Peter think if he came home and found his closet full of strangers? He dislikes things like that."

Wondering in a dazed sort of way what things could be even remotely like the things he had momentarily glimpsed, Sanders looked speculatively at the door.

"Hurry, Sanders. What's inside?" Yolanda Wilmont asked insistently.

"Well, madam," said Sanders reluctantly, "there seems to be more in there than valuable furs at the moment. Looked like quite a gathering to me."

"Tell them to come out this instant," Miss Van Dyck commanded.

"I'd hardly suggest that, madam," said Sanders in a shocked voice.

"Here, Sanders," put in Prescott Gates. "I'll handle this situation. I'll jolly well make them come out, whoever they are."

"I strongly advise against it, sir," said Sanders. "Not with the ladies present, if I may say so."

"What on earth, Sanders?" exclaimed a young and rather swagger looking maiden whose eyes gave the impression of having seen about all there was to be seen in life. "Just for that I'll never leave until that closet has given up its dead."

"Why not tell us, Sanders," remarked a stout lady in cascades of lace, "exactly what you saw, and then let us decide?"

"Yes," agred Aunt Sophie. "We're growing decidedly impatient with all this beating about the bush. Speak up, man!"

"Well," began the butler in a voice of academic detachment, "you see, there seems to be an entirely naked gentleman in that closet--"

"Impossible!" exclaimed Miss Van Dyck.

"I very much wish it were, madam," Sanders continued piously. "But that's not all. This gentleman has either been undressed by a lady or, having undressed himself, is about to undress her."

"Need you be so graphic?" inquired Yolanda.

"The picture was remarkably vivid," explained the butler.

"I wonder where they think they are?" Aunt Sophie wondered aloud.

"Certainly not at a private reception," observed the lacy lady, regarding the door with thoughtful eyes. "That is, not at a nice reception."

"What can they be doing in that closet?" Aunt Sophie continued, bemused.

"Practically anything by now," said the girl with the worldly eyes. "Especially if the gentleman has succeeded in carrying out his intentions."

"You mean in that closet?" Yolanda demanded incredulously.

"What's wrong with the closet?" demanded the other girl philosophically. "Many have managed with less."

"What a shocking situation!" murmured the lace-bedecked lady. "Shouldn't something be done? Can't you speak to them, Sanders--admonish them?"

"Certainly, madam," replied Sanders his suavity regained. "How would you suggest wording it?"

"Why, tell them to stop, of course," Aunt Sophie snapped irritably.

"Stop what, madam?" the butler inquired.

"You can be most exasperating at times for a man of your age, Sanders," Miss Van Dyck complained. "Tell them to stop whatever they're doing."

"But, madam," the butler patiently explained, "we're not sure just what they are doing. It would be pure speculation."

"Not so pure at that," put in the girl, "but it does seem logical, doesn't it, Sanders?"

"I must confess, Miss Sedgwick," said Sanders with becoming modesty, "I have never been in the same situation."

"No more have I," the girl retorted, "but I can use my imagination."

"I wish you wouldn't," Yolanda remarked frigidly.

Mr. Prescott Gates now felt called upon once more to display his greater knowledge of the seamy side of life. "If they are professional sneak thieves," he advanced weightily, "I hardly think they'd endanger their chances by that sort of nonsense."

"What sort of nonsense?" Miss Sedgwick inquired with disarming innocence. "And what makes you call it nonsense?"

"Don't answer her, Prescott," said Yolanda.

"And all this time we're talking here," Aunt Sophie burst forth in a tragic voice, "God only knows what is going on inside that closet."

"Perhaps only God should know," replied the stout lady with the resignation of a true believer.

"I have an idea," Miss Sedgwick offered. "Perhaps a man and wife wandered into that closet and not being able to find their way out became so exhausted--you know, so discouraged about it all--they just decided to go to bed."

"Don't be childish, Madge Sedgwick," Aunt Sophie scolded.

"Well, at least, I've got 'em married," said the girl. "That's more than any of you have done."

"You said a 'gentleman,' Sanders," Aunt Sophie went on in a worried voice to the butler. "Are you sure he was a gentleman?"

