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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Voice in the Fog, by Harold MacGrath,
+Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Voice in the Fog
+
+
+Author: Harold MacGrath
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 13, 2005  [eBook #16051]
+Most recently updated February 21, 2008
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VOICE IN THE FOG***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 16051-h.htm or 16051-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/5/16051/16051-h/16051-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/5/16051/16051-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VOICE IN THE FOG
+
+by
+
+HAROLD MACGRATH
+
+Author of
+The Man on the Box, Hearts and Masks,
+The Million Dollar Mystery, etc.
+
+With Illustrations by A. B. Wenzell
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+
+1915
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Kitty Killigrew]
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+CAV. GIOVANNI PICCININI
+
+IN MEMORY OF MANY HAPPY FLORENTINE DAYS
+
+
+
+
+THE VOICE IN THE FOG
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Fog.
+
+A London fog, solid, substantial, yellow as an old dog's tooth or a
+jaundiced eye.  You could not look through it, nor yet gaze up and down
+it, nor over it; and you only thought you saw it.  The eye became
+impotent, untrustworthy; all senses lay fallow except that of touch;
+the skin alone conveyed to you with promptness and no incertitude that
+this thing had substance.  You could feel it; you could open and shut
+your hands and sense it on your palms, and it penetrated your clothes
+and beaded your spectacles and rings and bracelets and shoe-buckles.
+It was nightmare, bereft of its pillows, grown somnambulistic; and
+London became the antechamber to Hades, lackeyed by idle dreams and
+peopled by mistakes.
+
+There is something about this species of fog unlike any other in the
+world.  It sticks.  You will find certain English cousins of yours, as
+far away from London as Hong-Kong, who are still wrapt up snugly in it.
+Happy he afflicted with strabismus, for only he can see his nose before
+his face.  In the daytime you become a fish, to wriggle over the
+ocean's floor amid strange flora and fauna, such as ash-cans and
+lamp-posts and venders' carts and cab-horses and sandwich-men.  But at
+night you are neither fish, bird nor beast.
+
+The night was May thirteenth; never mind the year; the date should
+suffice: and a Walpurgis night, if you please, without any Mendelssohn
+to interpret it.
+
+That happy line of Milton's--"Pandemonium, the high capital of Satan
+and his peers"--fell upon London like Elijah's mantle.  Confusion and
+his cohort of synonyms (why not?) raged up and down thoroughfare and
+side-street and alley, east and west, danced before palace and tenement
+alike: all to the vast amusement of the gods, to the mild annoyance of
+the half-gods (in Mayfair), and to the complete rout of all mortals
+a-foot or a-cab.  Imagine: militant suffragettes trying to set fire to
+the prime minister's mansion, _Siegfried_ being sung at the opera, and
+a yellow London fog!
+
+The press about Covent Garden was a mathematical problem over which
+Euclid would have shed bitter tears and hastily retired to his arbors
+and citron tables.  Thirty years previous (to the thirteenth of May,
+not Euclid) some benighted beggar invented the Chinese puzzle; and
+tonight, many a frantic policeman would have preferred it, sitting with
+the scullery maid and the pantry near by.  Simple matter to shift about
+little blocks of wood with the tip of one's finger; but cabs and
+carriages and automobiles, each driver anxious to get out ahead of his
+neighbor!--not to mention the shouting and the din and discord of horns
+and whistles and sirens and rumbling engines!
+
+"It's hard luck," said Crawford, sympathetically.  "It will be half an
+hour before they get this tangle straightened out."
+
+"I shouldn't mind, Jim, if it weren't for Kitty," replied his wife.  "I
+am worried about her."
+
+"Well, I simply could not drag her into this coupe and get into hers
+myself.  She's a heady little lady, if you want to know.  As it is,
+she'll get back to the hotel quicker than we shall.  Her cab is five
+up.  If you wish, I'll take a look in and see if she's all right."
+
+"Please do;" and she smiled at him, lovely, enchanting.
+
+"You're the most beautiful woman in all this world!"
+
+"Am I?"
+
+Click!  The light went out.  There was a smothered laugh; and when the
+light flared up again, the aigrette in her copper-beech hair was all
+askew.
+
+"If anybody saw us!"--secretly pleased and delighted, as any woman
+would have been who possessed a husband who was her lover all his
+waking hours.
+
+"What! in this fog?  And a lot I'd care if they did.  Now, don't stir
+till I come back; and above all, keep the light on."
+
+"And hurry right back; I'm getting lonesome already."
+
+He stepped out of the coupe.  Harlequin, and Colombine, and
+Humpty-Dumpty; shapes which came out of nowhere and instantly vanished
+into nothing, for all the world like the absurd pantomimes of his
+boyhood days.  He kept close to the curb, scrutinizing the numbers as
+he went along.  Never had he seen such a fog.  Two paces away from the
+curb a headlight became an effulgence.  Indeed, there were a thousand
+lights jammed in the street, and the fog above absorbed the radiance,
+giving the scene a touch of Brocken.  All that was needed was a witch
+on a broomstick.  He counted five vehicles, and stopped.  The
+door-window was down.
+
+"Miss Killigrew?" he said.
+
+"Yes.  Is anything wrong?"
+
+"No.  Just wanted to see if you were all right.  Better let me take
+your place and you ride with Mrs. Crawford."
+
+"Good of you; but you've had enough trouble.  I shall stay right here."
+
+"Where's your light?"
+
+"The globe is broken.  I'd rather be in the dark.  Its fun to look
+about.  I never saw anything to equal it."
+
+"Not very cheerful.  We'll be held up at least half an hour.  You are
+not afraid?"
+
+"What, I?"  She laughed.  "Why should I be afraid?  The wait will not
+matter.  But the truth is, I'm worried about mother.  She would go to
+that suffragette meeting; and I understand they have tried to burn up
+the prime minister's house."
+
+"Fine chance!  But don't you worry.  Your mother's a sensible woman.
+She'll get back to the hotel, if she isn't there already."
+
+"I wish she had not gone.  Father will be tearing his hair and twigging
+the whole Savoy force by the ears."
+
+Crawford smiled.  Readily enough he could conjure up the picture of Mr.
+Killigrew, short, thick-set, energetic, raging back and forth in the
+lobby, offering to buy taxicabs outright, the hotel, and finally the
+city of London itself; typically money-mad American that he was.
+Crawford wanted to laugh, but he compromised by saying: "He must be
+very careful of that hair of his; he hasn't much left."
+
+"And he pulls out a good deal of it on my account.  Poor dad!  Why in
+the world should I marry a title?"
+
+"Why, indeed!"
+
+"Mrs. Crawford was beautiful tonight.  There wasn't a beauty at the
+opera to compare with her.  Royalties are frumps, aren't they?  And
+that ruby!  I don't see how she dares wear it!"
+
+"I am not particularly fond of it; but it's a fad of hers.  She likes
+to wear it on state occasions.  I have often wondered if it is really
+the Nana Sahib's ruby, as her uncle claimed.  Driver, the Savoy, and
+remember it carefully; the Savoy."
+
+"Yes, sir; I understand, sir.  But we'll all be some time, sir.
+Collision forward is what holds us, sir."
+
+Alone again, Kitty Killigrew leaned back, thinking of the man who had
+just left her and of his beautiful wife.  If only she might some day
+have a romance like theirs!  Presently she peered out of the
+off-window.  A brood of _Siegfried_-dragons prowled about, now going
+forward a little, now swerving, now pausing; lurid eyes and threatening
+growls.
+
+Once upon a time, in her pigtail days, when her father was going to be
+rich and was only half-way between the beginning and the end of his
+ambition, Kitty had gone to a tent-circus.  Among other things she had
+looked wonderingly into the dim, blurry glass-tank of the "human fish,"
+who was at that moment busy selling photographs of himself.  To-night,
+in searching for comparisons, this old forgotten picture recurred to
+her mind; blithely memory brought it forth and threw it upon the
+screen.  All London had become a glass-tank, filled with human
+pollywogs.
+
+She did not want to marry a title; she did not want to marry money; she
+did not want to marry at all.  Poor kindly dad, who believed that she
+could be made happy only by marrying a title.  As if she was not as
+happy now as she was ever destined to be!
+
+Voices.  Two men were speaking near the curb-door.  She turned her head
+involuntarily in this direction.  There were no lights in the frontage
+before which stood her cab, which intervened between the Brocken haze
+in the street, throwing a square of Stygian shadow against the fog,
+with right and left angles of aureola.  She could distinguish no shapes.
+
+"Cheer up, old top; you're in hard luck."
+
+"I'm a bally ass."
+
+"No, no; only a ripping good sporty game all the way through."
+
+Oddly enough, Kitty sensed the irony.  She wondered if the speaker's
+companion did.
+
+"Well, a wager's a wager."
+
+"And you're the last chap to welch a square bet.  What's the odds?  My
+word, I didn't urge you to change the stakes."
+
+"Didn't you?"
+
+The voice was young and pleasant; and Kitty was sure that the owner's
+face was even as pleasant as his voice.  What had he wagered and lost?
+
+"If you're really hard pressed. . . ."
+
+"Hard pressed!  Man, I've nothing in God's world but two guineas, six."
+
+"Oh, I say now!"
+
+"Its the truth."
+
+"If a fiver will help you. . . ."
+
+"Thanks.  A wager's a wager.  I've lost.  I was a bally fool to play
+cards.  Deserve what I got.  Six months; that's the agreement.  A
+madman's wager; but I'll stick."
+
+"Six months; twelve o'clock, midnight, November thirteenth.  It's the
+date, old boy; that's what hoodooed you, as the Americans say."
+
+Kitty wasn't sure that the speaker was English; if he was, he had lost
+the insular significance of his vowels.  Still, it was, in its way, as
+pleasant a voice as the other's.  There was no doubt about the younger
+man; he was English to the core, English in his love of chance, English
+in his loyalty to his word; stupidly English.  That he was the younger
+was a trifling matter to deduce: no young man ever led his elder into
+mischief, harmful or innocuous.
+
+"Six months.  It's a joke, my boy; a great big laugh for you and me,
+when there's nothing left in life but toddies and churchwardens.  Six
+months."
+
+"I dare say I can hang on till that time is over.  Well, good night!
+No letters, no addresses."
+
+"Exact terms.  Six months from date I'll be cooling my heels in your
+ante-room."
+
+"Cavenaugh, if it's anything else except a joke. . . ."
+
+"Oh, rot!  It was your suggestion.  I tell you, it's a lark, nothing
+more.  A gentleman's word."
+
+"I'll start for my diggings."
+
+"Ride home with me; my cab's here somewhere."
+
+"No, thanks.  I've got a little thinking to do and prefer to be alone.
+Good night."
+
+"And good luck go with you.  Deuce take it, if you feel so badly. . . ."
+
+There was no reply; and Kitty decided that the younger man had gone on.
+Silence; or rather, she no longer heard the speakers.  Then a low
+chuckle came to her and this chuckle broadened into ironic laughter;
+and she knew that Mephisto was abroad.  What had been the wager; and
+what was the meaning of the six months?  It is instinctive in woman to
+interpret the human voice correctly, especially when the eyes are not
+distracted by physical presentations.  This man outside, whoever and
+whatever he was, deep in her heart Kitty knew that he was not going to
+play fair.  What a disappointing world it was!--to set these human
+voices ringing in her ears, and then to take them out of her life
+forever!
+
+Still the din of horns and whistles and sirens, still the shouting.
+Would they never move on?  She was hungry.  She wanted to get back to
+the hotel, to learn what had happened to her mother.  Militant
+suffragettes, indeed!  A pack of mad witches, who left their brooms
+behind kitchen doors when they ought to be wielding them about dusty
+corners.  Woman never won anything by using brickbats and torches:
+which proved on the face of it that these militants were inefficient,
+irresponsible, and unlearned in history.  Poor simpletons!  Had not
+theirs always been the power behind the throne?  What more did they
+want?
+
+Her cogitations were peculiarly interrupted.  The door opened, and a
+man plumped down beside her.
+
+"Enid, it looks as if we'd never get out of this hole.  Have you got
+your collar up?"
+
+Numb and terrified, Kitty felt the man's hands fumbling about her neck.
+
+"Where's your sable stole?  You women beat the very devil for
+thoughtlessness.  A quid to a farthing, you've left it in the box, and
+I'll have to go back for it, providing they'll let me in.  And it's
+midnight, if a minute."
+
+Pressing herself tightly into her corner, Kitty managed to gasp: "My
+name is not Enid, sir.  You have mistaken your carriage."
+
+"What?  Good heavens!"  Almost instantly a match sparkled and flared.
+His eyes, screened behind his hand, palm outward (a perfectly natural
+action, yet nicely calculated), beheld a pretty, charming face, large
+Irish blue eyes (a bit startled at this moment), and a head of hair as
+shiny-black as polished Chinese blackwood.  The match, still burning,
+curved like a falling star through the window.  "A thousand pardons,
+madam!  Very stupid of me.  Quite evident that I am lost.  I beg your
+pardon again, and hope I have not annoyed you."
+
+He was gone before she could form any retort.  Where had she heard that
+voice before?  With a little shudder--due to the thought of those cold
+strange fingers feeling about her throat--her hands went up.  Instantly
+she cried aloud in dismay.  Her sapphires!  They had vanished!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Daniel Killigrew, of Killigrew and Company (sugar, coffee and spices),
+was in a towering rage; at least, he towered one inch above his normal
+height, which was five feet six.  Like an animal recently taken in
+captivity he trotted back and forth through the corridors, in and out
+of the office, to and from the several entrances, blowing the while
+like a grampus.  All he could get out of these infernally stupid beings
+was "Really, sir!"  He couldn't get a cab, he couldn't get a motor, he
+couldn't get anything.  Manager, head-clerk, porter, doorman and page,
+he told them, one and all, what a dotty old spoof of a country they
+lived in; that they were all dead-alive persons, fit to be neither
+under nor above earth; that they wouldn't be one-two in a race with
+January molasses--"Treacle, I believe you call it here!"  And what did
+they say to this scathing arraignment?  Yes, what did they say?
+"Really, sir!"  He knew and hoped it would happen: if ever Germany
+started war, it would be over before these Britishers made up their
+minds that there was a war.  A hundred years ago they had beaten
+Napoleon (with the assistance of Spain, Austria, Germany and Russia),
+and were now resting.
+
+Quarter to one, and neither wife nor daughter; outside there, somewhere
+in the fog; and he could not go to them.  It was maddening.  Molly
+might be arrested and Kitty lost.  Served him right; he should have put
+his foot down.  The idea of Molly being allowed to go with those
+rattle-pated women!  Suffragettes!  A "Bah!" exploded with a loud
+report.  Hereafter he would show who voted in the Killigrew family.
+Poor man!  He was made of that unhappy mental timber which agrees
+thoughtlessly to a proposition for the sake of peace and then regrets
+it in the name of war.  His wife and daughter twisted him round their
+little fingers and then hunted cover when he found out what they had
+done.
+
+He went out again to the main entrance and smoked himself headachy.  He
+hated London.  He had always hated it in theory, now he hated it in
+fact.  He hated tea, buttered muffins, marmalade, jam, toast, cricket,
+box hedges three hundred years old, ruins, and the checkless baggage
+system, the wet blankets called newspapers.  All the racial hatred of
+his forebears (Tipperary born) surged hot and wrathful in his veins.
+At the drop of a hat he would have gone to war, individually, with all
+England.  "Really, sir!"  Nothing but that, when he was dying of
+anxiety!
+
+A taxicab drew up before the canopy.  He knew it was a taxicab because
+he could hear the sound of the panting engine.  The curb-end of the
+canopy was curtained by the abominable fog.  Mistily a forlorn figure
+emerged.  The doorman started leisurely toward this figure.  Killigrew
+pushed him aside violently.  Molly, with her hat gone, her hair awry,
+her dress torn, her gloves ragged, her eyes puffed!  He sprang toward
+her, filled with Berserker rage.  Who had dared.
+
+"Give the man five pounds," she whispered.  "I promised it."
+
+"Five. . . ."
+
+"Give it to him!  Good heavens, do I look as if I were joking?  Pay
+him, pay him!"
+
+Killigrew counted out five sovereigns, perhaps six, he was not sure.
+The chauffeur swooped them up, and set off.
+
+"Molly Killigrew. . . ."
+
+"Not a word till I get to the rooms.  Hurry!  Daniel, if you say
+anything I shall fall down!"
+
+He led her to the lift.  Curious glances followed, but these signified
+nothing.  On a night such as this was there would be any number of
+accidents.  Once in the living-room of the luxurious suite, Mrs.
+Killigrew staggered over to the divan and tumbled down upon it.  She
+began to cry hysterically.
+
+"Molly, old girl!  Molly!"  He put his arm tenderly across her heaving
+shoulders and kneeled.  His old girl!  Love crowded out all other
+thoughts.  Money-mad he might be, but he never forgot that Molly had
+once fried his meat and peeled his potatoes and darned his socks.
+"Molly, what has happened?  Who did this?  Tell me, and I'll kill him!"
+
+"Dan, when they started up the street for the prime minister's house, I
+could not get out of the crowd.  I was afraid to.  It was so foggy you
+had to follow the torches.  I did not know what they were about till
+the police rushed us.  One grabbed me, but I got away."  All this
+between sobs.  "Dan, I don't want to be a suffragette."  Sob.  "I don't
+want to vote."  Sob.
+
+And for the first time that night Killigrew smiled.
+
+"Where's Kitty?"
+
+He started to his feet.  "She hasn't got back from the opera yet.
+She'll be the death of me, one of these fine days.  You know her.  Like
+as not she's stepped out of her cab to see what's going on, and has
+lost herself."
+
+"But the Crawfords were with her."
+
+"Would that make any difference with Kitty if she wanted to get out?  I
+told her not to wear any jewels, but she wouldn't mind me.  She never
+does.  I haven't any authority except in my offices.  You and
+Kitty. . . ."
+
+"Don't scold!"
+
+"All right; I won't.  But, all the same, you and the girl need
+checking."
+
+"Daniel, it was only because I wanted something to occupy myself with.
+It's no fun for me to sit still in my house and watch everybody else
+work.  The butler orders the meals, the housekeeper takes charge of the
+linen, the footman the carriages.  Why, I can't find a button to sew on
+anything any more.  I only wanted something to do."
+
+Killigrew did not smile this time.  Here was the whole matter in a
+nutshell: she wanted something to do.  And there were thousands of
+others just like her.  Man-like, he forgot that women needed something
+more than money and attention from an army of servants.  He had his
+offices, his stock-ticker, his warfare.  Not because she wanted to
+vote, but because she wanted and needed something to do.
+
+"Molly, old girl, I begin to see.  I'm going to finance a home-bureau
+of charity.  I mean it.  Fifty thousand the year to do with as you
+like.  No hospitals, churches, heathen; but the needy and deserving
+near by.  You can send boys to college and girls to schools; and
+Kitty'll be glad to be your lieutenant.  I never had a college
+education.  Not that I ever needed it,"--with sudden truculence in his
+tone.  "But it might be a good thing for some of the rising generations
+in my tenements.  I'll leave the choice to you.  And when it comes to
+voting, why, tell me which way to vote, and I'll do it.  I'll be a bull
+moose, if you say so."
+
+"You're the kindest man in the world, Dan, and I'm an old fool of a
+woman!"
+
+Kitty burst into the room, star-eyed, pale.  "Mother!"  She sped to her
+mother's side.  "Oh, I felt it in my bones that something was going to
+happen!"
+
+"Think of it, Kitty dear; your mother, fighting with a policeman!  Oh,
+it was frightful!"
+
+"Never mind, mumsy," Kitty soothed.  She rang for the maid, a thing her
+father had not thought to do.  And when her mother was snug in bed, her
+head in cooling bandages, her face and hands bathed in refreshing
+cologne, Kitty returned to her father, "Dad, you mustn't say a word to
+mother about it, but I've been robbed."
+
+"What?"
+
+"My necklace.  And I could not identify the thief if he stood before me
+this very minute.  The interior light was out of order.  He entered,
+pretending he had made a mistake.  He called me Enid and told me to put
+up my collar; touched my neck with his hands.  I was so astonished that
+I could not move.  Finally I managed to explain that he had made a
+mistake.  He apologized and got out; and it is quite evident that the
+necklace went with him."
+
+"Can't you remember the least thing about him?"
+
+"Nothing, absolutely nothing."
+
+"Where were the Crawfords?"
+
+"I did not wait to see them.  My cab was ahead of theirs.  What shall
+we do?"
+
+"Notify the police; it's all we can do.  They cost me an even ten
+thousand, Kitty.  And I told you not to wear them on a night like this.
+I'm discouraged.  I want to get out of this blasted country.  I'm
+hoodooed."  Killigrew walked the floor.  He took out a cigar, eyed it
+thoughtfully, and returned it to his pocket.  "Because they happen to
+be born in this smoke, they think the way they do things is the last
+word on the subject.  I'd like to show them."
+
+"Dad,"--with a bit of a smile,--"I know what the trouble is.  You want
+to go home."
+
+"And that's the truth.  This is the first trip abroad I ever took with
+you and your mother, and it's going to be the last.  I can't live out
+of my element, which is hurry and bustle and getting things done
+quickly.  I'm a fish out of water.  I want to go home; I want to see
+the Giants wallop the Cubs; and I want my two-weeks' bass fishing.  But
+I'll hang on till the end of June as I promised.  Ten thousand in
+sapphires you couldn't match in a hundred years, and Molly coming in
+banged up like a prize-fighter! . . .  Someone at the door."
+
+It proved to be Crawford.
+
+"Glad you got back safely," he said relievedly.
+
+"Had her necklace stolen," replied Killigrew briefly.
+
+"You don't mean to say. . . ."
+
+Kitty recounted her amazing adventure.
+
+"And my wife's ruby is gone."  Crawford made the disclosure simply.  He
+was a quiet man; he had learned the futility of gestures, of wasting
+words in lamentation.
+
+"Good gracious!" exclaimed Kitty.
+
+"The windows of the cab were down.  I stood outside, smoking to pass
+the time.  Suddenly I heard Mrs. Crawford cry out.  A hand had reached
+in from the off side, clutched the pendant, twisted it off, and was
+gone.  All quicker than I can tell it.  I tried to give chase, but it
+was utter folly.  I couldn't see anything two feet away.  Mrs. Crawford
+is a bit knocked up over it.  Rather sinister stone, if its history is
+a true one: the Nana Sahib's ruby, you know.  For the jewel itself I
+don't care.  I never liked to see her wear it."
+
+Killigrew threw up his hands.  "And this is the London you've been
+bragging about to me!  How much was the ruby worth?"
+
+"Don't know; nobody does.  It's one of those jewels you can't set a
+price on.  He will not be able to dispose of it in its present shape.
+He'll break it up and sell the pieces, and that's the shame of it.
+Think of the infernal cleverness of the man!  Two or three hundred
+vehicles stalled in the street, fog so thick you couldn't see your hand
+before your face.  Simple game for a man with ready wit.  And the
+police busy at the two ends of the block, trying to straighten out the
+tangle.  Mrs. Crawford says that the hand was white, slender and well
+kept.  It came in swiftly and accurately.  The man had been watching
+and waiting.  She was so unprepared for the act that she didn't even
+try to catch the hand.  I have notified Scotland Yard.  But you can't
+hunt down a hand.  I'm willing to wager that we'll neither of us ever
+see the gems again."
+
+"He must have come directly from your carriage to mine," said Kitty.
+"I am heart-broken."
+
+"One of the tricks of fate.  Glad you got back all right.  We were
+mightily worried.  Come over across the hall at nine to-morrow, all of
+you, for breakfast.  Don't fuss up.  And we'll talk over the affair and
+plan what's to be done.  Good night."
+
+"I like that young man," declared Killigrew emphatically.  "He's the
+real article.  American to the backbone; a millionaire who doesn't
+splurge.  Well," sighing regretfully, "he was born to it, and I had to
+dig for mine.  But I can't get it through my head why he wants to
+excavate mummies when he could dig up potatoes with some profit."
+
+"Dad, find me an earl or a duke like Mr. Crawford, and I'll marry him
+just as fast as you like."
+
+"Kittibudget, I'm not so strong for dukes as I was.  Your mother will
+have a black eye in the morning, or I don't know a shindy when I see
+it.  Now, hike off to bed.  I'm all in."
+
+"You poor old dad!  I worry you to death."
+
+She threw her lovely arms about his neck and kissed him.
+
+"Well, you're worth it.  Kitty, I've had a jolt to-night.  You marry
+whom you blame please.  I've been doing some tall thinking.  Make your
+own romance, duke or dry-goods clerk.  You'd never hook up with
+anything that wasn't a man.  You're Irish.  If he happens to be made,
+all well and good; if not, why, I'll undertake to make him.  And that's
+a bargain.  I don't want any alimony money in the Killigrew family."
+
+She kissed him again and went into her bedroom.  Kind-hearted,
+impulsive old dad!  In a week's time he would forget all about this
+heart-to-heart talk, and shoo away every male who hadn't a title or a
+million, or who wasn't due to fall heir to one or the other.
