Front matter (continued 2)

"I—er—think, perhaps," he mumbled, "as it is—er—getting late...."

"You aren't going?" said Molly concerned.

"Certainly Mr. Finch is going," said Mrs. Waddington: and there was that in her demeanour which suggested that at any moment she might place one hand on the scruff of his neck and the other on the seat of his trousers and heave. "If Mr. Finch has appointments that call him elsewhere, we must not detain him. Good night, Mr. Finch."

"Good night. Thank you for a—er—very pleasant evening."

"It was most kay-eend of you to come," said Mrs. Waddington.

"Do come again," said Molly.

"Mr. Finch," said Mrs. Waddington, "is no doubt a very ba-husy man. Please go upstairs immediately, Molly. Good na'eet, Mr. Finch."

She continued to regard him in a manner hardly in keeping with the fine old traditions of American hospitality.

"Ferris," she said, as the door closed.

"Madam?"

"On no pretext whatever, Ferris, is that person who has just left to be admitted to the house again."

"Very good, madam," said the butler.

4

It was a fair sunny morning next day when George Finch trotted up the steps of Number 16, Seventy-Ninth Street, East, and pressed the bell. He was wearing his dove-grey suit, and under his arm was an enormous canvas wrapped in brown paper. After much thought he had decided to present Molly with his favourite work, Hail, Jocund Spring!—a picture representing a young woman, scantily draped and obviously suffering from an advanced form of chorea, dancing with lambs in a flower-speckled field. At the moment which George had selected for her portrayal, she had—to judge from her expression—just stepped rather hard on a sharp stone. Still, she was George's master-piece, and he intended to present her to Molly.

The door opened. Ferris, the butler, appeared.

"All goods," said Ferris, regarding George dispassionately, "must be delivered in the rear."

George blinked.

"I want to see Miss Waddington."

"Miss Waddington is not at home."

"Can I see Mr. Waddington?" asked George, accepting the second-best.

"Mr. Waddington is not at home."

George hesitated a moment before he spoke again. But love conquers all.

"Can I see Mrs. Waddington?"

"Mrs. Waddington is not at home."

As the butler spoke, there proceeded from the upper regions of the house a commanding female voice that inquired of an unseen Sigsbee how many times the speaker had told him not to smoke in the drawing-room.

"But I can hear her," George pointed out.

The butler shrugged his shoulders with an aloof gesture, as if disclaiming all desire to go into these mysteries. His look suggested that he thought George might possibly be psychic.

"Mrs. Waddington is not at home," he said once more.

There was a pause.

"Nice morning," said George.

"The weather appears to be clement," agreed Ferris.

George then tumbled backwards down the steps, and the interview concluded.

CHAPTER FOUR

1

"Tell me all," said Hamilton Beamish.

George told him all. The unfortunate young man was still looking licked to a splinter. For several hours he had been wandering distractedly through the streets of New York, and now he had crawled into Hamilton Beamish's apartment in the hope that a keener mind than his own might be able to detect in the encompassing clouds a silver lining which he himself had missed altogether.

"Let me get this clear," said Hamilton Beamish. "You called at the house?"

"Yes."

"And the butler refused to admit you?"

"Yes."

Hamilton Beamish regarded his stricken friend compassionately.

"My poor cloth-headed George," he said, "you appear to have made a complete mess of things. By being impetuous you have ruined everything. Why could you not have waited and let me introduce you into this house in a normal and straightforward fashion, in my capacity of an old friend of the family? I would have started you right. As things are, you have allowed yourself to take on the semblance of an outcast."

"But when old Waddington invited me to dinner—actually invited me to dinner...."

"You should have kicked him in the eye and made good your escape," said Hamilton Beamish firmly. "Surely, after all that I said to you about Sigsbee H. Waddington, you were under no illusion that his patronage would make you popular in the home? Sigsbee H. Waddington is one of those men who have only to express a liking for anybody to cause their wives to look on him as something out of the Underworld. Sigsbee H. Waddington could not bring the Prince of Wales home to dinner and get away with it. And when he drags in and lays on the mat a specimen—I use the word in the kindliest spirit—like you, and does so, moreover, five minutes before the start of a formal dinner-party, thus upsetting the seating arrangements and leading to black thoughts in the kitchen, can you blame his wife for not fawning on you? And on top of that you pretend to be an artist."

"I am an artist," said George, with a flicker of spirit. It was a subject on which he held strong views.

"The point is a debatable one. And, anyhow, you should have concealed it from Mrs. Waddington. A woman of her type looks on artists as blots on the social scheme. I told you she judged her fellow-creatures entirely by their balance at the bank."

"I have plenty of money."

"How was she to know that? You tell her you are an artist, and she naturally imagines you...."

The telephone rang shrilly, interrupting Mr. Beamish's flow of thought. There was an impatient frown on his face as he unhooked the receiver, but a moment later this had passed away and, when he spoke, it was in a kindly and indulgent tone.

"Ah, Molly, my child!"

"Molly!" cried George.

Hamilton Beamish ignored the exclamation.

"Yes," he said. "He is a great friend of mine."

"Me?" said George.

Hamilton Beamish continued to accord him that complete lack of attention characteristic of the efficient telephoner when addressed while at the instrument.

"Yes, he has been telling me about it. He's here now."

"Does she want me to speak to her?" quavered George.

"Certainly, I'll come at once."

Hamilton Beamish replaced the receiver, and stood for awhile in thought.

"What did she say?" asked George, deeply moved.

"This is interesting," said Hamilton Beamish.

"What did she say?"

"This causes me to revise my views to some extent."

"What did she say?"

"And yet I might have foreseen it."

"What did she say?"

Hamilton Beamish rubbed his chin meditatively.

"The mind of a girl works oddly."

"What did she say?"

"That was Molly Waddington," said Hamilton Beamish.

"What did she say?"

"I am by no means sure," said Mr. Beamish regarding George owlishly through his spectacles, "that, after all, everything has not happened for the best. I omitted to take into my calculations the fact that what has occurred would naturally give you in the eyes of a warm-hearted girl, surrounded normally by men with incomes in six figures, a certain romantic glamour. Any girl with nice instincts must inevitably be attracted to a penniless artist whom her mother forbids her to see."

"What did she say?"

"She asked me if you were a friend of mine."

"And then what did she say?"

"She told me that her stepmother had forbidden you the house and that she had been expressly ordered never to see you again."

"And what did she say after that?"

"She asked me to come up to the house and have a talk."

"About me?"

"So I imagine."

"You're going?"

"At once."

"Hamilton," said George in a quivering voice, "Hamilton, old man, pitch it strong!"

"You mean, speak enthusiastically on your behalf?"

"I mean just that. How well you put these things, Hamilton!"

Hamilton Beamish took up his hat and placed it on his head.

"It is strange," he said meditatively, "that I should be assisting you in this matter."

"It's your good heart," said George. "You have a heart of gold."

"You have fallen in love at first sight, and my views on love at first sight are well known."

"They're all wrong."

"My views are never wrong."

"I don't mean wrong exactly," said George with sycophantic haste. "I mean that in certain cases love at first sight is the only thing."

"Love should be a reasoned emotion."

"Not if you suddenly see a girl like Molly Waddington."

"When I marry," said Hamilton Beamish, "it will be the result of a carefully calculated process of thought. I shall first decide after cool reflection that I have reached the age at which it is best for me to marry. I shall then run over the list of my female friends till I have selected one whose mind and tastes are in harmony with mine. I shall then...."

"Aren't you going to change?" said George.

"Change what?"

"Your clothes. If you are going to see Her...."

"I shall then," proceeded Hamilton Beamish, "watch her carefully for a considerable length of time in order to assure myself that I have not allowed passion to blind me to any faults in her disposition. After that...."

"You can't possibly call on Miss Waddington in those trousers," said George. "And your shirt does not match your socks. You must...."

"After that, provided in the interval I have not observed any more suitable candidate for my affections, I shall go to her and in a few simple words ask her to be my wife. I shall point out that my income is sufficient for two, that my morals are above reproach, that...."

"Haven't you a really nice suit that's been properly pressed and brushed and a rather newer pair of shoes and a less floppy sort of hat and...."

"... that my disposition is amiable and my habits regular. And she and I will settle down to the Marriage Sane."

"How about your cuffs?" said George.

"What about my cuffs?"

"Are you really going to see Miss Waddington in frayed cuffs?"

"I am."

George had nothing more to say. It was sacrilege, but there seemed no way of preventing it.

2

As Hamilton Beamish, some quarter of an hour later, climbed in a series of efficient movements up the stairs of the green omnibus which was waiting in Washington Square, the summer afternoon had reached its best and sweetest. A red-blooded, one hundred per cent American sun still shone warmly down from a sky of gleaming azure, but there had stolen into the air a hint of the cool of evening. It was the sort of day when Tin Pan Alley lyric-writers suddenly realise that "love" rhymes with "skies above," and rush off, snorting, to turn out the song-hit of a lifetime. Sentimentality was abroad: and gradually, without his being aware of it, its seeds began to plant themselves in the stony and uncompromising soil of Hamilton Beamish's bosom.

Yes, little by little, as the omnibus rolled on up the Avenue, there began to burgeon in Hamilton Beamish a mood of gentle tolerance for his species. He no longer blamed so whole-heartedly the disposition of his fellow-men to entertain towards the opposite sex on short acquaintance a warmth of emotion which could be scientifically justified only by a long and intimate knowledge of character. For the first time he began to debate within himself whether there was not something to be said for a man who was, like George Finch, plunged headlong into love with a girl to whom he had never even spoken.

And it was at this precise moment—just, dramatically enough, when the bus was passing Twenty-Ninth Street with its pretty and suggestive glimpse of the Little Church Round the Corner—that he noticed for the first time the girl in the seat across the way.