"That's difficult to tell, madam," said Sanders. "He didn't have a stitch on."

"I can well understand that," Madge Sedgwick agreed sympathetically. "Without any clothes on there's not a scrap of difference between a sneak thief and a gentleman."

"I should think all naked men would look a little sneaky," the lady in lace unhelpfully contributed.

"There should be some distinction," Miss Van Dyck protested indignantly.

"Yes. It would be convenient on occasions to be able to tell at a glance," Madge Sedgwick remarked as if to herself.

"What did he look like, Sanders?" Yolanda Wilmont demanded. "Did you recognize his face?"

"I didn't see his face, Miss Yolanda," the butler explained.

"What did you see?" asked Madge with interest.

"His back, miss," said Sanders. "He turned it rather briskly, I thought."

"At least he had the instincts of a gentleman," remarked the stout lady.

"Oh, I don't know," Madge Sedgwick countered. "Even a sneak thief might have his little qualms."

"Did you recognize the woman?" Prescott Gates inquired.

"I got the impression I'd seen her before, sir," admitted the butler. "Looked very much like a young woman who was here a little earlier announcing she was in an interesting condition."

"Sanders, you keep the most extraordinary things to yourself," Aunt (continued on page 45) Boss's Breeches (continued from page 42) Sophie said with severity. "Do you mean to say you put this person in that closet to bear her child?"

"No, madam," Sanders smoothly replied. "I rather concluded she'd left to commit suicide. She was inquiring about the rivers. I gave her adequate directions."

"Maybe she came back to find out which was the deepest," Madge Sedgwick suggested.

"Heavens on earth!" exclaimed Aunt Sophie distractedly. "What are we going to do? Here we have a naked man in the closet and a woman going to have a baby or commit suicide or something even worse. Prescott, you're a man. Why don't you suggest something?"

"I'm going for a policeman," Mr. Gates replied with surprising decision as he hurried to the door.

"Should think a preacher or a doctor would do better according to the circumstances," Madge flung after him, but Mr. Gates was already gone.

"That does it," whispered Peter Van Dyck to his companions in the closet. "That unweaned ass has gone to get a cop."

"Gord!" breathed Little Arthur.

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you two," said Peter.

"Don't mean ter say you're going out there in front of all them people the way you are?" the man inquired in an awed voice.

"Almost," Peter told him. "With the addition of this coat."

Fumbling in the darkness, he seized the first coat his hands encountered and squeezed himself into it. Fortunately for Peter's self-assurance he was unable to see how he looked. He was wearing a fur coat belonging to his Aunt Sophie. It was short but luckily full.

"Wait a second," said Josephine. "You're not going to leave me alone in here with that crook. I'm going to disguise myself, too."

"No fear," shot back Little Arthur. "I don't associate with the like of you."

"Oh!" cried Josephine, enraged. "I'll strip him to the buff."

"What's that?" asked Arthur anxiously.

"I don't know," the girl replied, "but it must be awful."

"Will you two please stop bickering?" cut in Peter. "Or wait until I've gone."

"I'm ready," said Jo. "Go right ahead. I defy recognition."

"What have you got on?" Peter was interested enough to inquire.

"A storm coat that's three sizes too big and a pair of dark glasses I found in one of the pockets," the girl replied.

"Let's change!" Peter suggested.

"Too late now," she told him. "We've got to hurry right along."

"Don't leave me here alone," Little Arthur pleaded.

"I'd like to leave you lifeless," Jo informed him.

"Almost wish you would," bleakly Arthur replied.

The policeman, followed importantly by Prescott Gates, arrived just in time to witness the emergence of Peter Van Dyck. What struck the officer as being especially remarkable about this odd affair was the length and bareness of Peter's legs. In real life Peter's legs were not really so bad. Though long and slim they were at least not distorted. They were just ordinary male legs, which are never much to get excited about. Now, however, protruding as they were from a woman's fur coat, they fairly screamed for attention. The officer's eyes responded. He could not recall ever having seen such peculiar-looking legs on either man or beast. In spite of this they seemed to carry their owner along busily enough as he made for the front staircase. Behind him trailed a strange object which at first glance did not appear to be entirely human. Josephine in dark glasses and oversized storm coat hurried to the front door where she was stopped by the officer, who told her, "Oh, no, you don't!" in what can only be described as a nasty voice. Little Arthur, apparently preferring arrest to being left alone with his thoughts, brought up a shrinking rear. Walking nervously on tiptoe, he started to follow Peter. Aunt Sophie's voice stopped him. Aunt Sophie's voice stopped everyone in fact.

