me sort of brokerage business in Boston. He's
taken a summer home up here on Long Island, and some misguided chap put
him on the club's visitor's list. His card will NOT be renewed. Sleek
customer, isn't he? Trifle familiar--I was only introduced to him last
night."

Carruthers grunted, broke his burned match into pieces, and began to
toss the pieces into an ash tray.

Jimmie Dale became absorbed in an inspection of his hands--those
wonderful hands with long, slim, tapering fingers, whose clean, pink
flesh masked a strength and power that was like to a steel vise.

Jimmie Dale looked up. "Going to print a nice little story for him about
the 'costliest and most beautiful necklace in America'?" he inquired
innocently.

Carruthers scowled. "No," he said bluntly. "I am not. He'll read the
NEWS-ARGUS a long time before he reads anything about that, Jimmie."

But therein Carruthers was wrong--the NEWS-ARGUS carried the "story" of
Markel's diamond necklace in three-inch "caps" in red ink on the front
page in the next morning's edition--and Carruthers gloated over it
because the morning NEWS-ARGUS was the ONLY paper in New York that did.
Carruthers was to hear more of Markel and Markel's necklace than he
thought, though for the time being the subject dropped between the two
men.

It was still early, barely ten o'clock, when Carruthers left the club,
and, preferring to walk to the newspaper offices, refused Jimmie Dale's
offer of his limousine. It was but five minutes later when Jimmie Dale,
after chatting for a moment or two with those about in the lobby, in
turn sought the coat room, where Markel was being assisted into his
coat.

"Getting home early, aren't you, Markel?" remarked Jimmie Dale
pleasantly.

"Yes," said Markel, and ran his fingers fussily, comb fashion, through
his whiskers. "Quite a little run out to my place, you know--and with,
you know what, I don't care to be out too late."

"No, of course," concurred Jimmie Dale, getting into his own coat.

They walked out of the club together, and Markel climbed importantly
into the tonneau of a big gray touring car.

"Ah--home, Peters," he sniffed at his chauffeur; and then, with a
grandiloquent wave of his hand to Jimmie Dale: "'Night, Dale."

Jimmie Dale smiled with his eyes--which were hidden by the brim of his
bat.

"Good-night, Markel," he replied, and the smile crept curiously to
the corners of his mouth as he watched the gray car disappear down the