Thanks," he added, accepting the smoke I offered him.
When the cigars were drawing nicely we were ready to hear the story.
Not until then did I fully realize what a little fellow Jemmy was.
Now I saw that he was almost a dwarf, little if any over four feet in
height, and very slightly built. His face, shrunken and wrinkled, had
that look of prenatural wisdom which dwarfs sometimes have, and his
little black eyes were incredibly bright. He was evidently something
of a dandy, for his clothes were immaculate. I admired again the
aplomb with which he accepted the situation.
"Well," he began, "to make a long story short, I started on this
lay just after old Magnus' death, when a friend of mine in the
fortune-tellin' line told me Mrs. Magnus was a spiritualist."
"A spiritualist?" I queried, in surprise.
"Oh, yes; had been for years. That give me my clue, so I--ah--got into
the house."
"How?" demanded Godfrey.
"That's telling."
"Bribed a servant, of course," said Godfrey. "We'll look them over in
the morning. Go on."
"I got inside the house, looked over the ground, an' decided on my
line of operation. I wanted something neat an' effective, an' I worked
on it a good while before I had it goin' just right. There were so
many little details. It took a lot of practice--these things do--an'
then I had to remodel the inside of the desk--shorten up the drawers,
an' make room for myself behind them. Luckily I'm little, an' the desk
was one of the biggest I ever saw.
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