advantage, while Rankin and De Gollyer in a bored way continued to gaze
dreamily at a vagrant star or two. "Two men and a woman, or two women
and a man. Obviously it should be classified as the first of the great
original parent themes. Its variations extend into the thousands. By the
way, Rankin, excellent opportunity, eh, for some of our modern,
painstaking, unemployed jackasses to analyze and classify."

"Quite right," said Rankin without perceiving the satirical note. "Now
there's De Maupassant's Fort comma la Mort--quite the most interesting
variation--shows the turn a genius can give. There the triangle is the
man of middle age, the mother he has loved in his youth and the daughter
he comes to love. It forms, you might say, the head of a whole
subdivision of modern continental literature."

"Quite wrong, Rankin, quite wrong," said Quinny, who would have stated
the other side quite as imperiously. "What you cite is a variation of
quite another theme, the Faust theme--old age longing for youth, the man
who has loved longing for the love of his youth, which is youth itself.
The triangle is the theme of jealousy, the most destructive and,
therefore, the most dramatic of human passions. The Faust theme is the
most fundamental and inevitable of all human experiences, the tragedy of
life itself. Quite a different thing."

Rankin, who never agreed with Quinny unless Quinny maliciously took
advantage of his prior announcement to agree with him, continued to
combat this idea.

"You believe then," said De Gollyer after a certain moment had been
consumed in hair splitting, "that the origin of all dramatic themes is
simply the expression of some human emotion. In other words, there can
exist no more parent themes than there are human emotions."

"I thank you, sir, very well put," said Quinny with a generous wave of
his hand. "Why is the Three Musketeers a basic theme? Simply the
interpretation of comradeship, the emotion one man feels for another,
vital because it is the one peculiarly masculine emotion. Look at Du
Maurier and Trilby, Kipling in Soldiers Three--simply the Three
Musketeers."

"The Vie de Bohème?" suggested Steingall.

"In the real Vie de Bohème, yes," said Quinny viciously. "Not in the
concocted sentimentalities that we now have served up to us by athletic
tenors and consumptive elephants!"

Rankin, who had been silently deliberating on what had been left behind,
now said cunningly and with evident purpose:

"All the same, I don't agree with you men at all. I believe there are
situations, original situations, that are independent of your human
emotions, that exist just because they are situations, accidental and
nothing else."

"As for instance?" said Quinny, preparing to attack.

"Well, I'll just cite an ordinary one that happens to come to my mind,"
said Rankin, who had carefully selected his test. "In a group of seven
or eight, such as we are here, a theft takes place; one man is the
thief--which one? I'd like to know what emotion that interprets, and yet
it certainly is an original theme, at the bottom of a whole literature."

This challenge was like a bomb.

"Not the same thing."

"Detective stories, bah!"

"Oh, I say, Rankin, that's literary melodrama."

Rankin, satisfied, smiled and winked victoriously over to Tommers, who
was listening from an adjacent table.

"Of course your suggestion is out of order, my dear man, to this
extent," said Quinny, who never surrendered, "in that I am talking of
fundamentals and you are citing details. Nevertheless, I could answer
that the situation you give, as well as the whole school it belongs to,
can be traced back to the commonest of human emotions, curiosity; and
that the story of Bluebeard and the Moonstone are to all purposes
identically the same."

At this Steingall, who had waited hopefully, gasped and made as though
to leave the table.

"I shall take up your contention," said Quinny without pause for breath,
"first, because you have opened up one of my pet topics, and, second,
because it gives me a chance to talk." He gave a sidelong glance at
Steingall and winked at De Gollyer. "What is the peculiar fascination
that the detective problem exercises over the human mind? You will say
curiosity. Yes and no. Admit at once that the whole art of a detective
story consists in the statement of the problem. Any one can do it. I can
do it. Steingall even can do it. The solution doesn't count. It is
usually banal; it should be prohibited. What interests us is, can we
guess it? Just as an able-minded man will sit down for hours and fiddle
over the puzzle column in a Sunday balderdash. Same idea. There you have
it, the problem--the detective story. Now why the fascination? I'll tell
you. It appeals to our curiosity, yes--but deeper to a sort of
intellectual vanity. Here are six matches, arrange them to make four
squares; five men present, a theft takes place--who's the thief? Who
will guess it first? Whose brain will show its superior cleverness--see?
That's all--that's all there is to it."

"Out of all of which," said De Gollyer, "the interesting thing is that
Rankin has supplied the reason why the supply of detective fiction is
inexhaustible. It does all come down to the simplest terms. Seven
possibilities, one answer. It is a formula, ludicrously simple,
mechanical, and yet we will always pursue it to the end. The marvel is
that writers should seek for any other formula when here is one so
safe, that can never fail. By George, I could start up a factory on it."

