Gold That Glitters

by Perceval Gibbon

Gold That Glitters

By Perceval Gibbon

Author of “The Saint," “The Second-class Passenger,” Etc.

Truer gold was the heart of this little barmaid than woman ever wore or coin was made of

THE tramp who plodded at the road’s edge was aware of the car only in time to leap aside as it swished past him, almost brushing his elbow. It was being driven at an insane speed, going like some great canary-colored projectile, and he had time only to note that its occupants were a monocled youth at the wheel and a gaudy sort of girl at his side before it took the bend ahead almost on two wheels and vanished.

He stared after it with an amaze that soured into resentment.

“The murderin’ fools!” he said aloud. “Pity they don’t break their bloomin’ necks!”

He gathered up the curious contents of the bundle he had let fall in his jump for safety. He had found this Kentish main road in general a kindly one; he had obtained lifts on homeward-bound market wagons and food of a sort had been plentiful. The canary-colored car was an outrage; his anger was that of a man whose clear rights have been infringed.

He went forward upon his way, still breathing desultory maledictions.

“Murderin’ fools,” he repeated, as his unhurrying feet brought him to the bend around which the car had disappeared. “Pair of bloomin’——”

He ceased abruptly; there was no need of further ill wishing. A hundred yards ahead of him the car had left the road and charged the ditch that ran beneath the high hedge beside it and now lay with its near-side wheels crumpled under it, its screen a bristle of shining splinters of glass and the whole of it a wreck and an ensign of disaster. Upon the grassy bank of the hedge the pinks and yellows of the girl’s attire lay in a tragic and crumpled heap. As the tramp stared there arose to sight from the other, side of the car the overcoated figure of the fool who had driven it, capless now, holding a handkerchief to his face and steadying himself upon his feet with the other hand upon a mud guard. He seemed to be calling out feebly and inarticulately.

The tramp broke into a run. For all his shuffle when he walked—the labor-saving, mile-eating slouch of the road dweller—he could move handily enough when he liked and he arrived swiftly. He flung down his bundle and stood looking at the unconscious figure of the girl.

She lay on her back, with her head drooping downward toward the ditch, cushioned upon the gay-colored ruin that had been her hat. Upon the pallor of her face the unchanging pink of the cheeks and the hard, fixed bow of the mouth stood out like blood stains, giving to her stillness a very horrid quality of death, and her ungloved hand, outstretched upon the grasses, was splayed as though fixed in a last effort of defense. And with it all there was, for the tramp at any rate, a special atrocity in the delicate and pretty fashion of all her accouterment, her luxurious and costly looking femininity that should have made her immune from these violences. He looked across at the youth with a savage face.

“Killed ’er, ’ave you?” he said. “Well, you’ll be ’ung for it!”

The youth, still pressing the handkerchief to one side of his face, moaned weakly.

“’S, my eye,” he said tremulously. “Smashed my glass; ’fraid it’s done for! Here!” He detached the hand by which he held on to the car, fumbled at a pocket, and managed to bring forth some loose money. “Go ’n’ fetch doctor!” he said.

“Go to blazes!” snarled the tramp and bent to the girl.

She showed no obvious wound, but as he raised her so as to lay her with her head uppermost she weighed as lifeless as a shape of stone upon his hands. There were puddles of water in the ditch bottom; he soaked his neckcloth in one of these and squeezed it upon her face. Trickles of mud ran here and there and gave to her half-obliterated rouge and powder a new and affrighted ghastliness.

“Miss!” he called to her. “’Ere, miss! Open yer eyes just a minute! Can’t you ’ear me, miss?”

But miss heard nothing. The tramp looked up with a face in which a kind of austerity had replaced all his savage anger of a couple of minutes before.

“You’ve done it,” he said. “The way you was drivin’ that car—murder’s the only name for it. What was she—your wife?”

