hen dogging her heels. She was a
wit, and she had a beautiful hand, even though she was no better than
the rest of Monte Carlo, ruminated the safe-breaker easily, as he
squinted, under the flare of a match, at the ward indentations in his
wax-covered key-flange.

His thoughts went back, as he worked, to the timely yet unexpected
scene at the stair-head, two hours before. There he had helped a slim
young _femme de chambre_ support the Princess to her room, that royal
lady having done her best to drown her ill fortune in absinthe and
American high-balls--which, he knew, was ever an impossible
combination. She had collapsed at the head of the stairs, and as he
had helped lift her he had first caught sight of the solitaire diamond
on the limp and slender finger. This reactionary mood, in the face of
the earlier more tragical hours of that day of wearing anxieties, was
almost one of facetiousness. He seemed to revel in the memory of what,
in time, he knew, would be humiliating to him. It was a puny little
diamond ring, of but three or four carats' weight, he mused, and yet
with it had come the actual, if not the moral, turn in the tide of all
his restless activities. It marked the moment when life seemed to fall
back to its older and darker areas; it was the first diminutive
milestone on his new road of adventure. But he would return the ring,
of that he stoutly reassured himself, for he still nursed his ironic
sense of justice in the smaller things. Yes, he would return the ring,
he repeated, with his ever-recurring inapposite scrupulosity, for the
young Princess was a lady of fortune under an unlucky star, like
himself.

Durkin smiled a little, over his wax-covered key, as he still filed and
fitted and listened. Then he gave vent to an almost inaudible "Ah!"
for the bit of the key made the complete circuit, at last, and the
wards of the lock clicked back into place.

He swung open the heavy iron door, cautiously, listened for a moment,
and then struck another match.

That Pobloff might have the bank-notes with him was a contingency; that
he would carry about with him two thousand napoleons was an absurdity.
And Durkin knew the money had not been deposited--to ascertain that had
been part of his day's work. The Prince, of course, was a prodigal and
free-handed gentleman--how much of his winnings had already leaked
through his careless fingers it was impossible to surmise. Durkin even
resented the thought of