+Nevertheless, she had long since made up her mind to build her own
+romance.  That was her right, and she did not propose to surrender it
+to anybody.  Her weary head on the pillow, she thought of the voices in
+the fog.  "A wager's a wager."
+
+The next morning the fog was not quite so thick; that is, in places
+there were holes and punctures.  You saw a man's face and torso, but
+neither hat nor legs.  Again, you saw the top of a cab bowling along,
+but no horse: phantasmally.
+
+Breakfast in Crawford's suite was merry enough.  Misfortune was turned
+into jest.  At least, they made a fine show of it; which is
+characteristic of people who bow to the inevitable whenever confronted
+by it.  Crawford was passing his cigars, when a page was announced.
+The boy entered briskly, carrying a tray upon which reposed a small
+package.
+
+"By special messenger, sir.  It was thought you might be liking to have
+it at once, sir."  The page pocketed the shilling politely and departed.
+
+"That's the first bit of live work I've seen anybody do in this hotel,"
+commented Killigrew, striking a match.
+
+"I have stopped here often," said Crawford, "and they are familiar with
+my wishes.  Excuse me till I see what this is."
+
+The quartet at the table began chatting again, about the fog, what they
+intended doing in Paris, sunshiny Paris.  By and by Crawford came over
+quietly and laid something on the table before his wife's  plate.
+
+It was the Nana Sahib's ruby, so-called.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+That same morning, at eleven precisely (when an insolent west wind
+sprang up and tore the fog into ribbons and scarves and finally blew it
+into smithereens, channelward) there stood before the windows of a
+famous haberdashery in the Strand a young man, twenty-four years of
+age, typically English, beardless, hair clipped neatly about his neck
+and temples, his skin fresh colored, his body carefully but thriftily
+clothed.  Smooth-skinned he was about the eyes and nose and mouth,
+unmarked by dissipation; and he stood straight; and by the set of his
+shoulders (not particularly deep or wide) you would infer that when he
+looked at you he would look straight.  Pity, isn't it, that you never
+really can tell what a man is inside by drawing up your brief from what
+he is outside.  There is always the heel of Achilles somewhere; trust
+the devil to find that.
+
+Of course you wish to know forthwith who returned the ruby, and why.
+As our statesmen say, regarding any important measure for public
+welfare, the time is not yet ripe.  Besides, the young man I am
+describing had never heard of the Nana Sahib's ruby, unless vaguely in
+some Sepoy Mutiny tale.
+
+His expression at this moment was rather mournful.  He was regretting
+the thirty shillings the week he had for several years drawn regularly
+in this shop.  Inside there he had introduced the Raglan shirt, the
+Duke of Westminster four-in-hand, and the Churchill batwing collar.  He
+longed to enter and plead for reinstatement, but his new-found pride
+refused to budge his legs door-ward.  Thirty shillings, twelve for his
+"third floor back," and the rest for clothes and books and simple
+amusements.  What a whirl he had been in, this past fortnight!
+
+He pulled at his chin, shook his head and turned away.  No, he simply
+could not do it.  What! suffer himself to be laughed at behind his
+back?  Impossible, a thousand times no!  At the first news stand he
+bought two or three morning papers, and continued on to his lodgings.
+He must leave England at once, but the question was--How?
+
+It was a comfortable room, as "third floor backs" go.  He read the
+"want" advertisements carefully, and at length paused at a paragraph
+which seemed to suit his fancy perfectly.  "Cabin stewards
+wanted--White Star Line--New York and Liverpool."  He cut out the
+clipping, folded it and stored it away.  Then he proceeded to pack up
+his belongings, not a very laborious affair.
+
+Manuscripts.  He riffled the pages ruefully.  Sonnets and chant-royals
+and epics, fine and lofty in spirit; so fine indeed that they easily
+sifted through every editorial office in London.  There was even a
+bulky romance.  He had read so much about the enormous royalties which
+American authors received for their work, and English authors who were
+popular on the other side, that his ambition had been frenetically
+stirred.  The fortunes such men as Maundering and Piffle and Drool
+made!  And all he had accomplished so far had been the earnest support
+of the postal service.  Far back at the beginning he had been
+unfortunate enough to sell a sonnet for ten shillings.  Alack!  You
+sell your first sonnet, you win your first hand at cards, and then the
+passion has you.
+
+Poetry was a drug on the market.  Nobody read it (or wrote it) these
+days; and any one who attempted to sell it was clearly mad.  Oh, a
+jingle for Punch might pass, you know; something clever, with a snapper
+to it.  But epic poetry?  Sonnets?  Why, didn't you know that there
+wasn't a magazine going that did not have some sub-editor who could
+whack out fourteen lines in fourteen minutes, whenever a page needed
+filling up?  These things he had been told times without number.  And
+Maundering, Piffle and Drool had long since cornered the romance
+market.  The King's Highway had become No Thoroughfare.
+
+America.  He would go to the land of the brave (when occasion demanded)
+and the free (if you were imaginative).  Having packed his trunk and
+valise, he departed for Liverpool.  Besides, America was all that was
+left; he was at the end of his rope.
+
+What a rollicking old fraud life was!  Swung out of his peaceful orbit,
+by the legerdemain of death; no longer a humble steady star but a
+meteor; bumping as yet darkly against the planets; and then this
+monumental folly which had returned him to the old orbit but still in
+meteoric form, without peace or means of livelihood!  An ass, indeed,
+if ever there was one.
+
+He eventually arrived at his destination, lied blithely to the chief
+steward, and was assigned to the first-class cabins on the promenade
+deck, simply because his manner was engaging and his face pleasing to
+the eye.  The sea?  He had never been on it but once, and then only in
+a rowboat.  A good sailor?  Perhaps.  Chicken and barley broths at
+eleven; the captain's table in the dining-saloon, breakfast, luncheon
+and dinner; cabin housekeeper and luggage man at the ports; and always
+a natty, stiffly starched jacket with a metal number; and "Yes, sir!"
+and "No, sir!" and "Thank you, sir!" his official vocabulary.  Fine job
+for a poet!
+
+It was all in the game he was going to play with fate.  A chap who
+could sell flamingo ties to gentlemen with purple noses, and shirts
+with attached cuffs to coal-porters ought not to worry over such a
+simple employment as cabin-steward on board an ocean liner.
+
+Early the next morning they left port, with only a few first-class
+passengers.  The heavy travel was coming from the west, not going that
+way.  The series of cabins under his stewardship were vacant.
+Therefore, with the thoroughness of his breed, he set about to learn
+"ship"; and by the time the first bugle for dinner blew, he knew port
+from starboard, boat-deck from main, and many other things, some
+unknown to the chief-steward who had made a hundred and twenty voyages
+on this very ship.
+
+Beautiful weather; a mild southwest blow, with a moderate beam-sea;
+only the deck _would_ come up smack against the soles of his boots in a
+most unexpected and aggravating manner.  But after the third day out,
+he found his sea-legs and learned how to "lean."  From two till five
+his time was his own, and a very good deal of this time he devoted to
+Henley and Morris and Walt Whitman, an ancient brier between his teeth
+and a canister of excellent tobacco at his elbow.  Odd, isn't it, that
+an Englishman without his pipe is as incomplete as a Manx cat, which,
+as doubtless you know, has no tail.  After all, does a Manx cat know
+that it is incomplete?  Let me say, then, as incomplete as a small boy
+without pockets.
+
+Toward his fellow stewards he was friendly without being companionable;
+and as they were of a decent sort, they let him go his way.
+
+Several times during the voyage he opened his trunk and took out the
+manuscripts.  Hang it, they weren't so bally bad.  If he could still
+re-read them, after an hour or two with Henley, there must be some
+merit to them.
+
+One afternoon he sat alone on the edge of his bunk.  The sun was
+pouring into the porthole; intermittently it flashed over him.
+Suddenly and alertly he got up, looked out, listened intently, then
+stepped back into the cabin and locked the door.  Again he listened.
+There was no sound except the steady heart-beats of the great engines
+below.  He sat down sidewise, took out the chamois bag which hung
+around his neck, and poured the contents out on the blanket.  Blue
+stones, rather dull at first; but ah! when the sun awoke the fires in
+them: blue as the flower o' the corn, the flame of burning sulphur.  He
+gathered them up and slowly trickled them through his fingers.
+Sapphires, unset, beautiful as a woman's eyes.  He replaced them in the
+chamois bag; and for the rest of the afternoon went about his affairs
+preoccupiedly, grave as a bishop under his miter.  For, all said and
+done, he had much to be grave about.
+
+In one of the panels of the partition which separated the cabin from
+the next, there was a crack.  A human eye could see through it very
+well.  And did.
+
+My young poet had "signed on" under the name of Thomas Webb.  It was
+not assumed.  For years he had been known in the haberdashery as Webb.
+There was more to it, however; there was a tail to the kite.  The
+English have an inordinate fondness for hyphens, for mother's family
+name and grandmother's family name and great-grandmother's, with the
+immediate paternal cognomen as a period.  Thomas' full name was a
+rosary, if you like, of yeomen, of soldiers, of farmers, of artists, of
+gentle bloods, of dreamers.  The latest transfusion of blood is always
+most powerful in effect upon the receiver; and as Thomas' father had
+died in penury for the sake of an idea, it was in order that the son
+should be something of a dreamer too.  Poetry is but an expression of
+life seen through dreams.
+
+His father had been a scholar, risen from the people; his mother had
+been gentle.  From his seventh year the boy had faced life alone.  He
+had never gone with the stream but had always found lodgment in the
+backwaters.  There is no employment quieter, peacefuller than that of a
+clerk in a haberdashery.  From Mondays till Saturdays, calm; a perfect
+environment for a poet.  You would be surprised to learn of the vast
+army of poets and novelists and dramatists who dispense four-in-hands,
+collars, buttons and hosiery six days in the week and who go
+a-picnicking on the seventh, provided it does not rain.
+
+Thomas had an idea.  It was not a reflection of his lamented father's;
+it was wholly his own.  He wanted to be loved.  His father's idea had
+been to love; thus, humanity had laughed him into the grave.  So it
+will be seen that Thomas' idea was the more sensible of the two.
+
+The voyage was uneventful.  Blue day followed blue day.  When at length
+the great port of New York loomed in the distance, Thomas felt a
+thrilling in his spine.  Perhaps yonder he might make his fortune; no
+matter what else he did, that remained to be accomplished, for he was a
+fortune-hunter, of the ancient type; that is, he expected to work for
+it.  Shore leave would be his, and if during that time he found
+nothing, why, he was determined to finish the summer as a steward; and
+by fall he would have enough in wages and tips to give him a start in
+life.  At present he could jingle but seven-and-six in his pocket; and
+jingle it frequently he did, to assure himself that it was not wearing
+away.
+
+An important tug came bustling alongside.  By the yellow flag he knew
+that it carried the quarantine officials, inspectors, and a few
+privileged citizens.  Among others who came aboard Thomas noted a
+sturdy thick-chested man in a derby hat--bowler, Thomas called it.
+Quietly this man sought the captain and handed him what looked to
+Thomas like a cablegram.  The captain read it and shook his head.
+Thomas overheard a little of their conversation.
+
+"You're welcome to look about, Mr. Haggerty; but I don't think you'll
+find the person you seek."
+
+"If you don't mind, I'll take a prowl.  Special case, Captain.  Mr.
+Killigrew thought perhaps I'd see a face I knew."
+
+"Valuable?"
+
+"Fine sapphires.  A chance that they may come int' this port.  They
+haven't yet."
+
+"Your customs inspectors ought to be able to help you," observed the
+captain, hiding a smile.  "Nothing but motes can slip through their
+fingers."
+
+"Sometimes they're tripped up," replied Haggerty.  "A case like this is
+due t' slip through.  I'll take a look."
+
+Thomas heard no more.  A detective.  Unobserved, he went down to his
+stuffy cabin, took off the chamois bag and locked it in his trunk.  So
+long as it remained on board, it was in British territory.
+
+The following day he went into the great city of man-made cliffs.  He
+walked miles and miles.  Naturally he sought the haberdashers along
+Broadway.  No employment was offered him: for the reason that he failed
+to state his accomplishments.  But he was in nowise discouraged.  He
+would go back to Liverpool.  The ship would sail with full cabin
+strength, and this trip there would be tips, three sovereigns at least,
+and maybe more, if his charges happened to be generous.
+
+He tied the chamois bag round his neck again, and turned in.  He was
+terribly tired and footsore.  He slept fitfully.  At half after nine he
+sat up, fully awake.  His cabin-mate (whom he rather disliked) was not
+in his bunk.  Indeed, the bunk had not been touched.  Suddenly Thomas'
+hand flew to his breast.  The chamois bag was gone!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Iambic and hexameter, farewell!  In that moment the poet died in
+Thomas; I mean, the poet who had to dig his expressions of life out of
+ink-pots.  Things boil up quickly and unexpectedly in the soul;
+century-old impulses, undreamed of by the inheritor; and when these
+bubble and spill over the kettle's lip, watch out.  There is an island
+in the South Seas where small mud-geysers burst forth under the
+pressure of the foot.  Fate had stepped on Thomas.
+
+As he sprang out of his bunk he was a reversion: the outlaw in
+Lincoln-green, the Yeoman of the Guard, the bandannaed smuggler of the
+southeast coast.  Quickly he got into his uniform.  He went about this
+affair the right way, with foresight and prudence; for he realized that
+he must act instantly.  He sought the purser, who was cordial.
+
+"I'm not feeling well," began Thomas; "and the doctor is ashore.
+Where's there an apothecary's shop?"
+
+"Two blocks straight out from the pier entrance.  You'll see red and
+blue lights in the windows.  Tummy?"
+
+"I'm subject to dizzy spells.  Where's Jameson?"  Jameson was the surly
+cabin-mate.
+
+"Quit.  Gone over to the Cunard.  Fool.  Like a little money advanced?
+Here's a bill, five dollars."
+
+"Thank you, sir."  Twenty shillings, ten pence.  "Doesn't Jameson take
+his peg a little too often, sir?"
+
+"He's a blighter.  Glad to get rid of him.  Hurry back.  And don't stop
+at Mike's or Johnny's,"--smiling.
+
+"I never touch anything heavier than ale, sir."  Mike's or Johnny's; it
+saved him the trouble of asking.  Tippling pubs where stewards
+foregathered.
+
+His uniform was his passport.  Nobody questioned him as he passed the
+barrier at a dog-trot.  Outside the smelly pier (sugar, coffee and
+spices, shipments from Killigrew and Company) he paused to send a short
+prayer to heaven.  Then he approached a snoozing stevedore.
+
+"Where's Mike's?"
+
+"Lead y' there, ol' scout!"
+
+"No; tell me where it is.  Here's a shilling."
+
+Explicit directions followed; and away went Thomas at a dog-trot again:
+the lust to punish, maim or kill in his heart.  He was not a university
+man; he had not played cricket at Lord's or stroked the crew from
+Leander; but he was island-born, a chap for cold tubbings, calisthenics
+and long tramps into the country on pleasant Sundays.  Thomas was
+slender, but sound and hard.
+
+Jameson was not at Mike's nor at Johnny's; but there were dozens of
+other saloons.  He did not ask questions.  He went in, searched, and
+strode out.  In the lowest kind of a drinking dive he found his man.  A
+great wave of dizziness swept over Thomas.  When it passed, only the
+bandannaed smuggler remained, cautious, cunning, patient.
+
+The quarry was alone in a side-room, drinking gin and smiling to
+himself.  For an hour Thomas waited.  His palms became damp with cold
+sweat and his knees wabbled, but not in fear.  Four glasses of ale,
+sipped slowly, tasting of wormwood.  In the bar-mirror he could watch
+every move made by Jameson.  No one went in.  He had evidently paid in
+advance for the bottle of gin.  Thomas ordered his fifth glass of ale,
+and saw Jameson's head sink forward a little.  Thomas' sigh almost
+split his heart in twain.  Jameson's head went up suddenly, and with a
+drunken smile he reached for the bottle and poured out a stiff potion.
+He drank it neat.
+
+Thomas wiped his palms on his sleeves and ordered a cigar.
+
+"Lonesome?" asked the swart bartender.  This good-looking chap was
+rather a puzzle to him.  He wasn't waiting for anybody, and he wasn't
+trying to get drunk.  Five ales in an hour and not a dozen words; just
+an ordinary Britisher who didn't know how to amuse himself in Gawd's
+own country.
+
+Jameson's head fell upon his arms.  With assured step Thomas walked
+toward the corridor which divided the so-called wine-rooms.  At the end
+of the corridor was a door.  He did not care where it led so long as it
+led outside this evil-smelling den.  He found the room empty opposite
+Jameson's.  He went in quietly.  The shabby waiter followed him,
+soft-footed as a cat.
+
+"A bottle of Old Tom," said Thomas.
+
+The waiter nodded and slipped out.  He saw the sleeper in the other
+room, and gently closed the door.
+
+"Gink in number two wants a bottle o' gin.  He's th' kind.  Layer o'
+ale an' then his quart.  Th' real souse."
+
+"So that's his game, huh?" said the bartender.  "How's th' gink in
+number four?"
+
+"Dead t' th' world."
+
+"Tip th' Sneak.  There may be a chancet t' roll 'em both.  Here y' are.
+Soak 'im two-fifty."
+
+Half an hour longer Thomas waited.  Then he rose and tiptoed to the
+door, drawing it back without the least sound.  Jameson's had not
+latched.  Taking a deep long breath (strange, how one may control the
+heart by this process!) Thomas crossed the corridor and entered the
+other room; entered prepared for any emergency.  If Jameson awoke, so
+much the worse for him.  The gods owe it to the mortals they keep in
+bondage to bestow a grain of luck here and there along the way to
+Elysium or Hades.  His cabin-mate's stentorian breathing convinced the
+trespasser that it was the stupidest, heaviest kind of sleep.
+
+For a moment he looked down at the man contemptuously.  To have
+befuddled his brain at such a time!  Or was it because the wretch knew
+that he, Thomas, would not dare cry out over his loss?  He stepped
+behind the sleeping man.  He wanted to fall upon him, beat him with his
+fists.  Ah, if he had not found him!
+
+The night, fortunately, was warm and thick.  Jameson had carelessly
+thrown open his coat and vest.  Underneath he wore the usual
+sailor-jersey.  Thomas steeled his arms.  With one hand he pulled the
+roll collar away from the man's neck and with the other sought for the
+string: sought in vain.  The light, the four drab walls, the haze of
+tobacco smoke, all turned red.
+
+"Where is it, you dog?  Quick!"  Thomas shook the man.  "Where is it?
+Quick, or I'll throttle you!"
+
+"Lemme 'lone!"  Jameson sagged toward the table again.
+
+Thomas bent him back ruthlessly and plunged a hand into the inside
+pocket of the man's coat.  The touch of the chamois-bag burned like
+fire.  He pulled it out and transferred it to his own pocket and made
+for the door.  He did not care now what happened.  Found!  Woe to any
+one who had the ill-luck to stand between him and the exit.
+
+Outside the door stood the shabby waiter, grinning cheerfully.  He was
+accompanied by a hulking, shifty-eyed creature.
+
+"Roll 'im, ol' sport?  Caught in th' act, huh?" gibed the waiter.
+
+Thomas had the right idea.  He struck first.  The waiter crashed
+against the wall.  The hulking, shifty-eyed one fared worse.  He went
+down with his face to the cracks in the floor.  Thomas dashed for the
+exit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Outside he found himself in a kind of court.  He ran about wildly, like
+a rat in a trap.  He plumped into the alley, accidentally.  Down this
+he fled, into the street.  A voice called out peremptorily to him to
+stop, but he went on all the faster, swift as a hare.  He doubled and
+circled through this street and that until at last he came out into a
+broad, brilliant thoroughfare.  An iron-pillared railway reared itself
+skyward and trains clamored past.  Bloomsbury: millions of years and
+miles away!  He would wake up presently, with the sunlight (when it
+shone) pouring into his room, and the bright geraniums on the outside
+window-sill bidding him good morning.
+
+He was on the point of rushing up the station stairway, when he espied
+a cab at the far corner.  A replica of a London cab, something which
+smacked of home; he could have hugged for sheer joy the bleary-eyed
+cabby who touched his rusty high hat.
+
+"Free?"
+
+"Free 's th' air, bo.  Where to?"
+
+"Pier 60, White Star Line.  How much?"--quite his old-time self again.
+
+"Two dollars,"--promptly.
+
+"All right.  And hurry!"  Thomas climbed in.  He was safe.
+
+As the crow flies it was less than a ten-minutes' jog from that corner
+to Pier 60.  Thomas had not gone far; he had merely covered a good deal
+of ground.  Cabby drove about for three-quarters of an hour and then
+drew up before the pier.
+
+Back to his cabin once more, weak as a swimmer who had breasted a
+strong tide.  He opened his trunk and rammed the chamois-bag into the
+toe of one of his patent-leather boots.  In the daytime he would wear
+it about his neck, but each night back into the shoe it must go.  He
+flung himself on the bunk, not to sleep, but to think and wonder.
+
+Meantime there was great excitement in the dive.  The waiter was
+rocking his body, wailing and holding his jaw.  His companion was
+sitting on the floor.  In the wine-room two policemen and a thick-set,
+black-mustached man in a derby hat were asking questions.
+
+"Robbed!" moaned Jameson.
+
+The man in the derby hat shook him roughly.  "Robbed o' what, y' soak?"
+
+"Robbed!"
+
+"Mike," said the man in the derby, "put th' darbies on th' Sneak.
+We'll get something for our trouble, anyhow.  An' tell that waiter t'
+put th' brakes on his yawp.  Bring him in here.  Now, you, what's
+happened?"
+
+"Why, the gink in uniform comes in . . ."
+
+The bartender interrupted.  "A gink dressed like a ship-steward comes
+in an' orders ale.  Drinks five glasses.  Goes out int' th' wine-room
+'cross th' hall an' orders a bottle o' gin.  An' next I hears Johnny
+howlin' murder.  Frame-up, Mr. Haggerty.  Nothin' t' do with it, hones'
+t' Gawd!  Th' boss ain't here."
+
+Jameson lurched toward the bartender.  "Young lookin'?  Red cheeks?
+'Old himself like a sojer?"
+
+"That's 'im," agreed the bartender.
+
+"What were y' robbed of?" demanded Haggerty.
+
+Jameson looked into a pair of chilling blue eyes.  His own wavered
+drunkenly.  "Money."
+
+"Y' lie!  What was it?"  Haggerty seized Jameson by the collar and
+swung him about.  "Hurry up!"
+
+"I tell you, my money.  Paid off t'dy.  'E knew it.  Sly."  Jameson had
+become almost sober.  Out of the muddle one thing loomed clearly: he
+could not be revenged upon his cabin-mate without getting himself into
+deep trouble.  Money; he'd stick to that.
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Name's Webb; firs'-class steward on th' _Celtic_.  Damn 'im!"
+
+"Lock this fool up till morning," said Haggerty.  "I'll find out what
+he's been robbed of."
+
+"British subject!" roared Jameson.
+
+"Not t'night.  Take 'im away.  Think I saw th' fellow running as I came
+by.  Yelled at him, but he could run some.  Take 'im away.  Something
+fishy about this.  I'll call on my friend Webb in th' morning.  There
+might be something in this."
+
+And Haggerty paid his call promptly; only, Thomas saw him first.  The
+morning sun lighted up the rugged Irish face.  Thomas not only saw him
+but knew who he was, and in this he had the advantage of the encounter.
+One of the first things a detective has to do is to surprise his man,
+and then immediately begin to bullyrag and overbear him; pretend that
+all is known, that the game is up.  Nine times out of ten it serves,
+for in the same ratio there is always a doubtful confederate who may
+"peach" in order to save himself.
+
+Thomas never stirred from his place against the rail.  He drew on his
+pipe and pretended to be stolidly interested in the sweating
+stevedores, the hoist-booms and the brown coffee-bags.
+
+A hand fell lightly on his shoulder.  Haggerty had a keen eye for a
+face; he saw weak spots, where a hundred other men would have seen
+nothing out of the ordinary.  The detective always planned his campaign
+upon his interpretation of the face of the intended victim.
+
+"Webb?"
+
+Thomas lowered his pipe and turned.  "Yes, sir."
+
+"Where were you between 'leven an' twelve last night?"
+
+"What is that to you, sir?"  (Yeoman of the Guard style.)
+
+"What did Jameson take away from you?"
+
+"Who are you, and what's your business with me?"  The pipe-stem
+returned with a click to its ivory vise.
+
+"My name is Haggerty, of th' New York detective force; American
+Scotland Yard, 'f that'll sound better.  Better tell me all about it."
+
+"I'm a British subject, on board a British ship."
+
+"Nothing doing in m' lord style.  When y' put your foot on that pier
+you become amenable t' th' laws o' th' United States, especially 'f
+you've committed a crime."
+
+"A crime?"
+
+"Listen here.  You went int' Lumpy Joe's, waited till Jameson got
+drunk, an' then you rolled him."