She was a girl of chic and élan. One may go still further—a girl of espièglerie and je ne sais quoi. She was dressed, as Hamilton Beamish's experienced eye noted in one swift glance, in a delightful two-piece suit composed of a smart coat in fine quality repp, lined throughout with crêpe-de-chine, over a dainty long-sleeved frock of figured Marocain prettily pleated at the sides and finished at the neck with a small collar and kilted frill: a dress which, as every schoolboy knows, can be had in beige, grey, mid-grey, opal, snuff, powder, burnt wood, puce, brown, bottle, almond, navy, black and dark Saxe. Her colour was dark Saxe.

Another glance enabled Hamilton Beamish to take in her hat. It was, he perceived, a becoming hat in Yedda Visca straw, trimmed and bound with silk petersham ribbon, individual without being conspicuous, artistic in line and exquisite in style: and from beneath it there strayed a single curl of about the colour of a good Pekingese dog. Judging the rest of her hair by the light of this curl, Hamilton Beamish deduced that, when combing and dressing it, she just moistened the brush with a little scalpoline, thus producing a gleamy mass, sparkling with life and possessing that incomparable softness, freshness and luxuriance, at the same time toning each single hair to grow thick, long and strong. No doubt she had read advertisements of the tonic in the papers and now, having bought a bottle, was seeing how healthy and youthful her hair appeared after this delightful, refreshing dressing.

Her shoes were of black patent-leather, her stockings of steel-grey. She had that schoolgirl complexion and the skin you love to touch.

All these things the trained eye of Hamilton Beamish noted, swivelling rapidly sideways and swivelling rapidly back again. But it was her face that he noted most particularly. It was just the sort of face which, if he had not had his policy of Sane Love all carefully mapped out, would have exercised the most disturbing effect on his emotions. Even as it was, this strong, competent man could not check, as he alighted from the bus at Seventy-Ninth Street, a twinge of that wistful melancholy which men feel when they are letting a good thing get away from them.

Sad, reflected Hamilton Beamish, as he stood upon the steps of Number 16 and prepared to ring the bell, that he would never see this girl again. Naturally, a man of his stamp was not in love at first sight, but nevertheless he did not conceal it from himself that nothing would suit him better than to make her acquaintance and, after careful study of her character and disposition, possibly discover in a year or two that it was she whom Nature had intended for his mate.

It was at this point in his reflections that he perceived her standing at his elbow.

There are moments when even the coolest-headed efficiency expert finds it hard to maintain his poise. Hamilton Beamish was definitely taken aback: and, had he been a lesser man, one would have said that he became for an instant definitely pop-eyed. Apart from the fact that he had been thinking of her and thinking of her tenderly, there was the embarrassment of standing side by side with a strange girl on a door-step. In such a crisis it is very difficult for a man to know precisely how to behave. Should he endeavour to create the illusion that he is not aware of her presence? Or should he make some chatty remark? And, if a chatty remark, what chatty remark?

Hamilton Beamish was still grappling with this problem, when the girl solved it for him. Suddenly screwing up a face which looked even more attractive at point-blank range than it had appeared in profile, she uttered the exclamation "Oo!"

"Oo!" said this girl.

For a moment, all Hamilton Beamish felt was that almost ecstatic relief which comes over the man of sensibility when he finds that a pretty girl has an attractive voice. Too many times in his career he had admired girls from afar, only to discover, when they spoke, that they had voices like peacocks calling up the rain. The next instant, however, he had recognised that his companion was suffering, and his heart was filled with a blend of compassion and zeal. Her pain aroused simultaneously the pity of the man and the efficiency of the efficiency expert.

"You have something in your eye?" he said.

"A bit of dust or something."

"Permit me," said Hamilton Beamish.

One of the most difficult tasks that can confront the ordinary man is the extraction of foreign bodies from the eye of a perfect stranger of the opposite sex. But Hamilton Beamish was not an ordinary man. Barely ten seconds later, he was replacing his handkerchief in his pocket and the girl was blinking at him gratefully.

"Thank you ever so much," she said.

"Not at all," said Hamilton Beamish.

"A doctor couldn't have done it more neatly."

"It's just a knack."

"Why is it," asked the girl, "that, when you get a speck of dust in your eye the size of a pin-point, it seems as big as all out-doors?"

Hamilton Beamish could answer that. The subject was one he had studied.

"The conjunctiva, a layer of mucous membrane which lines the back of the eyelids and is reflected on the front of the globe, this reflection forming the fornix, is extremely sensitive. This is especially so at the point where the tarsal plates of fibrous tissue are attached to the orbital margin by the superior and inferior palpebral ligaments."

"I see," said the girl.

There was a pause.

"Are you calling on Mrs. Waddington?" asked the girl.

"On Miss Waddington."

"I've never met her."

"You don't know the whole family, then?"

"No. Only Mrs. Waddington. Would you mind ringing the bell?"

Hamilton Beamish pressed the button.

"I saw you on the omnibus," he said.

"Did you?"

"Yes. I was sitting in the next seat."

"How odd!"

"It's a lovely day, isn't it?"

"Beautiful."

"The sun."

"Yes."

"The sky."

"Yes."

"I like the summer."

"So do I."

"When it's not too hot."

"Yes."

"Though, as a matter of fact," said Hamilton Beamish, "I always say that what one objects to is not the heat but the humidity."

Which simply goes to prove that even efficiency experts, when they fall in love at first sight, can babble like any man of inferior intellect in the same circumstances. Strange and violent emotions were racking Hamilton Beamish's bosom: and, casting away the principles of a lifetime, he recognised without a trace of shame that love had come to him at last—not creeping scientifically into his soul, as he had supposed it would, but elbowing its way in with the Berserk rush of a commuter charging into the five-fifteen. Yes, he was in love. And it is proof of the completeness with which passion had blunted his intellectual faculties that he was under the impression that in the recent exchange of remarks he had been talking rather well.

The door opened. Ferris appeared. He looked at the girl, not with the cold distaste which he had exhibited earlier in the day towards George Finch, but with a certain paternal affection. Ferris measured forty-six round the waist, but Beauty still had its appeal for him.

"Mrs. Waddington desired me to say, miss," he said, "that an appointment of an urgent nature has called her elsewhere, rendering it impossible for her to see you this afternoon."

"She might have phoned me," the girl complained.

Ferris allowed one eyebrow to flicker momentarily, conveying the idea, that, while he sympathised, a spirit of loyalty forbade him to join in criticism of his employer.

"Mrs. Waddington wished to know if it would be convenient to you, miss, if she called upon you to-morrow at five o'clock?"

"All right."

"Thank you, miss. Miss Waddington is expecting you, sir."

Hamilton Beamish continued to stare after the girl, who, with a friendly nod in his direction, had begun to walk light-heartedly out of his life along the street.

"Who is that young lady, Ferris?" he asked.

"I could not say, sir."

"Why couldn't you? You seemed to know her just now."

"No, sir. I had never seen the young lady before. Mrs. Waddington, however, had mentioned that she would be calling at this hour and instructed me to give the message which I delivered."

"Didn't Mrs. Waddington say who was calling?"

"Yes, sir. The young lady."

"Ass!" said Hamilton Beamish. But even he was not strong man enough to say it aloud. "I mean, didn't she tell you the young lady's name?"

"No, sir. If you will step this way, sir, I will conduct you to Miss Waddington, who is in the library."

"It seems funny that Mrs. Waddington did not tell you the young lady's name," brooded Hamilton Beamish.

"Very humorous, sir," agreed the butler indulgently.

3

"Oh, Jimmy, it was sweet of you to come," said Molly.

Hamilton Beamish patted her hand absently. He was too preoccupied to notice the hateful name by which she had addressed him.

"I have had a wonderful experience," he said.

"So have I. I think I'm in love."

"I have given the matter as close attention as has been possible, in the limited time at my disposal," said Hamilton Beamish, "and I have reached the conclusion that I, too, am in love."

"I think I am in love with your friend, George Finch."

"I am in love with ..." Hamilton Beamish paused. "I don't know her name. She is a most charming girl. I met her coming up here on the bus, and we talked for awhile on the front door-steps. I took something out of her eye."

Molly stared incredulously.

"You have fallen in love with a girl and you don't know who she is? But I thought you always said that love was a reasoned emotion and all that."

"One's views alter," said Hamilton Beamish. "A man's intellectual perceptions do not stand still. One develops."

"I was never so surprised in my life."

"It came as a complete surprise to me," said Hamilton Beamish. "It is excessively aggravating that I do not know her name nor where she lives nor anything about her except that she appears to be a friend—or at least an acquaintance—of your stepmother."

"Oh, she knows mother, does she?"

"Apparently. She was calling here by appointment."

"All sorts of weird people call on mother. She is honorary secretary to about a hundred societies."

"This girl was of medium height, with an extremely graceful figure and bright brown hair. She wore a two-piece suit with a coat of fine quality repp over a long-sleeved frock of figured Marocain pleated at the sides and finished at the neck with a small collar and kilted frill. Her hat was of Yedda Visca straw, trimmed and bound with silk petersham ribbon. She had patent-leather shoes, silk stockings, and eyes of tender grey like the mists of sunrise floating over some magic pool of Fairyland. Does the description suggest anybody to you?"

"No, I don't think so—She sounds nice."

"She is nice. I gazed into those eyes only for a moment, but I shall never forget them. They were deeper than the depth of waters stilled at even."

"I could ask mother who she is."

"I should be greatly obliged if you would do so," said Hamilton Beamish. "Mention that it is some one upon whom she is to call at five o'clock to-morrow, and telephone me the name and address. Oh, to seize her and hold her close to me and kiss her again and again and again! And now, child, tell me of yourself. I think you mentioned that you also were in love."

"Yes. With George Finch."

"A capital fellow."

"He's a lambkin," emended Molly warmly.

"A lambkin, if you prefer it."

"And I asked you to come here to-day to tell me what I ought to do. You see, mother doesn't like him."

"So I gathered."

"She has forbidden him the house."

"Yes."

"I suppose it's because he has no money."

Hamilton Beamish was on the point of mentioning that George had an almost indecent amount of money, but he checked himself. Who was he that he should destroy a young girl's dreams? It was as a romantic and penniless artist that George Finch had won this girl's heart. It would be cruel to reveal the fact that he was rich and the worst artist in New York.

