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CHAPTER IV.

I GAVE myself a holiday for a few days after my involuntary exploration of the Society of Gentlemen Thieves, and then I turned my attention steadily to work again, and accomplished a great deal of business to my own and Mr. Leighton's satisfaction. It had taken me about three weeks to finish a commission entrusted to me by the head of a Bond Street firm for a necklace of pearls, three rows in graduated sizes, and I was much pleased when after matching those in the last row, over which I had had a somewhat unusual difficulty, I took them to Bond Street, and handed them to the senior partner.

"These will do nicely," he said, "our customer is very particular, and will criticise every pearl separately. But these are perfect."

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I was rising to go, when an assistant came in with a small ring-case, and asked for some directions as to its being sent off. The senior partner opened the case, and showed me the ring, asking me if I did not think it very nice.

"It is splendid," I said. "It makes me feel quite covetous."

The five diamonds, as large as could possibly be worn in a ring, were beautifully set and of a most dazzling lustre.

"A wedding present?" I said interrogatively, as I handed it back.

"A betrothal ring," he answered, "sent for in a hurry. It is the lady's birthday to-night, and, as the engagement is to be announced at a dinner party, she wished to have her ring. It had to be made smaller for her."

"I wonder if it can be Miss Somers-Brand," I said, "it is her birthday to-day, and they are giving a large dinner to which I am going. If so I hope it is to Sir Charles Merivale."

The senior partner smiled.

"Sir Charles is an old customer of ours, and his father and grandfather were before him," | | 62 he said. "His bride will not need to envy anyone's jewels. We are doing up the family rubies now."

I felt sure, though my question had received an indirect reply, that my surmise was correct. Sir Charles' devotion to Miss Somers-Brand from the first moment of their meeting at her coming-out ball had been apparent to everyone. But though she was very pretty and charming she was undowered, and people had wondered whether such a very desirable parti, both as to rank, and riches, as Sir Charles Merivale would select her from the many eligible young ladies amongst whom he might have chosen.

I saw that I was right in my guess as soon as I arrived at the Brands' house that night. Amidst a group of men on the hearthrug, Mr. Somers-Brand and Sir Charles Merivale stood conversing together with marked cordiality, the latter beaming with the assured and triumphant happiness of a newly-engaged man.

Nellie Brand, all pink chiffon and blushes, came forward to shake hands with me, and when I laughingly lifted her left hand and | | 63 looked at the ring sparkling in all its pristine beauty on the third finger, she blushed still more, and nodded an affirmative to my unspoken question.

There were a great many people present--it was a party of twenty-four--and I was the last to arrive, so that I had not time to notice all the other guests, and almost immediately after my entrance we paired off and went downstairs.

I was taken in by the son of the house, and as he and I were friends of long standing, and had not met for some time, we were occupied at first in giving a mutual account of ourselves, and getting as it were "up to date " with each other.

Now and then the voice of a man seated on the same side of the table as myself, and hidden from me by the intervening couples, broke in and arrested my attention. It was a familiar voice certainly, but besides that it gave me an odd feeling of anxiety.

Where had I heard it last? It was associated with some uncomfortable experience I felt sure; but when and how?

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I glanced in the direction of it once or twice, but I could not catch the man's face.

At last it worried me so that I said to Tom Brand:

"Tell me who is sitting on our side of the table? There's a voice I recognise, and I cannot fit the person to it."

He mentioned the names of the four couples, and I stopped him at the last.

"Of course," I said, in a sort of surprise, "Gerard Beverley! Why, dear me, he is a--"

I broke off suddenly, realising the betrayal of which I was on the verge.

Tom smiled at my apparently unnecessary excitement and confusion.

"He is a son of old Admiral Beverley," he said, "and he is a confounded young fool; throws all his money away on betting, and gets into no end of scrapes; but I don't know anything worse of him than that. Why do you look so horrified about him? You knew him when he was a lad down in Hampshire, didn't you?"

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"Yes," I answered, "I knew them all quite well; I loved Mrs. Beverley; she was such a sweet, gracious old lady, and so devoted to her boys. What a grief Gerard must be to her."

Tom laughed again.

"Oh, he is only a scrapegrace; he'll get over it some of these days, I expect. You seem very down on him, Mrs. Delamere, which is not like you--you are generally so charitable. Has he been so unlucky as to offend you?"

"No," I said, "quite the contrary. But I happen to know something about him which I would greatly prefer not to know. I would not say even so much as that to you, but it just occurs to me that perhaps you could look after him a little. You know his people better even than I do. Could you manage to convey to them that he wants a very great deal of looking after, much more than they think; and that the kindest thing they could do to him, would be to pay all his debts--for I am sure he must have many--and send him out to some definite work abroad. Will you try to do this?"

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"I certainly will if you are as much in earnest as you seem to be," he replied; "you shall tell me just what you want me to do presently when we can have a quiet talk together."

At this moment there was a little stir, and a buzz of louder conversation.

We had reached the dessert stage, and an old friend of the family had insisted on proposing a toast--"the engaged couple."

We all looked and spoke our compliments to them, and Sir Charles Merivale said a word or two of thanks for himself and Nellie, and then someone asked to see her ring, and she took it off and handed it round for general inspection.

It passed Tom and me, and I handed it on to my next door neighbour; then our attention was attracted by an exciting story of an Indian loot, told by an old general who had taken part in it, and whose recollections were aroused by the brilliance of Nellie's diamond ring.