The wretched youth had been dabbing at his damaged eye all the while, half whimpering with the pain of it. He showed as a bony-faced, beaky, weak-chinned creature, with a little, foppish smudge of mustache upon his upper lip and hair plastered flat like a crust upon his skull. Shaken, bruised, and wounded as he was, he met the tramp’s question with a gape of utter astonishment.

“Wife!” he said. “Wife! Her!”

And actually from under the red and oozing handkerchief there sounded the thin cackle of a laugh.

The tramp stared at him; he was genuinely and deeply shocked. He was no judge of the quality of a woman, but he knew something about men and it seemed to him that while the girl to whom he had been ministering was pitiful and appealing, the youth who laughed was merely vile and despicable.

Words gathered themselves within him tumultuously.

But he was saved from the mighty oratory that hovered on his lips. Those broad and easy roads serve many travelers, and from around the bend there came the hum of an approaching car. In a few seconds more it had pulled up beside them, and the two men it contained had sprung out.

“Hullo!” exclaimed one of them. “Bad smash, eh? The lady’s injured, I’m afraid.”

“The lady’s dead!” retorted the tramp vehemently. “An’ ’e”—with a rigid finger pointing in fierce denunciation—“’e did it! Drivin’ like a madman, ’e was! Nearly run over me, quarter mile back there.”

The man who had spoken looked at him in surprise, with a faintly supercilious cock to his well-shaped brows. But he answered nothing and suddenly it was borne upon the tramp that these two decent-appearing new arrivals would discount any charges he brought against the youth by his tatters, his uncouth speech and all his character of one who had no place in their ordered world.

The youth, with his handkerchief still to his face, was dribbling disjointed explanations.

“Tire burst, I s’pose,” he was saying. “Broke my eyeglass in the smash; ’fraid I’ve lost my eye.”

“Let’s have a look!” suggested the second of the two newcomers, advancing upon him, while the other knelt down beside the girl. The latter had taken a flask from his pocket and went to work to force some of the contents between the girl’s slack lips. All of them pointedly disregarded the tramp. He stood by the ditch, watching them as they went to work and marking with envy the unhesitating manner with which the man with the flask felt at the girl’s heart and tested for a pulse in her slim wrist. He was out of it all.

The man who worked over the girl looked up at last.

“I say, Jack!” he called. “I think we’d better get ’em into your car and rush ’em into Maidstone. The lady here—I’m awfully afraid——” A shrug expressed the nature of his fears.

The other agreed. “Yes, an’ this eye wants attending to pretty badly,” he said. “You hold the lady in the back seat and we two’ll go in front.”

It was only when they were all but ready to start that the last speaker took indirect notice of the presence of the tramp. His cool eye dwelt on him appraisingly for a couple of moments; then:

“Better take the rugs an’ things with us,” he said. “No use leavin’ them to be stolen!”

And when he had piled the movables from the wreck into his own car, he drove off. He went slowly, so as not to shake up their unconscious burden, and in the very deliberation of the car’s progress there was for the tramp a suggestion of arrogant indifference to his existence.

“Well, I’m blowed!” he said, as he stood alone beside the debris of the canary-colored car. “Murder—in broad daylight! But who’s goin’ to believe me?”

He was assured that no one would. He had not even actually seen the accident take place; and the girl was almost certainly dead and, therefore, past bearing out his testimony. He shrugged resignedly and stopped to gather up his bundle again. With his hand upon it he paused and remained stooping, staring at something that had fallen among the weeds at the foot of the bank.

“’Ere!” he said. “What’s this?”

He reached for it, picked it up and rose to examine it. It was a brooch, a pretty thing made in the form of a lyre, such as a woman might use to fasten a scarf across her bosom. It twinkled up to his startled eyes from the hollow of his grimed palm which set off and enhanced its look of useless and lavish costliness.

“Diamonds!” he gasped. “Gold an’ diamonds! Must ’ave ripped it off ’er when she fell! Why, ’ere’s ’undreds of pounds’ worth!”

He turned it back and forth in his big blunt-ended fingers; and suddenly, with quick furtive movements of the head, he glanced about him lest any one should be watching. It was at that moment that the thing became his, a means toward plenty and pleasure. He thrust it deep into his pocket and took his bundle in hand.