"Your stepmother," he agreed, "is apt to see eye to eye with Bradstreet in her estimation of her fellows."

"I don't care if he hasn't any money," said Molly. "You know that, when I marry, I get that pearl necklace that father bought for mother. It's being held in trust for me. I can sell it and get thousands of dollars, so that we shall be as right as anything."

"Quite."

"But, of course, I don't want to make a runaway marriage if I can help it. I want to be married with bridesmaids and cake and presents and photographs in the rotogravure section and everything."

"Naturally."

"So the point is, mother must learn to love George. Now listen, Jimmy dear. Mother will be going to see her palmist, very soon—she's always going to palmists, you know."

Hamilton Beamish nodded. He had not been aware of this trait in Mrs. Waddington's character, but he could believe anything of her. Now that he came to consider the matter, he recognised that Mrs. Waddington was precisely the sort of woman who, in the intervals of sitting in the salons of beauty specialists with green mud on her face, would go to palmists.

"And what you must do is to go to this palmist before mother gets there and bribe her to say that my only happiness is bound up with a brown-haired artist whose name begins with a G."

"I scarcely think that even a palmist would make Mrs. Waddington believe that."

"She believes everything Madame Eulalie sees in the crystal."

"But hardly that."

"No, perhaps you're right. Well, then, you must get Madame Eulalie at least to steer mother off Lord Hunstanton. Last night, she told me in so many words that she wanted me to marry him. He's always here, and it's awful."

"I could do that, of course."

"And you will?"

"Certainly."

"You're a darling. I should think she would do it for ten dollars."

"Twenty at the outside."

"Then that's settled. I knew I could rely on you. By the way, will you tell George something quite casually?"

"Anything you wish."

"Just mention to him that, if he happens to be strolling in Central Park to-morrow afternoon near the Zoo, we might run into each other."

"Very well."

"And now," said Molly, "tell me all about George and how you came to know one another and what you thought of him when you first saw him and what he likes for breakfast and what he talks about and what he said about me."

4

It might have been expected that the passage of time, giving opportunity for quiet reflection on the subject of the illogical nature of the infatuation in which he had allowed himself to become involved, would have brought remorse to so clear and ruthless a thinker as Hamilton Beamish. It was not so, but far otherwise. As Hamilton Beamish sat in the ante-chamber of Madame Eulalie's office next day, he gloried in his folly: and when his better self endeavoured to point out to him that what had happened was that he had allowed himself to be ensnared by a girl's face—that is to say, by a purely fortuitous arrangement of certain albuminoids and fatty molecules, all Hamilton Beamish did was to tell his better self to put its head in a bag. He was in love, and he liked it. He was in love, and proud of it. His only really coherent thought as he waited in the ante-room was a resolve to withdraw the booklet on "The Marriage Sane" from circulation and try his hand at writing a poem or two.

"Madame Eulalie will see you now, sir," announced the maid, breaking in upon his reverie.

Hamilton Beamish entered the inner room. And, having entered it, stopped dead.

"You!" he exclaimed.

The girl gave that fleeting pat at her hair which is always Woman's reaction to the unexpected situation. And Hamilton Beamish looking at that hair emotionally, perceived that he had been right in his yesterday's surmise. It was, as he had suspected, a gleamy mass, sparkling with life and possessing that incomparable softness, freshness and luxuriance.

"Why, how do you do?" said the girl.

"I'm fine," said Hamilton Beamish.

"We seem fated to meet."

"And I'm not quarrelling with fate."

"No?"

"No," said Hamilton Beamish. "Fancy it being you!"

"Fancy who being me?"

"Fancy you being you." It occurred to him that he was not making himself quite clear. "I mean, I was sent here with a message for Madame Eulalie, and she turns out to be you."

"A message? Who from?"

"From whom?" corrected Hamilton Beamish. Even in the grip of love, a specialist on Pure English remains a specialist on Pure English.

"That's what I said—Who from?"

Hamilton Beamish smiled an indulgent smile. These little mistakes could be corrected later—possibly on the honeymoon.

"From Molly Waddington. She asked me to...."

"Oh, then you don't want me to read your hand?"

"There is nothing I want more in this world," said Hamilton Beamish warmly, "than to have you read my hand."

"I don't have to read it to tell your character, of course," said the girl. "I can see that at a glance."

"You can?"

"Oh, certainly. You have a strong, dominating nature and a keen incisive mind. You have great breadth of vision, iron determination, and marvellous insight. Yet with it all you are at heart gentle, kind and lovable; deeply altruistic and generous to a fault. You have it in you to be a leader of men. You remind me of Julius Cæsar, Shakespeare and Napoleon Bonaparte."

"Tell me more," said Hamilton Beamish.

"If you ever fell in love...."

"If I ever fell in love...."

"If you ever fell in love," said the girl, raising her eyes to his and drawing a step closer, "you would...."

"Mr. Delancy Cabot," announced the maid.

"Oh, darn it!" said Madame Eulalie. "I forgot I had an appointment. Send him in."

"May I wait?" breathed Hamilton Beamish devoutly.

"Please do. I shan't be long." She turned to the door. "Come in, Mr. Cabot."

Hamilton Beamish wheeled around. A long, stringy person was walking daintily into the room. He was richly, even superbly, dressed in the conventional costume of the popular clubman and pet of Society. He wore lavender gloves and a carnation in his buttonhole, and a vast expanse of snowy collar encircled a neck which suggested that he might be a throw-back to some giraffe ancestor. A pleasing feature of this neck was an Adam's apple that could have belonged to only one man of Hamilton Beamish's acquaintance.

"Garroway!" cried Hamilton Beamish. "What are you doing here? And what the devil does this masquerade mean?"

The policeman seemed taken aback. His face became as red as his wrists. But for the collar, which held him in a grip of iron, his jaw would no doubt have fallen.

"I didn't expect to find you here, Mr. Beamish," he said apologetically.

"I didn't expect to find you here, calling yourself De Courcy Bellville."

"Delancy Cabot, sir."

"Delancy Cabot, then."

"I like the name," urged the policeman. "I saw it in a book."

The girl was breathing hard.

"Is this man a policeman?" she cried.

"Yes, he is," said Hamilton Beamish. "His name is Garroway, and I am teaching him to write poetry. And what I want to know," he thundered, turning on the unhappy man, whose Adam's apple was now leaping like a young lamb in the springtime, "is what are you doing here, interrupting a—interrupting a—in short interrupting, when you ought either to be about your constabulary duties or else sitting quietly at home studying John Drinkwater. That," said Hamilton Beamish, "is what I want to know."

Officer Garroway coughed.

"The fact is, Mr. Beamish, I did not know that Madame Eulalie was a friend of yours."

"Never mind whose friend she is."

"But it makes all the difference, Mr. Beamish. I can now go back to headquarters and report that Madame Eulalie is above suspicion. You see, sir, I was sent here by my superior officers to effect a cop."

"What do you mean, effect a cop?"

"To make an arrest, Mr. Beamish."

"Then do not say 'effect a cop.' Purge yourself of these vulgarisms, Garroway."

"Yes, sir. I will indeed, sir."

"Aim at the English Pure."

"Yes, sir. Most certainly, Mr. Beamish."

"And what on earth do you mean by saying that you were sent here to arrest this lady?"

"It has been called to the attention of my superior officers, Mr. Beamish, that Madame Eulalie is in the habit of telling fortunes for a monetary consideration. Against the law, sir."

Hamilton Beamish snorted.

"Ridiculous! If that's the law, alter it!"

"I will do my best, sir."

"I have had the privilege of watching Madame Eulalie engaged upon her art, and she reveals nothing but the most limpid truth. So go back to your superior officers and tell them to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge."

"Yes, sir. I will, sir."

"And now leave us. We would be alone."

"Yes, Mr. Beamish," said Officer Garroway humbly. "At once, Mr. Beamish."

For some moments after the door had closed, the girl stood staring at Hamilton Beamish with wondering eyes.

"Was that man really a policeman?"

"He was."

"And you handled him like that, and he said, 'Yes, sir!' and 'No, sir!' and crawled out on all fours." She drew a deep breath. "It seems to me that you are just the sort of friend a lonely girl needs in this great city."

"I am only too delighted that I was able to be of service."

"Service is right! Mr. Beamish...."

"My first name is Hamilton."

She looked at him, amazed.

"You are not the Hamilton Beamish? Not the man who wrote the booklets?"

"I have written a few booklets."

"Why, you're my favourite author! If it hadn't been for you I would still be mouldering in a little one-horse town where there wasn't even a good soda-fountain. But I got hold of a couple of your Are You in a Groove? things, and I packed up my grip and came right along to New York to lead a larger life. If I'd known yesterday that you were Hamilton Beamish, I'd have kissed you on the door-step!"

It was Hamilton Beamish's intention to point out that a curtained room with a closed door was an even more suitable place for such a demonstration, but, even as he tried to speak, there gripped him for the first time in his life a strange, almost George Finch-like shyness. One deprecates the modern practice of exposing the great, but candour compels one to speak out and say that at this juncture Hamilton Beamish emitted a simpering giggle and began to twiddle his fingers.

The strange weakness passed, and he was himself again. He adjusted his glasses firmly.

"Would you," he asked, "could you possibly.... Do you think you could manage to come and lunch somewhere to-morrow?"

The girl uttered an exclamation of annoyance.

"Isn't that too bad!" she said. "I can't."

"The day after?"

"I'm sorry. I'm afraid I shall be off the map for three weeks. I've got to jump on a train to-morrow and go visit the old folks back in East Gilead. It's Pop's birthday on Saturday, and I never miss it."

"East Gilead?"

"Idaho. You wouldn't have heard of the place, but it's there."

"But I have heard of it. A great friend of mine comes from East Gilead."

"You don't say! Who?"

"A man named George Finch."

She laughed amusedly.

"You don't actually mean to tell me you know George Finch?"