The whole party listened to the story--a stirring one and well-told--and it was not till | | 67 the general had concluded, and the comments were subsiding that Nellie said with a laugh: "Please may I have my ring back now? My finger is catching cold."

There was a little murmur of reply, and then she said in a decisive voice:

"But I have not got it, indeed; it has never come back to me."

Several people began looking about, moving the plates and wine-glasses; one or two sitting near Nellie stopped and looked on the floor; finally, Mr. Brand rang the bell for the butler, and Nellie, getting up, shook her dress, thinking it might have fallen into the folds.

But the ring was not forthcoming!

It came upon me with a sort of shock that I knew with absolute certainty where the ring was, and yet that it was impossible for me to reveal my knowledge, because such a revelation would have made me a traitor, though indirectly, towards someone who claimed my loyalty, and would--though in justice to myself, I must say this was a secondary consideration to me--have been very dangerous to me.

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A complete search was made all over the room for the ring; each one saying in turn that it had been passed on to the next person at the table.

When, after an interval of ten minutes it was still invisible, a sort of hush fell over the whole party, and the extreme unpleasantness of the situation dawned on most of them.

I say most of them, because I knew that there were two people whose feelings were totally different to those of the others, and one of those two was myself.

"I don't know what to do," said Mr. Somers-Brand at last; "it is a most extraordinary thing, and seems like magic. The ring seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth."

He looked appealingly round at his guests; it was really a most awkward predicament. Mrs. Brand seemed inclined to make a move to the drawing room.

I felt desperate; I seemed such a traitor either way.

A thought occurred to me; I spoke a few words rapidly to Tom.

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Fortunately I knew him well enough to feel assured that he would not misconstrue my agitation.

He interposed at once between his mother and the door.

"Don't go, mother," he said, "stay and help us to solve this problem. Who else was in the room besides you?" he continued, turning to the butler.

"Only William, sir," that decorous official replied, with the imperturbable demeanour which is so admirable in butlers.

"Ring for William," said Tom.

As soon as William, the footman, had made a sheepish appearance, Tom proceeded to address the whole company.

"With my father's permission," he said, "I will make a suggestion, and I hope that you will all approve of it, and that you will appreciate the motives I have in making it. It is this. That the door should be locked and the key held by my father; that we should all resume our places at table; and that the lights should then be turned off. That after a minute | | 70 or two they should be turned on again. I should like to say that I have a theory about the disappearance of the ring which I am anxious to prove. If this way is unsuccessful I shall suggest another. But I fully believe that when the lights are turned on the ring will be visible.

"I apologize to you all for asking you to do this, but I feel certain that you would all prefer that the ring should now be found, if possible. Do you agree to my suggestion?"

Apparently everyone did, and it was carried out in every detail.

When the electric lights flashed up again we were all dazzled for an instant, after our temporary eclipse, and looked vaguely at each other as though we expected to see the ring suspended in mid air or lurking in some unusual place like a conjuring trick.

Then Nellie Brand gave a little glad cry, and, stooping forward, picked the ring out from the folds of yellow ribbon that meandered about amongst the flowers in the centre of the table.

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"Ah!" said Tom, with an accent of relief, 'a practical joke as I thought, and very cleverly played! Now, mother, we will consent to part with you."

He telegraphed to me a look of grateful acknowledgment as I passed out of the room; I saw him turn and go towards Gerard Beverley.

I had no need to be assured by the ghastly look on the boy's face that he was a thief, for from the moment that Tom told me to whom the voice, so oddly familar [sic] to me, belonged, I had identified him with the Countess's impetuous champion in the Gentlemen Burglars' Club, on the memorable occasion when I was the unwilling witness of one of their meetings, and when the question of my escape with life and honour hung and trembled in the balance.

Scarcely any other subject was spoken of either in the drawing-room, or, as I heard from Tom afterwards, in the dining-room that evening.

Many were the surmises as to the perpetrator of the joke, or the theft, that had made such a | | 72 sensation, but neither Tom nor I betrayed our knowledge.

When we managed to have a few quiet words together just before I left, I explained to him the suggestion I had made, and which he had adopted by saying that I had heard of it being done, and with the same successful result on a very similar occasion.

But I did not acknowledge to him, either then or later, that I knew Gerard Beverley to be a thief, for I felt that to do so might lead eventually to the discovery of the club, and that I should then have broken faith with my kind little "Countess."

Nevertheless, I cannot doubt that Tom guessed the real state of affairs for himself; he told me that he saw Gerard home that night, and took the opportunity of having a serious talk with him.

The wretched young fellow completely broke down, confessed he was in worse trouble than anyone imagined, and, only after immense persuasion, consented to make a clean breast of it to his father.

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Poor old Admiral Beverley collected all his son's debts, settled them up, got him a berth as overseer in one of the new South African settlements, and told Tom, the last time they met, that Gerard was writing more hopefully and reasonably than he had ever done before, and that they hoped to make a decent fellow of him yet.

The ruffled complacency of the dinner guests of that evening was restored when they heard that both the butler and footman had given indignant warning to the Somers-Brands the very next day.

"You may be quite sure," said Sir Charles Merivale to me subsequently, "that the butler and footman were in league, and it was one of there who took it. They got frightened when Tom suggested his experiment, and were afraid of a search coming next; so they decided to put it back. It was a clever idea of Tom's--saved any disturbance, and restored to Nellie her ring without any more fuss!"

I smiled demurely. For the "clever idea" was a happy inspiration that I have often congratulated myself upon since then.