His conscience troubled him not at all. James Webb, from time to time deck hand on Thames barges, dock laborer, Jack of all trades upon many watersides and now, since the spring was fine and the summer promised well, a tramp of the southern counties of England, was so little a thief in the grain that he was genuinely unaware that he was stealing at all. The girl was dead, so she didn’t own it; she wasn’t the young fool’s wife, so he didn’t own it; and anyhow, a thing picked up in the grass like that—it was a gift tossed to him by sheer circumstance. Only—it was a thing to keep quiet about, lest it should be taken away from him.

He arrived in Maidstone soon after noon. At the bottom of the hill which sloped between villas to the town, a large policeman looked searchingly and disapprovingly at him as he slouched past, crossed the bridge and headed up the busy and cheery High Street. He saw the glance and stiffened defensively as though the official eye could see through the stuff of his worn corduroys to the treasure in his pocket. He knew what he wanted and presently he found it—the plate-glass front of the town’s chief jeweler, with its exhibit of clocks and silverware and, in a corner next the door, its display of jewelry. He stopped here, an incongruous figure of shabby poverty with his untidy bundle dangling from one hand, and took stock of the gems exposed in the window.

Most of the articles were ticketed with their prices, but a few of the larger pieces set forth on pads of white velvet were unmarked. It was one of the latter that gained his attention, a heart-shaped pendant crusted with brilliants. Mentally he compared it with the brooch in his pocket.

“Not ’arf as many diamonds, nor yet not such big ones. Wonder why they don’t stick the price on it?”

For that was his purpose, to find some index to the value of his find, ready for the time when he should turn it into cash. He frowned thoughtfully at the bright window and was suddenly aware of a dapper assistant within watching him suspiciously through the glass of the door. Upon a sudden impulse he pointed with a finger to the diamond heart and beckoned the assistant forth with his head.

The assistant stared a moment, then jerked open the door and stood upon the threshold, eying him from head to foot.

“What d’you want?” he demanded.

Webb again pointed to the little heart behind the glass. “Mister,” he inquired; “what’s the worth o’ that heart thing you got there? You ain’t put no price on it.”

“That! You thinking of buying it?” queried the other.

“Not without knowin’ the price, any’ow,” retorted Webb.

The jeweler’s shopman sniffed. “Better treat yourself to something cheaper, my man,” he said loftily. “That heart is worth”—he hesitated and decided to be crushing while he was about it, and a big lie costs no more than a little one—“it’s worth a cool thousand pounds, that is! Are you sure you won’t take a couple of ’em?”

“Thousand——”

To the jeer itself Webb replied nothing at all. He backed away from the little shop man as though in fear. He backed till he had reached the farther edge of the sidewalk; then, with a last scared look at the triumphant jester, he turned and blundered on up the street. For he had believed utterly. The capricious and unaccountable fortune that will enrich a man one day and undo him the next had singled him out for this stupendous gift, and it frightened him.

He found a quiet spot in a big street and with much precaution against possible spies he drew his wealth forth. It was as he had thought; it had many more and much larger stones than the thousand-pound heart; altogether there was twice as much of mere mass to it. It might even be worth two thousand. He swore reverently as he reflected upon it.

“But it’ll take some gettin’ rid of,” he warned himself. “Can’t go into a pawnshop like this an’ ask ’em for thousands o’ pounds. I—I got to get some different clo’es.”

He surveyed himself and frowned in thought. It was impossible plausibly to connect the figure which he cut in his own eyes with the El Dorado which beckoned to him. Pawnshops, as he knew them, were the very homes and headquarters of suspicion and distrust; and he had no idea of how to find the discreet dealers in stolen goods who give a value for value and ask no questions. “I got to get some different clo’es,” he repeated to himself, and had a vision of himself nobly clad, armored against the doubts of usurers, laying down his treasure confidently upon a counter whence presently he picked up its price in handful after handful of spendable money.