"Peter!" she cried. "Peter!"

"Yes, Aunt Sophie," Peter replied in a natural tone which contrasted strangely with his attire and which almost stupefied the policeman, who had expected something entirely different from such an object. "Yes, Aunt Sophie. Were you calling me?"

"Peter," continued the outraged lady, "what in the world have you been up to?"

"Nothing at all, Auntie," he assured her, growing more uncomfortably aware of a sea of upturned faces. "Merely getting ready, you know. Making little arrangements."

"Is that person following you?" Miss Van Dyck demanded, pointing a quivering finger at Little Arthur, shaking as unobstrusively as possible on the stairs.

Peter started visibly. He found himself extremely nervous.

"What person?" he gasped; then, glancing back and encountering the mute appeal in the miserable little creature's eyes, his heart melted. "Oh, that person," he said hastily. "Yes. He's following me--how do you do, everybody." Here Peter thought it best to bow carelessly to those below him. "Yes, Aunt Sophie," he hurried on. "He's following me. I asked him to. He's helping me to get ready. My new valet. Do you like him?"

"Decidedly not!" exploded Aunt Sophie. "He has the face of a born criminal."

"Say," put in the policeman, "How many more of you are there in that closet?"

"What, officer?" said Peter. "How many more of me are there in that closet? No more at all. I'm the only one."

"Does your nephew happen to be nuts, lady?" the policeman asked Miss Van Dyck.

"No," Yolanda answered for the stunned woman, "but I fear he's suffering a little from overwork."

"Thank you, Yolanda," called Peter with a fearful smile. "But if you want to know, I'm suffering hideously from overexposure."

"The coat! The coat!" shouted Madge. "It's slipping, Peter. Look out!"

Peter snatched at the coat in the nick of time, then waved lightly to the girl, who of all the group had not averted her eyes. "Thanks, Madge," he called. "Wouldn't want that to happen."

"I wasn't anxious about it for myself," she replied. "I was thinking of your aunt and Yolanda."

"Thanks," Yolanda told her. "We are quite able to think for ourselves."

"Oh, very well," said Miss Sedgwick. "I don't care if he takes it off altogether and dances like a savage."

"No doubt," said the other sweetly

"If it's all the same to you ladies," called Peter, "I'd prefer to keep it on. And I don't feel like dancing."

"My stockings! My stockings! They're gone!" burst suddenly from the object behind the goggles, making a frantic dash for the closet, only to be brought up in midflight at the end of the officer's arm.

"None of that," he said rudely. "You're staying here."

"Oh, am I?" Jo replied dealing him a clever Gallic kick. "I want my stockings."

"Ah-ha," observed Madge Sedgwick, triumphantly. "Then he did undress her."

Probably because they assumed it to be a part of a policeman's duty, no one seemed to pay the slightest attention to the officer doubled up in anguish. That is, no one save Little Arthur, who, for the moment forgetting his own troubles in the presence of those of the law, was laughing weakly upon the stairs.

"Did it hurt much?" solicitously asked Peter, who from his Olympian height had witnessed the incident.

"Hurt?" gasped the policeman, stung by the inadequacy of the word. "It's ruined I am to the grave."

"See what you've done to our police force," said Peter, looking down on Josephine clawing in the closet.

"Can't help that," she answered. "No low cop can come between me and my stockings."

"Oh, this is too disgraceful," Sophie Van Dyck informed all present. "Too disgraceful for words."

"Not disgraceful enough for my words," muttered Josephine. "Ah! Here they are -- my stockings!"

As the girl rose with a wad of stockings in her hand, Sophie Van Dyck directed on her the full force of her attack.

"Young woman," she demanded, "did you tell my butler you were going to have a baby?"

