The Corinthian

company, would she? I hardly think she will demand to see my nephew.”

“No, but what if she does?” asked Pen, having no such dependence on her aunt’s forbearing.

Sir Richard smiled rather sardonically. “I am not, perhaps, the best person in the world of whom to make— ah—impertinent demands.”

Pen’s eyes lit with sudden laughter. “Oh, I do hope you will talk to her like that, and look at her just so! And if she brings Fred with her, he will be quite overcome, I dare say, to meet you face to face. For you must know that he admires you excessively. He tries to tie his cravat in a Wyndham Fall, even!”

“That, in itself, I find an impertinence,” said Sir Richard.

She nodded, and lifted a hand to her own cravat. “What do you think of mine, sir?”

“I have carefully refrained from thinking about it at all. Do you really wish to know?”

“But I have arranged it just as you did!”

“Good God!” said Sir Richard faintly. “My poor deluded child!”

“You are teasing me! At least it was not ill enough tied to make you rip it off my neck as you did when you first met me!”

“You will recall that we left the inn in haste this morning,” he explained.

“I am persuaded that would not have weighed with you. But you put me in mind of a very important matter. You paid my reckoning there.”

“Don’t let that worry you, I beg.”

“I am determined to pay everything for myself,” Pen said firmly. “It would be a shocking piece of impropriety if I were to be beholden for money to a stranger.”

“True. I had not thought of that.”

She looked up with her sudden bright look of enquiry. “You are laughing at me again!”

He showed her a perfectly grave countenance. “Laughing? I?”

“I know very well you are. You may make your mouth prim, but I have noticed several times that you laugh with your eyes.”

“Do I? I beg your pardon!”

“Well, you need not, for I like it. I would not have come all this way with you if you had not had such smiling eyes. Isn’t it odd how one knows if one can trust a person, even if he is drunk?”

“Very odd,” he said.

She was hunting fruitlessly through her pockets. “Where can I have put my purse? Oh, I think I must have put it in my overcoat!”

She had flung this garment down on a chair, upon first entering the parlour, and stepped across the room to feel in the capacious pockets.

“Are you seriously proposing to count a few miserable shillings into my hand?”

“Yes, indeed I am. Oh, here it is!” She pulled out a leather purse with a ring round its neck, from one pocket, stared at it, and exclaimed: “This is not my purse!”

Sir Richard looked at it through his glass. “Isn’t it? It is certainly not mine, I assure you.”

“It is very heavy. I wonder how it can have come into my pocket? Shall I open it?”

“By all means. Are you quite sure it is not your own?”

“Oh yes, quite!” She moved to the table, tugging at the ring. It was a little hard to pull off, but she managed it after one or two tugs, and shook out into the palm of her hand a diamond necklace that winked and glittered in the light of the candles.

“Richard!” gasped Miss Creed, startled into forgetting the proprieties again. “Oh, I beg your pardon! But look!”

“I am looking, and you have no need to beg my pardon. I have been calling you Pen these two days.”

“Oh, that is another matter, because you are so much older!”

He looked at her somewhat enigmatically. “Am I? Well, never mind. Do I understand that this gaud does not belong to you?”

“Good gracious, no! I never saw it before in my life!”

“Oh!” said Sir Richard. “Well, it is always agreeable to have problems solved. Now we know why your friend Mr Yarde had no fear of the Bow Street Runner.”

Chapter 6

Pen let the necklace slip through her fingers on to the table. “You mean that he stole it, and then—and then put it in my pocket? But, sir, this is terrible! Why—why, that Runner will next come after us!”

“I think it more likely that Mr Yarde will come after us.”

“Good God!” Pen said, quite pale with dismay. “What are we to do?”

He smiled rather maliciously. “Didn’t you desire to meet with a real adventure?”

“Yes, but—Oh, do not be absurd and teasing, I beg of you! What shall we do with the necklace? Couldn’t we throw it away somewhere, or hide it in a ditch?”

“We could, of course, but it would surely be a trifle unfair to the owner?”

“I don’t care about that,” confessed Pen. “It would be dreadful to be arrested for thieving, and I know we shall be!”

“Oh, I trust not!” Sir Richard said. He straightened the necklace, where it lay on the table, and looked down at it with a slight frown creasing his brow. “Yes,” he said meditatively. “I have seen you before. Now, where have I seen you before?”

“Do please put it away!” begged Pen. “Only think if a servant were to come into the room!”

He picked it up. “My lamentable memory! Alas, my lamentable memory! Where, oh, where have I seen you?”

“Dear sir, if Jimmy Yarde finds us, he will very likely cut our throats to get the necklace back!”

“On the contrary, I have his word for it that he is opposed to all forms of violence.”

“But when he does not discover it in my pocket, where he placed it—and now I come to think of it, he actually had my coat in his hands—he must guess that we have discovered it!”

“Very likely he will, but I cannot see what profit there would be in his cutting our throats.” Sir Richard restored the necklace to its leather purse, and dropped it into his pocket. “We have now nothing to do but to await the arrival of Jimmy Yarde. Perhaps—who knows?—we may induce him to divulge the ownership of the necklace. Meanwhile, this parlour is very stuffy, and the night remarkably fine. Do you care to stroll out with me to admire the stars, brat?”

“I suppose,” said Pen defiantly, “that you think I am very poor-spirited!”

“Very,” agreed Sir Richard, his eyes glinting under their heavy lids.

“I am not afraid of anything,” Pen announced. “Merely, I am shocked?”

“A waste of time, believe me. Are you coming?”

“Yes, but it seems to me as though you have put a live coal in your pocket! What if some dishonest person were to steal it from you?”

“Then we shall be freed from all responsibility. Come along!”

She followed him out into the warm night. He appeared to have banished all thought of the necklace from his mind. He pointed various constellations out to her, and, drawing her hand through his arm, strolled with her down the street, past the last straggling cottages, into a lane redolent of meadowsweet.

“I suppose I was poor-spirited,” Pen confided presently. “Shall you feel obliged to denounce poor Jimmy Yarde to the Runner?”

“I hope,” said Sir Richard dryly, “that Mr Piers Luttrell is a gentleman of resolute character.”

“Why?”

“That he may be able to curb your somewhat reckless friendliness.”

“Well, I haven’t seen him for five years, but it was always I who thought of things to do.”