"The reason is," said Rankin, "that the situation does constantly occur.
It's a situation that any of us might get into any time. As a matter of
fact, now, I personally know two such occasions when I was of the party;
and devilish uncomfortable it was too."

"What happened?" said Steingall.

"Why, there is no story to it particularly. Once a mistake had been made
and the other time the real thief was detected by accident a year later.
In both cases only one or two of us knew what had happened."

De Gollyer had a similar incident to recall. Steingall, after
reflection, related another that had happened to a friend.

"Of course, of course, my dear gentlemen," said Quinny impatiently, for
he had been silent too long, "you are glorifying commonplaces. Every
crime, I tell you, expresses itself in the terms of the picture puzzle
that you feed to your six-year-old. It's only the variation that is
interesting. Now quite the most remarkable turn of the complexities that
can be developed is, of course, the well-known instance of the visitor
at a club and the rare coin. Of course every one knows that? What?"

Rankin smiled in a bored, superior way, but the others protested their
ignorance.

"Why, it's very well known," said Quinny lightly.

"A distinguished visitor is brought into a club--dozen men, say,
present, at dinner, long table. Conversation finally veers around to
curiosities and relics. One of the members present then takes from his
pocket what he announces as one of the rarest coins in existence--passes
it around the table. Coin travels back and forth, every one examining
it, and the conversation goes to another topic, say the influence of the
automobile on domestic infelicity, or some other such asininely
intellectual club topic--you know? All at once the owner calls for his
coin.

"The coin is nowhere to be found. Every one looks at every one else.
First they suspect a joke. Then it becomes serious--the coin is
immensely valuable. Who has taken it?

"The owner is a gentleman--does the gentlemanly idiotic thing of course,
laughs, says he knows some one is playing a practical joke on him and
that the coin will be returned to-morrow. The others refuse to leave the
situation so. One man proposes that they all submit to a search. Every
one gives his assent until it comes to the stranger. He refuses, curtly,
roughly, without giving any reason. Uncomfortable silence--the man is a
guest. No one knows him particularly well--but still he is a guest. One
member tries to make him understand that no offense is offered, that the
suggestion was simply to clear the atmosphere, and all that sort of
bally rot, you know.

"'I refuse to allow my person to be searched,' says the stranger, very
firm, very proud, very English, you know, 'and I refuse to give my
reason for my action.'

"Another silence. The men eye him and then glance at one another. What's
to be done? Nothing. There is etiquette--that magnificent inflated
balloon. The visitor evidently has the coin--but he is their guest and
etiquette protects him. Nice situation, eh?

"The table is cleared. A waiter removes a dish of fruit and there under
the ledge of the plate where it had been pushed--is the coin. Banal
explanation, eh? Of course. Solutions always should be. At once every
one in profuse apologies! Whereupon the visitor rises and says:

"'Now I can give you the reason for my refusal to be searched. There are
only two known specimens of the coin in existence, and the second
happens to be here in my waistcoat pocket.'"

"Of course," said Quinny with a shrug of his shoulders, "the story is
well invented, but the turn to it is very nice--very nice indeed."

"I did know the story," said Steingall, to be disagreeable; "the ending,
though, is too obvious to be invented. The visitor should have had on
him not another coin, but something absolutely different, something
destructive, say, of a woman's reputation, and a great tragedy should
have been threatened by the casual misplacing of the coin."

"I have heard the same story told in a dozen different ways," said
Rankin.

"It has happened a hundred times. It must be continually happening,"
said Steingall.

"I know one extraordinary instance," said Peters, who up to the present,
secure in his climax, had waited with a professional smile until the big
guns had been silenced. "In fact, the most extraordinary instance of
this sort I have ever heard."

"Peters, you little rascal," said Quinny with a sidelong glance, "I
perceive you have quietly been letting us dress the stage for you."

"It is not a story that will please every one," said Peters, to whet
their appetite.

"Why not?"

"Because you will want to know what no one can ever know."

"It has no conclusion then?"

"Yes and no. As far as it concerns a woman, quite the most remarkable
woman I have ever met, the story is complete. As for the rest, it is
what it is, because it is one example where literature can do nothing
better than record."

"Do I know the woman?" asked De Gollyer, who flattered himself on
passing through every class of society.

"Possibly, but no more than any one else."

"An actress?"

"What she has been in the past I don't know--a promoter would better
describe her. Undoubtedly she has been behind the scenes in many an
untold intrigue of the business world. A very feminine woman, and yet,
as you shall see, with an unusual instantaneous masculine power of
decision."

"Peters," said Quinny, waving a warning finger, "you are destroying your
story. Your preface will bring an anticlimax."

"You shall judge," said Peters, who waited until his audience was in
strained attention before opening his story. "The names are, of course,
disguises."

