THE LOST PENDANT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2506, 2 April 1902, Page 75

THE LOST PENDANT.

"Ten Pounds Reward.— Lost, on Wednesday afternoon, May 17, between the Criterion Theatre and Lowndes square, a •heart-shaped pendant, blue enamel, surrounded by diamonds, with a diamond centre. Initials on back, 'M. L.' The above reward will be paid to anyone bringing the same to Messrs" Lighton and Simeons, Sloane street." - : Three people in three different places ,-were reading the advertisement soon after J9 o-' clock on the morning of Friday, May ■19. ■< The first, wlio was a solid-looking person in blue, sitting on a high stool in the dinner precincts of New Scotland Yard, was doing so because he was paid for it. | ', . The second, whose paper had already acquired some beer stains from the public-.-house bar at which he was reading it. was ' a . white-faced gentleman with a pair of .twitching eyes, a two days' beard, and a (bad habit of biting his nails. His eye Taiulover the advertisement without surprise, for it had been inserted according to jfliis expectations. This was not because ! 'he had lost the brooch, but because he had — well — found it. 1 The sum offered was food for meditation. Mr Bluejaw, to give the name usually applied to him, though not bestowed upon him in baptism, handsomely 'conceded that it was pretty fair, but r='fiected, on the other hand, that the general •practice was not lightly to be departed from, the general practice being to wait a lew days and see whether any further inducement would be offered. The third reader was a sandy-hafred young man of fair complexion, attired in a Zingai'i smoking jacket, who appeared to have very little appetite for his excellent breakfast, and he had come upon the advertisement purely by chance. There was not the faintest doubt about it. He knew the pendant at once. For one thing, lie had. bought it ; for another, when certtain events had happened, it had been returned to him. and thereafter had been bandied about between the giver and the donee, till she had finally kept it on the ground that the whole thing was becoming ridiculous. . And so she had lost it. £10. The sum gave rise to reflection to the candy young man as well as to Mr Blue{jaw. She wanted it back, and wanted it xather badly. Spare £10 notes 'were ra ri#ies with Colonel Liddiard's daughter. {Yes, it was clear that she still valued the thing — but why? Fred Barallay — that was his name — jerked himself "from the chaiv and paced the room. A glance at Mr face would have shown that the conclusion he had arrived at as to why she /valued it was satisfying. As 3 matter of fact, his imagination had wandered further afield. He was supposing, just supposing, that he found the pendant. Would he have the pluck to take it back to her himself? iYes, he was sure he would. "Nothing denture, nothing win." "Faint heart never iron fair lady." "Who fears to fall" — a dozen seasoned proverbs put him on his mettle. Then if he did — and it was at this point that Mr Barallay's imagination fairly carried him away into the drawing i.'oom of Lowndes square. Feeling the necessity of action, he changed his coat, seized a hat, and went forth into Piccadilly, possibly with a vague idea of finding the pendant. If such was his intention it was, as the reader knows, doomed to disappointment, but it so happened that in his wanderings he came across the jeweller's shop at which he had .purchased the lost article. He stopped, looked into the window, went on slowly to •the corner, hesitated, turned back, and entered. The thing he ordered was, curiously enough, a heart-shaped pendant of blue enamel surrounded by diamonds and with b diamond centre. The initials "M. L." ,\vere to be engraved on the back. The ftrhole thing was to be as like as possible to the one he had ordered the preceding spring, Rnd he was obliged to have it immediately. fTlie jeweller turned up his books, noted /the price, remembered the design, and jshook his head. He had not another like £t. However, urged and entreated, he gave ground for hope that among the wholeiale trade, which should be ransacked from *nd to end, a similar pendant could be I'ound. It would be engiaved at once, and ■ f such an article could be obtained in : England or Paris he should have it on '. Jonday. Happily for Mr Barallay "s peace of Jnind, on Monday morning the package came, but then arose a doubt as to whether the real pendant had not yet been found mid handed over. With eager hands he tore open the package, threw the white Jnorocco case into the fireplace, and staited out to the shop of Messrs Lighton and Eimm'ons. Once arrived there, he inquired with ready artifice whether the lady who had Jost her pendant had been to inquire after The lady had been in every day, was the answer, but the pendant had not yet been found At the time he scarcely noticed that a Jarge, ph'eginatic-looking man gave way \o him immediately. "That's all right." said Mr Barallay. ►Tve got it. I will go and give it to ier." Everything had gone so well that it was Jrith a tremor, not of doubt, but of exciteJwent, that he ran up the well remembeied »t«p3 and glanced over the familiar square ps he waited for his ring to be answered. ,The sams footman came to the door, and jbeneath the imperturbability of the British f\ervant lurked a looked of surprise and pleased recognition. Miss Mabel was at tome. "Will you .ell her," said Barallay. "that Uer pendant has been found, and that the finder would. ,Ws& to .give it to. ksi Jigrson.-

