"And you left it in your pyjama pocket," said the girl quietly. "I'll
telephone to your house for it."
"Phew!" said Bones. "It seems incredible. I must have been robbed."
"I don't think so," said the girl; "it is probably under your pillow.
Do you keep your pyjamas under your pillow?"
"That," said Bones, "is a matter which I never discuss in public. I
hate to disappoint you, dear old Marguerite----"
"I'm sorry," said the girl, with such a simulation of regret that Bones
dissolved into a splutter of contrition.
A commissionaire and a taxicab brought the plan, which was discovered
where the girl in her wisdom had suggested.
"I'm not so sure how much money I'm going to make out of this," said
Bones off-handedly, after a thorough and searching examination of the
project. "It is certain to be about three thousand pounds--it may be a
million or two million. It'll be good for you, dear old stenographer."
She looked at him.
"I have decided," said Bones, playing with his paper-knife, "to allow
you a commission of seven and a half per cent. on all profits. Seven
and a half per cent. on two million is, roughly, fifty thousand
pounds----"
She laughed her refusal.
"I like to be fair," said Bones.
"You like to be generous," she corrected him, "and because I am a girl,
and pretty----"
"Oh, I say," protested Bones feebly--"oh, really you are not pretty at
all. I am not influenced by your perfectly horrible young face,
believe me, dear old Miss Marguerite. Now, I've a sense of fairness, a
sense of justice----"
"Now, listen to me, Mr. Tibbetts." She swung her chair round to face
him squarely. "I've got to tell you a little story."
Bones listened to that story with compressed lips and folded arms. He
was neither shocked nor amazed, and the girl was surprised.
"Hold hard, young miss," he said soberly. "If this is a jolly old
swindle, and if the naughty mariner----"
"His name is Webber, and he is an actor," she interrupted.
"And dooced well he acted," admitted Bones. "Well, if this is so, what
about the other johnny who's putting up ten thousand to my fifteen
thousand?"
This was a facer for the girl, and Bones glared his triumph.
"That is what the wicked old ship-sailer said. Showed me the money,
an' I sent him straight off on the job. He said he'd got a Stock
Exchange person named Morris----"
"Morris!" gasped the girl. "That is my step-father!"
Bones jumped up, a man inspired.
"The naughty old One, who married your sainted mother?" he gurgled.
"My miss! My young an' jolly old Marguerite!"
He sat down at his desk, yanked open the drawer, and slapped down his
cheque-book.