he go and make a call upon the Kat Mortons forthwith.
"Why, I certainly can't do that!" he exclaimed; "After what I said to Kat that day on Tantalus. Lord, they wouldn't let me in the house! And anyway, why should I?"
But Bert was insistent. "It's this way," she said; "Those girls are trying to get their aunt, Mrs. Walters, to take them to Europe. They are dead set on it. Their mother, Mrs. Walter's sister, died four or five years ago, and they live with their father, a sort of a nonentity and shyster lawyer, in the old home out Nuuanu, and the aunt is the fairy godmother and does everything for them. She has quite a fortune of her own. She had them over in the Orient and was just bringing them back loaded with plunder, when we met them on the boat. I go to see her often because she is so lonely and seems to have taken a fancy to me and begs me to come. The Kats only go there when they want something, and she knows it; and so it helps a little when I drop in to cheer her up. She has been telling me about their manoeuvres to get her away. In fact, they are so persistent that even she is suspicious of their motives and wants me to try to find out what's on their minds. And I can't do a thing because they know that I go to see Mrs. Walters so often, and they would be regular clams if I tried to pry anything out of them."