+
+"Rolled?"--genuinely bewildered.
+
+"Picked his pockets, if you want it blunt.  Th' question is, did he
+take it from you 'r you from him?  I can arrest you, Mr. Webb, British
+subject 'r not.  'S up t' you t' tell me th' story.  Don't be afraid of
+me; I don't eat up men.  All y' got t' do is t' treat me on th' level.
+You won't lose anything 'f you're honest."
+
+"Come with me, sir."  (The smuggler was, in his day, a match in cunning
+for any or all of His Majesty's coast-guards.)
+
+Haggerty followed the young man down the various companionways.
+Instinctively he knew what was coming, the pith of the matter if not
+the details.  Thomas pulled out his trunk, unlocked it, threw back the
+lid, and picked up an old leather box.
+
+"Look at this, sir.  It was my mother's.  And I'd be a fine chap, would
+I not, to let a drunken scoundrel steal it and get away with it."
+
+It was a Neapolitan brooch, of pink coral, surrounded by small pearls.
+Haggerty balanced it on his palm and appraised it at three or found
+hundred dollars.  He glanced casually into the leather box.  Some faded
+tin-types, some letters, a very old Bible, and odds and ends of a young
+man's fancy: Haggerty shrugged.  It looked as if he had stumbled into a
+mare's-nest.
+
+"He said you took money."
+
+"He lied,"--tersely.
+
+"Do y' want t' appear against him?"
+
+"No.  We sail at seven to-morrow.  So long as he missed his shot, let
+him go."
+
+"Why didn't y' lodge a complaint against him?"
+
+"I'm not familiar with your laws, Mr. Haggerty.  So I took the matter
+in my own hands."
+
+"Don't do it again.  Sorry t' trouble you.  But duty's duty.  An'
+listen.  Always play your game above board; it pays."
+
+"Thanks."
+
+Haggerty started to offer his hand, but the look in the gray eyes
+caused him to misdoubt and reconsider the impulse.  So Thomas made his
+first mistake, which, later on, was to cost him dear.  Coconnas shook
+hands with Caboche the headsman, and escaped the "question
+extraordinary."  Truth is, Thomas was not an accomplished liar.  He
+could lie to the detective, but he could not bring himself to shake
+hands on it.
+
+On the way down the plank Haggerty mused: "An' I thought I had a hunch!"
+
+Thomas sighed.  "Play your game above board; it pays."  Into what a
+labyrinth of lies he was wayfaring!
+
+That same night, on the other side of the Atlantic, the ninth Baron of
+Dimbledon sailed for America to rehabilitate his fortunes.  He did and
+he didn't.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Thomas was a busy man up to and long after the hour of sailing.  His
+cabins were filled with about all the variant species of the race: two
+nervous married women with their noisy mismanaged children, three young
+men on a lark, and an actress who was paying her husband's expenses and
+gladly announced the fact over and through the partitions.  Three bells
+tingled all day long, and the only thing that saved Thomas from the
+"sickbay" was the fact that the bar closed at eleven.  And a rough
+passage added to his labors.  No Henley this voyage, no comfy loafing
+about the main-deck in the sunshine.  A busy, miserable, dejected young
+man, who cursed his folly and yet clung to it with that tenacity which
+makes prejudice England's first-born.
+
+Night after night, stretched out wearily on his bunk, the sordid
+picture of Lumpy Joe's returned to him.  By a hair's breadth!  It was
+always a source of amazement to recall how quickly and shrewdly his
+escape had been managed.  He felt reasonably safe.  Jameson would never
+dare tell what he knew, to incriminate himself for the sake of revenge.
+To have got the best of him and to have pulled the wool over the eyes
+of a keen American detective!
+
+In Liverpool he deliberately threw away a full sovereign in
+motion-pictures and music-halls.  But he drank nothing, not even his
+customary ale.  Not so long ago he had tasted his first champagne; very
+expensive, something more than two hundred pounds.  Stupid ass!  And
+yet . . .  The very life he had always been longing for, dreaming of,
+behind his counters: to be free, to rove at will, to seek adventure.
+
+"Then," said Sir Tristram, "I will fight with you unto the uttermost."
+"I grant," said Sir Palomides, "for in a better quarrel keep I never to
+fight, for and I die of your hands, of a better knight's hands may I
+not be slain." . . .
+
+Off for America again; and the Book of Marvelous Adventures, to be
+opened wide by a pair of Irish blue eyes, deep as the sea, glancing as
+the sunlight on its crests.
+
+"You are my steward, I believe?"
+
+In his soul of souls Thomas hoped so.  "Yes, miss--indeed, yes, if you
+occupy this cabin."
+
+"Here are the tickets"; and the young lady signed the slip of paper he
+gave her: Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Killigrew, Miss Killigrew and maid.  "I
+shall probably keep you very busy."  There was a twinkle in her eyes,
+but he was English and did not see it.
+
+"That is what I am here for, miss."  He smiled reassuringly.
+
+"Never ask my father if he wishes tea and toast"--gravely.
+
+"Yes, miss"--with honest gravity.  Thomas knew nothing of women, young
+or old.  With the habits and tastes of the male biped he was tolerably
+familiar.  He was to learn.
+
+"Hot water-bottles for my mother every night, and a pot of chocolate
+for myself.  I shall always have my breakfast early in the saloon.  I'm
+a first-rate sailor."
+
+A rush, a whir.
+
+"Kitty, you darling!  They have put us on the other side of the ship."
+
+Thomas was genuinely glad of it.  With a goddess and a nymph to wait
+upon, heaven knew how many broken dishes he'd have to account for.
+Never in the park, never after the matinees, never in all wide London,
+had he seen two such lovely types: Titian and Greuse.
+
+"No!" said the Greuse.
+
+"Stupid mistake at the booking-office," replied the Titian.  "Come up
+on deck.  They are putting off."
+
+"Just a moment.  Put the small luggage, Mr. . . ."
+
+"Webb."
+
+"Mr. Webb.  Put the small luggage on the lounge.  Never mind the
+straps.  That is all."
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+The two young women hurried off.  Thomas stared after them, his brows
+bent in a mixture of perplexity, dazzlement and diffidence.
+
+"A very good-looking steward."
+
+"Kitty, you little wretch!"
+
+"Why, he _is_ good-looking."
+
+"Princes, dukes, waiters, cabbies, stewards; all you do is look at
+them, and they become slaves.  You've more mischief in you than a dozen
+kittens."
+
+"I have met cabbies whom I much prefer to certain dukes."
+
+"But I've a young man picked out for you.  He's an artist."
+
+"Good night!" murmured Kitty.  "If there is one kind of person in the
+world dad considers wholly useless and incompetent, it's an artist or a
+poet."
+
+"But this artist makes fifteen thousand and sometimes twenty thousand
+the year."
+
+"Then he's no artist.  What is his name?"
+
+"Forbes, J. Mortimer Forbes."
+
+"Oh.  The pretty-cover man."
+
+"My dear, he is one of the nicest young men in New York.  His family is
+one of the best, and he goes everywhere.  And but for his
+kindness. . . ."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Some day I'll tell you the story.  Here we go!  Good-by, England!"
+
+"Good-by, sapphires!" said Kitty, so low that the other did not hear
+her.
+
+At dinner Thomas was called to account by the chief steward for
+permitting his thumb to connect with the soup.  But what would you,
+with Titian and Greuse smiling a soft "Thank you!" for everything you
+did for them?
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+"Night, daddy."
+
+"Good night, Kittibudget."
+
+Crawford smiled after the blithe, buoyant figure as it swung
+confidently down the deck.
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do," mused Killigrew, looking across
+the rail at the careening stars.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"That child.  I can't harness her."
+
+"Somebody's bound to"--prophetically.
+
+"It's got to be a whole man, or he'll wish he'd never been born.  She's
+had her way so long that she's spoiled."
+
+"Not a bit of it."
+
+"Yes, she is.  I told her not to wear those sapphires that night.  And,
+by the way, I've been hoping they'd turn up like that ruby of yours.
+How do you account for that?"
+
+The coal of Crawford's cigar waxed and waned and the ash lengthened.
+
+"I've no doubt that you've been mighty curious since that morning.
+Perhaps you read the tale in the newspapers.  I know of only one man
+who would return the Nana Sahib's ruby.  Sentiment; for I believe the
+poor devil was really fond of me.  A valet.  With me for ten years.  He
+was really my comrade; always my right-hand on my exploration trips;
+back-boned, fearless, reliable in a pinch, and a scholar in a way;
+though I can't imagine how and where he picked up his learning.  He
+saved my life at least twice by his quick wit.  In those days I was
+something of a stick; never went out.  I hired him upon his word and
+because he looked honest.  And he was for ten years.  He gave his name
+as Mason, said he was born in central New York.  We got along without
+friction of any sort.  And I still miss him.  Stole a hundred thousand
+dollars' worth of gems; hid them in the heels of my old shoes and
+nearly got away with them.  Haggerty, the detective, thought for weeks
+that I was the man.  I still believe that I was the innocent cause of
+Mason's relapse; for Haggerty was certain that somewhere in the past
+Mason had been a criminal.  You see, I had a peculiar fad.  I used to
+buy up old safes and open them for the sport of it.  Crazy idea, but I
+found a good deal of amusement in it."
+
+"You don't say!" gasped Killigrew, who had never heard of this phase
+before.
+
+"It's my belief that Mason got his inspiration from watching me.  I am
+devilish sorry."
+
+"Then you believe that he is up to his old tricks again?"
+
+"Yes,"--reluctantly.  "The man who took my wife's ruby, took your
+daughter's sapphires.  It needed a clever mind to conceive such a
+_coup_.  Three other carriages were entered, with more or less success.
+In a dense fog; a needle in a haystack.  And they'll never find him."
+
+"It's up to you to put the detectives on the right track."
+
+"I suppose I'll have to do it."
+
+"If he returns to America he'll be caught.  I'll give Haggerty the tip."
+
+"I have my doubts of Mason committing any such folly.  He picked up a
+small fortune that night.  Strange mix-up."
+
+"Here, try one of these," urged Killigrew, as the butt of Crawford's
+cigar went overboard.
+
+"Thanks."
+
+Thomas moved away from the ventilator.  Mix-up, indeed!  He stole down
+to the promenade deck, where the stewardess informed him that Miss
+Killigrew had just ordered her chocolate.  He flew to the kitchens.  It
+was a narrow escape.  To have been found wanting the first night out!
+
+"Come in," said a voice in answer to his knock.
+
+[Illustration: "Come in," said a voice.]
+
+He set the tray down on the stool, his heart insurgent and his fingers
+all thumbs.  He might live to be a steward eighty years old, but he
+never would get over the awe, the embarrassment of these invasions by
+night.  Each time he saw a woman in her peignoir or kimono he felt as
+though he had committed a sacrilege.  True, he understood their
+attitude; he was merely a serving machine and for the time wiped off
+the roster of mankind.
+
+A long blue coat of silk brocade enveloped Kitty from her throat to her
+sandals; sleeves which fell over her hands; buttoned by loops over
+corded knots.  An experienced traveler could have told him that it was
+the peculiar garment which any self-respecting Chinaman would wear who
+was in mourning for his grandfather.  Kitty wore it because of its
+beauty alone.
+
+"Thank you," she said, as Thomas went out backward, court style.  Kitty
+smiled across at her maid who was arranging the combs and brushes
+preparatory to taking down her mistress' hair.  "He looked as if he
+were afraid of something, Celeste."
+
+Celeste smiled enigmatically.  "Ma'm'selle shoult haff been born in
+Pariss."
+
+This was translatable, or not, as you pleased.  Kitty sipped the
+chocolate and found it excellent.  At length she dismissed the maid,
+switched off the lights, and then remembered that there was no water in
+the carafe.  She rang.
+
+Thomas replied so promptly that he could not have been farther off than
+the companionway.  "You rang, miss?"
+
+"Yes, Webb.  Please fill this carafe."
+
+"Is it possible that it was empty, miss?"
+
+"I used it and forgot to ring for more."
+
+All this in the dark.
+
+Thomas hurried away, wishing he could find some magic spring on board.
+For what purpose he could not have told.
+
+As for Kitty, she remained standing by the door, profoundly astonished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Third day out.
+
+Kitty smiled at the galloping horizon; smiled at the sunny sky; smiled
+at the deck-steward as he served the refreshing broth; smiled at the
+tips of her sensible shoes, at her hands, at her neighbors: until Mrs.
+Crawford could contain her curiosity no longer.
+
+"Kitty Killigrew, what have you been doing?"
+
+"Doing?"
+
+"Well, going to do?"--shrewdly.
+
+Kitty gazed at her friend in pained surprise, her blue eyes as innocent
+as the sea--and as full of hidden mysterious things.  "Good gracious!
+can't a person be happy and smile?"
+
+"Happy I have no doubt you are; but I've studied that smile of yours
+too closely not to be alarmed by it."
+
+"Well, what does it say?"
+
+"Mischief."
+
+Kitty did not reply to this, but continued smiling--at space this time.
+
+On the ship crossing to Naples in February their chairs on deck had
+been together; they had become acquainted, and this acquaintance had
+now ripened into one of those intimate friendships which are really
+sounder and more lasting than those formed in youth.  Crawford had
+heard of Killigrew as a great and prosperous merchant, and Killigrew
+had heard of Crawford as a millionaire whose name was very rarely
+mentioned in the society pages of the Sunday newspapers.  Men recognize
+men at once; it doesn't take much digging.  Before they arrived in
+Naples they had agreed to take the Sicilian trip together, then up
+Italy, through France, to England.  The scholar and the merchant at
+play were like two boys out of school; the dry whimsical humor of the
+Scotsman and the volatile sparkle of the Irishman made them capital
+foils.
+
+Killigrew dropped his _Rodney Stone_.
+
+"Say, Crawford," he began, "after seeing ten thousand saints in ten
+thousand cathedrals, since February, I'd give a hundred dollars for a
+ringside ticket to a scrap like that one,"--indicating the volume on
+his knee.
+
+Crawford lay back and laughed.
+
+"Well," said his wife, with an amused smile, "why don't you say it?"
+
+"Say what?"
+
+"'So would I!'"
+
+"Men are quite hopeless," sighed Mrs. Killigrew, when the laughter had
+subsided.
+
+"You oughtn't object to a good shindy, Molly," slyly observed her
+husband.  "You'll never forgive me that black eye."
+
+"I'll never forgive the country you got it in,"--grimly.  "But what's
+the harm in a good scrap between two husky fellows, trained to a hair
+to slam-bang each other?"
+
+"It isn't refined, dad," said Kitty.
+
+He sent a searching glance at her; he never was sure when that girl was
+laughing.  "Fiddle-sticks!  For four months now I've been shopping
+every day with you women, and you can't tell me prize-fights are
+brutal."
+
+Crawford applauded gently.
+
+"By the way, Crawford, you know something about direct charity."
+Killigrew threw back his rug and sat up.  "I've got an idea.  What's
+the use of giving checks to hospitals and asylums and colleges, when
+you don't know whether the cash goes right or wrong?  I'm going to let
+Molly here start a home-bureau to keep her from voting; a lump sum
+every year to give away as she pleases.  I'm strong for giving boys
+college education.  Smooths 'em out; gives them a start in life; that
+is, if they are worth anything at the beginning.  Like this: back the
+boy and screw up his honor and interest by telling him that you expect
+to be paid back when the time comes.  There's no better charity in the
+world than making a man of a boy, making him want to stand on his own
+feet, independent.  When you help inefficient people, you throw your
+money away.  What do you think of the idea?"
+
+"A first-rate one.  I'd like to come in."
+
+"No; this is all my own and Molly's.  But how'll I start her off?"
+
+"Get an efficient young man to act as private secretary; a fairly good
+accountant; no rich man's son, but some one who has had a chance to
+observe life.  Make him a buffer between Mrs. Killigrew and the whining
+cheats.  And above all, no young man who has social entree to your
+house.  That kind of a private secretary is always a fizzle."
+
+"Any one in mind?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I have," said Kitty, rising and going toward the companion-ladder to
+the lower decks.
+
+"What now?" demanded Killigrew.
+
+"Let her be; Kitty has a sensible head on her shoulders, for all her
+foolery."  Mrs. Killigrew laid a restraining hand on her husband's arm.
+
+But Mrs. Crawford smiled a replica of that smile which had aroused her
+curiosity in regard to Kitty.  And then her face grew serious.
+
+Kitty had a mind like her father's.  Her ideas were seldom nebulous or
+slow in forming.  They sprang forth, full grown, like those
+mythological creatures: Minerva was an idea of Jove's, as doubtless
+Venus was an idea of Neptune's.  Men with this quality become
+captains-general of armies or of money-bags.  In a man it signifies
+force; in a woman, charm.
+
+Kitty searched diligently and found the object of her quest on the
+main-deck, starboard, leaning against one of the deck supports and
+reading from a book which lay flat on the broad teak rail, in a blue
+shadow.  The sea smiled at Kitty and Kitty smiled at the sea.  Men are
+not the only adventurers; they have no monopoly on daring.  And what
+Kitty proposed doing was daring indeed, for she did not know into what
+dangers it might eventually lead her.
+
+"Mr. Webb?"
+
+Thomas looked up.  "You are wanting me, miss?"
+
+"If you are not too busy."
+
+"Really, no.  I have been reading."  He closed the book, loose-leafed
+from frequent perusals.  "I am at your service."
+
+"Do you read much, Mr. Webb?"
+
+The reiteration of the prefix to his name awakened him to the marvelous
+fact that for the present he was no longer the machine; she was
+recognizing the man.
+
+"Perhaps, for a man in my station, I read too much, Miss Killigrew."
+
+Kitty's scarlet lips stirred ever so slightly.  It was the first time
+he had added the name to the prefix: he in his turn was recognizing the
+woman.  And this rather pleased her, for she liked to be recognized.
+
+"May I ask what it is you are reading?"
+
+He offered the book to her.  _Morte d'Arthur_.  Kitty's eyebrows, a
+hundred years or more ago, would have stirred to tender lyrics the
+quills of Prior and Lovelace and Suckling: arched when interested, a
+funny little twist to the inner points when angered, and when laughter
+possessed her. . . .  Let Thomas indite the sonnet!  Just now they were
+widely arched.
+
+"I am very fond of the book," explained Thomas diffidently.  "I love
+the pompous gallantry of these fairy chaps.  How politely they used to
+hack each other into pieces!"
+
+"Are you by chance a university man?"
+
+"No.  I am self-educated, if one may call it that.  My father was a
+fellow at Trinity.  For myself, I have always had to work."
+
+"Do you like your present occupation?"
+
+"It was the best I could find."  How he would have liked to throw
+discretion to the winds and tell her the whole miserable story!
+
+"Are you good at accounting?"
+
+"Fairly."  What was all this about?  He began to riffle the leaves of
+the book, restively.
+
+"Could you tell an honest man from a dishonest one?"
+
+"I believe so."  Thomas had eyebrows, too, but he did not know how to
+use them properly.  Tell an honest man from a dishonest one, forsooth!
+
+Kitty found the situation less easy than she had anticipated.  The more
+questions she asked, the more embarrassed she grew; and it angered her
+because there was no clear reason why she should become embarrassed.
+And she also remarked his uneasiness.  However, she went on
+determinedly.
+
+"Have you ever had any contact with real poverty?"
+
+"Yes,"--close-lipped.  "Pardon me, Miss Killigrew, but . . ."
+
+"Just a moment, Mr. Webb," she interrupted.  "I dare say my questions
+seem impertinent, but they have a purpose back of them.  My mother and
+I are looking for a private secretary for a charitable concern which we
+are going to organize shortly.  We desire some one who is educated, who
+will be capable of guarding us from persons not worthy of benefactions,
+who will make recommendations, seek into the affairs of those
+considered worthy.  We shall, of course, expect to find room for you.
+It will not be a chatter-tea-drinking affair.  You will have the
+evenings to yourself and all of Sundays.  The salary will be two
+hundred a month."
+
+"Pounds?" gasped Thomas.
+
+"Oh, no; dollars.  I do not expect your answer at this moment.  You
+must have time to think it over."
+
+"It is not necessary, Miss Killigrew."
+
+"You decline?"
+
+"On the contrary, I accept with a good deal of gratitude.  On
+condition," he added gravely.
+
+"And that?"
+
+"You will ask me no questions regarding my past."
+
+Kitty looked squarely into his eyes and he returned the glance steadily
+and calmly.
+
+"Very well; I accept the condition,"
+
+Thomas was mightily surprised.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+He had put forward this condition, perfectly sure that she would refuse
+to accept it.  He could not understand.
+
+"You accept that condition?"
+
+"Yes."  Having gone thus far with her plot, Kitty would have died
+rather than retreated; Irish temperament.
+
+Thomas was moved to a burst of confidence.  "I know that I am poor, and
+to the best of my belief, honest.  Moreover, perhaps I should be
+compelled by the exigencies of circumstance to leave you after a few
+months.  I am not a rich man, masquerading for the sport of it; I am
+really poor and grateful for any work.  It is only fair that I should
+tell you this much, that I am running away from no one.  Beyond the
+fact that I am the son of a very great but unknown scholar, a farmer of
+mediocre talents who lost his farm because he dreamed of humanity
+instead of cabbages, I have nothing to say."  He said it gravely,
+without pride or veiled hauteur.
+
+"That is frank enough," replied Kitty, curiously stirred.  "You will
+not find us hard task-masters.  Be here this afternoon at three.  My
+father will wish to talk to you.  And be as frank with him as you have
+been with me."
+
+She smiled and nodded brightly, and turned away.  He had a glimpse of a
+tan shoe and a slim tan-silk ankle, which poised birdlike above the
+high doorsill; and then she vanished into the black shadow of the
+companionway.  She afterward confessed to me that her sensation must
+have been akin to that of a boy who had stolen an apple and beaten the
+farmer in the race to the road.
+
+We all make the mistake of searching for our drama, forgetting that it
+arrives sooner or later, unsolicited.
+
+Bewitched.  Thomas should have been the happiest man alive, but the
+devil had recruited him for his miserables.  Her piquant face no longer
+confronting and bewildering him, he saw this second net into which he
+had permitted himself to be drawn.  As if the first had not been
+colossal enough!  Where would it all end?  Private secretary and two
+hundred the month--forty pounds--this was a godsend.  But to take her
+orders day by day, to see her, to be near her. . . .  Poverty-stricken
+wretch that he was, he should have declined.  Now he could not; being a
+simple Englishman, he had given his word and meant to abide by it.
+There was one glimmer of hope; her father.  He was a practical merchant
+and would not permit a man without a past (often worse than a man with
+one) to enter his establishment.
+
+Thomas was not in love with Kitty.  (Indeed, this isn't a love story at
+all.)  Stewards, three days out, are not in the habit of falling in
+love with their charges (Maundering and Drool notwithstanding).  He was
+afraid of her; she vaguely alarmed him; that was all.
+
+For seven years he had dwelt in his "third floor back"; had breakfasted
+and dined with two old maids, their scrawny niece, and a muscular young
+stenographer who shouted militant suffrage and was not above throwing a
+brickbat whenever the occasion arrived.  There was a barmaid or two at
+the pub where he lunched at noon; but chaff was the alpha and omega of
+this acquaintance.  Thus, Thomas knew little or nothing of the sex.
+
+The women with whom he conversed, played the gallant, the hero, the
+lover (we none of us fancy ourselves as rogues!) were those who peopled
+his waking dreams.  She was La Belle Isoude, Elaine, Beatrice,
+Constance; it all depended upon what book he had previously been
+reading.  It is when we men are confronted with the living picture of
+some one of our dreams of them that women cease to dwell in the
+abstract and become issues, to be met with more or less trepidation.
+Back among some of his idle dreams there had been a Kitty, blue-eyed,
+black-haired, slender and elfish.
+
+Kitty sat down in her chair.  "Well," she said, "I have found him."
+
+"Found whom?" asked Mrs. Crawford.
+
+"The private secretary."
+
+"What?"  Killigrew swung his feet to the deck.  "What the dickens have
+you been doing now?  Who is it?"
+
+"Webb."
+
+"The steward?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, if that . . ." began Killigrew belligerently.
+
+"Dad, either mother and I act as we please, or you may attend to the
+home-bureau yourself.  Mother, it was agreed and understood that I
+should select any employee we might happen to need."
+
+"It was, my dear."
+
+"Very good.  I want some one who will attend to the affairs honestly
+and painstakingly.  There must be no idler about the house; and any
+young man . . ."
+
+"Wouldn't an old one do?" suggested Killigrew.
+
+"Whose set ideas would clash constantly with ours.  And any young man
+we know would idle and look on the whole affair as a fine joke.  I've
+had a talk with Webb.  He's not a university man, but he's educated.  I
+found him reading _Morte d'Arthur_."
+
+"Ah!"--from Crawford.
+
+"He became a steward because he could find nothing else to do at the
+present time.  He has been poor, and I dare say he has known the pinch
+of poverty.  You said only this morning, dad, that he was the most
+attentive steward you had ever met on shipboard.  Besides, there is a
+case in point.  Our butler was a steward before you engaged him, six
+years ago."
