In the little sitting-room above his shop sat Mr. Assid Ropes. It was the afternoon before Christmas Day. He had generously allowed all his assistants to leave. "If anybody wants their hair cut, or their hat ironed," he said, "I'll do it myself, and then they'll wish they hadn't."

Yet, when a customer rapped on the floor below, Mr. Ropes felt exceedingly angry.

"What do you want?" he called down the stairs.

"I want my hat ironed," said a clear, manly voice.

"Go away! Your hat doesn't want ironing. Go to bed!"

"I will not go away," said the clear, firm voice, "until you have attended to my hat—hat once, if you please."

Mr. Ropes came grumbling down the stairs. For one moment he gazed at the man in the shop, and then flung his arms round him and wept tears of joy.

"My dear old friend, Cyril Mush!" he exclaimed.

They had been boys together at Eton, and rowed in the Trinity boat together at Cambridge. Fate had separated them.

In less than a minute they were talking over old times together in the little sitting-room over the shop. Cyril Mush was delighted. "You can't charge an old friend anything for just ironing his hat," he said, with his peculiarly winning smile.

Before Mr. Ropes could correct this impression, another voice was heard in the shop below.

"Can you come down for a minute—to oblige a lady?"

Mr. Ropes descended once more. In a minute he returned.

"Awfully sorry, Mush, but I must go. I've got to shave a dead poodle, and the men are coming to stuff it at nine o'clock to-night. It's for a lady—noblesse oblige, you know. I'll finish your hat when I come back."

In a second he was gone. Cyril Mush replaced the lining in his hat, and placed it on his head. He went out into the streets. He was wondering what poodle it was which Mr. Assid Ropes had gone to shave. Could it be the same? No, most certainly not. So of course it was the same.

In the meanwhile Mr. Ropes had arrived at the house, and had been ushered into the chamber of death. The light was very bad, and he happened to cut the animal while engaged in shaving it.

"Very sorry, Sir," said Mr. Ropes, from force of habit, "but it's not my fault. You've got a pimple there, and you jerked your head just as I was going over it. A little powder will put that all right."

Suddenly it flashed across him that the poodle was not dead if the blood flowed. He rushed out of the room, and found himself confronted by a handsome, wicked-looking man, of about thirty.

"Excuse me, Sir, but that poodle's not dead. It's in a trance. Just run down to the kitchen and fetch me some brandy, some blankets, and some hot bricks, and I'll bring it round."

"The dog is dead, and in a very few hours he'll be stuffed," was the cruel reply. "You needn't trouble to bring it round. If you've brought your tackle round, you can shave it."

"I've been shaving it—and that's how I know."

A door opened on the other side of the passage, and a fair young girl came out in tears and a black dress.

"What's the matter, Algernon?" she said.

"It's nothing, Alice. This idiot says that Tommy's not dead."

With one wild yell of joy, a yell that broke the gas-globes, and unlinked carriages at all the principal London railway stations, Alice Smith fell senseless on the floor.

"Out you get!" exclaimed her cousin Algernon to Mr. Ropes. "If the dog is not dead, come back in two hours, and prove it—otherwise it will be dead, and stuffed too."

"Now then," said Algernon, when Mr. Ropes had gone, "if Tommy Atkins is not dead, he soon will be." He grasped his walking-stick, and tried the door of the room. It was locked. Mr. Ropes had locked it, and taken the key!

"Aha!" he exclaimed. "Baffled! Baffled! Kindly turn the lime-light off the swooned maiden, and throw it on to me. Sympathetic music from the violins, if you please."

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One hour had passed. Mr. Alkaloid, the photographer, had met Mr. Mush. Mr. Alkaloid had come from Ryde to London to get his hair singed. The two accidentally met Mr. Ropes as he was dashing wildly down the street towards his own shop. In one minute all was explained. Mr. Alkaloid had fetched his photographic apparatus, and the three were careering back to the house where the poodle lay dead. But was he dead? You know he wasn't, as well as I do. What do you ask such senseless questions for? "It's the only sure test," said Alkaloid. "If that dog's alive, he'll wag his tail when I try to photograph him. I never knew it fail."

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Outside the door of that gorgeously-furnished room stood an excited group. Algernon, the villain, was soliloquising. Alice was explaining to Cyril how he had dropped his note down the neck of the wrong girl—who was also named Smith—and how she had been compelled to believe him unfaithful. Mr. Ropes was listening attentively at the key-hole, and Cyril was kissing Alice.

Within the room Mr. Alkaloid was photographing the dead poodle. (I call it dead, but of course that doesn't humbug you.)

"Now then, we're ready," they heard Mr. Alkaloid say. "Don't stare. Just a natural, easy—now then—thank you!"

There was dead silence within the room and without. Then the door opened, and Mr. Alkaloid came out cheerfully.

"The poodle's dead all right," he said. "What you took to be blood, Ropes, was blacking off your razor. You really ought not to strop them on your boot. I'll walk round to your shop with you. I want my hair singed."

Alice went into hysterics; Algernon swooned with joy; and Cyril Mush had a fit.

At the moment of going to press, they are all three still in the above condition. The dog, in the meantime, has been accidentally stuffed with the stuffing intended for the stuffer's Christmas goose. The goose was found, on carving, to be stuffed with several shilling shockers, which had been intended to pad the poodle.

And to what better use could they have been put—especially if they were all like this?

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