ally, if she would not mind. Do not give my name."

He was ushered into the drawing room, and waited. Up and down he paced in pleasurable excitement. Passing the window in one of his peregrinations, he caw the man in a billycock hat who had given way to him in Lighton and Simmons's strolling by the railings opposite the house, but the recognition aroused no curiosity He had to wait some considerable time, and his fancy naturally began to play with the coming interview. He saw her as she would enter with a look half glad, half shy of recognition. He knew exactly the look. He would not say anything. That would be best, he thought. He would just show her the heart. "She would look at it and be struck with the pretty symbolism of his finding it, when all the other people in the world might have done so just as much as he. Then there would be a silence. Their eyes would meet, and ha would tell her that the world had been a dreary desert -for a year, and then At that moment the door opened, and Miss Liddiard — in every way a suitable young lady for whom to go forth and purchase pendants — came in. She wore a look of blank surprise as she sow him. " You ! " she exclaimed. Neither the look nor the exclamation was as-tutanged. That is the disadvantage of these pictured interviews. When the other person does not act up to them, it throws one off the "queue." Barallay fumbled in his pocket for the pendant, and wished that he had had it read}'. Who shall decide on" the rights and wrongs in lovers' quarrels? Whatever Barallay's view of the case may have been, Mabel was firmly convinced that he had been in the wrong, and after a year the conviction had grown to goodly proportions. She thought the message as to fhe locket was a mere pretext to see h?r. Why not say openly that he had come for forgiveness? Anil if he had come for forgiveness, why that happy expression? Therefore she" coldly asked him : "Why have you come?" The happy smile which shone so unseasonably on his face broadened as he produced the pendant.^ So he had found the pendant, and had not come to be forgiven at all. A little disappointment was but natural. "Oh, you found the pendant?" she said, interrogatively. An answer was needed. He was vexed that it had from the circumstances to be a falsehood. " YeS " 1 r "Thank you so much. It was good of you to bring it." Mr Baa-allay, although his soul was in a ferment, could think of nothing else to say but — " Not at all." She put the pendant carelessly upon the tab!e Considering all things, his satisfied smile, succeeded % the utterance of such banalities as " Not at all," argued a want of feeling that demanded resentment, fche could agree now with those who told her what kind of creatures men were. •• It is really ir.ost odd that voti should have found it," she said. " I had forgotten all about it." •Forgotten ! How the colours of his picture were being painted out! Still, an effort was yet to be made. "Birt I thought— l gathered that you valued it," he stammered. "Why?" . . _ "Well, you advertised for it, and I tLought -" The halting explanation sank exhausted. " Oh, mamma seemed so anxious I should recover it. She is at home. Would you like to see her? " „,.-, " I do not think I will trouble her, he said. Miss Liddiard marked the tone of disappointment and the absence now of that happy, belf-satisried smile, and began to feel a little remoise foi her iem.uk. She remembeied also that her mother had nothing to do with the reward whatever, and so she paused. Possibly he might have something else to say, and just poshibly he might find a willing ear. Unfortunately, the wounded Barallay took the pause to be intentionally embarrassing — a signal to end an undesircd interview ; so, mustering a nonchalant air, he said :