+
+Killigrew began to smile.  "How much have you offered him as a salary?"
+
+"Two hundred a month, to be paid out of the funds."
+
+"Janet," said Crawford, "it's a good thing I'm married, or I'd apply
+for the post myself."
+
+"All right," agreed Killigrew; "a bargain's a bargain."
+
+"A wager's a wager," thought Kitty.
+
+"If you wake up some fine morning and find the funds gone . . ."
+
+"Mother and I will attend to all checks, such as they are."
+
+"Kitty, any day you say I'll take you into the firm as chief counsel.
+But before I approve of your selection, I'd like to have a talk with
+our friend Webb."
+
+"He expects it.  You are to see him on the main-deck at three this
+afternoon."
+
+"Molly, how long have we been married?"
+
+"Thirty years, Daniel."
+
+"How old is Kitty?"
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Twenty-two," answered Mrs. Killigrew relentlessly.
+
+"Well, I was going to say that I've learned more about the Killigrew
+family in these four months of travel than in all those years together."
+
+"Something more than ornaments," suggested Kitty dryly.
+
+"Yes, indeed," replied her father amiably.
+
+And when he returned to the boat-deck that afternoon for tea (which, by
+the way, he never drank, being a thorough-going coffee merchant), he
+said to Kitty: "You win on points.  If Webb doesn't pan out, why, we
+can discharge him.  I'll take a chance at a man who isn't afraid to
+look you squarely in the eyes."
+
+At the precise time when Kitty retired and Thomas went aft for his good
+night pipe--eleven o'clock at sea and nine in New York--Haggerty found
+himself staring across the street at an old-fashioned house.  Like the
+fisherman who always returns to the spot where he lost the big one, the
+detective felt himself drawn toward this particular dwelling.  Crawford
+did not live there any more; since his marriage he had converted it
+into a private museum.  It was filled with mummies and cartonnages,
+ancient pottery and trinkets.
+
+What a game it had been!  A hundred thousand in precious gems, all
+neatly packed away in the heels of Crawford's old shoes!  And where was
+that man Mason?  Would he ever return?  Oh, well; he, Haggerty, had got
+his seven thousand in rewards; he was living now like a nabob up in the
+Bronx.  He had no real cause to regret Mason's advent or his escape.
+Yet, deep in his heart burned the chagrin of defeat: his man had got
+away, and half the game (if you're a true hunter) was in putting your
+hand on a man's shoulder and telling him to "Come along."
+
+He crossed the street and entered the, alley and gazed up at the
+fire-escape down which Mason had made his escape.  What impelled the
+detective to leap up and catch the lower bars of the ground-ladder he
+could not have told you.  He pulled himself up and climbed to the
+window.
+
+Open!
+
+Haggerty had nerves like steel wires, but a slight shiver ran down his
+spine.  Open, and Crawford yet on the high seas.  He waited, listening
+intently.  Not a sound of any sort came to his ears.  He stepped inside
+courageously and slipped with his back to the wall, where he waited,
+holding his breath.
+
+Click!  It seemed to come from his right.
+
+"Come out o' that!" he snarled.  "No monkey-business, or I'll shoot."
+
+He flashed his pocket-lamp toward the sound, and aimed.
+
+A blow on the side of the head sent the detective crashing against a
+cartonnage, and together the quick and the dead rolled to the floor.
+Instinctively Haggerty turned on his back, aimed at the window and
+fired.
+
+Too late!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+When the constellation, which was not included among the accepted
+theories of Copernicus, passed away, Haggerty sat up and rubbed the
+swelling over his ear, tenderly yet grimly.  Next, he felt about the
+floor for his pocket-lamp.  A strange spicy dust drifted into his nose
+and throat, making him sneeze and cough.  A mummy had reposed in the
+overturned cartonnage and the brittle bindings had crumbled into
+powder.  He soon found the lamp, and sent its point of vivid white
+light here and there about the large room.
+
+Pursuit of his assailant was out of the question.  Haggerty was not
+only hard of head but shrewd.  So he set about the accomplishment of
+the second best course, that of minute and particular investigation.
+Some one had entered this deserted house: for what?  This, Haggerty
+must find out.  He was fairly confident that the intruder did not know
+who had challenged him; on the other hand, there might be lying around
+some clue to the stranger's identity.
+
+Was there light in the house, fluid in the wires?  If so he would be
+saved the annoyance of exploring the house by the rather futile aid of
+the pocket-lamp, which stood in need of a fresh battery.  He searched
+for the light-button and pressed it, hopefully.  The room, with all its
+brilliantly decorated antiquities, older than Rome, older than Greece,
+blinded Haggerty for a space.
+
+"Ain't that like these book chaps?" Haggerty murmured.  "T' go away
+without turning off th' meter!"
+
+The first thing Haggerty did was to scrutinize the desk which stood
+near the center of the room.  A film of dust lay upon it.  Not a mark
+anywhere.  In fact, a quarter of an hour's examination proved to
+Haggerty's mind that nothing in this room had been disturbed except the
+poor old mummy.  He concluded to leave that gruesome object where it
+lay.  Nobody but Crawford would know how to put him back in his box,
+poor devil.  Haggerty wondered if, after a thousand years, some one
+would dig him up!
+
+Through all the rooms on this floor he prowled, but found nothing.  He
+then turned his attention to the flight of stairs which led to the
+servants' quarters.  Upon the newel-post lay the fresh imprint of a
+hand.  Haggerty went up the stairs in bounds.  There were nine rooms on
+this floor, two connecting with baths.  In one of these latter rooms he
+saw a trunk, opened, its contents carelessly scattered about the floor.
+One by one he examined the garments, his heart beating quickly.  Not a
+particle of dust on them; plenty of finger-prints on the trunk.  It had
+been opened this very night--by one familiar, either at first-hand or
+by instruction.  He had come for something in that trunk.  What?
+
+From garret to cellar, thirty rooms in all; nothing but the hand-print
+on the newel-post and the opened trunk.  Haggerty returned to the
+museum, turned out all the lights except that on the desk, and sat down
+on a rug so as not to disturb the dust on the chairs.  The man might
+return.  It was certain that he, Haggerty, would come back on the
+morrow.  He was anxious to compare the thumb-print with the one he had
+in his collection.
+
+For what had the man come?  Keep-sakes?  Haggerty dearly wanted to
+believe that the intruder was the one man he desired in his net; but he
+refused to listen to the insidious whisperings; he must have proof,
+positive, absolute, incontestable.  If it was Crawford's man Mason, it
+was almost too good to be true; and he did not care to court ultimate
+disappointment.
+
+Proof, proof; but where?  Why had the man not returned the clothes to
+the trunk and shut it?  What had alarmed him?  Everything else
+indicated the utmost caution. . . .  A glint of light flashing and
+winking from steel.  Haggerty rose and went over to the window.  He
+picked up a bunch of keys, thirty or forty in all, on a ring, weighing
+a good pound.  The detective touched the throbbing bump and sensed a
+moisture; blood.  So this was the weapon?  He weighed the keys on his
+palm.  A long time since he had seen a finer collection of skeleton
+keys, thin and flat and thick and short, smooth and notched, each a gem
+of its kind.  Three or four ordinary keys were sandwiched in between,
+and Haggerty inspected these curiously.
+
+"H'm.  Mebbe it's a hunch.  Anyhow, I'll try it.  Can't lose anything
+trying."
+
+He turned out the desk light and went down to the lower hall, his
+pocket-lamp serving as guide.  He unlatched the heavy door-chains,
+opened the doors and closed them behind him.  He inserted one of the
+ordinary keys.  It refused to work.  He tried another.  The door swung
+open, easily.
+
+"Now, then, come down out o' that!" growled a voice at the foot of the
+steps.  "Thought y'd be comin' out by-'n-by.  No foolin' now, 'r I blow
+a hole through ye!"
+
+Haggerty wheeled quickly.  "'S that you, Dorgan?  Come up."
+
+"Haggerty?" said the astonished patrolman.  "An' Mitchell an' I've been
+watchin' these lights fer an hour!"
+
+"Some one's been here, though; so y' weren't wasting your time.  I
+climbed up th' fire-escape in th' alley an' got a nice biff on th' coco
+for me pains.  See any one running before y' saw th' lights?"
+
+"Why, yes!"
+
+"Ha!  It's hard work t' get it int' your heads that when y' see a man
+running at this time o' night, in a quiet side-street it's up t' you t'
+ask him questions."
+
+"Thought he was chasin' a cab."
+
+"Well, listen here.  Till th' owner comes back, keep your eyes peeled
+on this place.  An' any one y' see prowling around, nab him an' send
+for me.  On your way!"
+
+Haggerty departed in a hurry.  He had already made up his mind as to
+what he was going to do.  He hunted up a taxicab and told the chauffeur
+where to go, advising him to "hit it up."  His destination was the
+studio-apartment of J. Mortimer Forbes, the artist.  It was late, but
+this fact did not trouble Haggerty.  Forbes never went to bed until
+there was positively nothing else to do.
+
+The elevator-boy informed Haggerty that Mr. Forbes had just returned
+from the theater.  Alone?  Yes.  Haggerty pushed the bell-button.  A
+dog bayed.
+
+"Why, Haggerty, what's up?  Come on in.  Be still, Fritz!"
+
+The dachel's growl ended in a friendly snuffle, and he began to dance
+upon Haggerty's broad-toed shoes.
+
+"Bottle of beer?  Cigar?  Take that easy chair.  What's on your mind
+tonight?"  Forbes rattled away.  "Why, man, there's a cut on the side
+of your head!"
+
+"Uhuh.  Got any witch-hazel?"  The detective sat down, stretched out
+his legs, and pulled the dachel's ears.
+
+Forbes ran into the bathroom to fetch the witch-hazel.  Haggerty poured
+a little into his palm and dabbled the wound with it.
+
+"Now, spin it out; tell me what's happened," said Forbes, filling his
+calabash and pushing the cigars across the table.
+
+For a year and a half these two men, the antitheses of each other, had
+been intimate friends.  This liking was genuine, based on secret
+admiration, as yet to be confessed openly.  Forbes had always been
+drawn toward this man-hunting business; he yearned to rescue the
+innocent and punish the guilty.  Whenever a great crime was committed
+he instantly overflowed with theories as to what the criminal was
+likely to do afterward.  Haggerty enjoyed listening to his patter; and
+often there were illuminating flashes which obtained results for the
+detective, who never applied his energies in the direction of logical
+deduction.  Besides, the chairs in the studio were comfortable, the
+imported beer not too cold, and the cigars beyond criticism.
+
+Haggerty accepted a cigar, lighted it, and amusedly watched the eager
+handsome face of the artist.
+
+"Any poker lately?"
+
+"No; cut it out for six months.  Come on, now; don't keep me waiting
+any longer."
+
+"Mum's th' word?"--tantalizingly.
+
+"You ought to know that by this time"--aggrieved.
+
+Haggerty tossed the bunch of keys on the table.
+
+"Ha!  Good specimens, these," Forbes declared, handling them.  "Here's
+a window-opener."
+
+"Good boy!" said Haggerty, as a teacher would have commended a bright
+pupil.
+
+"And a door-chain lifter.  Nothing lacking.  Did he hit you with these?"
+
+"Ye-up."
+
+"What are these regular keys for?"
+
+"One o' them unlocks a door."  Haggerty smoked luxuriously.
+
+Forbes eyed the ordinary keys with more interest than the burglarious
+ones.  Haggerty was presently astonished to see the artist produce his
+own key-ring.
+
+"What now?"
+
+"When Crawford went abroad he left a key with me.  I am making some
+drawings for an Egyptian romance and wanted to get some atmosphere."
+
+"Uhuh."
+
+"Which key is it that unlocks a door?" asked Forbes, his eyes sparkling.
+
+"Never'll get that out o' your head, will you?"
+
+"Which key?"
+
+"Th' round-headed one."
+
+Forbes drew the key aside and laid it evenly against the one Crawford
+had left in his keeping.
+
+"By George!"
+
+"What's th' matter?"
+
+"He's come back!"--in a whisper.
+
+"You're a keen one!  Ye-up; Crawford's valet Mason is visiting in town."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+There are many threads and many knots in a net; these can not be thrown
+together haphazard, lest the big fish slip through.  At the bottom of
+the net is a small steel ring, and here the many threads and the many
+knots finally meet.  Forbes and Haggerty (who, by the way, thinks I'm a
+huge joke as a novelist) and the young man named Webb recounted this
+tale to me by threads and knots.  The ring was of Kitty Killigrew, for
+Kitty Killigrew, by Kitty Killigrew, to paraphrase a famous line.
+
+At one of the quieter hotels--much patronized by touring
+Englishmen--there was registered James Thornden and man.  Every
+afternoon Mr. Thornden and his man rode about town in a rented touring
+car.  The man would bundle his master's knees in a rug and take the
+seat at the chauffeur's side, and from there direct the journey.
+Generally they drove through the park, up and down Riverside, and back
+to the hotel in time for tea.  Mr. Thornden drank tea for breakfast
+along with his bacon and eggs, and at luncheon with his lamb or mutton
+chops, and at five o'clock with especially baked muffins and
+apple-tarts.
+
+Mr. Thornden never gave orders personally; his man always attended to
+that.  The master would, early each morning, outline the day's work,
+and the man would see to it that these instructions were fulfilled to
+the letter.  He was an excellent servant, by the way, light of foot,
+low of voice, serious of face, with a pair of eyes which I may liken to
+nothing so well as to a set of acetylene blow-pipes--bored right
+through you.
+
+The master was middle-aged, about the same height and weight as his
+valet.  He wore a full dark beard, something after the style of the
+early eighties of last century.  His was also a serious countenance,
+tanned, dignified too; but his eyes were no match for his valet's; too
+dreamy, introspective.  Screwed in his left eye was a monocle down from
+which flowed a broad ribbon.  In public he always wore it; no one about
+the hotel had as yet seen him without it, and he had been a guest there
+for more than a fortnight.
+
+He drank nothing in the way of liquor, though his man occasionally
+wandered into the bar and ordered a stout or an ale.  After dinner the
+valet's time appeared to be his own; for he went out nearly every
+night.  He seemed very much interested in shop-windows, especially
+those which were filled with curios.  Mr. Thornden frequently went to
+the theater, but invariably alone.
+
+Thus, they attracted little or no attention among the clerks and bell
+boys and waiters who had, in the course of the year, waited upon the
+wants of a royal duke and a grand duke, to say nothing of a maharajah,
+who was still at the hotel.  An ordinary touring Englishman was, then,
+nothing more than that.
+
+Until one day a newspaper reporter glanced carelessly through the hotel
+register.  The only thing which escapes the newspaper man is the art of
+saving; otherwise he is omnipotent.  He sees things, anticipates
+events, and often prearranges them; smells war if the secretary of the
+navy is seen to run for a street-car, is intimately acquainted with
+"the official in the position to know" and "the man higher up," "the
+gentleman on the inside," and other anonymous but famous individuals.
+He is tireless, impervious to rebuff, also relentless; as an
+investigator of crime he is the keenest hound of them all; often he
+does more than expose, he prevents.  He is the Warwick of modern times;
+he makes and unmakes kings, sceptral and financial.
+
+This particular reporter sent his card up to Mr. Thornden and was,
+after half an hour's delay, admitted to the suite.  Mr. Thornden laid
+aside his tea-cup.
+
+"I am a newspaper man, Mr. Thornden," said the young man, his eye
+roving about the room, visualizing everything, from the slices of lemon
+to the brilliant eyes of the valet.
+
+"Ah! a pressman.  What will you be wanting to see me about,
+sir?"--neither hostile nor friendly.
+
+"Do you intend to remain long in America--incog?"
+
+"Incog!"  Mr. Thorndon leaned forward in his chair and drew down his
+eyebrow tightly against the rim of his monocle.
+
+"Yes, sir.  I take it that you are Lord Henry Monckton, ninth Baron of
+Dimbledon."
+
+Master and man exchanged a rapid glance.
+
+"Tibbets," said the master coldly, "you registered."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What did you register?"
+
+"Oh," interposed the reporter, "it was the name Dimbledon caught my
+eye, sir.  You see, there was a paragraph in one of our London
+exchanges that you had sailed for America.  I'm what we call a hotel
+reporter; hunt up prominent and interesting people for interviews.  I'm
+sure yours is a very interesting story, sir."  The reporter was a
+pleasant, affable young man, and that was why he was so particularly
+efficient in his chosen line of work.
+
+"I was not prepared to disclose my identity so soon," said Lord
+Monckton ruefully.  "But since you have stumbled upon the truth, it is
+far better that I give you the facts as they are.  Interviewing is a
+novel experience.  What do you wish to know, sir?"
+
+And thus it was that, next morning, New York--and the continent as
+well--learned that Lord Henry Monckton, ninth Baron of Dimbledon, had
+arrived in America on a pleasure trip.  The story read more like the
+scenario of a romantic novel than a page from life.  For years the
+eighth Baron of Dimbledon had lived in seclusion, practically
+forgotten.  In India he had a bachelor brother, a son and a grandson.
+One day he was notified of the death (by bubonic plague) of these three
+male members of his family, the baron himself collapsed and died
+shortly after.  The title and estate went to another branch of the
+family.  A hundred years before, a daughter of the house had run away
+with the head-gardener and been disowned.  The great-great-grand-son of
+this woman became the ninth baron.  The present baron's life was
+recounted in full; and an adventurous life it had been, if the reporter
+was to be relied upon.  The interview appeared in a London journal,
+with the single comment--"How those American reporters misrepresent
+things!"
+
+It made capital reading, however; and in servants' halls the newspaper
+became very popular.  It gave rise to a satirical leader on the
+editorial page: "What's the matter with us republicans?  Liberty,
+fraternity and equality; we flaunt that flag as much as we ever did.
+Yet, what a howdy-do when a title comes along!  What a craning of
+necks, what a kotowing!  How many earldoms and dukedoms are not based
+upon some detestable action, some despicable service rendered some
+orgiastic sovereign!  The most honorable thing about the so-called
+nobility is generally the box-hedge which surrounds the manse.  Kotow;
+pour our millions into the bottomless purses of spendthrifts; give them
+our most beautiful women.  There is no remedy for human nature."
+
+It was this editorial which interested Killigrew far more than the
+story which had given birth to it.
+
+"That's the way to shout."
+
+"Does it do any good?" asked Kitty.  "If we had a lord for breakfast--I
+mean, at breakfast--would you feel at ease?  Wouldn't you be watching
+and wondering what it was that made him your social superior?"
+
+"Social superior?  Bah!"
+
+"That's no argument.  As this editor wisely says, there's no remedy for
+human nature.  When I was a silly schoolgirl I often wondered if there
+wasn't a duke in the family, or even a knight.  How do you account for
+that feeling?"
+
+"You were probably reading Bertha M. Clay," retorted her father, only
+too glad of such an opening.
+
+"What is your opinion of titles, Mr. Webb?" she asked calmly.
+
+"Mr. Webb is an Englishman, Kitty," reminded her mother.
+
+"All the more reason for wishing his point of view," was the reply.
+
+"A title, if managed well, is a fine business asset."  Thomas stared
+gravely at his egg-cup.
+
+"A humorist!" cried Killigrew, as if he had discovered a dodo.
+
+"Really, no.  I am typically English, sir."  But Thomas was smiling
+this time; and when he smiled Kitty found him very attractive.  She was
+leaning on her elbows, her folded hands propping her chin; and in his
+soul Thomas knew that she was looking at him with those boring critical
+blue eyes of hers.  Why was she always looking at him like that?  "It
+is notorious that we English are dull and stupid," he said.
+
+"Now you are making fun of us," said Kitty seriously.
+
+"I beg your pardon!"
+
+She dropped her hands from under her chin and laughed.  "Do you really
+wish to know the real secret of our antagonism, Mr. Webb?"
+
+"I should be very glad."
+
+"Well, then, we each of us wear a chip on our shoulder, simply because
+we've never taken the trouble to know each other well.  Most English we
+Americans meet are stupid and caddish and uninteresting; and most of
+the Americans you see are boastful, loud-talking and money-mad.  Our
+mutual impressions are wholly wrong to begin with."
+
+"I have no chip on my shoulder," Thomas refuted eagerly.
+
+"Neither have I."
+
+"But I have," laughed her father.  "I eat Englishmen for breakfast;
+fe-fo-fum style."
+
+How democratic indeed these kindly, unpretentious people were! thought
+Thomas.  A multimillionaire as amiable as a clerk; a daughter who would
+have graced any court in Europe with her charm and elfin beauty.  Up to
+a month ago he had held all Americans in tolerant contempt.
+
+It was as Kitty said: the real Englishman and the real American seldom
+met.
+
+He did not realize as yet that his position in this house was unique.
+In England all great merchants and statesmen and nobles had one or more
+private secretaries about.  He believed it to be a matter of course
+that Americans followed the same custom.  He would have been
+wonderfully astonished to learn that in all this mighty throbbing city
+of millions--people and money--there might be less than a baker's dozen
+who occupied simultaneously the positions of private secretary and
+friend of the family.  Mr. Killigrew had his private secretary, but
+this gentleman rarely saw the inside of the Killigrew home; it wasn't
+at all necessary that he should.  Killigrew was a sensible man; his
+business hours began when he left home and ended when he entered it.
+
+"Do you know any earls or dukes?" asked Killigrew, folding his napkin.
+
+"Really, no.  I have moved in a very different orbit.  I know many of
+them by sight, however."  He did not think it vital to add that he had
+often sold them collars and suspenders.
+
+The butler and the second man pulled back the ladies' chairs.
+Killigrew hurried away to his offices; Kitty and her mother went
+up-stairs; and Thomas returned to his desk in the library.  He was
+being watched by Kitty; nothing overt, nothing tangible, yet he sensed
+it: from the first day he had entered this house.  It oppressed him,
+like a presage of disaster.  Back of his chair was a fireplace, above
+this, a mirror.  Once--it was but yesterday--while with his back to his
+desk, day-dreaming, he had seen her in the mirror.  She stood in the
+doorway, a hand resting lightly against the portiere.  There was no
+smile on her face.  The moment he stirred, she vanished.
+
+Watched.  Why?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The home-bureau of charities was a success from the start; but beyond
+the fact that it served to establish Thomas Webb as private secretary
+in the Killigrew family, I was not deeply interested.  I know that
+Thomas ran about a good deal, delving into tenements and pedigrees,
+judging candidates, passing or condemning, and that he earned his
+salary, munificent as it appeared to him.  Forbes told me that he
+wouldn't have done the work for a thousand a week; and Forbes, like
+Panurge, had ten ways of making money and twelve ways of spending it.
+
+The amazing characteristic about Thomas was his unaffected modesty, his
+naturalness, his eagerness to learn, his willingness to accept
+suggestions, no matter from what source.  Haberdashers' clerks--at
+least, those I have known--are superior persons; they know it all, you
+can not tell them a single thing.  I can call to witness dozens of
+neckties and shirts I shall never dare wear in public.  But perhaps
+seven years among a clientele of earls and dukes, who were set in their
+ideas, had something to do with Thomas' attitude.
+
+Killigrew was very well satisfied with the venture.  He had had some
+doubts at the beginning: a man whose past ended at Pier 60 did not look
+like a wise speculation, especially in a household.  But quite
+unconsciously Thomas himself had taken these doubts out of Killigrew's
+mind and--mislaid them.  The subscriptions to all the suffragette
+weeklies and monthlies were dropped; and there were no more banners
+reading "Votes for Women" tacked over the doorways.  Besides this, the
+merchant had a man to talk to, after dinner, he with his cigar and
+Thomas with his pipe, this privilege being insisted upon by the women
+folk, who had tact to leave the two men to themselves.
+
+Thomas amused the millionaire.  Here was a young man of a species with
+whom he had not come into contact in many years: a boy who did not know
+the first thing about poker, or bridge, or pinochle, who played
+outrageous billiards and who did not know who the latest reigning
+theatrical beauty was, and moreover, did not care a rap; who could
+understand a joke within reasonable time if he couldn't tell one; who
+was neither a nincompoop nor a mollycoddle.  Thomas interested
+Killigrew more and more as the days went past.
+
+Happily, the voice of conscience is heard by no ears but one's own.
+
+After luncheons Thomas had a good deal of time on his hands; and, to
+occupy this time he returned to his old love, composition.  He began to
+rewrite his romance; and one day Kitty discovered him pegging away at
+it.  He rose from his chair instantly.
+
+"Will you be wanting me, Miss Killigrew?"
+
+"Only to say that father will be detained down-town to-night and that
+you will be expected to take mother and me to the theater.  It is one
+of your English musical comedies; and very good, they say."
+
+Thomas had been dreading such a situation.  As yet there had been no
+entertaining at the Killigrew home; nearly all their friends were out
+of town for the summer; thus far he had escaped.
+
+"I am sorry, Miss Killigrew, but I have no suitable clothes."  Which
+was plain unvarnished truth.  "And I do not possess an opera-hat."  And
+never did.