"He is my most intimate friend."

"Then I trust for your sake," said the girl, "that he is not such a yap as he used to be."

Hamilton Beamish reflected. Was George Finch a yap? How precisely did one estimate the yaphood of one's friends?

"By the word 'yap' you mean...."

"I mean a yap. The sort of fellow who couldn't say Bo to a goose."

Hamilton Beamish had never seen George Finch in conversation with a goose, but he thought he was a good enough judge of character to be able to credit him with the ability to perform the very trivial deed of daring indicated.

"I fancy New York has changed George," he replied, after reflection. "In fact, now that I remember, it was on more or less that very subject that I called to see you in a professional capacity. The fact is, George Finch has fallen violently in love with Molly Waddington, the stepdaughter of your client, Mrs. Waddington."

"You don't say! And I suppose he's too shy to come within a mile of her."

"On the contrary. The night before last he seems to have forced his way into the house—you might say, practically forced his way—and now Mrs. Waddington has forbidden him to see Molly again, fearing that he will spoil her plan of marrying the poor child to a certain Lord Hunstanton."

The girl stared.

"You're right! George must have altered."

"And we were wondering—Molly and I—if we could possibly induce you to stoop to a—shall I say a benevolent little ruse. Mrs. Waddington is coming to see you to-day at five, and it was Molly's suggestion that I should sound you as to whether you would consent to take a look in the crystal and tell Mrs. Waddington that you see danger threatening Molly from a dark man with an eye-glass."

"Of course."

"You will?"

"It isn't much to do in return for all you have done for me."

"Thank you, thank you," said Hamilton Beamish. "I knew, the moment I set eyes on you, that you were a woman in a million. I wonder,—could you possibly come to lunch one day after you return?"

"I'd love it."

"I'll leave you my telephone number."

"Thanks. Give George my regards. I'd like to see him when I get back."

"You shall. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Mr. Beamish."

"Hamilton."

Her face wore a doubtful look.

"I don't much like that name Hamilton. It's kind of stiff."

Hamilton Beamish had a brief struggle with himself.

"My name is also James. At one time in my life many people used to call me Jimmy." He shuddered a little, but repeated the word bravely: "Jimmy."

"Put me on the list," said the girl. "I like that much better. Good-bye, Jimmy."

"Good-bye," said Hamilton Beamish.

So ended the first spasm of a great man's love-story. A few moments later, Hamilton Beamish was walking in a sort of dance-measure down the street. Near Washington Square he gave a small boy a dollar and asked him if he was going to be President some day.

5

"George," said Hamilton Beamish, "I met some one to-day who knew you back in East Gilead. A girl."

"What was her name? Did Molly give you any message for me?"

"Madame Eulalie."

"I don't remember anyone called that. Did Molly give you any message for me?"

"She is slim and graceful and has tender grey eyes like mists floating over some pool in Fairyland."

"I certainly don't remember anyone in East Gilead like that. Did Molly give you any message for me?"

"No."

"She didn't?" George flung himself despairingly into a chair. "This is the end!"

"Oh, yes, she did," said Hamilton Beamish. "I was forgetting. She told me to tell you that, if you happened to be in Central Park to-morrow afternoon near the Zoo, you might meet her."

"This is the maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year," said George Finch.

CHAPTER FIVE

1

Madame Eulalie peered into the crystal that was cupped between her shapely hands. The face that had caused Hamilton Beamish to jettison the principles of a lifetime was concentrated and serious.

"The mists begin to clear away!" she murmured.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Waddington. She had been hoping they would.

"There is some one very near to you...."

"A spirit?" said Mrs. Waddington nervously, casting an apprehensive glance over her shoulder. She was never quite sure that something of the sort might not pop out at any moment from a corner of this dim-lit, incense-scented room.

"You misunderstand me," said Madame Eulalie gravely. "I mean that that which is taking shape in the crystal concerns some one very near to you, some near relative."

"Not my husband?" said Mrs. Waddington in a flat voice. A woman, careful with her money, she did not relish the idea of handing over ten dollars for visions about Sigsbee H.

"Does your husband's name begin with an M.?"

"No," said Mrs. Waddington, relieved.

"The letter M. seems to be forming itself among the mists."

"I have a stepdaughter, Molly."

"Is she tall and dark?"

"No. Small and fair."

"Then it is she!" said Madame Eulalie. "I see her in a wedding-dress, walking up an aisle. Her hand is on the arm of a dark man with an eye-glass. Do you know such a person?"

"Lord Hunstanton!"

"I do seem to sense the letter H."

"Lord Hunstanton is a great friend of mine, and devoted to Molly. Do you really see her marrying him?"

"I see her walking up the aisle."

"It's the same thing."

"No! For she never reaches the altar."

"Why not?" asked Mrs. Waddington, justly annoyed.

"From the crowd a woman springs forth. She bars the way. She seems to be speaking rapidly, with great emotion. And the man with the eye-glass is shrinking back, his face working horribly. His expression is very villainous. He raises a hand. He strikes the woman. She reels back. She draws out a revolver. And then...."

"Yes?" cried Mrs. Waddington. "Yes?"

"The vision fades," said Madame Eulalie, rising briskly with the air of one who has given a good ten dollars' worth.

"But it can't be! It's incredible."

"The crystal never deceives."

"But Lord Hunstanton is a most delightful man."

"No doubt the woman with the revolver found him so—to her cost."

"But you may have been mistaken. Many men are dark and wear an eye-glass. What did this man look like?"

"What does Lord Hunstanton look like?"

"He is tall and beautifully proportioned, with clear blue eyes and a small moustache which he twists between the finger and thumb of his right hand."

"It was he!"

"What shall I do?"

"Well, obviously it would be criminal to allow Miss Waddington to associate with this man."

"But he's coming to dinner to-night."

Madame Eulalie, whose impulses sometimes ran away with her, was about to say: "Poison his soup": but contrived in time to substitute for this remark a sober shrug of the shoulders.

"I must leave it to you, Mrs. Waddington," she said, "to decide on the best course of action. I cannot advise. I only warn. If you want change for a large bill, I think I can manage it for you," she added, striking the business note.

All the way home to Seventy-Ninth Street Mrs. Waddington pondered deeply. And, as she was not a woman who, as a rule, exercised her brain to any great extent, by the time she reached the house she was experiencing some of the sensations of one who has been hit on the head by a sand-bag. What she felt that she needed above all things in the world was complete solitude: and it was consequently with a jaundiced eye that she looked upon her husband, Sigsbee Horatio, when, a few moments after her return, he shuffled into the room where she had planted herself down for further intensive meditation.

"Well, Sigsbee?" said Mrs. Waddington, wearily.

"Oh, there you are," said Sigsbee H.

"Do you want anything?"

"Well, yes and no," said Sigsbee.

Mrs. Waddington was exasperated to perceive at this point that her grave matrimonial blunder was slithering about the parquet floor in the manner of one trying out new dance-steps.

"Stand still!" she cried.

"I can't," said Sigsbee H. "I'm too nervous."

Mrs. Waddington pressed a hand to her throbbing brow.

"Then sit down!"

"I'll try," said Sigsbee doubtfully. He tested a chair, and sprang up instantly as if the seat had been charged with electricity. "I can't," he said. "I'm all of a twitter."

"What in the world do you mean?"

"I've got something to tell you and I don't know how to begin."

"What do you wish to tell me?"

"I don't wish to tell you at all," said Sigsbee frankly. "But I promised Molly I would. She came in a moment ago."

"Well?"

"I was in the library. She found me there and told me this."

"Do kindly get to the point, Sigsbee!"

"I promised her I would break it gently."

"Break what gently? You are driving me mad."

"Do you remember," asked Sigsbee, "a splendid young Westerner named Pinch who dropped in to dinner the night before last? A fine, breezy...."

"I am not likely to forget the person you mention. I have given strict instructions that he is never again to be admitted to the house."

"Well, this splendid young Pinch...."

"I am not interested in Mr. Finch,—which is, I believe, his correct name."

"Pinch, I thought."

"Finch! And what does his name matter, anyway?"

"Well," said Sigsbee, "it matters this much, that Molly seems to want to make it hers. What I'm driving at, if you see what I mean, is that Molly came in a moment ago and told me that she and this young fellow Finch have just gone and got engaged to be married!"

2

Having uttered these words, Sigsbee Horatio stood gazing at his wife with something of the spell-bound horror of a man who has bored a hole in a dam and sees the water trickling through and knows that it is too late to stop it. He had had a sort of idea all along that the news might affect her rather powerfully, and his guess was coming true. Nothing could make a woman of Mrs. Waddington's physique "leap from her chair": but she had begun to rise slowly like a balloon half-filled with gas: and her face had become so contorted and her eyes so bulging that any competent medical man of sporting tastes would have laid seven to four on a fit of apoplexy in the next few minutes.

But by some miracle this disaster—if you could call it that—did not occur. For quite a considerable time the sufferer had trouble with her vocal chords and could emit nothing but guttural croaks. Then, mastering herself with a strong effort, she spoke.

"What did you say?"

"You heard," said Sigsbee H. sullenly, twisting his fingers and wishing that he was out in Utah, rustling cattle.

Mrs. Waddington moistened her lips.

"Did you. I understand you to say that Molly was engaged to be married to that Finch?"

"Yes, I did. And," added Sigsbee H., giving battle in the first line of trenches, "it's no good saying it was all my fault, because I had nothing to do with it."

"It was you who brought this man into the house."

"Well, yes." Sigsbee had overlooked that weak spot in his defences. "Well, yes."

There came upon Mrs. Waddington a ghastly calm like that which comes upon the surface of molten lava in the crater of a volcano just before the stuff shoots out and starts doing the local villagers a bit of no good.

"Ring the bell," she said.

Sigsbee H. rang the bell.

"Ferris," said Mrs. Waddington, "ask Miss Molly to come here."

"Very good, madam."