"After being cooped up in that closet with your naked nephew," Jo replied indignantly as she stuffed the stockings back in their tender concealment, allowing one of them to dangle untidily down the front of her coat, "after being in there like that, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I had a male quartet. Would you?"

Miss Van Dyck saw no good in being dragged into this discussion.

"May I ask if you have anything on beneath that coat?" she asked.

"What do you think?" replied Josephine. "What has he got on beneath that fur coat?"

As she pointed to the odd figure on the stairs, everyone looked up and decided it did not have much. Before the direct fire of so many calculating glances Peter shrank a little. By this time the injured officer had discovered he could stand erect.

"What are you laughing at?" he demanded reproachfully of Little Arthur.

"At them," said Little Arthur, pointing to the legs above him.

"What!" cried Peter, turning fiercely upon the pickpocket. "You lying little--"

"Don't say it, mister," Arthur pleaded. "I wasn't laughing at all."

"You'll be hysterical when I get you up before the boys," the assaulted policeman promised him.

"Aunt Sophie," Yolanda said in a low voice, "there can be no announcement today. This has spoiled everything."

"I agree with that," Aunt Sophie replied. "But just the same we'll carry on as if nothing had occurred. Take our dear guests back to the reception room."

"Hoorah!" cried Jo, tossing up her arms, the hands of which lay concealed well down in the sleeves of the storm coat. "You're saved, Peter. You're saved."

"Saved for what?" he asked her. "Another day?"

"For us, of course," she replied. "For me!"

"A living death," he answered.

"Gord spare you, sir, from that one," put in Little Arthur piously. "No matter what you've done."

The bell rang, and Sanders, as if arising from a long illness, admitted several guests. With startled eyes they regarded the group on the stairs, then transferred their gaze to the enigmatic figure lurking within the voluminous folds of the storm coat. It was peering at them like a strange bird from behind a pair of goggles.

"What's that?" asked a tall gentleman, his face growing pale beneath a fresh massage.

"Don't know," gasped a lady with him. "It's awful. And Peter Van Dyck is almost ..." Her voice trailed away.

"It's charades, my dear," Aunt Sophie smoothly explained. "It's been such a lark, Yolanda, take them directly to the drawing room. Cocktails."

Yolanda did.

"Now, young lady," Aunt Sophie continued severely, "your conduct has been most disgraceful. I don't know what to do with you. Obviously you are a thief -- perhaps even worse. You must leave this house at once, quietly and without further violence. You will, of course, leave our stolen articles behind."

"They're not so hot, anyway," said Jo.

"And they're not stolen," said Peter, suddenly feeling very sorry for the small defiant creature looking a little lonely in the great hall. He came back down the stairs, slowly. "I'll explain everything, Auntie. You see, I'm sending those things over to one of my friends. He's going on a trip. Wanted to borrow them. Sent one of the maids -- a fresh piece, I admit -- but that's how she got here."

"But why is she wearing them in that ridiculous fashion?" Aunt Sophie persisted, her curiosity overcoming her eagerness to believe in any comfortable explanation.

"Oh, that," replied Peter, thinking quickly. "More convenient, you know. Doesn't have to carry them. Perhaps it even amuses her."

"Well, it doesn't amuse me," declared Aunt Sophie with conviction.

Peter looked at Jo, who had snatched off her dark glasses and was standing gazing up at him like a child about to be sent to bed; a child, Peter decided, who certainly should not be allowed to sleep alone.

"Good-bye, mister," she said. "And thanks for all the things you've done--even though you shouldn't have."

"Wait -- wait!" Peter exclaimed, in a voice that surprised even himself. "This nonsense has gone far enough. Aunt Sophie, the truth is--this girl's name is Josephine Duval, and she's the girl I plan to marry, if she'll still have me."

"Awk!" said Aunt Sophie.

"Hold on!" said the officer. "Don't I get to make no pinch?"

"Pinch yourself," exclaimed Jo, throwing her arms around Peter Van Dyck, "and I'll do the same -- to make certain I'm not dreaming!"

"For God's sake," Peter gasped. "Suppose someone should come in and find you here?!"