+
+Kitty laughed pleasantly.  "We are very democratic in this house, as by
+this time you will have observed.  In the summer we do not dress; we
+take our amusements comfortably.  Ordinarily we would be at our summer
+home on Long Island; but delayed repairs will not let us into it till
+August.  Then we shall all take a vacation.  You will join us as you
+are; that is, of course, if you are not too busy with your own affairs."
+
+"Never too busy to be of service to you, Miss Killigrew.  I'm only
+scribbling."
+
+"A book?"--interestedly.
+
+"Bally rot, possibly.  Would you like to read it?"--one of the best
+inspirations he had ever had.  He was not one of those silly
+individuals who hem and haw when some one discovers they have the itch
+for writing, whose sole aim is to have the secret dragged out of them,
+with hypocritical reluctance.
+
+"May I?"  Her friendly aloofness fell away from her as if touched by
+magic.  "I am an inveterate reader.  Besides, I know several famous
+editors, and perhaps I could help you."
+
+"That would be jolly."
+
+"And you are writing a story, and never told us about it!"
+
+"It never occurred to me to tell you.  I shall be very glad to go to
+the theater with you and Mrs. Killigrew."
+
+Kitty tucked the romance under her arm and flew to her room with it.
+This Thomas was as full of surprises as a Christmas-box.
+
+He eyed the empty doorway speculatively.  He rather preferred the
+friendly aloofness; otherwise some fatal nonsense might enter his head.
+He resumed his chair and transferred his gaze to the blotter.  He added
+a few pothooks by the way: numerals in addition and subtraction (for he
+was of Scotch descent), a name which he scratched out and scrawled
+again and again scratched out.  He examined the contents of his wallet.
+How many pounds did a dress-suit cost in this hurly-burly country?
+This question could be answered only in one way.  He hastened out into
+the hall, put on his hat, made for the subway, and got out directly
+opposite the offices of Killigrew and Company, sugar, coffee and
+spices.  London-bred, it did not take him long to find his way about.
+The racket disturbed him; that was all.
+
+The building in which Killigrew and Company had its offices belonged to
+Killigrew personally.  It had cost him a round million to build, but
+the office-rentals were making it a fine investment.  These ornate
+office-buildings caused Thomas to marvel unceasingly.  In London
+cubby-holes were sufficient.  If merchants like Killigrew, generally
+these were along the water-front; creaky, old, dim-windowed.  In this
+bewildering country a man conducted his business as from a palace.  The
+warehouses were distinct establishments.
+
+Thomas entered the portals, stepped cautiously into one of the
+express-elevators (so they insisted upon calling them here), and was
+shot up to the fourteenth floor, all of which was occupied by Killigrew
+and Company.  It was Thomas' first venture in this district.  And he
+learned the amazing fact that it was ordinarily as easy to see Mr.
+Killigrew as it was to see King George.  Office-boys, minor clerks,
+head clerks, managers; they quizzed and buffeted him hither and
+thither.  He never thought to state at the outset that he was Mrs.
+Killigrew's private secretary; he merely said that it was very
+important that he should see Mr. Killigrew at once.
+
+"Mr. Killigrew is busy," he was informed by the assistant manager, at
+whose desk Thomas finally arrived.  "If you will give me your card I'll
+have it sent in to him."
+
+Thomas confessed that he had no card.  The assistant manager grew
+distinctly chilling.
+
+"If you will be so kind as to inform Mr. Killigrew that Mr. Webb, Mrs.
+Killigrew's private secretary . . ."
+
+"Why didn't you say that at once, Mr. Webb?  Here, boy; tell Mr.
+Killigrew that Mr. Webb wishes to see him.  You might just as well
+follow the boy."
+
+Killigrew was smoking, and perusing the baseball edition of his
+favorite evening paper.  All this red-tape to approach a man who wasn't
+doing anything more vital than that!  Thomas smiled.  It was a
+wonderful people.
+
+"Why, hello, Webb!  What's the matter?  Anything wrong at the
+house?"--anxiously.
+
+"No, Mr. Killigrew.  I came to see you on a personal matter."
+
+Killigrew dropped the newspaper on his desk, a little frown between his
+eyes.  He made no inquiry.
+
+"Miss Killigrew tells me that you will not be home this evening, and
+that I am to take her and Mrs. Killigrew to the theater."
+
+"Anything in the way to prevent you?"  Killigrew appeared vastly
+relieved for some reason.
+
+"As a matter of fact, sir, I haven't the proper clothes; and I thought
+you might advise me where to go to obtain them."
+
+Killigrew laughed until the tears started.  The very heartiness of it
+robbed it of all rudeness.  "Good lord! and I was worrying my head off.
+Webb, you're all right.  Do you need any funds?"
+
+"I believe I have enough."  Thomas appeared to be disturbed not in the
+least by the older man's hilarity.  It was not infectious, because he
+did not understand it.
+
+"Glad you came to me.  Always come to me when you're in doubt about
+anything.  I'm no authority on clothes, but my secretary is.  I'll have
+him take you to a tailor where you can rent a suit for to-night.  He'll
+take your measure, and by the end of the week . . ."  He did not finish
+the sentence, but pressed one of the many buttons on his desk.  "Clark,
+this is Mr. Webb, Mrs. Killigrew's secretary.  He wants some clothes.
+Take him along with you."
+
+Alone again, Killigrew smiled broadly.  The humor of the situation did
+not blind him to the salient fact that this Webb was a man of no small
+courage.  He recognized in this courage a commendable shrewdness also:
+Webb wanted the right thing, honest clothes for honest dollars.  A man
+like that would be well worth watching.  And for a moment he had
+thought that Webb had fallen in love with Kitty and wanted to marry
+her!  He chuckled.  Clothes!
+
+What a boy Kitty would have made!  What an infallible eye she had for
+measuring a person!  No servant-question ever dangled its hot
+interrogation point before his eyes.  Kitty saw to that.  She was the
+real manager of the household affairs, for all that he paid the bills.
+Some day she would marry a proper man; but heaven keep that day as far
+off as possible.  What would he do without Kitty?  Always ready to
+perch on his knee, to smooth the day-cares from his forehead, to fend
+off trouble, to make laughter in the house.  He was not going to love
+the man who eventually carried her off.  He was always dreading that
+day; young men about the house, the yacht and the summer home worried
+him.  The whole lot of them were not worthy to tie the laces of her
+shoes, much as they might yearn to do so.
+
+And all Webb wanted was a tailor!  He would give a hundred for the
+right to tell this scare to the boys at the club, but Webb's ingenuous
+confidence did not merit betrayal.  Still, nothing should prevent him
+from telling Kitty, who knew how to keep a secret.  He picked up the
+newspaper and resumed his computation of averages (batting), chuckling
+audibly from time to time.  Clothes!
+
+At quarter to six Thomas returned to the house, laden with fat bundles
+which he hurried secretly to his room.  He had never worn a dress-suit.
+He had often guilelessly dreamed of possessing one: between paragraphs,
+as another young man might have dreamed of vanquishing a rival.  It was
+inborn that we should wish to appear well in public; to better one's
+condition, or, next best, to make the public believe one has.  Thomas
+was deeply observant and quickly adaptive.  Between the man who goes to
+school _with_ books and the man who goes to school _in_ books there is
+wide difference.  What we are forced to learn seldom lifts us above the
+ordinary; what we learn by inclination plows our fields and reaps our
+harvests.  It is as natural as breathing that we should like our
+tonics, mental as well as physical, sugar-coated.
+
+Thomas had never worn a dress-suit; but in the matter of collars and
+cravats and shirts he knew the last word.  But why should he wish to
+wear that mournfully conventional suit in which we are supposed to
+enjoy ourselves?  She had told him not to bother about dress.  Was it
+that very nonsense he dreaded, insidiously attacking the redoubts of
+his common sense?
+
+That evening at dinner Kitty nor her mother appeared to notice the
+change.  This gratified him; he knew that outwardly there was nothing
+left to desire or attain.
+
+Kitty began to talk about the romance immediately.  She had found the
+beginning very exciting; it was out of the usual run of stories; and if
+it was all as good as the first part, there would be some editors glad
+to get hold of it.  So much for the confidence of youth.  _The Black
+Veil_, as I have reason to know, lies at the bottom of Thomas' ancient
+trunk.
+
+Long as he lived he would never forget the enjoyment of that night.
+The electric signs along Broadway interested him intensely; he babbled
+about them boyishly.  Theater outside and theater within; a great drama
+of light and shadow, of comedy and tragedy; for he gazed upon the scene
+with all his poet's eyes.  He enjoyed the opera, the color and music,
+the propinquity of Kitty.  Sometimes their shoulders touched; the
+indefinable perfume of her hair thrilled him.
+
+Kitty had seen all these things so many times that she no longer
+experienced enthusiasm; but his was so genuine, so un-English, that she
+found it impossible to escape the contagion.  She did not bubble over,
+however; on the contrary, she sat through the performance strangely
+subdued, dimly alarmed over what she had done.
+
+As they were leaving the lobby of the theater, a man bumped against
+Thomas, quite accidentally.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" said the stranger, politely raising his hat and
+passing on.
+
+[Illustration: "I beg your pardon!" said the stranger.]
+
+Thomas' hand went clumsily to his own hat, which he fumbled and dropped
+and ran after frantically across the mosaic flooring.
+
+A ghost; yes, sir, Thomas had seen a ghost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+I left Thomas scrambling about the mosaic lobby of the theater for his
+opera-hat.  When he recovered it, it resembled one of those accordions
+upon which vaudeville artists play Mendelssohn's Wedding March and the
+latest ragtime (by request).  Some one had stepped on it.  Among the
+unanswerable questions stands prominently: Why do we laugh when a man
+loses his hat?  Thomas burned with a mixture of rage and shame; shame
+that Kitty should witness his discomfiture and rage that, by the time
+he had retrieved the hat, the ghost had disappeared.
+
+However, Thomas acted as a polished man of the world, as if
+eight-dollar opera-hats were mere nothings.  He held it out for Kitty
+to inspect, smiling.  Then he crushed it under his arm (where the
+broken spring behaved like an unlatched jack-in-the-box) and led the
+way to the Killigrew limousine.
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Webb," said Kitty, biting her lips.
+
+"Now, now!  Honestly, don't you know, I hated the thing.  I knew
+something would happen.  I never realized till this moment that it is
+an art all by itself to wear a high hat without feeling and looking
+like a silly ass."
+
+He laughed, honestly and heartily; and Kitty laughed, and so did her
+mother.  Subtle barriers were swept away, and all three of them became
+what they had not yet been, friends.  It was worth many opera-hats.
+
+"Kitty, I'm beginning to like Thomas," said her mother, later.  "He was
+very nice about the hat.  Most men would have been in a frightful
+temper over it."
+
+"I'm beginning to like him, too, mother.  It was cruel, but I wanted to
+shout with laughter as he dodged in and out of the throng.  Did you
+notice how he smiled when he showed it to me?  A woman stepped on it.
+When she screamed I thought there was going to be a riot."
+
+"He's the most guileless young man I ever saw."
+
+"He really and truly is," assented Kitty.
+
+"I like him because he isn't afraid to climb up five flights of
+tenement stairs, or to shake hands with the tenants themselves.  I was
+afraid at first."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"That you might have made a mistake in selecting him so casually for
+our secretary."
+
+"Perhaps I have," murmured Kitty, under her breath.
+
+Alone in her bedroom the smile left Kitty's face.  A brooding frown
+wrinkled the smooth forehead.  It was there when Celeste came in; it
+remained there after Celeste departed; and it vanished only under the
+soft, dispelling fingers of sleep.
+
+There was a frown on Thomas' forehead, too; bitten deep.  He tried to
+read, he tried to smoke, he tried to sleep; futilely.  In the middle of
+the banquet, as it were, like a certain Assyrian king in Babylon,
+Thomas saw the Chaldaic characters on the wall: wherever he looked,
+written in fire--Thou fool!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Two mornings later the newspapers announced the important facts that
+Miss Kitty Killigrew had gone to Bar Harbor for the week, and that the
+famous uncut emeralds of the Maharajah of Something-or-other-apur had
+been stolen; nothing co-relative in the departure of Kitty and the
+green stones, coincidence only.
+
+The Indian prince was known the world over as gem-mad.  He had
+thousands in unset gems which he neither sold, wore, nor gave away.
+His various hosts and hostesses lived in mortal terror during a sojourn
+of his; for he carried his jewels with him always; and often, whenever
+the fancy seized him, he would go abruptly to his room, spread a square
+of cobalt-blue velvet on the floor, squat in his native fashion beside
+it, and empty his bags of diamonds and rubies and pearls and sapphires
+and emeralds and turquoises.  To him they were beautiful toys.
+Whenever he was angry, they soothed him; whenever he was happy, they
+rounded out this happiness; they were his variant moods.
+
+He played a magnificent game.  Round the diamonds he would make a
+circle of the palest turquoises.  Upon this pyramid of brilliants he
+would place some great ruby, sapphire, or emerald.  Then his servants
+were commanded to raise and lower the window-curtains alternately.
+These shifting contra-lights put a strange life into the gems; they not
+only scintillated, they breathed.  Or, perhaps the pyramid would be of
+emeralds; and he would peer into their cool green depths as he might
+have peered into the sea.
+
+He kept these treasures in an ornamented iron-chest, old, battered, of
+simple mechanism.  It had been his father's and his father's father's;
+it had been in the family since the days of the Peacock Throne, and
+most of the jewels besides.  Night and day the chest was guarded.  It
+lay upon an ancient Ispahan rug, in the center of the bedroom, which no
+hotel servant was permitted to enter.  His five servants saw to it that
+all his wants were properly attended to, that no indignity to his high
+caste might be offered: as having his food prepared by pariah hands in
+the hotel kitchens, foul hands to make his bed.  He was thoroughly
+religious; the gods of his fathers were his in all their ramifications;
+he wore the Brahmin thread about his neck.
+
+He was unique among Indian princes.  An Oxford graduate, he
+persistently and consistently clung to the elaborate costumes of his
+native state.  And when he condescended to visit any one, it was
+invariably stipulated that he should be permitted to bring along his
+habits, his costumes and his retinue.  In his suite or apartments he
+was the barbarian; in the drawing-room, in the ballroom, in the
+dining-room (where he ate nothing), he was the suave, the courteous,
+the educated Oriental.  He drank no wines, made his own cigarettes, and
+never offered his hand to any one, not even to the handsome women who
+admired his beautiful skin and his magnificent ropes of pearls.
+
+Some one had entered the bedroom, overpowered the guard, and looted the
+bag containing the emeralds.  The prince, the lightest of sleepers, had
+slept through it all.  He had awakened with a violent headache, as had
+four of his servants.  The big Rajput who had stood watch was in the
+hospital, still unconscious.
+
+All the way from San Francisco the police had been waiting for such a
+catastrophe.  The newspapers had taken up and published broadcast the
+story of the prince's pastime.  Naturally enough, there was not a crook
+in all America who was not waiting for a possible chance.  Ten
+emeralds, weighing from six to ten carats each; a fortune, even if
+broken up.
+
+Haggerty laid aside the newspaper and gravely finished his ham and eggs.
+
+"I'll take a peek int' this, Milly," he said to his wife.  "We've been
+waiting for this t' happen.  A million dollars in jools in a chest y'
+could open with a can-opener.  Queer ginks, these Hindus.  We see lots
+o' fakers, but this one is the real article.  Mebbe a reward.  All
+right; little ol' Haggerty can use th' money.  I may not be home t'
+supper."
+
+"Anything more about Mr. Crawford's valet?"
+
+Haggerty scowled.  "Not a line.  I've been living in gambling joints,
+but no sign of him.  He gambled in th' ol' days; some time 'r other
+he'll wander in somewhere an' try t' copper th' king.  No sign of him
+round Crawford's ol' place.  But I'll get him; it's a hunch.  By-by!"
+
+Later, the detective was conducted into the Maharajah's reception-room.
+The prince, in his soft drawling English (far more erudite and polished
+than Haggerty's, if not so direct), explained the situation, omitting
+no detail.  He would give two thousand five hundred for the recovery of
+the stones.
+
+"At what are they valued?"
+
+"By your customs appraisers, forty thousand.  To me they are priceless."
+
+"Six t' ten carats?  Why, they're worth more than that."
+
+The prince smiled.  "That was for the public."
+
+"I'll take a look int' your bedroom," said Haggerty, rising.
+
+"Oh, no; that is not at all necessary," protested the prince.
+
+"How d' you suppose I'm going t' find out who done it, or how it was
+done, then?" demanded Haggerty, bewildered.
+
+A swift oriental gesture.
+
+The hotel manager soothed Haggerty by explaining that the prince's
+caste would not permit an alien to touch anything in the bedroom while
+it contained the prince's belongings.
+
+"Well, wouldn't that get your goat!" exploded Haggerty.  "That lets me
+out.  You'll have to get a clairyvoint."
+
+The prince suggested that he be given another suite.  His servants
+would remove his belongings.  He promised that nothing else should be
+touched.
+
+"How long'll it take you?"
+
+"An hour."
+
+"All right," assented Haggerty.  "Who's got th' suite across th' hall?"
+he asked of the manager, as they left the prince.
+
+"Lord Monckton.  He and his valet left this morning for Bar Harbor.
+Back Tuesday.  A house-party of Fifth Avenue people."
+
+"Uhuh."  Haggerty tugged at his mustache.  "I might look around in
+there while I'm waiting for his Majesty t' change.  Did y'ever hear th'
+likes?  Bug-house."
+
+"But he pays a hundred the day, Haggerty.  I'll let you privately into
+Lord Monckton's suite.  But you'll waste your time."
+
+"Sure he left this morning?"
+
+"I'll phone the office and make sure. . . .  Lord Monckton left shortly
+after midnight.  His man followed early this morning.  Lord Monckton
+went by his host's yacht.  But the man followed by rail."
+
+"What's his man look like?"
+
+"Slim and very dark, and very quiet."
+
+"Well, I'll take a look."
+
+The manager was right.  Haggerty had his trouble for nothing.  There
+was no clue whatever in Lord Monckton's suite.  There was no paper in
+the waste-baskets, in the fireplace; the blotters on the writing-desk
+were spotless.  Some clothes were hanging in the closets, but these
+revealed only their fashionable maker's name.  In the reception-room,
+on a table, a pack of cards lay spread out in an unfinished game of
+solitaire.  All the small baggage had been taken for the journey.
+Truth to tell, Haggerty had not expected to find anything; he had not
+cared to sit idly twiddling his thumbs while the Maharajah vacated his
+rooms.
+
+In the bathroom (Lord Monckton's) he found two objects which aroused
+his silent derision: a bottle of brilliantine and an ointment made of
+walnut-juice.  Probably this Lord Monckton was a la-de-dah chap.  Bah!
+
+Once in the prince's vacated bedroom Haggerty went to work with classic
+thoroughness.  Not a square foot of the room escaped his vigilant eye.
+The thief had not entered by the windows; he had come into the room by
+the door which gave to the corridor.  He stood on a chair and examined
+the transom sill.  The dust was undisturbed.  He inspected the keyhole;
+sniffed; stood up, bent and sniffed again.  It was an odor totally
+unknown to him.  He stuffed the corner of his fresh handkerchief into
+the keyhole, drew it out and sniffed that.  Barely perceptible.  He
+wrapped the corner into the heart of the handkerchief, and put it back
+into his pocket.  Some powerful narcotic had been forced into the room
+through the keyhole.  This would account for the prince's headache.
+These Orientals were as bad as the Dutch; they never opened their
+windows for fresh air.
+
+Beyond this faint, mysterious odor there was nothing else.  The first
+step would be to ascertain whether this narcotic was occidental or
+oriental.
+
+"Nothing doing yet," he confessed to the anxious manager.  "But there
+ain't any cause for you t' worry.  You're not responsible for jools not
+left in th' office."
+
+"That isn't the idea.  It's having the thing happen in this hotel.
+We'll add another five hundred if you succeed.  Not in ten years has
+there been so much as a spoon missing.  What do you think about it?"
+
+"Big case.  I'll be back in a little while.  Don't tell th' reporters
+anything."
+
+Haggerty was on his way to a near-by chemist whom he knew, when he
+espied Crawford in his electric, stalled in a jam at Forty-second and
+Broadway.  He had not seen the archeologist since his return from
+Europe.
+
+"Hey, Mr. Crawford!" Haggerty bawled, putting his head into the window.
+
+"Why, Haggerty, how are you?  Can I give you a lift?"
+
+"If it won't trouble you."
+
+"Not at all.  Pretty hot weather."
+
+"For my business.  Wish I could run off t' th' seashore like you folks.
+Heard o' th' Maharajah's emeralds?"
+
+"Yes.  You're on that case?"
+
+"Trying t' get on it.  Looks blank jus' now.  Clever bit o' work;
+something new.  But I've got news for you, though.  Your man Mason is
+back here again.  I thought I wouldn't say nothing t' you till I put my
+hand on his shoulder."
+
+"I'm sorry.  I had hoped that the unfortunate devil would have had
+sense to remain abroad."
+
+"Then you knew he was over there?"--quickly.  "See him?"
+
+"No.  I shall never feel anything but sorry for him.  You can not live
+with a man as I did, for ten years, and not regret his misstep."
+
+"Oh, I understand your side.  But that man was a born crook, an' th'
+cleverest I ever run up against.  For all you know, he may have been
+back of a lot o' tricks Central never got hold of.  I'll bet that each
+time that you went over with him, he took loot an' disposed of it.  I
+may be pig-headed sometimes, but I'm dead sure o' this.  Wait some day
+an' see.  Say, take a whiff o' this an' tell me what y' think it is."
+Haggerty produced the handkerchief.
+
+"I don't smell anything," said Crawford.
+
+Haggerty seized the handkerchief and sniffed, gently, then violently.
+All he could smell was reminiscent of washtubs.  The mysterious odor
+was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+This is not a story of the Maharajah's emeralds; only a knot in the
+landing-net of which I have already spoken.  I may add with equal
+frankness that Haggerty, upon his own initiative, never proceeded an
+inch beyond the keyhole episode.  It was one of his many failures; for,
+unlike the great fictional detectives who never fail, Haggerty was
+human, and did.  It is only fair to add, however, that when he failed
+only rarely did any one else succeed.  If ever criminal investigation
+was a man's calling, it was Haggerty's.  He had infinite patience, the
+heart of a lion and the strength of a gorilla.  Had he been highly
+educated, as a detective he would have been a fizzle; his mind would
+have been concerned with variant lofty thoughts, and the sordid would
+have repelled him: and all crimes are painted on a background of
+sordidness.  In one thing Haggerty stood among his peers and topped
+many of them; in his long record there was not one instance of his
+arresting an innocent man.
+
+So Haggerty had his failures; there are geniuses on both sides of the
+law; and the pariah-dog is always just a bit quicker mentally than the
+thoroughbred hound who hunts him; indeed, to save his hide he has to be.
+
+Nearly every great fact is like a well-balanced kite; it has for its
+tail a whimsy.  Haggerty, on a certain day, received twenty-five
+hundred dollars from the Hindu prince and five hundred more from the
+hotel management.  The detective bore up under the strain with stoic
+complacency.  "The Blind Madonna of the Pagan--Chance" always had her
+hand upon his shoulder.
+
+Kitty went to Bar Harbor, her mother to visit friends in Orange.
+Thomas walked with a straight spine always; but it stiffened to think
+that, without knowing a solitary item about his past, they trusted him
+with the run of the house.  The first day there was work to do; the
+second day, a little less; the third, nothing at all.  So he moped
+about the great house, lonesome as a forgotten dog.  He wrote a sonnet
+on being lonesome, tore it up and flung the scraps into the
+waste-basket.  Once, he seated himself at the piano and picked out with
+clumsy forefinger _Walking Down the Old Kent Road_.  Kitty could play.
+Often in the mornings, while at his desk, he had heard her; and oddly
+enough, he seemed to sense her moods by what she played.  (That's the
+poet.)  When she played Chopin or Chaminade she went about gaily all
+the day; when she played Beethoven, Grieg or Bach, Thomas felt the
+presence of shadows.
+
+There was a magnificent library, mostly editions de luxe.  Thomas
+smiled over the many uncut volumes.  True, Dickens, Dumas and Stevenson
+were tolerably well-thumbed; but the host of thinkers and poets and
+dramatists and theologians, in their hand-tooled Levant . . . !  Away
+in an obscure corner (because of its cheap binding) he came across a
+set of Lamb.  He took out a volume at random and glanced at the
+fly-leaf--"Kitty Killigrew, Smith College."  Then he went into the body
+of the book.  It was copiously marked and annotated.  There was
+something so intimate in the touch of the book that he felt he was
+committing a sacrilege, looking as it were into Kitty's soul.  Most men
+would have gone through the set.  Thomas put the book away.  Thou fool,
+indeed!  What a hash he had made of his affairs!
+
+He saw Killigrew at breakfast only.  The merchant preferred his club in
+the absence of his family.
