Unless I'm mistaken, you,
being a stranger newly come to town, were going to take your case to
those man-eating sharks?"
"How do you know I've just come to town?"
"When you looked at your watch I noticed it was three hours slow.
That must mean the Pacific coast, or near it. Therefore you've just
got in from the Far West and haven't thought to rectify your time.
At a venture I'd say you were a mining man from down around the
Ray-Kelvin copper district in Arizona. That peculiar, translucent
copper silicate in your scarf-pin comes from those mines."
"The Blue Fire? I wish it had stayed there, all of it! Anything
else?"
"Yes," returned Average Jones, warming to the game. "You're an
Eastern college man, I think. Anyway, your father or some older
member of your family graduated from one of the older colleges."
"What's the answer?"
"The gold of your Phi Beta Kappa key is a different color from your
watch-chain. It's the old metal, antedating the California gold.
Did your father graduate some time in the latter forties or early
fifties?"
"Hamilton, '51.
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