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The glaring head-lines that met his eye on the front page proved as bracing as a slap in the face. "'The Maitland Jewels," he read, half aloud: "'Daring Attempt at Burglary. "Mad" Maitland Catches "Handsome Dan" Anisty in the Act of Cracking His Safe at Maitland Manor. Which was Which? Both Principals Disappear."
She stood before him, slight, delicate, pretty, appealing in her ingenuous candor; and at his mercy. How could he bring himself to deal with her as he might with well, Anisty himself? She was a woman, he a gentleman.
It could not have been the grey girl; for she knew him only as Anisty; she could never have thought him himself, Maitland.... But what other woman of his acquaintance did not believe him to be out of town? With a hopeless gesture, Maitland gave it up, conceding the mystery too deep for him, his intellect too feeble to grapple with all its infinite ramifications.
"That you brought back the jewels, for one minor thing. I found them almost as soon as you had left. And then I knew ... knew that you cared enough to get them from this fellow Anisty and bring them back to me, knew that I cared enough to search the world from end to end until I found you, that you might wear them if you would."
Anisty stuffed something bulky back into his pocket and wadded another something green and yellow colored into a little pill, which he presently flicked carelessly across the table. The detective's large mottled paw closed over it and moved toward his waistcoat. "As I was sayin'," he resumed, "I'm sorry yeh don't see yer way to givin' us a hand. But p'rhaps yeh're right.
How dared they doubt him? The insolents! The crude brutish insolence of them! Her anger raged high again ... and as swiftly was quenched, extinguished in a twinkling by a terror born of her excitement and a bare suggestion thrown out by Hickey. "... explainin' how a crook like Anisty made three tries in one day to steal some jewels and didn't get 'em. Where were they, all this time?"
The grey man, having vainly deciphered all the names on one side of the vestibule, straightened up and turned his attention to the opposite wall, either unconscious of or indifferent to the shuffle of feet on the stoop behind him. The short, thick-set man removed one hand from a pocket and tapped the grey man gently on the shoulder. "Lookin' for McCabe, Anisty?" he inquired genially.
"It's a big enough haul to attract him," argued the lawyer earnestly; "Anisty always aims high.... Now, will you do what I have been begging you to do for the past eight years?" "Seven," corrected Maitland punctiliously. "It's just seven years since I entered into mine inheritance and you became my counselor." "Well, seven, then. But will you put those jewels in safe deposit?" "Oh, I suppose so."
As it was, all strength and thought of resistance had been choked out of Anisty. He lay at length, gasping painfully. Maitland glanced over his shoulders and saw the girl moving forward, apparently making for the switch. "No!" he cried, peremptory. "Don't turn off the light please!" "But " she doubted. "Let me have those curtain cords, if you please," he requested shortly.
"I've an engagement," invented Anisty plausibly, "with a friend at two. If you'll excuse me ? Garcon, l'addition!" "Then I und'stand, Mister Maitland, we e'n count on yeh?" Anisty, eyelids drooping, tipped back his chair a trifle and regarded Hickey with a fair imitation of the whimsical Maitland smile. "Hardly, I think." "Why not?" truculently.
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