"I merely came to return the pendant." Miss Liddiard naturally answered : " Then 1 must not keep you. Perhaps you have appointments." Barallay muttered something gluoniily about going away — abroad — somewhere — anywheie. took up his gloves, and said : '' Good-bye.'" "Good-bye,'' said Miss Liddnrd, chil'ily. " It keeps fine." " But cold for the time of year. Goodbye." * .Slowly down the stairs and out of the front door went Mr Barallay with Ins heait in ,his boots and his eyes on the ground, and paused at the foot of the steps undecided which was the nearest way to the devil. It was then that a hand was clapped upon his shoulder, and he looked round and perceived the phlegmatic person he had seen from the window and an attendant policeman. "What the dickens do you want?" he asked angrily. "Gently, gently," said the man, emphasismi; the pressure of his massive hand. " Be^t to come quiet."

"What on earth do you mean?" K aid Baralluy, tiymj to shake the hand off. "The matter of that pendant," said the large man, with an air of betting all un easiness at rest.

"What has the pendant got to do with you?" fumed Barallay. '"Don't argue. Don't argue," sa : d the man. soothingly. "Now, my gentleman, would you like a cab?"

" Look here," said Barallay, curbing his intense desire for combat, " they know me at th:it hou-e. Ring the be I .' and ask them who I am." "Know you, do they? Constable, ling the bell " The boll wa« 1 iini, they waited. "Did you gpc your iewaid'?" insinuated tlis I&ess man*

" Oh, yes, I got my reward," responded Barallay, moodily, and the footman opened the door. "Who am I?' asked Barallay. The footman was too much astonished at sight of a constable and another, whose clothes were the clothes of Philistii, but wlice boots were the booth of a police force, to give a ready answer. "Who is he?"' demanded the large man. "Why, it's Mr Barallay. and he used to be • " responded the footman. " Yes, yes," broke in Barallay hurriedly, who did not want his love troubles blurted from the housetops. "And this afternoon he come with the pendant," volunteered the footman. Barallay wished the pendant at the bottom of the sea. " For Heaven's sake, don't let's stand at the front door. There'll be a crowd. Take us into the library." lie said. Deep as was the conviction of the large man that the person who brought back the pendant for the reward must be a thief, or his guilty receiver, some vague doubts, connected with Barallay's clothes and his knowledge of the interior of a house in Lowndes square, wormed themselves into his mind, as he, with the policeman, tramped after their prisoner into the library. "Well, what is it all about?" as-ked Barallay, flinging himself into a chair. The "large man raised a didactic forefinger. " The pendant was stole." he said, and then at his back appeared Miss Lddiard.with just a shade of pink at the tip of her nose arid her eyelid*. She paused 111 astonishment, and Barallay looked uncomfortably away. " The pendant was stole," pursued the large man, " because the chain was stole and other articles at the same time belonging to other people. Grabbed as they came ovit of the matinee. The person '00 comes for the reward knows all about it. I don't say 'c stole it, but 'c knows them that did, and c received it. Now you came for the reward, and, wot's more, you got it.' Miss Liddiard started, and the large man turned and saw her. The pendant was in her hands. " Excuse me, ma'am," he said, and took it. '' Now," he continued, addressing Barallay, '' 'ow did you come by it?" Barallay remembered that he had told Mabel that he had found it. In view of its denouement, wild horses would not drag from him the story of his visit to the jeweller's. " I refuse to say-,'' he said. "Come, come." said the large man, "did you buy it, p'raps?" " I refuse to say," repeated Barallay. The large man turned to the constable, whose conception of his duties appeared to be to stare fixedly at one spot in the ceiling, and shook his head. " There's nothing for it,' he said, " but to take 'im to where 'c will say." Mabel stared at Barallay with two frightened eyes, and was about to speak, when the front door bell pealed out again. The footman rushed in, his face pallid with bewilderment, and breathlessly remarked : " There's another person come and sez he's found the di'mond pendant." Amid the astonished group the large man stood the master of the situation. To the policeman he hastily whispered " H.de yourself," and immediately one of the window curtains became bulbous with that official's form, and billowy with laboured breathing, while over the too obvious feet the large man threw an antimacassar. Then, tossing his hat behind the sofa, and picking up a book, he assumed the air of a householder beguiling his elegant leisure with liter.u-y pursuits. "Show him in," he said to the footman, and the footman showed in Mr Bluejaw. j It will be seen that the gentleman had solved the knotty point.s in the consideiation of which he was engaged. In the fiist place, Monday's paper had added nothing to the reward, and, being in circumstances of financial embaiiassment. he could wait no longer. In the second place, he had come to the conclusion that to _have a thing well done one must do "it one's self, and so had risked the recognition which might have been inconvenient and had gone personally to the s-hop of Messis Lighton and Simmons. There he produced the pendant, and demanded as his reward £10. 'lhe shopwoman, of course, told him jlint not half an hour before someone else had proclaimed himself the finder, and had gone off to the ] lady's house. The reward would probably ! have been paid to him. By hurrying, Mr : Bluejdw, 11" he really was the finder, might get there in time. Mr Bluejaw swore by all his gods that he was the finder, and wanted to know where the thief had gone. He was told the number in Lowndes square, and, after calling Messrs Lighton and Simmons names undreamed of in their vocabulary, had bolted round. Hence his admittance, white and panting, with angry eyes shifting from one face to another. The most natural cause of his anxiety proclaimed itself in liis first woids : "Lady, 'aye you parted?' " Haddrc-ss yourself to me, young man," said the large man, the dignity of his character of householder expressing itself in add d aspirate*. " What is the purpose of your question?'* Mr Bluejaw held out his hand to command attention, and started on his .stople^s explanation. "Ah farnd the pendink. >welp me, on Tliuir-day aiternooir, Piccadilly Succus ; anybody eke come "ere an' say 'c famd it 'c's a liar, swlp me ; if you've give "im the cash c's bilked yer ; ah farnd the jool as advertised, an' ah want 10 pun cesb, s'trewth, .swelp me." "You don't expect to receive the reward without returning the article, I presoom?" said the large man, conclusively, for the pendant was in his pocket. "So now," lie added, with some los^ of dramatic effect as a householder in Lowndes square, " that's <.nough t it. ' " 'No ugh of itJ 'Nough of n!" gapped the exjbpeiated Bluejaw. "What do you take us for?" said the