+
+Early in the afternoon of the fourth day, Thomas received a telephone
+call from Killigrew.
+
+"Hello!  That you, Webb?"
+
+"Yes.  Who is it?"
+
+"Killigrew.  Got anything to do to-night?"
+
+"No, Mr. Killigrew."
+
+"You know where my club is, don't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, be there at seven for dinner.  Tell the butler and the
+housekeeper.  Mr. Crawford has a box to the fight to-night, and he
+thought perhaps you'd like to go along with us."
+
+"A boxing-match?"
+
+"Ten rounds, light-weights; and fast boys, too.  Both Irish."
+
+"Really, I shall be glad to go."
+
+"Webb?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Never use that word 'really' to me.  It's un-Irish."
+
+Thomas heard a chuckle before the receiver at the other end clicked on
+the hook.  What a father this hearty, kindly, humorous Irishman would
+have made for a son!
+
+In London Thomas' amusements had been divided into three classes.
+During the season he went to the opera twice, to the music-halls once a
+month, to a boxing-match whenever he could spare the shillings.  He
+belonged to a workingmen's club not far from where he lived; an empty
+warehouse, converted into a hall, with a platform in the center, from
+which the fervid (and often misinformed) socialists harangued; and in
+one corner was a fair gymnasium.  Every fortnight, for the sum of a
+crown a head, three or four amateur bouts were arranged.  Thomas rarely
+missed these exhibitions; he seriously considered it a part of his
+self-acquired education.  What Englishman lives who does not?  Brains
+and brawn make a man (or a country) invincible.
+
+At seven promptly Thomas called at the club and asked for Mr.
+Killigrew.  He was shown into the grill, where he was pleasantly
+greeted by his host and Crawford and introduced to a young man about
+his own age, a Mr. Forbes.  Thomas, dressed in his new stag-coat, felt
+that he was getting along famously.  He had some doubt in regard to his
+straw hat, however, till, after dinner, he saw that his companions were
+wearing their Panamas.
+
+Forbes, the artist, had reached that blase period when, only upon rare
+occasions, did he feel disposed to enlarge his acquaintance.  But this
+fresh-skinned young Britisher went to his heart at once, a kindred
+soul, and he adopted him forthwith.  He and Thomas paired off and
+talked "fight" all the way to the boxing club.
+
+There was a great crowd pressing about the entrance.  There were eddies
+of turbulent spirits.  A crowd in America is unlike any other.  It is
+full of meanness, rowdyism, petty malice.  A big fellow, smelling of
+bad whisky, shouldered Killigrew aside, roughly.  Killigrew's Irish
+blood flamed.
+
+"Here!  Look where you're going!" he cried.
+
+The man reached back and jammed Killigrew's hat down over his eyes.
+Killigrew stumbled and fell, and Crawford and Forbes surged to his
+rescue from the trampling feet.  Thomas, however, caught the ruffian's
+right wrist, jammed it scientifically against the man's chest, took him
+by the throat and bore him back, savagely and relentlessly.  The crowd,
+packed as it was, gave ground.  With an oath the man struck.  Thomas
+struck back, accurately.  Instantly the circle widened.  A fight
+outside was always more interesting than one inside the ropes.  A blow
+ripped open Thomas' shirt.  It became a slam-bang affair.  Thomas
+knocked his man down just as a burly policeman arrived.  Naturally, he
+caught hold of Thomas and called for assistance.  The wrong man first
+is the invariable rule of the New York police.
+
+"Milligan!" shouted Killigrew, as he sighted one of the club's
+promoters.
+
+Milligan recognized his millionaire patron and pushed to his side.
+
+After due explanations, Thomas was liberated and the real culprit was
+forced swearing through the press toward the patrol-wagon, always near
+on such nights.  Eventually the four gained Crawford's box.  Aside from
+a cut lip and a torn shirt, Thomas was uninjured.  If his
+fairy-godmother had prearranged this fisticuff, she could not have done
+anything better so far as Killigrew was concerned.
+
+"Thomas," he said, as the main bout was being staged, the chairs and
+water-pails and paraphernalia changed to fresh corners, "I'll remember
+that turn.  If you're not Irish, it's no fault of yours.  I wish you
+knew something about coffee."
+
+"I enjoy drinking it," Thomas replied, smiling humorously.
+
+Ever after the merchant-prince treated Thomas like a son; the kind of a
+boy he had always wanted and could not have.  And only once again did
+he doubt; and he longed to throttle the man who brought into light what
+appeared to be the most damnable evidence of Thomas' perfidy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+We chaps who write have magic carpets.
+
+Whiz!
+
+A marble balcony, overlooking the sea, which shimmered under the light
+of the summer moon.  Lord Henry Monckton and Kitty leaned over the
+baluster and silently watched the rush of the rollers landward and the
+slink of them back to the sea.
+
+For three days Kitty had wondered whether she liked or disliked Lord
+Monckton.  The fact that he was the man who had bumped into Thomas that
+night at the theater may have had something to do with her doddering.
+He might at least have helped Thomas in recovering his hat.  Dark,
+full-bearded, slender, with hands like a woman's, quiet of manner yet
+affable, he was the most picturesque person at the cottage.  But there
+was always something smoldering in those sleepy eyes of his that
+suggested to Kitty a mockery.  It was not that recognizable mockery of
+all those visiting Englishmen who held themselves complacently superior
+to their generous American hosts.  It was as though he were silently
+laughing at all he saw, at all which happened about him, as if he stood
+in the midst of some huge joke which he alone was capable of
+understanding: so Kitty weighed him.
+
+He did not seem to care particularly for women; he never hovered about
+them, offering little favors and courtesies; rather, he let them come
+to him.  Nor did he care for dancing.  But he was always ready to make
+up a table at bridge; and a shrewd capable player he was, too.
+
+The music in the ballroom stopped.
+
+"Will you be so good, Miss Killigrew, as to tell me why you Americans
+call a palace like this--a cottage?"  Lord Monckton's voice was
+pleasing, with only a slight accent.
+
+"I'm sure I do not know.  If it were mine, I'd call it a villa."
+
+"Quite properly."
+
+"Do you like Americans?"
+
+"I have no preference for any people.  I prefer individuals.  I had
+much rather talk to an enlightened Chinaman than to an unenlightened
+white man."
+
+"I am afraid you are what they call blase."
+
+"Perhaps I am not quite at ease yet.  I was buffeted about a deal in
+the old days."
+
+Lord Monckton dropped back into the wicker chair, in the deep shadow.
+Kitty did not move.  She wondered what Thomas was doing.  (Thomas was
+rubbing ointment on his raw knuckles.)
+
+"I am very fond of the sea," remarked Lord Monckton.  "I have seen some
+odd parts of it.  Every man has his Odyssey, his Aeneid."
+
+Aeneid.  It seemed to Kitty that her body had turned that instant into
+marble as cold as that under her palms.
+
+The coal of the man's cigar glowed intermittently.  She could see
+nothing else.
+
+Aeneid--Enid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Thomas slammed the ball with a force which carried it far over the wire
+backstop.
+
+"You must not drive them so hard, Mr. Webb; at least, not up.  Drive
+them down.  Try it again."
+
+Tennis looked so easy from the sidelines that Thomas believed all he
+had to do was to hit the ball whenever he saw it within reach; but
+after a few experiments he accepted the fact that every game required a
+certain talent, quite as distinct as that needed to sell green neckties
+(old stock) when the prevailing fashion was polka-dot blue.  How he
+loathed Thomas Webb.  How he loathed the impulse which had catapulted
+him into this mad whirligig!  Why had not fate left him in peace; if
+not satisfied with his lot, at least resigned?  And now must come this
+confrontation, the inevitable!  No poor rat in a trap could have felt
+more harassed.  Mentally, he went round and round in circles, but he
+could find no exit.  There is no file to saw the bars of circumstance.
+
+That the lithe young figure on the other side of the net, here, there,
+backward and forward, alert, accurate, bubbling with energy . . .
+Once, a mad rollicking impulse seized and urged him to vault the net
+and take her in his arms and hold her still for a moment.  But he knew.
+She was using him as an athlete uses a trainer before a real contest.
+
+There was something more behind his stroke than mere awkwardness.  It
+was downright savagery.  Generally when a man is in anger or despair he
+longs to smash things; and these inoffensive tennis-balls were to
+Thomas a gift of the gods.  Each time one sailed away over the
+backstop, it was like the pop of a safety-valve; it averted an
+explosion.
+
+"That will be enough!" cried Kitty, as the last of a dozen balls sailed
+toward the distant stables.
+
+The tennis-courts were sunken and round them ran a parapet of lawn,
+crisp and green, with marble benches opposite the posts, generally used
+as judges' stands.  Upon one of these Kitty sat down and began to fan
+herself.  Thomas walked over and sat down beside her.  The slight
+gesture of her hand had been a command.
+
+It was early morning, before breakfast; still and warm and breathless,
+a forerunner of a long hot summer day.  A few hundred yards to the
+south lay the sea, shimmering as it sprawled lazily upon the tawny
+sands.
+
+The propinquity of a pretty girl and a lonely young man has founded
+more than one story.
+
+"You'll be enjoying the game, once you learn it."
+
+"Do you think I ever will?" asked Thomas.  He bent forward and began
+tapping the clay with his racket.  How to run away!
+
+Kitty, as she looked down at his head, knew that there were a dozen
+absurd wishes in her heart, none of which could possibly ever become
+facts.  He was so different from the self-assertive young men she knew,
+with their silly flirtations, their inane small-talk, their capacity
+for Scotch whisky and long hours.  For days she had studied him as
+through microscopic lenses; his guilelessness was real.  It just simply
+could not be; her ears had deceived her that memorable foggy night in
+London.  And yet, always in the dark his voice was that of one of the
+two men who had talked near her cab.  Who was he?  Not a single corner
+of the veil had he yet lifted, and here it was, the middle of August;
+and except for the week at Bar Harbor she had been with him day by day,
+laid she knew not how many traps, over which he had stepped serenely,
+warily or unconsciously she could not tell which.  It made her heart
+ache; for, manly and simple as he appeared, honest as he seemed, he was
+either a rogue or the dupe of one, which was almost as bad.  But to-day
+she was determined to learn which he was.
+
+"What have you done with the romance?"
+
+"I have put it away in the bottom of my trunk.  The seventh rejection
+convinces me that I am not a story-teller."
+
+He had a desperate longing to tell her all, then and there.  It was too
+late.  He would be arrested as a smuggler, turned out of the house as
+an impostor.
+
+"Don't give up so easily.  There are still ninety-three other editors
+waiting to read it."
+
+"I have my doubts.  Still, it was a pleasant pastime."  He sat back and
+stared at the sea.  He must go this day; he must invent some way of
+leaving.
+
+Then came the Machiavellian way; only, he managed as usual to execute
+it in his blundering English style.  Without warning he dropped his
+racket, caught Kitty in his arms tightly and roughly, kissed her cheek,
+rose, and strode swiftly across the courts, into the villa.  It was
+done.  He could go now; he knew very well he had to go.
+
+His subsequent actions were methodical enough; a shower, a thorough
+rub-down, and then into his workaday clothes.  He packed his trunk and
+hand-luggage, overlooked nothing that was his, and went down into the
+living-room where he knew he would find Killigrew with the morning
+papers.  He felt oddly light-headed; but he had no time to analyze the
+cause.
+
+"Good morning, Thomas," greeted the master of the house cordially.
+
+"I am leaving, Mr. Killigrew.  Will you be kind enough to let me have
+the use of the motor to the station?"
+
+"Leaving!  What's happened?  What's the matter?  Young man, what the
+devil's this about?"
+
+"I am sorry, sir, but I have insulted Miss Killigrew."
+
+"Insulted Kitty?"  Killigrew sprang up.
+
+"Just a moment, sir," warned Thomas.  The tense, short but powerful
+figure of Kitty's father was not at that moment an agreeable thing to
+look at; and Thomas knew that those knotted hands were rising toward
+his throat.  "Do not misinterpret me, sir.  I took Miss Kitty in my
+arms and kissed her."
+
+"You--kissed--Kitty?"  Killigrew fell back into his chair, limp.  For a
+moment there had been black murder in his heart; now he wondered
+whether to weep or laugh.  The reaction was too sudden to admit of
+coherent thought.  "You kissed Kitty?" he repeated mechanically.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What did she do?"
+
+"I did not wait to learn, sir."
+
+Killigrew got up and walked the length of the room several times, his
+chin in his collar, his hands clasped behind his back, under his
+coat-tails.  The fifth passage carried him out on to the veranda.  He
+kept on going and disappeared among the lilac hedges.
+
+Thomas thought he understood this action, that his inference was
+perfectly logical; Killigrew, rather than strike the man who had so
+gratuitously insulted his daughter, had preferred to run away.  (I
+know; for a long time I, too, believed Thomas the most colossal ass
+since Dobson.)  Thomas gazed mournfully about the room.  It was all
+over.  He had burned his bridges.  It had been so pleasant, so
+homelike; and he had begun to love these unpretentious people as if
+they had been his very own.
+
+Except that which had been expended on clothes, Thomas had most of his
+salary.  It would carry him along till he found something else to do.
+To get away, immediately, was the main idea; he had found a door to the
+trap.  (The chamois-bag lay in his trunk, forgotten.)
+
+"Your breakfast is ready, sir," announced the grave butler.
+
+So Thomas ate his chops and potatoes and toast and drank his tea, alone.
+
+And Killigrew, blinking tears, leaned against the stout branches of the
+lilacs and buried his teeth in his coat-sleeve.  He was as near
+apoplexy as he was ever to come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Meantime Kitty sat on the bench, stunned.  Never before in all her life
+had such a thing happened.  True, young men had at times attempted to
+kiss her, but not in this fashion.  A rough embrace, a kiss on her cheek,
+and he had gone.  Not a word, not a sign of apology.  She could not have
+been more astounded had a thunder-bolt struck at her feet, nor more
+bereft of action.  She must have sat there fully ten minutes without
+movement.  From Thomas, the guileless, this!  What did it mean?  She
+could not understand.  Had he instantly begged forgiveness, had he made
+protestations of sentiment, a glimmering would have been hers.  Nothing;
+he had kissed her and walked away: as he might have kissed Celeste, and
+had, for all she knew!
+
+When the numbing sense of astonishment passed away, it left her cold with
+anger.  Kitty was a dignified young lady, and she would not tolerate such
+an affront from any man alive.  It was more than an affront; it was a
+dire catastrophe.  What should she do now?  What would become of all her
+wonderfully maneuvered plans?
+
+She went directly to her room and flung herself upon the bed, bewildered
+and unhappy.  And there Killigrew found her.  He was a wise old man,
+deeply versed in humanity, having passed his way up through all sorts and
+conditions of it to his present peaceful state.
+
+"Kittibudget, what the deuce is all this about? . . .  You've been
+crying!"
+
+"Supposing I have?"--came muffled from the pillows.
+
+"What have you been doing to Thomas?"
+
+"I?" she shot back, sitting up, her eyes blazing.  "He kissed me, dad, as
+he probably kisses his English barmaids."
+
+"Kitty, girl, you're as pretty as a primrose.  I don't think Thomas was
+really accountable."
+
+"Are you defending him?"--blankly.
+
+"No.  The strange part of it is, I don't think Thomas wants to be
+defended.  A few minutes ago he came to me and told me what he had done.
+He is leaving."
+
+The anger went out of her eyes, snuffed--candle-wise.  "Leaving?"
+
+"Leaving.  He asked me for the motor to the station."
+
+"Leaving!  Well, that's about the only possible thing he could do, under
+the circumstances.  He has a good excuse."  Excuse!  Kitty's nimble mind
+reached out and touched Thomas' Machiavellian inspiration.
+
+"Hang it, Kitty, I had to run out into the lilacs to laugh!  Can't this
+be smoothed over some way?  I like that boy; I don't care if he is a
+Britisher and sometimes as simple as a fool.  When I think of the other
+light-headed duffers who call themselves gentlemen . . .  Pah!  They
+drink my whiskies, smoke my cigars, and dub me an old Mick behind my
+back.  They run around with silly chorus-girls and play poker till
+sun-up, and never do an honest day's work.  It takes a brave man to come
+to me and frankly say that he has insulted my daughter."
+
+"He said that?"  Behind her lips Kitty was already smiling.  "You are
+acting very strangely, dad."
+
+"I know.  Ordinarily I'd have taken him by the collar and hustled him
+into the road.  And if it had been one of those young bachelors who are
+coming down to-night, I'd have done it.  I like Thomas; and I don't think
+he kissed you either to affront or to insult you."
+
+"Indeed!"--icily.
+
+"I dare say I stole a kiss or two in my day."
+
+"Does mother know it?"
+
+"Back in the old country, when I was a lad.  It's a normal impulse.
+There isn't a young man alive who can look upon a pretty girl's face
+without wishing to kiss it.  I don't believe Thomas will repeat the
+offense.  The trouble, girl, is this--you've been living in a false
+atmosphere, where people hide all their generous impulses because to be
+natural is not fashionable."
+
+"I marvel at you more and more.  Is it generous, then, to kiss a girl
+without so much as by your leave?  If he had been sorry, if he had
+apologized, I might overlook the deed.  But he kissed me and walked away.
+Do you realize what such an action means to any young woman with pride?
+Very well, if he apologizes he may stay; but no longer on the basis of
+friendship.  It must be purely business.  When my guests arrive I shall
+not consider it necessary to ask him to join any of our amusements."
+
+"Poor devil!  He'll have to pay for that kiss."
+
+"Next, I suppose you'll be wanting me to marry him!" Kitty volleyed.  But
+she wasn't half so angry as she pretended.
+
+"What?  Thomas?"
+
+"Ah, that's different, isn't it?  There, there; I've promised to overlook
+the offense on condition that he apologize and keep his place.  I have
+always said that you'd rather have a man about than me."
+
+"Well, perhaps I could understand a man better."
+
+"Go down to breakfast.  I hear mother moving about.  I'll ring for what I
+need.  I must bathe and dress.  Some of the people will motor in for
+lunch."
+
+Killigrew, subdued and mystified, went in search of Thomas and discovered
+him in almost the exact spot he had left him; for Thomas, having
+breakfasted, had returned to the living-room to await the motor.
+
+"Thomas, when Kitty comes down, apologize.  And remember this, that you
+can't kiss a pretty girl just because you happen to want to."
+
+"But, Mr. Killigrew, I didn't want to!" said Thomas.
+
+"Well, I'll be tinker-dammed!"
+
+"I mean . . .  Really, sir, it is better that I should return at once to
+the city.  I'm a rotter."
+
+"Don't be a fool!  Take your grips back to your room, and don't let's
+have any more nonsense.  Finish up that report from Brazil; and if you
+handle it right, I'll take you into the office where you'll be away from
+the women folks."
+
+Thomas' heart went down in despair.
+
+"Mrs. Killigrew can find another secretary for the bureau.  I shan't say
+a word to her, and I'll see that Kitty doesn't.  You've had your
+breakfast.  Go and finish up that report.  Williams," Killigrew called to
+the second man, "take Mr. Webb's grips up to his rooms.  I'll see you
+later, Thomas," and Killigrew made off for the breakfast-room, where he
+chuckled at odd times, much to his wife's curiosity.  But he shook his
+head when she quizzed him.
+
+"You agree with me, Molly, don't you, that Kitty shall marry when and
+where she pleases?"
+
+"Certainly, Daniel.  I don't believe in ready-made matches."
+
+"No more do I.  Molly, old girl, I've slathers of money.  I could quit
+now; but I'm healthy and can't play all day.  Got to work some of the
+time.  Every one around here shall do as they please.  And,"--slyly--"if
+Kitty should want to marry Thomas . . ."
+
+"Thomas?"
+
+"Anything against the idea?"
+
+"But Thomas couldn't take care of Kitty."
+
+"H'm."
+
+"And Kitty wouldn't marry a man who couldn't."
+
+"Some truth In that.  At present Thomas couldn't support an idea.  But
+there's makings in the boy, give a man time and nothing else to do.
+There's one thing, though; Thomas seems to have the gift of picking out
+the chaff when it comes to men.  A man who can spot a man is worth
+something to somebody.  Where Thomas' niche is, however, I can't tell to
+date.  He'll never get on socially; he has too much regard for other
+people's feelings."
+
+"And no tact."
+
+"A poor man needs a good deal of that."  Killigrew began paring his
+fourth chop-bone.  He hadn't enjoyed himself so much in months.  Thomas
+had kissed Kitty and hadn't wanted to!
+
+It would take a philosopher to dig up the reason for that; or rather a
+clairvoyant, since philosophers dealt only with logical sequences, and
+there was nothing logical to Killigrew's mind in Thomas kissing Kitty
+when he hadn't wanted to!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Sugar, coffee and spices.  Thomas dipped his pen into the inkwell and
+went to work.  Were all American fathers mad?  To condone an affront
+like this!  He could not understand these Americans.  He had approached
+Killigrew with far more courage than the latter suspected.  Thomas had
+read that here men still shot each other on slight provocation.  Sugar,
+coffee and spices. . . .  Sao Paulo and valorization committee . . .
+10,000,000 bags.  What should he do?  Whither should he turn?  To have
+offered that affront . . . for nothing!  Kitty, whom he revered above
+all women save one, his mother! . . .  Sugar, coffee and spices.  Rio
+number seven, 7 1/2 to 13 1/2 cents.  Leaks in the roasting
+business. . . .  Apologize?  On his knees, if need be.  Caught like a
+rat in a trap; done for; at the end of his rope.  Why hadn't he taken
+to his heels when he had had the chance?  Gone at once to New York and
+sent for his belongings? . . .  Sugar, coffee and spices. . . .  The
+pen slipped from his fingers, and he laid his head on his arms.
+Monumental ass!
+
+Up suddenly, alert eyed.  There was a telephone-booth in the hall.
+This he sought noiselessly.  He remained hidden in the booth for as
+long as twenty minutes.  Then he emerged, wiping the perspiration from
+his forehead.  For the time being he was saved.  But he was very
+miserable.
+
+Sugar, coffee and spices again.  Doggedly he recommenced the
+transcription, adding, deducting, comparing.  He heard a slight noise
+by the portiere, and raised his eyes.  Kitty stood there like a picture
+in a frame; pale, calm of eye.
+
+He was on his feet quickly.  "Miss Killigrew, I apologize for my
+unwarranted rudeness.  I did not mean it as you thought I did"--which
+would have made any other woman furious.
+
+"I know it," said Kitty to herself.  "You wanted an excuse to run away.
+All my conjectures are true.  I believe I have you, Mr. Thomas, right
+in the hollow of my hand."  To Thomas, however, she was a presentiment
+of cold and silent indignation.
+
+He blundered on.  "You have all been so kind to me . . .  I am sorry.
+I am also quite ready to stay or go, whichever you say."
+
+"We shall say no more about it," she replied coldly; turned on her trim
+little heels and went out into the rose gardens, where she found fault
+with the head gardener; and on to the stables, where she rated the head
+groom for not exercising her favorite mount; and back to the villa,
+where she upset the cook by ordering a hearty breakfast which she could
+not eat; and all the time striving to smother her generous impulses and
+the queer little thrills which stirred in her heart.
+
+Guests began to arrive a little before luncheon.  A handsome yacht
+joined Killigrew's in the offing.  Laughter and music began to be heard
+about the villa.
+
+Thomas took his documents and retired to his room, hoping they would
+forget all about him.  He had luncheon there.  About four o'clock he
+looked out of the window toward the beach.  They were in bathing; half
+a dozen young men and women.  The diving-raft bobbed up and down.  Only
+yesterday she had tried to teach him how to swim.  After all, he was
+only a bally haberdasher's clerk; he would never be anything more than
+that.
+
+More guests for dinner, which Thomas also had in his room, despite
+Killigrew's protests.  The villa would be filled for a whole week, and
+a merry dance he would have to avoid the guests.  At nine, just as he
+was on the point of going to bed, the second man knocked for admittance.
+
+"Miss Killigrew wishes you to come aboard the visiting yacht at ten,
+sir."
+
+"Offer Miss Killigrew my excuses.  I am very tired."
+
+"Miss Killigrew was decided, sir.  Her father's orders.  He wishes you
+to meet his resident partner in Rio Janeiro.  Mr. Killigrew and Mr.
+Savage will be in the smoke-room forward, sir."
+
+"Very well.  Tell Miss Killigrew that I shall come aboard."
+
+"Thank you, sir.  The motor-boat will be at the jetty at nine-thirty,
+sir."  The servants about the Killigrew home understood Thomas'
+position.  They had known young honorables who had served as private
+secretaries.
+
+A formal command.  There was no way of avoiding it.  Resignedly Thomas
+got into his evening clothes.  They might smile at his pumps, the hang
+of his coat, but there would be no question over the correctness of his
+collar and cravat.  He was very bitter against the world, and more
+especially against Thomas Webb, late of Hodman, Pelt and Company,
+"haberdashers to H. H. the Duke of" and so forth and so on.