“An’ that means gettin’ a job,” was his conclusion. “Couple o’ months—or p’r’aps three—ought to do it. Can’t go an’ miss a chance like this ’ere!”

The blind brick walls about him alone were witnesses to the stiffening of resolution that ran through him and made of the drooping tramp a man with a direction and a purpose.

It was late evening ere he completed the journey on foot over the hill road that links Maidstone with Chatham; his instinct led him unerringly toward the waterside now that work was in question. And the same instinct, like that of a homing bird, led him to a suitably mean street and to a correspondingly unpretentious public house. In a stuffy little compartment not much bigger than a telephone booth he laid his bundle down and demanded beer and bread and cheese.

“Come far?” asked the girl who pushed the tankard toward him, with perfunctory civility.

He nodded. “Walked over from Maidstone,” he answered. Now that he was in search of work there was no need to tell her more. She was a large and buxom girl with a mild and pleasant face and something of directness and simplicity in her regard. She picked up the shilling which he laid down and moved toward the cash register at the back of the bar. A harsh voice arrested her.

“Here! Let’s ’ave a look at that!”

Webb, lowering his tankard at the sound of it, was aware of a shirt-sleeved man behind the bar who held out his hand for the shilling which he had just paid over—a short and pot-bellied man, with a jowl that crushed into creases over his collar and angry little eyes like a proud pig. He took the coin from the girl’s hand, examined it, and rang it twice on the bar.

“All right!” he said then, restored it to her, gave Webb a glance that seemed to challenge him to make any comment on the matter and moved away.

“What was all that?” Webb asked the girl when she returned with his change.

She gave a wry little smile. “There’s a lot o’ bad money about lately,” she said. “I took a bad half crown this morning—at least, he says it was me.”

“Was it you?” asked Webb.

“I don’t know. But I know I got to pay for it,” she answered. “Either that or pass it off on some one else. An’ of course I can’t do that.”

“But some one passed it on you,” said Webb.

She nodded resignedly. “That’s what he says,” she answered. “But I couldn’t do that.”

She spoke with such a tranquil conviction that Webb had no reply. He did not altogether understand, but he was impressed, none the less. In her place he would have seen no evil in passing on his loss to another; but he liked the steadfastness of honesty that went so well with her quiet and patient eyes.

He had the good fortune to find employment the following morning. A wharf extension was building, and before noon he was one of a gang of men at work unloading stone from a flotilla of lighters for the construction. It was not easy nor agreeable work; the stuff had to be piled by hand into barrows and taken ashore over plank gangways—a day-long monotony of lifting and hauling that tired his slackened muscles to the utmost. The dinner hour found him already stiff and aching, with a powerful inclination to leave the job and depart again to the freedom and ease of the roads, the variety and interest of tramping. But upon rising that morning in the common lodging house where he had slept, he had pinned the brooch within the waistband of his trousers, where a hand thrust through the belt could feel its presence. He felt for it now, while he sat upon a stone heap and ate the food he had brought with him and the touch of it was sufficient to restore his resolution.

And the end of the day also brought its reward in a sense of satisfaction in a task accomplished and also in the knowledge that some sixth of a week’s wages was earned toward the achievement of his purpose. He sat that evening in the general kitchen of the lodging house, his elbow upon the table, his head in his hand and reviewed once more the prospect that opened before him. Tramps, laborers, and the like were busy about him with talk, cooking and such things; but he saw nothing of them. He was gazing beyond them to where there moved, against an indeterminate back ground, an impressively clad figure to which all the world was a buyable chattel. It rode in cabs, it refreshed itself frequently, it labored not at all. It was comely and clever: it was himself as he would be.

Some one passing behind him jostled him roughly where he sat so that his dream dropped from him. He turned to curse the man who had knocked against him, but ere he spoke he saw the scene about him and realized its quality. A drunken man was trying to take his boots off and a group was watching him with laughter. About the fire stood a gang, keeping jealous eyes on their pots and pans and a miserable woman was trying to feed a rag-wrapped baby. Utter squalor, naked poverty and inhuman degradation were the note of it all. He slipped a hand through his belt and felt between his fingers the small hard shape of the brooch. And suddenly he laughed.