In the interval which elapsed between the departure of the butler and the arrival of the erring daughter, no conversation brilliant enough to be worth reporting took place in the room. Once Sigsbee said "Er——" and in reply Mrs. Waddington said "Be quiet!" but that completed the dialogue. When Molly entered, Mrs. Waddington was looking straight in front of her and heaving gently, and Sigsbee H. had just succeeded in breaking a valuable china figure which he had taken from an occasional table and was trying in a preoccupied manner to balance on the end of a paper-knife.

"Ferris says you want to see me, mother," said Molly, floating brightly in.

She stood there, looking at the two with shining eyes. Her cheeks were delightfully flushed: and there was about her so radiant an air of sweet, innocent, girlish gaiety that it was all Mrs. Waddington could do to refrain from hurling a bust of Edgar Allan Poe at her head.

"I do want to see you," said Mrs. Waddington. "Pray tell me instantly what is all this nonsense I hear about you and...." She choked. "... and Mr. Finch."

"To settle a bet," said Sigsbee H., "is his name Finch or Pinch?"

"Finch, of course."

"I'm bad at names," said Sigsbee. "I was in college with a fellow called Follansbee and do you think I could get it out of my nut that that guy's name was Ferguson? Not in a million years! I...."

"Sigsbee!"

"Hello?"

"Be quiet." Mrs. Waddington concentrated her attention on Molly once more. "Your father says that you told him some absurd story about being...."

"Engaged to George?" said Molly. "Yes, it's quite true. I am. By a most extraordinary chance we met this afternoon in Central Park near the Zoo...."

"A place," said Sigsbee H., "I've meant to go to a hundred times and never seen yet."

"Sigsbee!"

"All right, all right! I was only saying...."

"We were both tremendously surprised, of course," said Molly. "I said 'Fancy meeting you here!' and he said...."

"I have no wish to hear what Mr. Finch said."

"Well, anyway, we walked round for awhile, looking at the animals, and suddenly he asked me to marry him outside the cage of the Siberian yak."

"No, sir!" exclaimed Sigsbee H. with a sudden strange firmness, the indulgent father who for once in his life asserts himself. "When you get married, you'll be married in St. Thomas's like any other nice girl."

"I mean it was outside the cage of the Siberian yak that he asked me to marry him."

"Oh, ah!" said Sigsbee H.

A dreamy look had crept into Molly's eyes. Her lips were curved in a tender smile, as if she were reliving that wonderful moment in a girl's life, when the man she loves beckons to her to follow him into Paradise.

"You ought to have seen his ears!" she said. "They were absolutely crimson."

"You don't say!" chuckled Sigsbee H.

"Scarlet! And, when he tried to speak, he gargled."

"The poor simp!"

Molly turned on her father with flaming eyes.

"How dare you call my dear darling Georgie a simp?"

"How dare you call that simp your dear darling Georgie?" demanded Mrs. Waddington.

"Because he is my dear darling Georgie. I love him with all my heart, the precious lamb, and I'm going to marry him."

"You are going to do nothing of the kind!" Mrs. Waddington quivered with outraged indignation. "Do you imagine I intend to allow you to ruin your life by marrying a despicable fortune-hunter?"

"He isn't a despicable fortune-hunter."

"He is a penniless artist."

"Well, I'm sure he is frightfully clever and will be able to sell his pictures for ever so much."

"Tchah!"

"Besides," said Molly defiantly, "when I marry I get that pearl necklace which father gave mother. I can sell that, and it will keep us going for years."

Mrs. Waddington was about to reply—and there is little reason to doubt that that reply would have been about as red-hot a come-back as any hundred and eighty pound woman had ever spoken—when she was checked by a sudden exclamation of agony that proceeded from the lips of her husband.

"Whatever is the matter, Sigsbee?" she said, annoyed.

Sigsbee H. seemed to be wrestling with acute mental agitation. He was staring at his daughter with protruding eyes.

"Did you say you were going to sell that necklace?" he stammered.

"Oh, be quiet, Sigsbee!" said Mrs. Waddington. "What does it matter whether she sells the necklace or not? It has nothing to do with the argument. The point is that this misguided girl is proposing to throw herself away on a miserable, paint-daubing, ukulele-playing artist...."

"He doesn't play the ukulele. He told me so."

"... when she might, if she chose, marry a delightful man with a fine old English title who would...."

Mrs. Waddington broke off. There had come back to her the memory of that scene in Madame Eulalie's office.

Molly seized the opportunity afforded by her unexpected silence to make a counter-attack.

"I wouldn't marry Lord Hunstanton if he were the last man in the world."

"Honey," said Sigsbee H. in a low, pleading voice, "I don't think I'd sell that necklace if I were you."

"Of course I shall sell it. We shall need the money when we are married."

"You are not going to be married," said Mrs. Waddington, recovering. "I should have thought any right-minded girl would have despised this wretched Finch. Why, the man appears to be so poor-spirited that he didn't even dare to come here and tell me this awful news. He left it to you...."

"George was not able to come here. The poor pet has been arrested by a policeman."

"Ha!" cried Mrs. Waddington triumphantly. "And that is the sort of man you propose to marry! A gaol-bird!"

"Well, I think it shows what a sweet nature he has. He was so happy at being engaged that he suddenly stopped at Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue and started giving away dollar-bills to everybody who came by. In about two minutes there was a crowd stretching right across to Madison Avenue, and the traffic was blocked for miles, and they called out the police-reserves, and George was taken away in a patrol-wagon, and I telephoned to Hamilton Beamish to go and bail him out and bring him along here. They ought to arrive at any moment."

"Mr. Hamilton Beamish and Mr. George Finch," said Ferris in the doorway. And the nicely-graduated way in which he spoke the two names would have conveyed at once to any intelligent listener that Hamilton Beamish was an honoured guest but that he had been forced to admit George Finch—against all the promptings of his better nature—because Mr. Beamish had told him to and he had been quelled by the man's cold, spectacled eye.

"Here we are," said Hamilton Beamish heartily. "Just in time, I perceive, to join in a jolly family discussion."

Mrs. Waddington looked bleachingly at George, who was trying to hide behind a gate-leg table. For George Finch was conscious of not looking his best. Nothing so disorders the outer man as the process of being arrested and hauled to the coop by a posse of New York gendarmes. George's collar was hanging loose from its stud: his waistcoat lacked three buttons: and his right eye was oddly discoloured where a high-minded officer, piqued by the fact that he should have collected crowds by scattering dollar-bills and even more incensed by the discovery that he had scattered all he possessed and had none left, had given him a hearty buffet during the ride in the patrol-wagon.

"There is no discussion," said Mrs. Waddington. "You do not suppose I am going to allow my daughter to marry a man like that."

"Tut-tut!" said Hamilton Beamish. "George is not looking his best just now, but a wash and brush-up will do wonders.... What is your objection to George?"

Mrs. Waddington was at a momentary loss for a reply. Anybody, suddenly questioned as to why they disliked a slug or a snake or a black-beetle, might find it difficult on the spur of the moment to analyse and dissect their prejudice. Mrs. Waddington looked on her antipathy to George Finch as one of those deep, natural, fundamental impulses which the sensible person takes for granted. Broadly speaking, she objected to George because he was George. It was, as it were, his essential Georgeness that offended her. But, seeing that she was expected to be analytical, she forced her mind to the task.

"He is an artist."

"So was Michael Angelo."

"I never met him."

"He was a very great man."

Mrs. Waddington raised her eyebrows.

"I completely fail to understand, Mr. Beamish, why, when we are discussing this young man here with the black eye and the dirty collar, you should persist in diverting the conversation to the subject of a perfect stranger like this Mr. Angelo."

"I merely wished to point out," said Hamilton Beamish stiffly, "that the fact that he is an artist does not necessarily damn a man."

"There is no need," retorted Mrs. Waddington with even greater stiffness, "to use bad language."

"Besides, George is a rotten artist."

"Rotten to the core, no doubt."

"I mean," said Hamilton Beamish, flushing slightly at the lapse from the English Pure into which emotion had led him, "he paints so badly that you can hardly call him an artist at all."

"Is that so?" said George, speaking for the first time and speaking nastily.

"I am sure George is one of the cleverest artists living," cried Molly.

"He is not," thundered Hamilton Beamish. "He is an incompetent amateur."

"Exactly!" said Mrs. Waddington. "And consequently can never hope to make money."

Hamilton Beamish's eyes lit up behind their spectacles.

"Is that your chief objection?" he asked.

"Is what my chief objection?"

"That George has no money?"

"But...." began George.

"Shut up!" said Hamilton Beamish. "I ask you, Mrs. Waddington, would you give your consent to this marriage if my friend George Finch were a wealthy man?"

"It is a waste of time to discuss such...."

"Would you?"

"Possibly I would."

"Then allow me to inform you," said Hamilton Beamish, triumphantly, "that George Finch is an exceedingly wealthy man. His uncle Thomas, whose entire fortune he inherited two years ago, was Finch, Finch, Finch, Butterfield and Finch, the well-known Corporation Law firm. George, my boy, let me congratulate you. All is well. Mrs. Waddington has withdrawn her objections."

Mrs. Waddington snorted, but it was the snort of a beaten woman, outgeneralled by a superior intelligence.

"But...."

"No." Hamilton Beamish raised his hand. "You cannot go back on what you said. You stated in distinct terms that, if George had money, you would consent to the marriage."

"And, anyway, I don't know what all the fuss is about," said Molly. "Because I am going to marry him, no matter what anybody says."

Mrs. Waddington capitulated.

"Very well! I am nobody, I see. What I say does not matter in the slightest."

"Mother!" said George reproachfully.

"Mother?" echoed Mrs. Waddington, starting violently.

"Now that everything is so happily settled, of course I regard you in that light."

"Oh, do you?" said Mrs. Waddington.

"Oh, I do," said George.

Mrs. Waddington sniffed unpleasantly.

"I have been overwhelmed and forced into consenting to a marriage of which I strongly disapprove," she said, "but I may be permitted to say one word. I have a feeling that this wedding will never take place."

"What do you mean?" said Molly. "Of course it will take place. Why shouldn't it?"