+
+All the way down to the motor-boat his new pumps sang "Fool-fool!
+Rotter-rotter!"  He climbed the yacht's ladder and ran into Kitty and
+her guests, exactly as she had arranged he should.
+
+"Mr. Webb," she said; and immediately began introducing him, leaving
+Lord Henry Monckton until the last.  A cluster of lights made the spot
+as bright as day.
+
+Thomas bowed politely and Lord Monckton smiled amiably.
+
+"Mr. Killigrew is in the smoking-room?" Thomas inquired.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Thomas bowed again, indirectly toward the guests and walked away.  Lord
+Monckton commented on the beauty of the night.
+
+And Kitty caught the gasp between her teeth, lest it should be heard.
+Fog!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"Rather hot for this time of day," volunteered Lord Monckton, sliding
+into the Morris chair at the side of Thomas' desk and dangling his legs
+over the arm.
+
+"Yes, it is," agreed Thomas, folding a sheet of paper and placing the
+little ivory elephant paper-weight upon it.
+
+"Rippin' doubles this morning.  You ought to go into the game.  Do you
+a lot of good."
+
+"I didn't know you played."
+
+"Don't.  Watch."
+
+Thomas' gaze was level and steady.
+
+Lord Monckton laughed easily and sought his monocle.  He fumbled about
+the front of his coat and shirt.  "By jove!  Lost my glass; wonder I
+can see anything."
+
+Outside, on the veranda, the two men could see the cluster of women of
+which Kitty was the most animated flower.  Voices carried easily.
+
+"Ah--what do you think of these--ah--Americans?" asked Lord Monckton,
+as one compatriot to another, leaning toward the desk.
+
+"I think them very kindly, very generous people; at least, those I have
+met.  Have you not found them so?"
+
+"Quite so.  I am enjoying myself immensely."  Lord Monckton swung about
+in the chair, his back to the veranda.
+
+Thomas loosened his negligee linen-collar.
+
+"Ah, really!" drifted into the room.  Lord Monckton sleepily eying
+Thomas, only heard the voice; he did not see, as Thomas did, the action
+and gesture which accompanied the phrase.  Kitty had put something into
+her eye, squinted, and twisted an imaginary something a few inches
+below her dimpled chin.  It was a hoydenish trick, but Kitty had
+enacted it for Lord Monckton's benefit.  The women shouted with
+laughter.  Lord Monckton turned in time to see them troop into the
+gardens.  He turned again to Thomas, to find a grin upon that
+gentleman's face.
+
+[Illustration: It was a hoydenish trick.]
+
+"Miss Killigrew is rather an unusual young person," was his comment.
+
+"Uncommon," replied Thomas, scrutinizing the point of his pen.
+
+"For my part, I prefer 'em clinging."  Lord Monckton rose.
+
+"Rotter!" breathed Thomas.  He rearranged his papers, crackling them
+suggestively.
+
+"Picnic this afternoon; going along?" asked Lord Monckton, pausing by
+the portieres.
+
+"Really, I am not a guest here; I am only private secretary to Mrs.
+Killigrew.  If they treat me as a human being it is because they
+believe that charity should not play in grooves."
+
+"Ah!  We are all open to a little charity."
+
+"That's true enough.  Good morning."
+
+"Beggar!" murmured Lord Monckton as he let the portieres fall behind
+him.
+
+"Blighter!" muttered Thomas, staring malevolently at the empty doorway.
+He would be glad when Mr. and Mrs. Crawford and the artist came down.
+Forbes was a chap you could get along with anywhere, under any
+conditions.
+
+Some time later Kitty came in.  She crossed immediately to the desk.
+As Thomas looked up, she smiled at him.  It was the first smile of the
+kind he had witnessed, coming in his direction, since before that
+blunder on the tennis-courts.
+
+"I found Lord Monckton's monocle, Mr. Webb.  Will you be so kind as to
+give it to him?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Killigrew."  Absently he raised the monocle and squinted
+through it.  "Why, it's plain glass!" he exclaimed.
+
+"So it is," replied Kitty, with a crooked smile.  "And I dare say so
+are most of the monocles we see.  A silly affectation, don't you think
+so?"
+
+He was instantly up in arms.  The monocle was a British institution,
+and he would as soon have denied the divine right of kings as question
+an Englishman's right to wear what he pleased in his eye.
+
+"It was originally designed for a man whose left eye was weaker than
+the right.  Besides, we don't notice them over there."
+
+"I have often wondered what the wearers do when their noses itch."
+
+"Doubtless they scratch them."
+
+Kitty's laughter bubbled.  It subsided instantly.  Her hand reached
+out, then dropped.  She had almost said: "Thomas, what have you done
+with my sapphires?"  Urgent as the impulse was, she crushed it back.
+For deep in her heart she wanted to believe in Thomas; wanted to
+believe that it was only a mad wager such as Englishmen propose, accept
+and see to the end.  There was not the slightest doubt in her mind that
+Thomas and Lord Monckton were the two men who had stood on the curb
+that foggy night in London.  One had taken the necklace and the other
+had wagered he would carry it six months in America before returning it
+to its owner.  The Nana Sahib's ruby she attributed to a real thief,
+who had known Crawford in former days and, conscience-stricken, had
+returned it.
+
+Great Britain was an empire of wagerers she knew; they wagered for and
+against every conceivable thing which had its dependence on chance.
+
+That first night on board the Celtic, when Thomas came to her cabin in
+the dark, she had recognized his voice.  In the light the activity of
+the eye had dulled the keenness of the ear; but in the dark the ear had
+found the chord.  For days she had been subconsciously waiting to hear
+one or the other of those voices; and Thomas' had come with a shock.
+The words "Aeneid" and "Enid" had so little variation in sound between
+them that Kitty had found her second man in Lord Monckton.  Sooner or
+later she would trap them.
+
+"Would you like to go to the picnic this afternoon?"--with a spirit
+which was wholly kind.
+
+"Very much indeed; but I can't"--indicating the stack of papers on his
+desk.
+
+"Oh," listlessly.
+
+"I am very poor, Miss Killigrew, and perhaps I am ambitious."
+
+Her lips parted expectantly.
+
+"Your father has promised to give me a chance on his coffee plantations
+in Brazil this autumn, and I wish to show him that I know how to grind.
+Plug, isn't that the American for it?"  He smiled across the desk.  "I
+wish to prove to you all that I am grateful.  Your father, who knows
+something of men, says there is one hidden away in me somewhere, if
+only I'll take the trouble to dig it out.  I should like to be with you
+and your guests all the time.  I like play, and I have been very lonely
+all my life."  He fingered the papers irresolutely.  "My place is here,
+not with your guests; there's the width of the poles between us.  I
+ought not to know anything about the pleasures of idleness till the day
+comes when I can afford to."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," she admitted.  What an agreeable voice he had!
+Perhaps neither of them was a rogue; only a wild pair of Englishmen
+embarked on a dangerous frolic.  "Don't forget to give Lord Monckton
+his monocle."
+
+"I shan't."
+
+Kitty departed, smiling.  Her thought was: he had kissed her and hadn't
+wanted to!  (Ah, but he had; and not till long hours after did he
+realize that there had been as much Thomas as Machiavelli in that
+futile inspiration!)
+
+Report 47, on the difference between the shipments to Europe and
+America.  Very dry, very dull; what with the glorious sunshine outside
+and the chance to play, Report 47 was damnable.  A bird-like peck at
+the inkwell, and the pen began to scratch-scratch-scratch.  He was
+twenty-four; by the time he was thirty he ought to . . .
+
+"Beg pardon, sir!"
+
+Lord Monckton's valet stood before the desk.  Thomas did not like this
+man, with his soundless approaches, his thin nervous fingers, his
+brilliant roving eyes.  Where had he been picked up?  A perfect
+servant, yes; but it seemed to Thomas that the man was always expecting
+some one to come up behind him.  Those quick cat-like glances over his
+shoulder were not reassuring.  Dark, swarthy; and yet that odd white
+scar in the scalp above his ear.  That ought to have been dark,
+logically.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Lord Monckton has dropped his glass somewhere, sir, and he sent me to
+inquire, sir."
+
+"Oh, here it is.  And tell your master to be very careful of it.  Some
+one might step on it."
+
+"Thank you, sir."  The valet departed as noiselessly as he had entered.
+
+"Really," mused Thomas, "there's a rum chap.  I don't like him around.
+He gives me the what-d'-y'-call-it."
+
+They needed an extra man at the table that night, so Thomas came down.
+He found himself between two jolly young women, opposite Kitty who
+divided her time between Lord Monckton and a young millionaire who,
+rumor bruited it, was very attentive to Killigrew's daughter.  Still,
+Thomas enjoyed himself.  Nobody seemed to mind that he was only a clerk
+in the house.  The simpleton did not realize that he was a personage to
+these people; an English private secretary, quite a social stroke on
+the part of the Killigrews.
+
+He gathered odd bits of news of what was going on among the summer
+colonists.  The lady next to Killigrew, a Mrs. Wilberforce, had had a
+strange adventure the night before.  She and her maid had been
+mysteriously overpowered by some strange fume, and later discovered
+that her pearls were gone.  She had notified the town police.  This
+brought the conversation around to the maharajah's emeralds.  Hadn't he
+and his attendants been overcome in the same manner?  Thomas thought of
+the sapphires.  Since nobody knew he had them, he stood in no danger.
+But there was Kitty's great fire-opal, glowing like a coal on her
+breast, seeming to breathe as she breathed.  It was almost as large as
+a crown-piece.
+
+During lulls Thomas dreamed.  He was going to give himself until thirty
+to make his fortune; and he was going to make it down there in the
+wilds of South America.  But invariably the sleepy mocking eyes of Lord
+Monckton brought him back to earth, jarringly.
+
+Once, Kitty caught Thomas gazing malevolently at Lord Monckton.  No
+love lost between them, evidently.  It was the ancient story: to wager,
+to borrow, to lend, to lose a friend.
+
+Long after midnight Kitty awoke.  She awoke hungry.  So she put on her
+slippers and peignoir and stole down-stairs.  The grills on each side
+of the entrance to the main hall were open; that is, the casement
+windows were thrown back.  She heard voices and naturally paused to
+learn whose they were.  She would have known them anywhere in the world.
+
+"Tut, tut, Tommy; don't be a bally ass and lose your temper."
+
+"Temper?  Lose my temper?  I'm not losing it, but I'm jolly well tired
+of this rotten business."
+
+"It was you who suggested the wager; I only accepted it."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"And once booked, no Englishman will welch, if he isn't a cad."
+
+"I'm not thinking of welching.  But I don't see what you get out of it."
+
+"Sport.  And a good hand at bridge."
+
+"Remarkably good."
+
+"I say, you don't mean to insinuate . . ."
+
+"I'm not insinuating.  I'm just damnably tired.  Why the devil did you
+take up that monocle business?  You never wore one; and Miss Killigrew
+found out this morning that it was an ordinary glass."
+
+"She did?"  Lord Monckton chuckled.
+
+"And she laughed over it, too."
+
+"Keen of her.  But, what the devil!  Stick a monocle in your eye, and
+you don't need any letters of introduction.  Lucky idea, your
+telephoning me that you were here.  What a frolic, all around!"
+
+So that was why her coup had fallen flat? thought Kitty.
+
+"I'll tell you this much," said Thomas.  (Kitty heard him tap his pipe
+against the veranda railing.)  "Play fair or, by the lord, I'll smash
+you!  I'm going to stick to my end of the bargain, and see that you
+walk straight with yours."
+
+"I see what's worrying you.  Clear your mind.  I would not marry the
+richest, handsomest woman in all the world, Thomas.  There's a dead
+heart inside of me."
+
+"There's another thing.  I'd get rid of that valet."
+
+"Why?"--quickly.
+
+"He's too bally soft on his feet to my liking.  I don't like him."
+
+"Neither do I, Thomas!" murmured Kitty, forgetting all about her
+hunger.  Not a word about her sapphires, though.  Did she see but the
+surface of things?  Was there something deeper?
+
+She stole back up-stairs.  As she reached the upper landing, some one
+brushed past her, swiftly, noiselessly.  With the rush of air which
+followed the prowler's wake came a peculiar sickish odor.  She waited
+for a while.  But there was no sound in all the great house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+"The Carew cottage was entered last night," said Killigrew, "and twenty
+thousand in diamonds are gone.  Getting uncomfortably close.  You and
+your mother, Kitty, had better let me take your jewels into town
+to-day."
+
+"We have nothing out here but trinkets."
+
+"Trinkets!  Do you call that fire-opal a trinket?  Better let me take
+it into town, anyway.  I'm Irish enough to be superstitious about
+opals."
+
+"That's nonsense."
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"Oh, well; if the thought of having it around makes you nervous, I'll
+give it to you.  The Crawfords and Mr. Forbes are coming down this
+afternoon.  You must be home again before dinner.  Here's the opal."
+She took it from around her neck.
+
+"Crawfords?  Fine!"  Killigrew slipped the gem into his wallet.  "I'll
+bring them back on the yacht if you'll take the trouble to phone them
+to meet me at the club pier."
+
+"I'll do so at once.  Good-by!  Mind the street-crossing," she added,
+mimicking her mother's voice.
+
+"I'll be careful," he laughed, stepping into the launch which
+immediately swung away toward the beautiful yacht, dazzling white in
+the early morning sunshine.
+
+Kitty waved her handkerchief, turned and walked slowly back to the
+villa.  Who had passed her in the upper hall?  And on what errand?
+Neither Thomas nor Lord Monckton, for she had left them on the veranda.
+Perhaps she was worrying unnecessarily.  It might have been one of her
+guests, going down to the library for a book to read.
+
+She met Lord Monckton coming out.
+
+"Fine morning!" he greeted.  He made a gesture, palm upward.
+
+A slight shiver touched the nape of Kitty's neck.  She had never
+noticed before how frightfully scarred his thumbs and finger-tips were.
+He saw the glance.
+
+"Ah!  You notice my fingers?  Not at all sensitive about them, really.
+Hunting a few years ago and clumsily fell on the camp-stove.  Scar on
+my shoulder where I struck as I rolled off.  Stupid.  Tripped over a
+case of canned corn.  I have fingers now as sensitive as a blind man's."
+
+"I am sorry," she said perfunctorily.  "You must tell me of your
+adventures."
+
+"Had a raft of 'em.  Mr. Killigrew gone to New York?"
+
+"For a part of the day.  Had your breakfast?"
+
+"No.  Nothing to do; thought I'd wait for the rest of them.  Read a
+little.  Swim this morning, just about dawn.  Refreshing."
+
+"Then I'll see you at breakfast."
+
+He smiled and stepped aside for her to pass.  She proved rather a
+puzzle to him.
+
+Kitty spent several minutes in the telephone booth.
+
+She began to realize that the solution of the Webb-Monckton wager was
+as far away as ever.  Lord Monckton was leaving on the morrow.  She
+must play her cards quickly or throw them away.  The fact that neither
+had in any way referred to the character of the wager left her in a
+haze.  Sometime during the day or evening she must maneuver to get them
+together and tell them frankly that she knew everything.  She wanted
+her sapphires; more, she wanted the incubus removed from Thomas'
+shoulders.  Mad as March hares, both of them; for they had not the
+least idea that the sapphires were hers!
+
+Later, she stole to the library door and peered in.  Thomas was at his
+desk.  For a long time she watched him.  He appeared restless, uneasy.
+He nibbled the penholder, rumpled his hair, picked up the ivory
+elephant and balanced it, plunged furiously into work again, paused,
+stared at the Persian carpet, turned the inkwell around, worked,
+paused, sighed.  Thomas was very unhappy.  This state of mind was quite
+evident to Kitty.  Kissed her and hadn't wanted to.  He was unlike any
+young man she knew.
+
+Presently he began to scribble aimlessly on the blotter.  All at once
+he flung down the pen, rose and walked out through the casement-doors,
+down toward the sea.  Kitty's curiosity was irresistible.  She ran over
+to the blotter.
+
+Fool!
+
+Blighter!
+
+Rotter!
+
+Double-dyed ass!
+
+Blockhead!
+
+Kitty Killigrew--(scratched out)!
+
+Nincompoop!
+
+Haberdasher!
+
+Ass!
+
+All of which indicated to the investigator that Thomas for the present
+had not a high opinion of himself.  An ordinary young woman would have
+laughed herself into hysterics.  Kitty tore off the scribbles, not the
+least sign of laughter in her eyes, and sought the window-seat in the
+living-room.  There was one word which stood out strangely alien:
+haberdasher.  Why that word?  Was it a corner of the curtain she had
+been striving to look behind?  Had Thomas been a haberdasher prior to
+his stewardship?  And was he ashamed of the fact?
+
+Haberdasher.
+
+What's the matter with that word?  If it irked Thomas it irked Kitty no
+less.  It is a part of youth to crave for high-sounding names and
+occupations.  It is in the mother's milk they feed on.  Mothers dream
+of their babes growing up into presidents or at least ambassadors, if
+sons; titles and brilliant literary salons, if daughters.  What living
+mother would harbor a dream of a clerkship in a haberdasher's shop?
+Perish the thought!  Myself for years was told that I had as good a
+chance as anybody of being president of the United States; a far better
+chance than many, being as I was _my_ mother's son.
+
+Irish blood and romance will always be mysteriously intertwined.
+Haberdasher did not fit in anywhere with Kitty's projects; it was
+off-key, a jarring note.  Whoever heard of a haberdasher's clerk
+reading _Morte d'Arthur_ and writing sonnets?  She was reasonably
+certain that while Thomas had jotted it down in scornful
+self-flagellation, it occupied a place somewhere in his past.
+
+  "They turne out ther trashe
+  And shew ther haberdashe,
+  Ther pylde pedlarye."
+
+There's no romance in collars and cuffs and ties and suspenders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+Meanwhile Killigrew arrived in New York, went to the bank and deposited
+Kitty's opal, and sought his office.
+
+"There's a Mr. Haggerty in your office, Mr. Killigrew.  I told him to
+wait."
+
+"Haggerty, the detective?"
+
+"Yes.  He said you'd be glad to see him.  Has news of some sort."
+
+Killigrew hurried into his private office.  "Hello, Haggerty!  What's
+the trouble this morning?"
+
+"Got some news for you."  Haggerty accepted a cigar.  "I've a hunch
+that I can find Miss Killigrew's sapphires."
+
+"No!  I thought they had been sold over the other side."
+
+"Seems not."
+
+"Got your man?"
+
+"Nope.  Funny kind of a job, though.  Fooled th' customs inspectors.
+Sapphires 'r here in New York, somewheres."
+
+"A thousand to you, Haggerty, if you recover them."
+
+"A row between two stewards on th' _Celtic_ gave me th' clue."
+
+"Why, that's the boat I came over on."
+
+"Sure thing."
+
+"And the thief was on board all the time?"
+
+"Don't think he was when you crossed.  I've got t' wait till th' boat
+docks before I can get particulars.  It's like this.  Th' chap who took
+th' sapphires engaged passage as a steward.  His cabin-mate saw him
+lookin' over th' stones.  He'd taken 'em out o' their settings.  This
+man Jameson pinches 'em, but his mate follows him up an' has it out
+with him in a waterfront groggery.  Got 'em back.  Cool customer.  I
+went on board th' next morning an' quizzed him.  An' say, he done me up
+brown.  As unblinkin' a liar 's I ever met.  Took me t' his cabin an'
+showed me what he professed Jameson had swiped.  Nothing but a pearl
+an' coral brooch.  He did it so natural that I swallowed th' bull,
+horns an' hoofs.  I've had every pawnshop in New York looked over, but
+they ain't there.  I've been busy on the maharajah's emeralds.  There's
+a case.  Cleverest ever.  Some drug, atomized through a keyhole, which
+puts y' t' by-by."
+
+"A drug?  Why, say, two of my neighbors have been robbed within the
+past three days, and they all complained of violent headaches."
+
+"Well, what y' know about that!  Say, Mr. Killigrew, any place where I
+could hang out down there for a couple o' days?"
+
+"Come as my guest, Haggerty.  I can tell the folks that you're from the
+office."
+
+"Fumes!  I'll bet a hat it's my maharajah's man.  When do you go back?"
+
+"About half-past two, on my yacht.  You'll find it at the New York
+Yacht Club pier.  Some old friends of yours will be on board.
+Crawford, his wife, and Forbes, the artist."
+
+"Fine an' dandy!  Forbes is clever at guessing, an' we'll work
+t'gether.  All right I'll hike up t' Bronx an' get some duds.  Tell th'
+chef that corn-beef an' cabbage is my speed-limit," jested the
+detective as he reached the door.
+
+"By the way, what's the name of that steward who took my daughter's
+sapphires?"
+
+"His monacker is Webb," said Haggerty; "Thomas Webb, Esquire; an'
+believe me, he's some smooth guy.  Thomas Webb."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+For a moment Killigrew sat stiffly upright in his chair; then gradually
+his body grew limp, his chin sank, his shoulders drooped.  "Webb?" he
+said dully.  "Are you sure, Haggerty?"
+
+"No question about it.  Y' see, this Jameson chap writes me a sassy
+letter from Liverpool.  Spite.  Thomas Webb was th' name.  What's th'
+matter?"
+
+"Haggerty, the very devil is the matter.  Thomas Webb, recently a
+steward on the _Celtic_, has been my wife's private secretary for
+nearly two months."
+
+"Say that again!" gasped Haggerty, bracing himself against the jamb of
+the door.
+
+"But I'll wager my right hand that there's some mistake."
+
+"Of all th' gall I ever heard of!  Private secretary, an' Miss
+Killigrew's sapphires stowed away in his trunk, if he ain't sold 'em
+outside th' pawnshops!  Will y' gimme a free hand, Mr. Killigrew?"
+
+"I suppose I'll have to."
+
+"All right.  On board you draw me a map o' th' rooms an' where Thomas
+Webb holds out.  I shan't come t' th' house an' meet anybody.  While
+you folks 'r at supper I'll sneak up t' his room an' see what's in his
+trunk.  If I don't find 'em, why, I'll come back t' town an' start a
+news stand, Forty-second an' Broadway.  I'll be on th' yacht at
+half-past two.  I'm on m' way."
+
+The door behind him closed with a bang.  It startled every clerk on the
+huge floor.  The door to the boss' office did not bang more than once a
+year, and that was immediately after the annual meeting of the
+directors of the Combined Brazilian Coffees.  Who was this potentate
+who dared desecrate the honored quiet of this loft?
+
+Haggerty's news hit Killigrew hard.  Thomas.  There must be a mistake.
+He had not studied men all these years without learning to read young
+and old with creditable accuracy.  Thomas was as easy to read as an
+amateur's scorecard; runs were runs, hits were hits, outs were outs.
+Why, Thomas wouldn't have stolen an apple from a farmer's
+orchard--without permission.  What, enter a carriage in a fog, steal a
+necklace, and carry it around with him for months?  Never in this
+world.  And private secretary to the very person he had robbed?  Of all
+the fool situations, this was the cap!  Imbecility was written all over
+the face of it.  It was simply a coincidence in the matter of names.
+Yet, steward on the _Celtic_; there was no getting away from that.
+There could not have been two Thomas Webbs on board.  I'm afraid
+Killigrew swore; distant thunder, off behind the hills there.  He
+struck the desk with his balled fist.  He knew it; it was that infernal
+opal of Kitty's getting in its deadly work.  And what would Kitty say?
+What would she do?
+
+He stood up and pulled down the roller-top violently.  The crash of it
+sent every clerk, bookkeeper and stenographer huddling over his or her
+work.  Two bangs all in one morning?  What had happened to the coffee
+market?  As a matter of fact, coffee fell off a quarter point between
+then and closing; which goes to prove that the stock-market depends
+upon its business less in the matter of supply and demand than in
+"signs."
+
+On board the yacht Killigrew laid the affair before Crawford.
+
+"What do you believe?"
+
+"I've reached the point," said Crawford, "where I believe in nothing
+except this young lady," and he laid his hand over his wife's.  "For
+ten years I had a valet named Mason.  I would have staked my life on
+his integrity, his honesty.  He turned out to be an accomplished rogue.
+Went with me into the wilds of Africa and Persia, through deserts,
+swamps, over mountains; tireless, resourceful, dependable; and saved my
+life twice.  Its knocked a hole in my faith in mankind."
+
+"Listen here," said Haggerty.  "Without your knowing it, he always
+carried a bunch o' first-class skeleton keys.  I'm dead sure he was
+working his game all th' time.  He came back for them keys, but he
+didn't get 'em.  He's in New York somewheres.  D' y' think y' could
+recognize him if y' saw him?"
+
+"Instantly."
+
+"A man can change his looks in two years," said Forbes.  "Remember File
+Number 113?"
+
+"This is real life, Mort; not a detective story."
+
+"How would you recognise him?"
+
+"That I'm unable to explain.  It's what Haggerty here calls a hunch."
