clock last night--or, rather, you _will_ know it if you are ever
questioned on the subject, which you won't be," said I. "So, now that I
have shown you in just what shape my nerve is, what is the demand you
are going to put upon it?"

"You will have to bring to the enterprise all that ability which used to
characterize your efforts as an amateur actor, Bunny," she replied.
"Summon all your sang-froid to your aid; act with deliberation,
courtesy, and, above all, without the slightest manifestation of
nervousness, and we should win, not a petty little twenty-seven hundred
dollars, but as many thousands. You know Mrs. Gushington-Andrews?"

"Yes," said I. "She is the lady who asked me for the olives at your last
dinner."

"Precisely," observed Henriette. "You possibly observed also that
wherever she goes she wears about sixty-nine yards of pearl rope upon
her person."

"Rope?" I laughed. "I shouldn't call that rope. Cable, yes--frankly,
when she came into the dining-room the other night I thought it was a
feather-boa she had on."

"All pearls, Bunny, of the finest water," said Henriette,
enthusiastically. "There isn't one of the thousands that isn't worth
anywhere from five hundred to twenty-five hundred."

"And I am to land a yard or two of the stuff for you in some mysterious
way?" I demanded. "How is it to be--by kidnapping the lady, the snatch
and run game, or how?"

"Sarcasm does not suit your complexion, Bunny," retorted Henriette.
"Your best method is to follow implicitly the directions of wiser
brains. You are a first-class tool, but as a principal--well--well,
never mind. You do what I tell you and some of those pearls will be
ours. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, as you may have noticed, is one of those
exceedingly effusive ladies who go into ecstasies over everything and
everybody. She is what Raffles used to call a palaverer. Where most
people nod she describes a complete circle with her head. When a cold,
formal handshake is necessary she perpetrates an embrace, and that is
where we come in. At my next Tuesday tea she will be present. She will
wear her pearls--she'll be strung with them from head to foot. A
rope-walk won't be in it with her, and every single little jewel will be
worth a small fortune. You, Bunny, will be in the room to announce her
when she arrives. She will rush to my arms, throw her own about my neck,
the ornaments of my corsage will catch the rope at two or more points,
sever the thread in