Mrs. Waddington sniffed again.

"Mr. Finch," she said, "though a very incompetent artist, has lived for a considerable time in the heart of Greenwich Village and mingled daily with Bohemians of both sexes and questionable morals...."

"What are you hinting?" demanded Molly.

"I am not hinting," replied Mrs. Waddington with dignity. "I am saying. And what I am saying is this. Do not come to me for sympathy if this Finch of yours turns out to have the sort of moral code which you might expect in one who deliberately and of his own free-will goes and lives near Washington Square. I say again, that I have a presentiment that this marriage will never take place. I had a similar presentiment regarding the wedding of my sister-in-law and a young man named John Porter. I said, 'I feel that this wedding will never take place.' And events proved me right. John Porter, at the very moment when he was about to enter the church, was arrested on a charge of bigamy."

George uttered protesting noises.

"But my morals are above reproach."

"So you say."

"I assure you that, as far as women are concerned, I can scarcely tell one from another."

"Precisely," replied Mrs. Waddington, "what John Porter said when they asked him why he had married six different girls."

Hamilton Beamish looked at his watch.

"Well, now that everything is satisfactorily settled...."

"For the moment," said Mrs. Waddington.

"Now that everything is satisfactorily settled," proceeded Hamilton Beamish, "I will be leaving you. I have to get back and dress. I am speaking at a dinner of the Great Neck Social and Literary Society to-night."

The silence that followed his departure was followed by a question from Sigsbee H. Waddington.

"Molly, my dear," said Sigsbee H., "touching on that necklace. Now that this splendid young fellow turns out to be very rich, you will not want to sell it, of course?"

Molly reflected.

"Yes, I think I will. I never liked it much. It's too showy. I shall sell it and buy something very nice with the money for George. A lot of diamond pins or watches or motor-cars or something. And, whenever we look at them we will think of you, daddy dear."

"Thanks," said Mr. Waddington huskily. "Thanks."

"Seldom in my life," observed Mrs. Waddington, coming abruptly out of the brooding coma into which she had sunk, "have I ever had a stronger presentiment than the one to which I alluded just now."

"Oh, mother!" said George.

Hamilton Beamish, gathering up his hat in the hall, became aware that something was pawing at his sleeve. He looked down and perceived Sigsbee H. Waddington.

"Say!" said Sigsbee H. in a hushed undertone. "Say, listen!"

"Is anything the matter?"

"You bet your tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles something's the matter," whispered Sigsbee H. urgently. "Say, listen. Can I have a word with you? I want your advice."

"I'm in a hurry."

"How long will you be before you start out for this Hoboken Clam-Bake of yours?"

"The dinner of the Great Neck Social and Literary Society, to which I imagine you to allude, is at eight o'clock. I shall motor down, leaving my apartment at twenty minutes past seven."

"Then it's no good trying to see you to-night. Say, listen. Will you be home to-morrow?"

"Yes."

"Right!" said Sigsbee H.

CHAPTER SIX

1

"Say, listen!" said Sigsbee H. Waddington.

"Proceed," said Hamilton Beamish.

"Say, listen!"

"I am all attention."

"Say, listen!" said Mr. Waddington.

Hamilton Beamish glanced at his watch impatiently. Even at its normal level of imbecility, the conversation of Sigsbee H. Waddington was apt to jar upon his critical mind, and now, it seemed to him, the other was plumbing depths which even he had never reached before.

"I can give you seven minutes," he said. "At the end of that period of time I must leave you. I am speaking at a luncheon of the Young Women Writers of America. You came here, I gather, to make a communication to me. Make it."

"Say, listen!" said Sigsbee H.

Hamilton Beamish compressed his lips sternly. He had heard parrots with a more intelligent flow of conversation. He was conscious of a strange desire to beat this man over the head with a piece of lead-piping.

"Say, listen!" said Sigsbee H. "I've gone and got myself into the devil of a jam."

"A position of embarrassment?"

"You said it!"

"State nature of same," said Hamilton Beamish, looking at his watch again.

Mr. Waddington glanced quickly and nervously over his shoulder.

"It's like this. You heard Molly say yesterday she was going to sell those pearls."

"I did."

"Well, say, listen!" said Mr. Waddington, lowering his voice and looking apprehensively about him once more, "They aren't pearls!"

"What are they, then?"

"Fakes!"

Hamilton Beamish winced.

"You mean imitation stones?"

"That's just what I do mean. What am I going to do about it?"

"Perfectly simple. Bring an action against the jeweller who sold them to you as genuine."

"But they were genuine then. You don't seem to get the position."

"I do not."

Sigsbee H. Waddington moistened his lips.

"Have you ever heard of the Finer and Better Motion Picture Company of Hollywood, Cal.?"

"Kindly keep to the point. My time is limited."

"This is the point. Some time ago a guy who said he was a friend of mine tipped me off that this company was a wow."

"A what?"

"A winner. He said it was going to be big and advised me to come in on the ground floor. The chance of a lifetime, he said it was."

"Well?"

"Well, I hadn't any money,—not a cent. Still, I didn't want to miss a good thing like that, so I sat down and thought. I thought and thought and thought. And then suddenly something seemed to say to me 'Why not?' That pearl necklace, I mean. There it was, you get me, just sitting and doing nothing and I only needed the money for a few weeks till this Company started to clean up and ... well, to cut a long story short, I sneaked the necklace away, had the fake stones put in, sold the others, bought the stock, and there I was, so I thought, all hotsy-totsy."

"All—what?"

"Hotsy-totsy. It seemed to me that I was absolutely hotsy-totsy."

"And what has caused you to revise this opinion?"

"Why, I met a man the other day who said these shares weren't worth a bean. I've got 'em here. Take a look at them."

Hamilton Beamish scrutinised the documents with distaste.

"The man was right," he said. "When you first mentioned the name of the company, it seemed familiar. I now recall why. Mrs. Henrietta Byng Masterson, the president of the Great Neck Social and Literary Society, was speaking to me of it last night. She also had bought shares and mentioned the fact with regret. I should say at a venture that these of yours are worth possibly ten dollars."

"I gave fifty thousand for them."

"Then your books will show a loss of forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety. I am sorry."

"But what am I to do?"

"Write it off to experience."

"But hell's bells! Don't you understand? What's going to happen when Molly tries to sell that necklace and it comes out that it's a fake?"

Hamilton Beamish shook his head. With most of the ordinary problems of life he was prepared to cope, but this, he frankly admitted, was beyond him.

"My wife'll murder me."

"I'm sorry."

"I came here, thinking that you would be able to suggest something."

"Short of stealing the necklace and dropping it in the Hudson River, I fear I can think of no solution."

"You used to be a brainy sort of gink," said Mr. Waddington reproachfully.

"No human brain could devise a way out of this impasse. You can but wait events and trust to Time the great healer eventually to mend matters."

"That's a lot of help."

Hamilton Beamish shrugged his shoulders. Sigsbee H. Waddington regarded the stock-certificates malevolently.

"If the stuff's no good," he said, "what do they want to put all those dollar-signs on the back for? Misleading people! And look at that seal. And all those signatures."

"I am sorry," said Hamilton Beamish. He moved to the window and leaned out, sniffing the summer air. "What a glorious day."

"No it isn't," said Mr. Waddington.

"Have you ever by any chance met Madame Eulalie, Mrs. Waddington's palmist?" asked Hamilton Beamish dreamily.

"Darn all palmists!" said Sigsbee H. Waddington. "What am I going to do about this stock?"

"I have already told you that there is nothing that you can do, short of stealing the necklace."

"There must be something. What would you do if you were me?"

"Run away to Europe."

"But I can't run away to Europe. I haven't any money."

"Then shoot yourself ... stand in front of a train ... anything, anything," said Hamilton Beamish impatiently. "And now I must really go. Good-bye."

"Good-bye. Thanks for being such a help."

"Not at all," said Hamilton Beamish. "Don't mention it. I am always delighted to be of any assistance, always."

He gave a last soulful glance at the photograph on the mantelpiece and left the room. Mr. Waddington could hear him singing an old French love-song as he waited for the elevator, and the sound seemed to set the seal upon his gloom and despair.

"You big stiff!" said Mr. Waddington morosely.

He flung himself into a chair and gave himself up to melancholy meditation. For a while, all he could think of was how much he disliked Hamilton Beamish. There was a man who went about the place pretending to be clever, and yet the moment you came to him with a childishly simple problem which he ought to have been able to solve in half a dozen different ways in five minutes, he could do nothing but say he was sorry and advise a fellow to stand in front of trains and shoot himself. What on earth was the use of trying to be optimistic about a world which contained people like Hamilton Beamish?

And that idiotic suggestion of his about stealing the necklace! How could he possibly...?

Sigsbee H. Waddington sat up in his chair. There was a gleam in his eyes. He snorted. Was it such an idiotic suggestion, after all?

He gazed into the future. At the moment the necklace was in safe custody at the bank, but, if Molly was going to marry this young Pinch, it would presumably be taken from there and placed on exhibition among the other wedding-presents. So that ere long there would undeniably be a time—say, the best part of a day—when a resolute man with a nimble set of fingers might....

Mr. Waddington sank back in his chair again. The light died out of his eyes. Philosophers tell us that no man really knows himself: but Sigsbee H. Waddington knew himself well enough to be aware that he fell short by several miles of the nerve necessary for such an action. Stealing necklaces is no job for an amateur. You cannot suddenly take to it in middle life without any previous preparation. Every successful stealer of necklaces has to undergo a rigorous and intensive training from early boyhood, starting with milk-cans and bags at railway-stations and working his way up. What was needed for this very delicate operation was a seasoned professional.

And there, felt Sigsbee H. Waddington bitterly, you had in a nutshell the thing that made life so difficult to live—the tragic problem of how to put your hand on the right specialist at the exact moment when you required him. All these reference-books like the Classified Telephone Directory omitted the vital trades,—the trades whose members were of assistance in the real crisis of life. They told you where to find a Glass Beveller, as if anyone knew what to do with a Glass Beveller when they had got him. They gave you the address of Yeast Producers and Designers of Quilts: but what was the good of a producer of yeast when you wanted some one who would produce a jemmy and break into a house or a designer of quilts when what you required was a man who could design a satisfactory scheme for stealing an imitation-pearl necklace?

