The Coast of Chance | Page 5

there
was enormous pressure somewhere--and in this case I don't see
where--I can't see what Mr. Purdie's keenness will do toward getting it
back."
Harry played a little sulkily with the proposition, but he would not pick
up the thread he had dropped. "I don't know that any one sees. The
question now is--who took it?"
"Why, one of us," said Flora flippantly. "Of course, it is all on the
Western Addition."
"Don't you believe it!" he answered her. "It's a confounded fine
professional job. It takes more than sleight of hand--it takes genius, a
thing like that!"
Flora gave him a quick glance, but he had not spoken flippantly. He
was serious in his admiration. She didn't quite fancy his tone. "Why,
Harry," she protested, "you talk as if you admired him!"
At this he laughed. "Well, how do you know I don't? But I can tell you
one thing"--he dropped back into the same tone again--"there's no local
crook work in this affair. It should be some one big--some one--" He
frowned straight before him. He shook his head and smiled. "There was
a chap in England, Farrell Wand."
The name floated in a little silence.
"He kept them guessing," Harry went on recalling it; "did some great

vanishing acts."
"You mean he could take things before their eyes without people
knowing it?" Flora's eyes were wide beyond their wont.
"Something of that sort. I remember at one of the Embassy balls at St.
James' he talked five minutes to Lady Tilton. Her emeralds were on
when he began. She never saw 'em again."
Flora began to laugh. "He must have been attractive."
"Well," Harry conceded practically, "he knew his business."
"But you can't rely on those stories," Clara objected.
"You must this time," he shook his tawny head at her; "I give you my
word; for I was there."
It seemed to Flora fairly preposterous that Harry could sit there looking
so matter-of-fact with such experiences behind him. Even Clara looked
a little taken aback, but the effect was only to set her more sharply on.
"Then such a man could easily have taken the ring in the Maple Room
this afternoon? You think it might have been the man himself?"
His broad smile of appreciation enveloped her. "Oh, you have a scent
like a bloodhound. You haven't let go of that once since you started. He
could have done it--oh, easy--but he went out eight, ten years ago."
"Died?" Flora's rising inflection was a lament.
"Went over the horizon--over the range. Believe he died in the
colonies."
"Oh," Flora sighed, "then I shall have to fancy he has come back again,
just for the sake of the Chatworth ring. That wouldn't be too strange.
It's all so strange I keep forgetting it is real. At least," she went on
explaining herself to Harry's smile, "it seems as if this must be going on
a long way off, as if it couldn't be so close to us, as if the ring I wanted

so much couldn't really be the one that has disappeared." All the while
she felt Harry's smile enveloping her with an odd, half-protecting
watchfulness, but at the close of her sentence he frowned a little.
"Well, perhaps we can find another ring to take the place of it."
She felt that she had been stupid where she should have been most
delicate. "But you don't understand," she protested, leaning far toward
him as if to coerce him with her generous warmth. "The Chatworth ring
was nothing but a fancy I had. I never thought of it for a moment as an
engagement ring!"
By the light stir of silk she was aware that Clara had risen. She looked
up quickly to encounter that odd look. Clara's face was so smooth, so
polished, so unruffled, as to appear almost blank, but none the less
Flora saw it all in Clara's eye--a look that was not new to her. It was the
same with which Clara had met the announcement of her engagement;
the same look with which she had confronted every allusion to the
approaching marriage; the same with which she now surveyed the
mention of the engagement ring--a look neither approving nor
dissenting, whose calm, considerate speculation seemed to repudiate all
interest positive or negative in the approaching event except the one
large question, "What is to become of me?" Many times Clara had held
it up before her, not as a question, certainly not as an accusation; as a
flat assertion of fact; but to-night Flora felt it so directly and
imperatively aimed at her that it seemed this time to demand an audible
response. And Clara's way of getting up, and standing there, with her
gloves on, poised and expectant, as if she were