He saw no more of the girl who had first greeted him on his arrival in Chatham till his wages had been paid him on the following Saturday. His program of thrift allowed him little to spend upon mere indulgences, but his days of work and his evenings in the foul and noisy kitchen had left him a little lonely and he had a pressing need for a while of companionship. The shabby little bar seemed to him cozy and hospitable and the sight of the girl, large and serious and kindly, gave him an odd sense of respite from the rigor of his purpose. Moreover, the fact that she recognized him warmed him with a feeling of welcome.

“Found work?” she inquired.

“Yes, I got a job,” he answered. “I’ll likely be ’ere two or three months, now.”

She smiled. She had a slow and kindly smile that he found pleasant to see. “You’ll be in here sometimes, then?” she suggested.

He nodded. “Sure to be,” he agreed. “Ain’t got nowhere else to go. An’ you? Been takin’ any more bad money lately?”

Her smile faded at that. “I don’t know how it ’appens,” she said dolefully. “I’m sure I’m as careful as I can be. But it keeps comin’ in. Another half crown an’ a two-shillin’ piece—an’ I’ve got to make it good!”

“It’s a shame,” said Webb warmly. “Must be some feller that’s got you marked down. Why don’t you go to the police an’ ’ave them put a detective on.”

She sighed. “The landlord’s done that a’ready,” she answered. “But it is a shame. It isn’t only that I got to lose by it; but to think there’s a man like that goin’ about! It makes you sick—feedin’ himself an’ buyin’ his drinks with money that don’t belong to him! Wouldn’t you rather starve?”

“I’d like to catch, ’im,” said Webb. “That’s what I’d like to do. He wouldn’t pass no more bad money for a bit, I’ll bet! But why should you ’ave to pay?”

She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “It’s that or get the sack,” she said. “I got five of ’em now that I’ve ’ad to pay for.”

“Let’s ’ave a look,” he suggested.

She felt in her pocket and produced an envelope and emptied its contents on the bar. There were three half crowns and two florins. Webb picked up one of the former and examined it curiously.

“’E’s a clever workman, whoever ’e is,” he commented. “You could pass one o’ these on me any time an’ I’d never know. ’Ardly anybody’d know. A man ’u’d take it an’ go off an’ spend it and not be any the worse.” He was watching her as he spoke; she only nodded regretfully. “What you goin’ to do with ’em?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Try an’ put ’em where nobody’ll ever find ’em, I suppose.”

“Throw ’em in the river, perhaps,” he suggested, half facetiously. “I’m workin’ down there; ’ow’d you like me to take ’em an’ heave ’em in for you?”

To his astonishment she smiled almost eagerly.

“Will you?” she said. “Do! Then I’ll know they can’t do no more harm.”

He stared at her. “You mean it?” he demanded.

She seemed not to understand. “Course I mean it,” she protested.

“Right!” said Webb. “I’ll do it.” And he swept up those plausible tokens of value and dropped them into his jacket pocket.

It was policy as well as a sense of humor that prompted him in his manner of disposing of them, for he was anxious that she should have independent testimony that he had really thrown them into the river. The dinner hour on Monday was reaching its end and the men were sitting about among the stone heaps, smoking and awaiting the summons to renew work. Webb, sitting among them, dropped a hand to his trousers pocket and brought out the coins and inspected them as they lay in his hand.

“Hullo, Jim!” called one of the others. “Been robbin’ a till or what?”

The rest of them turned to look. Webb smiled at them.

“Can any o’ you fellers swim an’ dive?” he asked. “’Cos, if so, I’ll make it worth your while.”

“How?” came the chorused query.

“Like this,” he answered, rising to his feet. He took one of the half crowns between finger and thumb and held it forth for them to see. Then, while they watched him breathlessly, he flung the broad coin forth over the water. It sparkled in a long arc and hit the surface fifty yards away.

