," said I.

"Well, by the hopping Harcourt," she retorted, quizzically, "if you give
them the slightest hint of _my_ personal appearance, I'll come back and
kill you. See?"

_The man's very words!_ And then she laughed.

"What?" I cried. "It was--you!"

"Was it?" she returned, airily.

"Why the devil you should go to all that trouble, when you had the stuff
right here is what puzzles me," said I.

"Oh, it wasn't any trouble," she replied. "Just sport--you looked so
funny sitting up there in your pajamas; and, besides, a material fact
such as that hold-up is apt to be more convincing to the police, to say
nothing of the Constant-Scrappes, than any mere story we could invent."

"Well, you'd better be careful, Henriette," I said with a shiver. "The
detectives are clever--"

"True, Bunny," she answered, gravely. "But you see the highwayman was a
man and--well, I'm a woman, dear. I can prove an alibi. By-the-way, you
left the cellar-door unlocked that Wednesday. I found it open when I
sneaked in to cut off the electric lights. You mustn't be so careless,
dear, or we may have to divvy up our spoil with others."

Marvellous woman, that Henriette!

X

THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. SHADD'S MUSICALE

Henriette was visibly angry the other morning when I took to her the
early mail and she discovered that Mrs. Van Varick Shadd had got ahead
of her in the matter of Jockobinski, the monkey virtuoso. Society had
been very much interested in the reported arrival in America of this
wonderfully talented simian who could play the violin as well as Ysaye,
and who as a performer on the piano was vastly the superior of
Paderewski, because, taken in his infancy and specially trained for the
purpose, he could play with his feet and tail as well as with his hands.
It had been reported by Tommy Dare, the leading Newport authority on
monkeys, that he had heard him play Brahm's "Variations on Paganini"
with his paws on a piano, "Hiawatha" on a xylophone with his feet, and
"Home, Sweet Home" with his tail on a harp simultaneously, in Paris a
year ago, and that alongside of Jockobinski all other musical prodigies
of the age became mere strummers.

"He's a whole orchestra in himself," said Tommy enthusiastically, "and
is the only living creature that I know of who can tackle a whole
symphony without the aid of a hired man."

Of course society was on the _qui vive_ for a genius of so riotous an
order as this, and all the wealthy famil