The Coast of Chance | Page 4

Harry!" She glanced about, as if for a missile to threaten him with.
"Upon my word! But look here--wait a minute!" he arrived deliberately at what was required of him. "Never mind how I felt; but if you want to know the way it happened--here's your Maple Room." He began a diagram with forks on the cloth before him, and Clara, who had watched their sparring from her point of vantage in the background, now leaned forward, as if at last they were getting to the point.
"This is the case, furthest from the door." He planted a salt-cellar in his silver inclosure. "I come in very early, at half-past two, before the crowd; fail to meet you there." He made mischievous bows to right and left. "I go out again. But first I see this ring."
"What was it like?" Flora demanded.
"Like?" Harry turned a speculative eye to the dull glow of the candelabrum, as if between its points of flame he conjured up the vision of the vanished jewel. "Like a bit of an old gold heathen god curled round himself, with his head, which was mostly two yellow sapphires, between his knees, and a big, blue stone on top. Soft, yellow gold, so fine you could almost dent it. And carved! Even through a glass every line of it is right." He paused and ran the tip of his finger along the silver outline of his diagram, as if the mere memory of the precious eyes of the little god had power to arrest all other consideration. "Well, there he was," he pulled himself up, "and I can't remember when a thing of that sort has stayed by me so. I couldn't seem to get away from it. I dropped into the club and talked to Buller about it. He got keen, and I went back with him to have another look at it. Well, at the door Buller stops to speak to a chap going out--a crazy Englishman he had picked up at the club. I go on. By this time there's a crowd inside, but I manage to get up to the case. And first I miss the spot altogether. And then I see the card with his name; and then, underneath I see the hole in the velvet where the god has been."
Flora gave out a little sigh of suspense, and even Clara showed a gleam of excitement. He looked from one to the other. "Then there were fireworks. Buller came up. The detective came up. Everybody came up. Nobody'd believe it. Lots of 'em thought they had seen it only a few minutes before. But there was the hole in the velvet--and nothing more to be found."
"But does no one know anything? Has no one an idea?" Clara almost panted in her impatience.
"Not the ghost of a glimmer of a clue. There were upward of two hundred of us, and they let us out like a chain-gang, one by one. My number was one hundred and ninety-three, and so far I can vouch there were no discoveries. It has vanished--sunk out of sight."
Flora sighed. "Oh, poor Bessie Chatworth!" It came out with a quick inconsequence that made Clara--even in her impatience--ever so faintly smile. "It seems so cruel to have your things taken like that when you're dead, and can't help it," Flora rather lamely explained. "I should hate it."
Harry stared at her. "Oh, come. I guess you wouldn't care." His eyes rested for a moment on the fine flare of jewels presented by Flora's clasped hands. "Besides,"--his voice dropped to a graver level--"the deuce of it is--" he paused, they, both rather breathless, looking at him. He had the air of a man about to give information, and then the air of a man who has thought better of it. His voice consciously shook off its gravity. "Well, there'll be such a row kicked up, the probability is the thing'll be returned and no questions asked. Purdie's keen--very keen. He's responsible, the executor of the estate, you see."
But Clara Britton leveled her eyes at him, as if the thing he had produced was not at all the thing he had led up to. "Still, unless 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,