“What yer doin’, yer fool?” yelled somebody. Webb grinned at him and a second coin followed the first. “’E’s mad!” cried another, and rose as though to prevent him, but the third and fourth coins went the way of the others. He backed away from the man who would restrain him.

“Only this left,” he cried. “Pity to keep it all by itself, ain’t it?” And the last of the coins spun forth and plopped into the river.

The men stared at him as he went back to his seat upon the stones and resumed his pipe. For every one of them, the sum he had thrown away was considerable.

“Well!” commented one, expelling a deep breath. “Jim’s mad, an’ that’s all about it! Or else ’e’s come into a fortune.”

Webb had his hand tucked into his belt; beneath the fingers of one lay the little jeweled lyre. He smiled again.

If he wanted publicity for his disposal of the coins he assuredly got it in the amplest measure. By evening he was notorious along the waterside; and when, next morning, he offered the explanation of his action, he was scarcely less famous. But when next he visited the public house the girl greeted him with a smile of merry appreciation.

It came to be almost his only recreation, the glass of beer and the hour of chat with her across the bar in the intervals of her service. Week followed week and his visits had the quality of ritual. The tale of his savings grew; he reached the point at which he was able to calculate the date when he would be able to leave the dull toil of his employment and go to London to realize upon his wealth. His resolution in this respect had never faltered; it was always in London that he had glimpsed his gilded future. Not even his genuine liking for the girl could shake his determination to be done with Chatham as soon as his plans should be ripe. Twice again he threw away base coins for her, and the fact of her fixed and unalterable honesty, a quality as constant in the make-up of her mind as the shape of her features in the contours of her face, became less marvelous to him.

The climax of their acquaintance came one evening when he entered the little bar to find no other customer there. “Evenin’, miss,” he greeted as usual and ordered his very modest drink.

She smiled at him, the slowly widening and friendly smile for which he had come to look, filled his pewter tankard and set it down before him. He thrust a ten-shilling note across in payment and she turned to get change from the cash register behind her. At the same moment the shirt-sleeved and pot-bellied landlord bustled to the machine and began to work upon it,

“’Ow much?” he demanded, taking the note from the girl. “Right!” He struck the appropriate key and handed her a little pile of silver and coppers in return. She passed it to Webb who pocketed it and leaned against the counter, chatting till it was time to push his tankard over to be replenished. He paid for it this time with a half crown that he fished at random from his pocket. And as on the evening of his first visit, the landlord intercepted the girl and took the coin from her.

“’Ere!” he demanded suddenly of Webb. “What’s this you tryin’ on?”

He bounced the coin upon the bar; it rang as flat as lead. His little eyes were savage as he glared at Webb.

“What yer talkin’ about?” retorted Webb. “If it ain’t good, that’s your lookout. You give it me in my change for me last drink. I ’adn’t no other ’arf crown on me!”

The landlord pushed the coin over to him. “You look out I don’t call a p’liceman,” he threatened. “I ’anded out yer last change meself and there warn’t no ’arf crowns among it. You pick up yer ’ome-made money an’ pay for yer beer, will yer?”

“I tell you I got it from you!” insisted Webb.

“Miss!” The pot-bellied man turned to where the girl stood behind him, looking on and listening. Webb could no longer see his face when he turned nor the warning and commanding wink with which he prompted her. But over the bulging shoulder he could see her face and its trouble.

“Miss! You ’anded ’im the change I give yer,” barked the fat man. “Speak up; you’re witness there wasn’t no ’arf crown in it, was there?”

She did not answer at first but stood nervously tangling her fingers before her.

“Speak up!” ordered the landlord. “Got a tongue in yer ’ead, ’aven’t yer? Tell ’im there wasn’t none!”

There was another pause; then she sighed.

“Yes, there was,” she answered in her mild and steady voice.

