lacent little chuckle that terminated in another fit of
coughing, spilled the contents on the table under the electric reading
lamp.
Like a thing of living, pulsing fire it rolled before their eyes--a
magnificent diamond necklace, of wondrous beauty, gleaming and
scintillating as the light rays shot back from a thousand facets.
For a moment, both men gazed at it without a word.
"Little surprise for my wife," volunteered Markel, with a debonair wave
of his pudgy hand, and trying to make his voice sound careless.
The case lay open--patently displaying the name of the most famous
jewelry house in America. Jimmie Dale's eyes fixed on Markel's whiskers
where they were brushed outward in an ornate and fastidious gray-black
sweep.
"By Jove!" he commented. "You don't do things by halves, do you,
Markel?"
"Two hundred and ten thousand dollars I paid for that little bunch of
gewgaws," said Markel, waving his hand again. Then he clapped Carruthers
heartily on the shoulder. "What do you think of it, Carruthers--eh?
Say, a photograph of it, and one of Mrs. Markel--eh? Please her, you
know--she's crazy on this society stunt--all flubdub to me of course.
How's it strike you, Carruthers?"
Carruthers, very evidently, liked neither the man nor his manners, but
Carruthers, above everything else, was a gentleman.
"To be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Markel," he said a little frigidly,
"I don't believe in this sort of thing. It's all right from a newspaper
standpoint, and we do it; but it's just in this way that owners of
valuable jewelry lay themselves open to theft. It simply amounts to
advising every crook in the country that you have a quarter of a million
at his disposal, which he can carry away in his vest pocket, once he can
get his hands on it--and you invite him to try."
Jimmie Dale laughed. "What Carruthers means, Markel, is that you'll have
the Gray Seal down your street. Carruthers talks of crooks generally,
but he thinks in terms of only one. He can't help it. He's been
trying so long to catch the chap that it's become an obsession. Eh,
Carruthers?"
Carruthers smiled seriously. "Perhaps," he admitted. "I hope, though,
for Mr. Markel's sake, that the Gray Seal won't take a fancy to it--if
he does, Mr. Markel can say good-bye to his necklace."
"Pouf!" coughed Markel arrogantly. "Overrated! His cleverness is all
in the newspaper columns. If he knows what's good for him, he'll know
enough to leave this alon
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