Mr. Waddington groaned in sheer bitterness of spirit. The irony of things afflicted him sorely. Every day the papers talked about the Crime Wave: every day a thousand happy crooks were making off in automobiles with a thousand bundles of swag: and yet here he was, in urgent need of one of these crooks, and he didn't know where to look for him.

A deprecating tap sounded on the door.

"Come in!" shouted Mr. Waddington irritably.

He looked up and perceived about seventy-five inches of bony policeman shambling over the threshold.

2

"I beg your pardon, sir, if I seem to intrude," said the policeman, beginning to recede. "I came to see Mr. Beamish. I should have made an appointment."

"Hey! Don't go." Said Mr. Waddington.

The policeman paused doubtfully at the door.

"But as Mr. Beamish is not at home...."

"Come right in and have a chat. Sit down and take the weight off your feet. My name is Waddington."

"Mine is Garroway," replied the officer, bowing courteously.

"Pleased to meet you."

"Happy to meet you, sir."

"Have a good cigar."

"I should enjoy it above all things."

"I wonder where Mr. Beamish keeps them," said Sigsbee H., rising and routing about the room. "Ah, here we are. Match?"

"I have a match, thank you."

"Capital!"

Sigsbee H. Waddington resumed his seat and regarded the other affectionately. An instant before, he had been bemoaning the fact that he did not know where to lay his hands on a crook, and here, sent from heaven, was a man who was probably a walking directory of malefactors.

"I like policemen," said Mr. Waddington affably.

"That is very gratifying, sir."

"Always have. Shows how honest I am, ha ha! If I were a crook, I suppose I'd be scared stiff, sitting here talking to you." Mr. Waddington drew bluffly at his cigar. "I guess you come across a lot of criminals, eh?"

"It is the great drawback to the policeman's life," assented Officer Garroway, sighing. "One meets them on all sides. Only last night, when I was searching for a vital adjective, I was called upon to arrest an uncouth person who had been drinking home-brewed hootch. He soaked me on the jaw, and inspiration left me."

"Wouldn't that give you a soft-pine finish!" said Mr. Waddington sympathetically. "But what I was referring to was real crooks. Fellows who get into houses and steal pearl necklaces. Ever met any of them?"

"I meet a great number. In pursuance of his duty, a policeman is forced against his will to mix with all sorts of questionable people. It may be that my profession biases me, but I have a hearty dislike for thieves."

"Still, if there were no thieves, there would be no policemen."

"Very true, sir."

"Supply and demand."

"Precisely."

Mr. Waddington blew a cloud of smoke.

"I'm kind of interested in crooks," he said. "I'd like to meet a few."

"I assure you that you would not find the experience enjoyable," said Officer Garroway, shaking his head. "They are unpleasant, illiterate men with little or no desire to develop their souls. I make an exception, I should mention, however, in the case of Mr. Mullett, who seemed a nice sort of fellow. I wish I could have seen more of him."

"Mullett? Who's he?"

"He is an ex-convict, sir, who works for Mr. Finch in the apartment upstairs."

"You don't say! An ex-convict and works for Mr. Finch? What was his line?"

"Inside burglary jobs, sir. I understand, however, that he has reformed and is now a respectable member of society."

"Still, he was a burglar once?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, well!"

There was a silence. Officer Garroway, who was trying to find a good synonym for one of the adjectives in the poem on which he was occupied, stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. Mr. Waddington chewed his cigar intensely.

"Say, listen!" said Mr. Waddington.

"Sir?" said the policeman, coming out of his reverie with a start.

"Suppose," said Mr. Waddington, "suppose, just for the sake of argument, that a wicked person wanted a crook to do a horrible, nefarious job for him, would he have to pay him?"

"Undoubtedly, sir. These men are very mercenary."

"Pay him much?"

"I imagine a few hundred dollars. It would depend on the magnitude of the crime contemplated, no doubt."

"A few hundred dollars!"

"Two, perhaps, or three."

Silence fell once more. Officer Garroway resumed his inspection of the ceiling. What he wanted was something signifying the aspect of the streets of New York, and he had used "sordid" in line two. "Scabrous!" That was the word. He was rolling it over his tongue when he became aware that his companion was addressing him.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

Mr. Waddington's eyes were glittering in a peculiar way. He leaned forward and tapped Officer Garroway on the knee.

"Say, listen! I like your face, Larrabee."

"My name is Garroway."

"Never mind about your name. It's your face I like. Say, listen, do you want to make a pile of money?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I don't mind telling you that I've taken a fancy to you, and I'm going to do something for you that I wouldn't do for many people. Have you ever heard of the Finer and Better Motion Picture Company of Hollywood, Cal.?"

"No, sir."

"That's the wonderful thing," said Mr. Waddington in a sort of ecstasy. "Nobody's ever heard of it. It isn't one of those worn-out propositions like the Famous Players that everybody's sick and tired of. It's new. And do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to let you have a block of stock in it for a quite nominal figure. It would be insulting you to give it to you for nothing, which is what I'd like to do, of course. But it amounts to the same thing. This stock here is worth thousands and thousands of dollars, and you shall have it for three hundred. Have you got three hundred?" asked Mr. Waddington, anxiously.

"Yes, sir, I have that sum, but...."

Mr. Waddington waved his cigar.

"Don't use that word 'but'! I know what you're trying to say. You're trying to tell me, I'm robbing myself. I know I am, and what of it? What's money to me? The way I look at it is that, when a man has made his pile, like me, and has got enough to keep his wife and family in luxury, the least he can do as a lover of humanity is to let the rest go to folks who'll appreciate it. Now you probably need money as much as the rest of them, eh?"

"I certainly do, sir."

"Then here you are," said Mr. Waddington, brandishing the bundle of stock-certificates. "This is where you get it. You can take it from me that the Finer and Better Motion Picture Company is the biggest thing since Marconi invented the victrola."

Officer Garroway took the stock and fondled it thoughtfully.

"It's certainly very nicely engraved," he said.

"You bet it is! And look at those dollar-signs on the back. Look at that seal. Cast your eye over those signatures. Those mean something. And you know what the motion-pictures are. A bigger industry than the beef business. And the Finer and Better is the greatest proposition of them all. It isn't like other companies. For one thing, it hasn't been paying out all its money in dividends."

"No?"

"No, sir! Not wasted a cent that way."

"It's all still there?"

"All still there. And, what's more, it hasn't released a single picture."

"All still there?"

"All still there. Lying on the shelves,—dozens of them. And then take the matter of overhead expenses,—the thing that cripples all these other film-companies. Big studios ... expensive directors ... high-salaried stars...."

"All still there?"

"No, sir! That's the point. They're not there. The Finer and Better Motion Picture Company hasn't any of these D. W. Griffiths and Gloria Swansons eating away its capital. It hasn't even a studio."

"Not even a studio?"

"No, sir. Nothing but a company. I tell you it's big!"

Officer Garroway's mild blue eyes widened.

"It sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime," he agreed.

"The opportunity of a dozen lifetimes," said Mr. Waddington. "And that's the way to get on in the world—by grabbing your opportunities. Why, what's Big Ben but a wrist-watch that saw its chance and made good?" Mr. Waddington paused. His forehead wrinkled. He snatched the bundle of stock from his companion's grasp and made a movement towards his pocket. "No!" he said, "No! I can't do it. I can't let you have it, after all!"

"Oh, sir!"

"No. It's too big."

"Oh, but, Mr. Waddington...."

Sigsbee H. Waddington seemed to come out of a trance. He shook himself and stared at the policeman as if he were saying "Where am I?" He heaved a deep, remorseful sigh.

"Isn't money the devil!" he said. "Isn't it terrible the way it saps all a fellow's principles and good resolutions! Sheer greed, that was what was the matter with me, when I said I wouldn't let you have this stock. Sheer, grasping greed. Here am I, with millions in the bank, and the first thing you know I'm trying to resist a generous impulse to do a fellow human-being, whose face I like, a kindly act. It's horrible!" He wrenched the bundle from his pocket and threw it to the policeman. "Here, take it before I weaken again. Give me the three hundred quick and let me get away."

"I don't know how to thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me, don't thank me. One—two—three," said Mr. Waddington, counting the bills. "Don't thank me at all. It's a pleasure."

3

Upstairs, while the conversation just recorded was in progress, Frederick Mullett was entertaining his fiancée, Fanny Welch, to a light collation in the kitchen of George Finch's apartment. It is difficult for a man to look devotional while his mouth is full of cold beef and chutney,—but not impossible, for Mullett was doing it now. He gazed at Fanny very much as George Finch had gazed at Molly Waddington, Hamilton Beamish at Madame Eulalie, and as a million other young men in New York and its outskirts were or would shortly be gazing at a million other young women. Love had come rather late to Frederick Mullett, for his had been a busy life, but it had come to stay.

Externally, Fanny Welch appeared not unworthy of his devotion. She was a pretty little thing with snapping black eyes and a small face. The thing you noticed about her first was the slim shapeliness of her hands with their long, sensitive fingers. One of the great advantages of being a pickpocket is that you do have nice hands.

"I like this place," said Fanny, looking about her.

"Do you, honey?" said Mullett tenderly. "I was hoping you would. Because I've got a secret for you."

"What's that?"

"This is where you and me are going to spend our honeymoon!"

"What, in this kitchen?"

"Of course not. We'll have the run of the whole apartment, with the roof thrown in."

"What'll Mr. Finch have to say to that?"

"He won't know, pettie. You see, Mr. Finch has just gone and got engaged to be married himself, and he'll be off on his honeymoon-trip, so the whole place'll be ours for ever so long. What do you think of that?"

"Sounds good to me."