duce the missing article. We all know that." "Can't perdooce?" said Mr Bluejaw, in bewilderment, drawing from his pocket the pendmt and presenting it to the public gaze. For the first time the large man was unequal to the occasion. He made a dive in his own pocket for his treasure, and brought it forth to stars at it in astonishment. Mi«s Liddiiird, too, had some difficulty m believing her eye?. She went up to Bluejaw and examined his pendant and then gave a rapid glance at the one the large man had placed on the table. " That is the one I lost, I am sure of it." she said, pointing to Bluejaw's. " This," she continued, looking at the other minutely, " seems new, somehow, and different. " There was a painful pau<e. The large man rubbed his head thoughtfully for a moment. Then he whistled very softly, and, while the half-asphyxiated policeman emerged from behind a curtain. Mr Bluejaw made a bolt for the street, followed quickly by the representatives of the law. Left alone, Mabel raised her puzzled eyes and looked at Barallay, who was tugging at his moustache in embairassment. " l"ou did not find it, then, at all?" she said. "No, I didn't," he confessed, with eyes upon the carpet. " Then how " " I bought it. Had it engraved. Had some silly ideas. Thought idiotic thing?. Made an ass of myself." Mabel Liddiard took the pendant — the new one — from the table, and looked at it as though she expected it. unless tenderly guarded, to vanish into thin air. " And you wouldn't tell them tbat you bought it. You would have gone to p-- prison rather than let me know," she faltered. Barallay found something prettier than the carpet to look at, and, instead of a yellow moustache to pull, a timidly proffered little hand to press. "Then you did value it?" he asked, with the ecstatic wonder of a lover who finds his expectations turn out to be true. " I value this one far the most," she softly answered, as she fastened it on her chain.