+
+Haggerty nodded.  "An' if y' depend on 'em y' generally land.  I've
+made some mistakes in my time, not believing in my hunches.  This Webb
+business goes t' show.  I had a hunch that something was wrong, but
+your Webb had such a kid face, th' hunch pulled for him.  Well, if y'
+ever see Mason again, what'll y' do?"
+
+"I don't know.  It's a tough proposition.  Somehow or other, I want to
+be quits with Mason.  I want to wipe out those obligations.  If I could
+do that, the next time I saw him I'd hand him over."
+
+"You're a sentimental duffer, Crawffy," said the artist, smiling.
+
+"And I shouldn't love him at all if he wasn't," the wife defended.
+
+"But this Webb affair doesn't add up right," said Killigrew morosely.
+
+"There's th' hull game," declared Haggerty.  "It's nothing but adding
+an' subtracting, this gum-shoe work.  Y've got t' keep at it till it
+adds right.  Y' don't realize, Mr. Crawford, how many times I almost
+put my hand on your shoulder; but y' didn't add up right.  I shan't go
+at Webb like a load o' bricks.  I'll nose around first.  Take a peek
+int' his belongings while you folks keep him busy downstairs.  No
+sapphires, no Thomas; I'll let it go at that.  But how was this man
+Jameson t' know anything about sapphires if they wasn't any?"
+
+"I've known Kitty Killigrew ever since she was born," said Killigrew
+dryly.  "I've yet to see her make a mistake in sizing up a man.  She
+picks 'em out the way I do, right off the bat.  The minute you dodder
+about a man or a woman, there's sure to be something' to dodder about.
+Good lord! you don't suppose he had a hand in these other burglaries?"
+
+"Can't say 's I do," answered Haggerty, reaching for his lemonade.
+"You wait.  I'll have it all cleared up by midnight, 'r they'll be a
+shake-up at Central t'-morrow.  Something's going t' happen; feel it
+like a sailor feels a storm when they ain't a cloud anywheres.  Now,
+let's see what y' know about auction pinochle, Mr. Killigrew.  No use
+moping."
+
+The yacht dropped anchor off shore at five.  The beach was deserted.
+Doubtless the guests were catnapping or reading.  At the Killigrew
+villa one did as one pleased.  Mr. and Mrs. Crawford were shown to
+their rooms at once, and Haggerty prowled about the stables and garage.
+Kitty knocked at Mrs. Crawford's door half an hour later.
+
+Introductions were made at dinner.  The Crawfords knew most of Kitty's
+guests and so did Forbes, who was very much interested in Lord
+Monckton.  Here was a romance, if there was any truth at all in the
+newspapers.  What adventures here and there across the world before the
+title fell to him!  He looked like one of R. Caton Woodville's drawings
+of Indian mutiny officers, with that flowing black beard; very
+conspicuous among all these smooth chins.  Forbes determined to sketch
+him.
+
+He was rather sorry not to see Thomas at the table.  Was Haggerty after
+him with the third degree?  Poor devil!  It did not seem possible; yet
+all the evidence pointed to Thomas.  Why should Jameson say that he had
+seen sapphires if he had not?  Still, the thing that did not add up was
+the position with which Thomas had allied himself to the Killigrews.
+Hang it, there was a figure missing.  Haggerty was right.  A man with
+any sympathy had no business man-hunting.
+
+After dinner Crawford sought Forbes.  "Have you any fire-arms with you,
+Mort?" he whispered.
+
+"A pair of automatics.  Why . . ."
+
+"Sh!  Please hustle and get them and ask no questions.  Hurry!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+"Mr. Killigrew," whispered Haggerty, "will you get Miss Kitty an'
+Thomas int' th' study-end o' th' library?"
+
+"Found anything?"
+
+"Th' sapphires were in his trunk, all right.  Tucked away in th' toes
+of a pair o' shoes.  Webb is in th' library now.  Jus' get Miss Kitty."
+
+"Very well," replied Killigrew, leaden-hearted.
+
+Thomas had been busy all day.  He was growing very tired, and often now
+the point of his pen sputtered.  The second man had brought in his
+dinner and set it on a small stand which stood at the right of the
+desk.  It was growing cold on the tray.  A sound.  He glanced up
+wearily.  He saw Kitty and Killigrew, and behind them the sardonic
+visage of Haggerty.  Thomas got up slowly.
+
+"Take it easy, Mr. Webb," warned Haggerty.  "Go on, Miss Killigrew, an'
+we'll see first if you've hit it."
+
+Thomas stared, wide-eyed, from face to face.  What in heaven's name had
+happened?  What was this blighter of a detective doing at the villa?
+And why was Kitty so white?
+
+"Mr. Webb," began Kitty, striving hard to maintain even tones, "on the
+night of May 13, you and Lord Henry Monckton stood on the curb outside
+my carriage, near the Garden, where I was blockaded in the fog.  I
+heard your voices.  There was talk about a wager.  The time imposed
+upon the fulfilment of this wager was six months.  Shortly after, Lord
+Monckton entered my carriage under the pretense of getting into his own
+and took my necklace of sapphires.  He did it very cleverly.  Then they
+were turned over to you.  You were to carry them for six months, find
+out to whom they belonged, and return them."
+
+"Thousands of miles away," said Haggerty confidently.  "Nothing ever
+happened like that."
+
+"Is it not true?" asked Kitty, ignoring Haggerty's interpolation.
+
+"Miss Killigrew, either I'm dreaming or you are.  I haven't the
+slightest idea what you are talking about."  Thomas was now whiter than
+Kitty.  "The talk about a wager is true; but I never knew you had lost
+any sapphires."
+
+"How about this little chamois-bag which I found in your trunk, Mr.
+Webb?" asked Haggerty ironically.  He tossed the bag on the desk.
+
+The bag hypnotized Thomas.  Suddenly he came to life.  He snatched up
+the bag and thrust it into his pocket.
+
+"Those are mine," he said quite calmly.  "Mine, by every legal and
+moral right in the world.  Mine!"
+
+Kitty breathed hard and closed her eyes.
+
+"Some brass!" jeered Haggerty, stepping forward.
+
+"Can you prove it, Thomas?" asked Killigrew, hoping against hope.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Killigrew, to your satisfaction, to Miss Killigrew's, and
+even to Mr. Haggerty's."
+
+Tableau.
+
+Broken by the entrance of Crawford and Forbes, who were also pale and
+disturbed.  Crawford flung a packet of papers on the desk.
+
+"Webb, I fancy that these papers are yours," said Crawford, smiling.
+
+One glance was enough for Thomas.
+
+"Tell them the truth," went on Crawford; "tell them who you are."
+
+"I have wagered . . ."
+
+"Never mind about the wager," put in Forbes.  "Crawford and I have just
+canceled it."
+
+"What has happened?" asked Thomas.  The whole world seemed tumbling
+about his unhappy head.
+
+"Tell Mr. Killigrew here how you have imposed on him and his family,"
+urged Crawford, serious now.  "Tell them your name, your full name."
+
+Thomas hesitated a moment.  "My name is Henry Thomas Webb-Monckton."
+
+"Ninth Baron of Dimbledon," added Forbes, "and as crazy as a loon!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Meanwhile the whirligig had gone about violently after this fashion.
+
+Forbes, wondering mightily, procured his automatics and gave one to his
+impatient friend.
+
+"What's the row, Crawffy?"
+
+"Be as silent as you can," said Crawford.  "Follow me.  We may be too
+late."
+
+"Anywhere you say."
+
+"The door will be locked.  We'll creep around the upper veranda and
+enter by opposite windows.  You keep your eye on the valet.  Don't be
+afraid to shoot if it's necessary."
+
+"What the deuce . . . !"
+
+"Come!"
+
+"But where?"
+
+"Lord Monckton's room."
+
+Blindly and confidently Forbes went out the rear window of the
+corridor, while Crawford made for the front.  They crept soundlessly
+forward.  Lord Monckton?  What was up?  Shoot the valet if necessary!
+All right; Crawford knew what he was doing.  He generally did.  Through
+his window Forbes saw two men packing suit-cases furiously.  The moment
+Crawford entered the room, Forbes did likewise, without the least idea
+what it was all about.
+
+"Put up your hands!" said Crawford quietly.
+
+Master and man came about face.
+
+"H'm!  The dyed beard and stained skin might fool any one but me,
+Mason."
+
+Mason!  Forbes' hand shook violently.
+
+"I have seen you with a beard before, in the days when we hadn't time
+for razors.  I knew you the instant I laid eyes on you.  Now, then, a
+few words.  I do not care to stand in your debt.  Haggerty is
+down-stairs.  Upon two occasions you saved my life . . .  Keep your eye
+on your man, Forbes! . . .  Twice you saved my life.  I'm going to give
+you a chance in return.  An hour's start, perhaps.  Forbes, come over
+to me.  That's it.  Give me the automatic.  There.  Now, go through
+their pockets carefully, and put everything in your own.  Leave the
+money.  Mason, a boat leaves to-morrow noon for Liverpool.  I'll ship
+your trunks and grips to the American Express Company there.  Do you
+understand?  If I ever see you again, I shan't lift a finger to save
+you."
+
+The late Lord Henry Monckton shrugged.  He had not lived intimately
+with this quiet-voiced man for ten years without having acquired the
+knowledge that he never wasted words.
+
+"You're a dangerously clever man, Mason.  I noted at dinner that in
+some manner you had destroyed Haggerty's photograph of your
+finger-tips.  But I recognize you, and know you--your gestures, the
+turn of your head, every little mannerism.  And if you do not do as I
+bid, I'll take my oath in court as to your identity.  Besides,"--with a
+nod toward the suitcases--"if you're not the man, why this hurry?  An
+hour.  I see, fortunately, you have already changed your clothes.  Be
+off!"
+
+"All right.  I'm Mason.  I knew the game was up the moment I saw you.
+Any one but you, Mr. Crawford, would pay for this interruption, pistol
+or no pistol.  An hour.  So be it.  You might tell that fool
+down-stairs and give him the papers you find in my grip.  Miss
+Killigrew's sapphires, I regret to say, are no more.  The mistake I
+made in London was in returning the Nana Sahib's ruby."
+
+"There is always one mistake," replied Crawford sternly.  He felt sad,
+too.
+
+"Off with you, Tibbets!  We can make the train for New York if we
+hustle."
+
+The man-servant's brilliant eyes flashed evilly.
+
+"Will you make it an hour and a half, sir?" asked Mason, as his valet
+slid over the window-sill.
+
+It sounded strange to Forbes.  Mason had unconsciously fallen into the
+old tone and mode of address, and he himself recognized him now.
+
+"Till nine-thirty, then.  At that time I shall notify Haggerty."
+
+"The boat?"
+
+"Oh, no.  I'm giving you that chance without conditions.  It's up to
+Haggerty to find you.  There's one question I should like to ask you.
+Were you in this sort of business while you were serving me?"
+
+Mason laughed.  The real man shone in his eyes and smile.  "I was.  It
+was very exciting.  It was very amusing, too.  I valeted you during the
+day-time and went about my own peculiar business at night.  I entered
+your service to rob you and remained to serve you; ten years.  I want
+you always to remember this: to you I was loyal, that I stood between
+you and death because you were the only being I was fond of.  You are
+the one bit of sentiment that ever entered my life.  Well, I must be
+off.  But I've had a jolly time of it, masquerading as a titled
+gentleman.  What a comedy!  How the fools kotowed and simpered while I
+looked over their jewels and speculated upon how much I could get for
+them!  But I had my code.  I never pilfered in the houses of my hosts.
+I set a fine trap for that simple young man down-stairs, and he fell
+into it, head-first.  Trust an Englishman of his sort to see nothing
+beyond his nose.  I'm off.  Good-by, Mr. Crawford.  I'm grateful."  The
+man stepped out of the window and vanished into the night.
+
+Crawford glanced at his watch; it was eight-ten.
+
+"Do you hope he'll get away?" asked Forbes breathlessly.
+
+"I don't know what I hope, Mort.  I'm rather dazed with the
+unexpectedness of all this.  Let's see what you took from their
+pockets."
+
+A large diamond brooch, a string of fine pearls, and a bag of wonderful
+polished emeralds.
+
+"Mort, the man couldn't help it.  Why, here's a fortune for a prince;
+and yet he remained here for more.  Well, he's gone; poor beggar."
+
+They burrowed into the suit-cases and trunks.  A dark green bottle came
+to light, Forbes took out the cork and carelessly sniffed.  A great
+black wave of dizziness swept over him, and he would have fallen but
+for Crawford.  The bottle fell.  Crawford put Forbes out into the hall
+and ran back for the bottle, sensing a slight dizziness himself.  He
+recognized the odor.  It was Persian.  He and Mason had run across it
+unpleasantly, once upon a time, in Teheran.  He was not familiar with
+the chemistry of the concoction.  He corked the bottle tightly.  Forbes
+came in groggily.
+
+"Well!  Did you ever see such an ass, Crawford?  To open a strange
+bottle like that and sniff at it!"
+
+"Here's an atomizer.  They must have used that.  Never touched their
+victims."
+
+"It evaporates quickly, though.  But the effect on a sleeping person
+would be long.  Now, who the deuce is this chap Webb?  A confederate?"
+
+"Still dizzy, eh?  No; Thomas is a dupe.  Don't you get it?  He's Lord
+Monckton.  Come on; we'll go down and straighten out the kinks."
+
+So they went down-stairs.  And Forbes tells me that when Thomas
+acknowledged his identity, Kitty did not fall on his neck.  Instead,
+she walked up to him, burning with fury: so pretty that Forbes almost
+fell in love with her, then and there.
+
+"So!  You pretended to be poor, and entered my home to make play behind
+our backs!  Despicable!  We took you in without question, generously,
+kindly, and treated you as one of us; and all the while you were
+laughing in your sleeve!"
+
+"Kitty!" remonstrated Killigrew, who felt twenty years gone from his
+shoulders.
+
+"Let me be!  I wish him to know exactly what I think of his conduct."
+She whirled upon the luckless erstwhile haberdasher's clerk; but he
+held out his hand for silence.  He was angry, too.
+
+"Miss Killigrew, I entered your employ honestly.  I was poor.  I am
+poor.  I have had to work for my bread every day of my life.  For seven
+years I was a clerk in a haberdasher's shop in London.  And one day the
+solicitors came and notified me that I had fallen into the title, two
+hundred and twenty pounds, and those sapphires.  The estate was so
+small and so heavily mortgaged that I knew I could not live on it.  The
+rents merely paid the interest.  I was no better off than before.  The
+cash was all that was saved out of an annuity."  From his inner
+waistcoat pocket he produced a document and dropped it on the desk.
+"There is the solicitor's statement, relative to the whole transaction.
+And now I'll tell you the rest of it.  I've been a fool.  I was always
+more or less alone.  I met this man Cavenaugh, or whatever he calls
+himself, in a concert-hall about a year ago.  We became friendly.  He
+came to me and bought his collars and ties and suspenders."
+
+Kitty found herself retreating from a fury which far outmatched her
+own; and as he gained in force, hers dwindled correspondingly.
+
+Thomas continued.  "He was well-read, traveled; he interested me.  When
+the title came, he was first to congratulate me.  Gave me my first real
+dinner.  Naturally I was grateful for this attention.  Well, the upshot
+of it was, we gambled; and I lost.  There was wine.  I suggested in the
+spirit of madness that I play the use of my title for six months
+against the money I had lost.  He agreed.  And here I am."
+
+His fury evaporated.  He sank back into his chair and rested his head
+in his hands.
+
+"I ain't a detective," murmured Haggerty, breaking in on the silence
+which ensued.  "I'm only fit t' chase dagos selling bananas without
+licenses.  But I'm aching t' see this other chap.  I kinda see through
+his game.  He's going t' interest me a hull lot."
+
+Crawford consulted his watch again.  Nine.  "Haggerty, suppose you and
+I knock the billiard balls around for half an hour?"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Half an hour."
+
+"I got t' see that chap, Mr. Crawford."
+
+"It's a matter of four or five thousand.  Do you want to risk it?"
+
+"Come on, Haggerty!" cried Forbes, with good understanding.  He caught
+the detective by the arm and pulled him toward the door.  But Haggerty
+hung back sturdily.
+
+"Is this straight, Mr. Crawford?"
+
+"Half an hour; otherwise not a penny."
+
+"All well an' good; but I'll hold you responsible if anything goes
+wrong.  I'm not seeing things clear."
+
+"You will presently."
+
+"Four thousand for half an hour?"
+
+"To a penny."
+
+"You're on!"
+
+The three of them marched off to the billiard-room.  Killigrew touched
+Kitty's arm and motioned her to follow.  She was rather glad to go.
+She was on the verge of most undignified tears.  When she had gone in
+search of Mrs. Crawford, Killigrew walked over to Thomas and laid a
+hand on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"Thomas, will you go to Brazil the first week in September?"
+
+"God knows, I'll be glad to," said Thomas, lifting his head.  His young
+face was colorless and haggard.  "But you are putting your trust in a
+double-dyed ass."
+
+"I'll take a chance at that.  Now, Thomas, as no doubt you're aware, we
+are all Irish in this family.  Hot-tempered, quick to take affront, but
+also quick to forgive or admit a wrong.  You leave Kitty alone till
+to-morrow."
+
+"I believe it best for me to leave to-night, sir."
+
+"Nothing of the sort.  Come out into the cooler, and we'll have a peg.
+It won't hurt either of us, after all this racket."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Half after nine.  Crawford laid down his cue.  From his pocket he took
+a bottle and gravely handed it to Haggerty.
+
+"Smell of the cork, carefully," Crawford advised.
+
+Haggerty did so.  "Th' stuff they put th' maharajah t' sleep with!"
+
+Then Forbes emptied his pockets.
+
+"Th' emeralds!" shouted Haggerty.
+
+Suddenly he stiffened.  "I'm wise.  I know.  It's your man Mason, an'
+you've bunked me int' letting him have all this time for his get-away!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+"That is true, Haggerty.  I had a debt to pay."  Crawford spun a
+billiard ball down the table.
+
+"Mr. Crawford, I'm going t' show you that I'm a good sport.  You've
+challenged me.  All right.  I want that man, an' by th' Lord Harry, I'm
+going t' get him.  I'm going t' put my hand on his shoulder an' say
+'Come along!'  Cash ain't everything, even in my business.  I want t'
+show it's th' game, too.  I don't want money in my pockets for winking
+my eye."
+
+"You'll have hard work."
+
+"How?"
+
+"He has burned the pads of his fingers and thumbs," blurted out Forbes.
+
+Crawford made an angry gesture.
+
+A Homeric laugh from Haggerty.  "I don't want his fingers now; this
+bottle an' these emeralds are enough for me."  He stuffed the jewels
+away.  "Where's th' phone?"
+
+"In the hall, under the stairs."
+
+"Good night."
+
+The nights of Poe and the grim realities of Balzac would not serve to
+describe that chase.  The magnificent vitality of that man Haggerty yet
+fills me with wonder.  He borrowed a roadster from Killigrew's garage,
+and hummed away toward New York.  On the way he laid his plans of
+battle, winnowed the chaff from the grain.  He understood the necessity
+of thinking and acting quickly.  A sporting proposition, that was it.
+He wanted just then not so much the criminal as the joy of finding him
+against odds and laying his hand on his shoulder: just to show them all
+that he wasn't a has-been.
+
+His telephone message had thrown a cordon of argus-eyed men around New
+York.  Now, then, what would he, Haggerty, do if he were in Mason's
+shoes?  Make for railroads or boats; for Mason did not belong to New
+York's underworld, and he would therefore find no haven in the city.
+Boat or train, then; and of the two, the boat would offer the better
+security.  Once on board, Mason would find it easy to lose his
+identity, despite the wireless.  And it all hung by a hair: would Mason
+watch?  If he hid himself and stayed hidden he was saved.
+
+"Chauffeur, what's your name?" asked Haggerty of Killigrew's man, as
+the car rolled quietly on to Brooklyn Bridge.
+
+"Harrigan,"--promptly.
+
+"That's good enough for me,"--jovially.  "Fill up th' gas-tank.  I'm
+going t' keep y' busy for twenty-four hours, mebbe.  An' if I win, a
+hundred for yours.  All y' got t' do is t' act as I say.  Let 'er go.
+Th' Great White Way first, where th' hotels hang out."
+
+Lord Monckton had not returned to the hotel.  Good.  More telephoning.
+Yes, the great railroad terminals had ten men each.  A black-bearded
+man with scarred fingers.
+
+Haggerty was really a fine general; he directed his army with
+shrewdness and little or no waste.  The Jersey side was watched, East
+and North Rivers.  The big ships Haggerty himself undertook.
+
+From half after nine that night till noon the next day, without sleep
+or rest or food, excepting a cup of coffee and a sandwich, which, to a
+man of Haggerty's build, wasn't food at all, he searched.  Each time he
+left the motor-car, the chauffeur fell asleep.  Haggerty reasoned in
+this wise: There were really but two points of departure for a man in
+Mason's position, London or South America.  Ten men, vigilant and
+keen-eyed, were watching all fruiters and tramps which sailed for the
+Caribbean.
+
+It came to the last boat.  Haggerty, in each case, had not gone aboard
+by way of the passengers' gangplank; not he.  He got aboard secretly
+and worked his way up from hold to boat-deck.  His chance lay in
+Mason's curiosity.  It would be almost impossible for the man not to
+watch for his ancient enemy.
+
+At two minutes to twelve, as the whistle boomed its warning to visitors
+to go ashore, Haggerty put his hard-palmed hand on Mason's shoulder.
+The man, intent on watching the gangplank, turned quickly, sagged, and
+fell back against the rail.
+
+"Come along," said Haggerty, not unkindly.
+
+Mason sighed.  "One question.  Did Mr. Crawford advise you where to
+look for me?"
+
+"No.  I found you myself, Mr. Mason; all alone.  It was a sporting
+proposition; an' you'd have won out if y' hadn't been human like
+everybody else, an' watched for me.  Come along!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+It remains for me, then, to relate how Thomas escaped that arm of the
+law equally as relentless as that of the police--the customs.
+Perfectly innocent of intent, he was none the less a smuggler.
+
+Killigrew took him before the Collector of the Port, laid the matter
+before him frankly, paid the duty, and took the gems over to Tiffany's
+expert, who informed him that these sapphires were the originals from
+which his daughter's had been copied, and were far more valuable.
+Twenty-five thousand would not purchase such a string of sapphires
+these days.  All like a nice, calm fairy-story for children.
+
+Immediately upon being informed of his wealth, Thomas became filled
+with a truly magnanimous idea.  But of that, later.
+
+A week later, to be exact.
+
+Around and upon the terrace of the Killigrew villa, with its cool white
+marble and fresh green strip of lawn, illumined at each end by scarlet
+poppy-beds, lay the bright beauty of the morning.  The sea below was
+still, the air between, and the heavens above, since no cloud moved up
+or down the misty blue horizons.  Leaning over the baluster was a young
+woman.  She too was still; and her eyes, directed toward the sea,
+contemplative apparently but introspective in truth, divided in their
+deeps the blue of the heavens and the green of the sea.  Presently a
+sound broke the hush.  It came from a neat little brown shoe.  Tap-tap,
+tap-tap.  To the observer of infinite details, a foot is often more
+expressive than lips or eyes.  Moods must find some outlet.  One can
+nearly perfectly control the face and hands; the foot is least guarded.
+
+The young man by the nearest poppy-bed plucked a great scarlet flower.
+Luckily for him the head gardener was not about.  Then slowly he walked
+over to the young woman.  The little foot became still.
+
+"I am sailing day after to-morrow for Rio Janeiro," he said.  He laid
+on the broad marble top of the baluster a little chamois-bag.  "Will
+you have these reset and wear them for me?"
+
+"The sapphires?  Why, you mustn't let them go out of the family.  They
+are wonderful heirlooms."
+
+"I do not intend to let them go out of the family," he replied quietly.
+
+Kitty stirred the bag with her fingers.  She did not raise her eyes
+from it.  In fact, she would have found it difficult to look elsewhere
+just then.
+
+"Will you wear them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And some day will you call me Thomas?"
+
+"Yes . . .  When you return."
+
+Somewhere back I spoke of Magic Carpets we writer chaps have.  A thing
+of flimsy dreams and fancies!  But I forgot the millionaire's.  His is
+real, made of legal-tenders woven intricately, wonderfully.  Does he
+wish a palace, a yacht, a rare jewel?  Whiz!  There you are, sir.  No
+flowery flourishes; the cold, hard, beautiful facts of reality.
+Killigrew had his Magic Carpet, and he spread it out and stood on it as
+he and Mrs. Killigrew viewed the pair out on the terrace.  (The
+millionaire can sometimes wish happiness with his Carpet.)
+
+"Molly, I'm going to send Thomas down to Rio.  He'll be worth exactly
+fifteen hundred the year . . . for years.  But I'm going to give him
+five thousand the first year, ten thousand the next, and twenty
+thereafter . . . if he sticks.  And I think he will.  He'll never be
+any the wiser."  He paused tantalizingly.
+
+"Well?" demanded Mrs. Killigrew, smiling.
+
+"Well, neither will Kitty."
+
+
+
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