The landlord swore and she shrank back from him. Webb laughed, but he was thrilled, too. He knew he might safely have counted upon it, but it was none the less stimulating and heart warming to watch her unswerving truth at work.

“Now’s the time to send for a policeman,” he, jeered. “Unless, p’r’aps, you’d like me to fetch one.”

The landlord gave him a ferocious look and banged down a sound coin in place of the imposture which yet lay on the bar.

“You’ll clear out to-morrow, you will,” he rasped at the girl. “’Ad enough o’ your tricks, I ’ave.”

And he stamped his indignant way toward his den of an office and left them together. They stood, one to each side of the pewter-topped counter, and looked at each other. The girl’s eyes were wet with distress.

“Oh!” she broke out. “What does he want me to do things like that for? It’s like—it’s like—stealin’; I can’t bear them. An’ now I’ve got to go an’ I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do.”

“Hush!” said Webb. “It’s my turn to stand by you now. I never saw nobody like you. I don’t believe you could do a dirty thing if you tried. Supposin’, now—supposin’ you an’ me was to fix up together! I bin savin’ money all the weeks I bin ’ere an’ soon I’ll ’ave more—’eaps an’ ’eaps more. We’d go to London; p’r’aps we c’d even ’ave a pub of our own. What say?”

She looked at him steadily. “You mean—get married?”

He nodded. Then, misreading her silence, he leaned across the bar, and, in tones little louder than a whisper, he told her the story of the accident on the Maidstone road, of his find, of his plan and his prospects. And to clinch his tale he fumbled within his waist band, pricked his finger on the pin of the brooch and managed to extract it. He showed it to her, lying gleaming in the cup of his hand.

“A thousand pounds—any’ow,” he said. “Think—a thousand pounds!”

He heard her gasp and looked quickly up at her face. What he saw there made his jaw drop.

“You!” she breathed, in a sort of incredulity of horror. “You—like all the others! And I did think you were decent an’ honest! I was just goin’ to——”

She broke off abruptly.

“But what’s the matter?” he demanded. “’Tisn’t as if I’d stole it. There it was, lyin’ in the grass for anybody to pick up. An’ the woman was dead.”

She shook her head. “But it ain’t yours,” she said. “You ought to have taken it to the police station. But to keep it like that an’ to ask me to- come an’ live on it—oh, it’s wrong, it’s all wrong!”

There was always that confident assurance, that trenchant discrimination between clear right and clear wrong, in her manner and voice. He was unutterably abashed.

“Then—then you won’t——”

She shook her head again. “I couldn’t,” she said decidedly, “I’d rather starve, an’ I did think you would, too.”

She turned away and he, leaving his drink untasted, turned in silence to the door.

It was twenty minutes later that a sturdy young man in worn working clothes and with a face whose hard seriousness imperfectly masked a certain trepidation, made his way to the desk of the sergeant on duty at the police station.

“Well?” inquired that officer briefly.

For answer the young man slapped down upon the desk a trinket that winked in the electric light.

“’Ad any inquiries ’bout this bein’ lost?” he asked.

The stout sergeant examined it with interest. “Where d’you get it?” he said.

James Webb told him the story.

“Ah!” said the sergeant. “An’ you’ve been holdin’ on to it in case a reward was offered, eh? You might ’ave got into trouble over that, you know. ’Owever—Billings!”

A young constable rose from his seat by the fire and came forward. The sergeant handed him the brooch.

“Take that across the road to the jewelers’ an’ ask ’em what they think of it!”

James Webb was given the seat by the fire vacated by Billings, and sat staring moodily at the coals till the policeman returned and dropped the brooch on the sergeant’s desk.

“Well?”

Billings grinned with a sidelong glance at the listening Webb.

“Says he’ll sell you them by the dozen at ten shillings apiece.”

Webb breathed deeply. Without a word he took the brooch which the smiling sergeant handed to him and went forth. He passed slowly along the street in the direction of the little inn.

“I’ll get her to teach me that honesty trick of ’ers,” he said. “I cert’n’y ain’t no good at the other thing!”