The Black Eagle Mystery

"Hello!" said Babbitts from the sheets of the morning paper.

I'll call him Babbitts to you because that's the name you'll remember him by—that is if you know about the Hesketh Mystery. I generally call him "Soapy," the name the reporters gave him, and "Himself," which comes natural to me, my mother being Irish. Maybe you'll remember that too? And he calls me "Morningdew"—cute, isn't it? It's American for my last name Morgenthau—I was Molly Morgenthau before I was married.

In case you don't know about the Hesketh Mystery I'll have to give a few facts to locate us. I was the telephone girl in Longwood, New Jersey, met Babbitts there when he was a reporter for the Dispatch—he is yet—and the switchboard lost one of its brightest ornaments. It was town for us, an apartment on West Ninety-fifth Street, near the Subway, five rooms on a corner, furnished like a Belasco play. If you read the Hesketh Mystery you know how I came by that furniture, and if you didn't you'll have to stay in ignorance, for I'm too anxious to get on to stop and tell you. Every day at ten Isabella Dabney, a light-colored coon, comes in to do the heavy work and I order her round, throwing a bluff that I'm used to it and hoping Isabella isn't on.

We've been married over two years and we're still—Oh, what's the use! But we do get on like a house on fire. I guess in this vast metropolis there's not a woman got anything on me when it comes to happiness. It certainly is wonderful how you bloom out and the mean part of you fades away when someone thinks you're the perfect article, handsewn, silk-lined, made in America.

And so having taken this little run round the lot, I'll come back to Babbitts with his head in the morning paper saying "Hello!"

It was a clear, crisp morning in January—sixteenth of the month—and we were at breakfast. Himself had just got in from Cleveland, where he'd been sent to write up the Cheney graft prosecution. It took some minutes to say "How d'ye do"—he'd been away two whole days—and after we'd concluded the ceremonies I lit into the kitchen to get his breakfast while he sat down at his end of the table and dived into the papers. His egg was before him and I was setting the coffeepot down at my end when he gave that "Hello," loud and startled, with the accent on the "lo."