'Know me? Well, I've been here about a week.'
'I mean, do they know who you are? Do they know you're a good citizen?'
'Well, if it comes to that, I suppose they don't. But--'
'Fine!' said Miss Silverton, appreciatively. 'Then it's all right. We can carry on!'
'Carry on!'
'Why, sure! All I want is to get the thing into the papers. It doesn't matter to me if it turns out later that there was a mistake and that you weren't a burglar trying for my jewels after all. It makes just as good a story either way. I can't think why that never struck me before. Here have I been kicking because you weren't a real burglar, when it doesn't amount to a hill of beans whether you are or not. All I've got to do is to rush out and yell and rouse the hotel, and they come in and pinch you, and I give the story to the papers, and everything's fine!'
Archie leaped from his chair.
'I say! What!'
'What's on your mind?' enquired Miss Silverton, considerately. 'Don't you think it's a nifty scheme?'
'Nifty! My dear old soul! It's frightful!'
'Can't see what's wrong with it,' grumbled Miss Silverton. 'After I've had someone get New York on the long- distance 'phone and give the story to the papers you can explain, and they'll let you out. Surely to goodness you don't object, as a personal favour to me, to spending an hour or two in a cell? Why, probably they haven't got a prison at all out in these parts, and you'll simply be locked in a room. A child of ten could do it on his head,' said Miss Silverton. 'A child of six,' she emended.
'But, dash it--I mean--what I mean to say--I'm married!'
'Yes?' said Miss Silverton, with the politeness of faint interest. 'I've been married myself. I wouldn't say it's altogether a bad thing, mind you, for those that like it, but a little of it goes a long way. My first husband,' she proceeded, reminiscently, 'was a travelling man. I gave him a two-weeks' try-out, and then I told him to go on travelling. My second husband--now, HE wasn't a gentleman in any sense of the word. I remember once--'
'You don't grasp the point. The jolly old point! You fail to grasp it. If this bally thing comes out, my wife will be most frightfully sick!'
Miss Silverton regarded him with pained surprise.
'Do you mean to say you would let a little thing like that stand in the way of my getting on the front page of all the papers--WITH photographs? Where's your chivalry?'
'Never mind my dashed chivalry!'
'Besides, what does it matter if she does get a little sore? She'll soon get over it. You can put that right. Buy her a box of candy. Not that I'm strong for candy myself. What I always say is, it may taste good, but look what it does to your hips! I give you my honest word that, when I gave up eating candy, I lost eleven ounces the first week. My second husband--no, I'm a liar, it was my third--my third husband said--Say, what's the big idea? Where are you going?'
'Out!' said Archie, firmly. 'Bally out!'
A dangerous light flickered in Miss Silverton's eyes.
'That'll be all of that!' she said, raising the pistol. 'You stay right where you are, or I'll fire!'
'Right-o!'
'I mean it!'
'My dear old soul,' said Archie, 'in the recent unpleasantness in France I had chappies popping off things like that at me all day and every day for close on five years, and here I am, what! I mean to say, if I've got to choose between staying here and being pinched in your room by the local constabulary and having the dashed thing get into the papers and all sorts of trouble happening, and my wife getting the wind up and--I say, if I've got to choose--'
'Suck a lozenge and start again!' said Miss Silverton.
'Well, what I mean to say is, I'd much rather take a chance of getting a bullet in the old bean than that. So loose it off and the best o' luck!'
Miss Silverton lowered the pistol, sank into a chair, and burst into tears.
'I think you're the meanest man I ever met!' she sobbed. 'You know perfectly well the bang would send me into a fit!'
'In that case,' said Archie, relieved, 'cheerio, good luck, pip-pip, toodle-oo, and good-bye-ee! I'll be shifting!'
'Yes, you will!' cried Miss Silverton, energetically, recovering with amazing swiftness from her collapse. 'Yes, you will, I by no means suppose! You think, just because I'm no champion with a pistol, I'm helpless. You wait! Percy!'
'My name is not Percy.'
'I never said it was. Percy! Percy, come to muzzer!'
There was a creaking rustle from behind the arm-chair. A heavy body flopped on the carpet. Out into the room, heaving himself along as though sleep had stiffened his joints, and breathing stertorously through his tilted nose, moved the fine bulldog. Seen in the open, he looked even more formidable than he had done in his basket.
'Guard him, Percy! Good dog, guard him! Oh, heavens! What's the matter with him?'
And with these words the emotional woman, uttering a wail of anguish, flung herself on the floor beside the animal.