"I'll take and show you the place in a minute or two. It's the best studio-apartment for miles around. There's a nice large sitting-room that looks on to the roof, with French windows so that you can stroll out and take the air when you like. And there's a sleeping-porch on the roof, in case the weather's warm. And a bath H. and C., with shower. It's the snuggest place you'll ever want to find, and you and I can stay perched up here like two little birds in a nest. And, when we've finished honeymooning, we'll go down to Long Island and buy a little duck-farm and live happy ever after."

Fanny looked doubtful.

"Can you see me on a duck-farm, Freddy?"

"Can I?" Mullett's eyes beamed adoration. "You bet I can see you there,—standing in a gingham apron on the old brick path between the hollyhocks, watching little Frederick romping under the apple-tree."

"Little who?"

"Little Frederick."

"Oh? And did you notice little Fanny clinging to my skirts?"

"So she is. And William John in his cradle on the porch."

"I think we'd better stop looking for awhile," said Fanny. "Our family's growing too fast."

Mullett sighed ecstatically.

"Doesn't it sound quiet and peaceful after the stormy lives we've led. The quacking of the ducks.... The droning of the bees.... Put back that spoon, dearie. You know it doesn't belong to you."

Fanny removed the spoon from the secret places of her dress and eyed it with a certain surprise.

"Now, how did that get there?" she said.

"You snitched it up, sweetness," said Mullett gently. "Your little fingers just hovered for a moment like little bees over a flower, and the next minute the thing was gone. It was beautiful to watch, dearie, but put it back. You've done with all that sort of thing now, you know."

"I guess I have," said Fanny wistfully.

"You don't guess you have, precious," corrected her husband-to-be. "You know you have. Same as I've done."

"Are you really on the level now, Freddy?"

"I'm as honest as the day is long."

"Work at nights, eh? Mullett, the human moth. Goes through his master's clothes like a jealous wife."

Mullett laughed indulgently.

"The same little Fanny! How you do love to tease. Yes, precious, I'm through with the game for good. I wouldn't steal a bone collar-stud now, not if my mother came and begged me on her bended knee. All I want is my little wife and my little home in the country."

Fanny frowned pensively.

"You don't think it'll be kind of quiet down on that duck-farm? Kind of slow?"

"Slow?" said Mullett, shocked.

"Well, maybe not. But we're retiring from business awful young, Freddy."

A look of concern came into Mullett's face.

"You don't mean you still have a hankering for the old game?"

"Well, what if I do?" said Fanny defiantly. "You do, too, if you'd only come clean and admit it."

The look of concern changed to one of dignity.

"Nothing of the kind," said Mullett. "I give you my word, Fanny, that there isn't the job on earth that could tempt me now. And I do wish you would bring yourself to feel the same, honey."

"Oh, I'm not saying I would bother with anything that wasn't really big. But, honest to goodness, Freddy, it would be a crime to side-step anything worthwhile, if it came along. It isn't as if we had all the money in the world. I've picked up some nice little things at the stores and I suppose you've kept some of the stuff you got away with, but outside of that we've nothing but the bit of cash we've managed to save. We've got to be practical."

"But, sweetie, think of the awful chances you'd be taking of getting pinched."

"I'm not afraid. If they ever do nab me, I've got a spiel about my poor old mother...."

"You haven't got a mother."

"Who said I had?... a spiel about my poor old mother that would draw tears from the Woolworth Building. Listen! 'Don't turn me over to the police, mister, I only did it for ma's sake. If you was out of work for weeks and starvin' and you had to sit and watch your old ma bendin' over the wash-tubs....'"

"Don't, Fanny, please! I can't bear it even though I know it's just a game. I.... Hello! Somebody at the front door. Probably only a model wanting to know if Mr. Finch has a job for her. You wait here, honey. I'll get rid of her and be back in half a minute."

4

More than twenty times that period had elapsed, however, before Frederick Mullett returned to the kitchen. He found his bride-to-be in a considerably less amiable mood than that in which he had left her. She was standing with folded arms, and the temperature of the room had gone down a number of degrees.

"Pretty girl?" she inquired frostily, as Mullett crossed the threshold.

"Eh?"

"You said you were going to send that model away in half a minute, and I've been waiting here nearer a quarter of an hour," said Fanny, verifying this statement by a glance at the wrist-watch, the absence of which from their stock was still an unsolved mystery to a prosperous firm of jewellers on Fifth Avenue.

Mullett clasped her in his arms. It was a matter of some difficulty, for she was not responsive, but he did it.

"It was not a model, darling. It was a man. A guy with grey hair and a red face."

"Oh? What did he want?"

Mullett's already somewhat portly frame seemed to expand, as if with some deep emotion.

"He came to tempt me, Fanny."

"To tempt you?"

"That's what he did. Wanted to know if my name was Mullett, and two seconds after I had said it was he offered me three hundred dollars to perpetrate a crime."

"He did? What crime?"

"I didn't wait for him to tell me. I spurned his offer and came away. That'll show you if I've reformed or not. A nice, easy, simple job he said it was, that I could do in a couple of minutes."

"And you spurned him, eh?"

"I certainly spurned him. I spurned him good and plenty."

"And then you came away?"

"Came right away."

"Then listen here," said Fanny in a steely voice, "it don't seem to me that your times add up right. You say he made you this offer two seconds after he heard your name. Well, why did it take you a quarter of an hour to get back to this kitchen? If you want to know what I think, it wasn't a red-faced man with grey hair at all,—it was one of these Washington Square vamps and you were flirting with her."

"Fanny!"

"Well, I've read Gingery Stories, and I know what it's like down here in Bohemia with all these artists and models and everything."

Mullett drew himself up.

"Your suspicions pain me, Fanny. If you care to step out on to the roof, you can peek in at the sitting-room window and see him for yourself. He's waiting there for me to bring him a drink. The reason I was so long coming back was that it took him ten minutes before he asked my name. Up till then he just sat and spluttered."

"All right. Take me out on the roof."

"There!" said Mullett, a moment later. "Now perhaps you'll believe me."

Through the French windows of the sitting-room there was undeniably visible a man of precisely the appearance described. Fanny was remorseful.

"Did I wrong my poor little Freddy, then?" she said.

"Yes, you did."

"I'm sorry. There!"

She kissed him. Mullett melted immediately.

"I must go back and get that drink," he said.

"And I must be getting along."

"Oh, not yet," begged Mullett.

"Yes, I must. I've got to look in at one or two of the stores."

"Fanny!"

"Well, a girl's got to have her trousseau, hasn't she?"

Mullett sighed.

"You'll be very careful, precious?" he said anxiously.

"I'm always careful. Don't you worry about me."

Mullett retired, and Fanny, blowing a parting kiss from her pretty fingers, passed through the door leading to the stairs.

It was perhaps five minutes later, while Mullett sat dreaming golden dreams in the kitchen and Sigsbee H. Waddington sat sipping his whisky-and-soda in the sitting-room, that a sudden tap on the French window caused the latter to give a convulsive leap and spill most of the liquid down the front of his waistcoat.

He looked up. A girl was standing outside the window, and from her gestures he gathered that she was requesting him to open it.

5

It was some time before Sigsbee H. Waddington could bring himself to do so. There exist, no doubt, married men of the baser sort who would have enjoyed the prospect of a tête-à-tête chat with a girl with snapping black eyes who gesticulated at them through windows: but Sigsbee Waddington was not one of them. By nature and training he was circumspect to a degree. So for awhile he merely stood and stared at Fanny. It was not until her eyes became so imperative as to be practically hypnotic that he brought himself to undo the latch.

"And about time, too," said Fanny, with annoyance, stepping softly into the room.

"What do you want?"

"I want a little talk with you. What's all this I hear about you asking people to perpetrate crimes for you?"

Sigsbee Waddington's conscience was in such a feverish condition by now that this speech affected him as deeply as the explosion of a pound of dynamite would have done. His vivid imagination leaped immediately to the supposition that this girl who seemed so intimate with his private affairs was one of those Secret Service investigation agents who do so much to mar the comfort of the amateur in crime.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he croaked.

"Oh, shucks!" said Fanny impatiently. She was a business girl and disliked this beating about the bush. "Freddy Mullett told me all about it. You want some one to do a job for you and he turned you down. Well, take a look at the understudy. I'm here, and, if the job's in my line, lead me to it."

Mr. Waddington continued to eye her warily. He had now decided that she was trying to trap him into a damaging admission. He said nothing, but breathed stertorously.

Fanny, a sensitive girl, misunderstood his silence. She interpreted the look in his eye to indicate distrust of the ability of a woman worker to deputise for the male.

"If it's anything Freddy Mullett could do, I can do it," she said. She seemed to Mr. Waddington to flicker for a moment. "See here!" she said.

Before Mr. Waddington's fascinated gaze she held up between her delicate fingers a watch and chain.

"What's that?" he gasped.

"What does it look like?"

Mr. Waddington knew exactly what it looked like. He felt his waistcoat dazedly.

"I didn't see you take it."

"Nobody don't ever see me take it," said Fanny proudly, stating a profound truth. "Well, then, now you've witnessed the demonstration, perhaps you'll believe me when I say that I'm not so worse. If Freddy can do it, I can do it."

A cool, healing wave of relief poured over Sigsbee H. Waddington's harassed soul. He perceived that he had wronged his visitor. She was not a detective, after all, but a sweet, womanly woman who went about lifting things out of people's pockets so deftly that they never saw them go. Just the sort of girl he had been wanting to meet.

"I am sure you can," he said fervently.

"Well, what's the job?"

"I want some one to steal a pearl necklace."

"Where is it?"

"In the strong-room at the bank."

Fanny's mobile features expressed disappointment and annoyance.

"Then what's the use of talking about it? I'm not a safe-smasher. I'm a delicately nurtured girl that never used an oxy-acetylene blowpipe in her life."

"Ah, but you don't understand," said Mr. Waddington hastily. "When I say that the necklace is in the strong-room, I mean that it is there just now. Eventually it will be taken out and placed among the other wedding-presents."