Mrs. Rita Kildair inhabited a charming bachelor-girl studio, very
elegant, of the duplex pattern, in one of the buildings just off Central
Park West. She knew pretty nearly every one in that indescribable
society in New York that is drawn from all levels, and that imposes but
one condition for membership--to be amusing. She knew every one and no
one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest rumors her history or her
means. No one had ever heard of a Mr. Kildair. There was always about
her a certain defensive reserve the moment the limits of
acquaintanceship had been reached. She had a certain amount of money,
she knew a certain number of men in Wall Street affairs and her studio
was furnished with taste and even distinction. She was of any age. She
might have suffered everything or nothing at all. In this mingled
society her invitations were eagerly sought, her dinners were
spontaneous, and the discussions, though gay and usually daring, were
invariably under the control of wit and good taste.

On the Sunday night of this adventure she had, according to her
invariable custom, sent away her Japanese butler and invited to an
informal chafing-dish supper seven of her more congenial friends, all of
whom, as much as could be said of any one, were habitués of the studio.

At seven o'clock, having finished dressing, she put in order her
bedroom, which formed a sort of free passage between the studio and a
small dining room to the kitchen beyond. Then, going into the studio,
she lit a wax taper and was in the act of touching off the brass
candlesticks that lighted the room when three knocks sounded on the door
and a Mr. Flanders, a broker, compact, nervously alive, well groomed,
entered with the informality of assured acquaintance.

"You are early," said Mrs. Kildair, in surprise.

"On the contrary, you are late," said the broker, glancing at his watch.

"Then be a good boy and help me with the candles," she said, giving him
a smile and a quick pressure of her fingers.

He obeyed, asking nonchalantly:

"I say, dear lady, who's to be here to-night?"

"The Enos Jacksons."

"I thought they were separated."

"Not yet."

"Very interesting! Only you, dear lady, would have thought of serving us
a couple on the verge."

"It's interesting, isn't it?"

"Assuredly. Where did you know Jackson?"

"Through the Warings. Jackson's a rather doubtful person, isn't he?"

"Let's call him a very sharp lawyer," said Flanders defensively. "They
tell me, though, he is on the wrong side of the market--in deep."

"And you?"

"Oh, I? I'm a bachelor," he said with a shrug of his shoulders, "and if
I come a cropper it makes no difference."

"Is that possible?" she said, looking at him quickly.

"Probable even. And who else is coming?"

"Maude Lille--you know her?"

"I think not."

"You met her here--a journalist."

"Quite so, a strange career."

"Mr. Harris, a clubman, is coming, and the Stanley Cheevers."

"The Stanley Cheevers!" said Flanders with some surprise. "Are we going
to gamble?"

"You believe in that scandal about bridge?"

"Certainly not," said Flanders, smiling. "You see I was present. The
Cheevers play a good game, a well united game, and have an unusual
system of makes. By-the-way, it's Jackson who is very attentive to Mrs.
Cheever, isn't it?"

"Quite right."

"What a charming party," said Flanders flippantly. "And where does Maude
Lille come in?"

"Don't joke. She is in a desperate way," said Mrs. Kildair, with a
little sadness in her eyes.

"And Harris?"

"Oh, he is to make the salad and cream the chicken."

"Ah, I see the whole party. I, of course, am to add the element of
respectability."

"Of what?"

She looked at him steadily until he turned away, dropping his glance.

"Don't be an ass with me, my dear Flanders."

"By George, if this were Europe I'd wager you were in the secret
service, Mrs. Kildair."

"Thank you."

She smiled appreciatively and moved about the studio, giving the
finishing touches. The Stanley Cheevers entered, a short fat man with a
vacant fat face and a slow-moving eye, and his wife, voluble, nervous,
overdressed and pretty. Mr. Harris came with Maude Lille, a woman,
straight, dark, Indian, with great masses of somber hair held in a
little too loosely for neatness, with thick, quick lips and eyes that
rolled away from the person who was talking to her. The Enos Jacksons
were late and still agitated as they entered. His forehead had not quite
banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn. He was of the type that
never lost his temper, but caused others to lose theirs, immovable in
his opinions, with a prowling walk, a studied antagonism in his manner,
and an impudent look that fastened itself unerringly on the weakness in
the person to whom he spoke. Mrs. Jackson, who seemed fastened to her
husband by an invisible leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a
certain desperate dash, which she assumed rather than felt in her
attitude toward life. One looked at her curiously and wondered what such
a nature would do in a crisis, with a lurking sense of a woman who
carried with her her own impending tragedy.

As soon as the company had been completed and the incongruity of the
selection had been perceived, a smile of malicious anticipation ran the
rounds, which the hostess cut short by saying:

"Well, now that every one is here, this is the order of the night: You
can quarrel all you want, you can whisper all the gossip you can think
of about one another, but every one is to be amusing! Also every one is
to help with the dinner--nothing formal and nothing serious. We may all
be bankrupt to-morrow, divorced or dead, but to-night we will be
gay--that is the invariable rule of the house!"

Immediately a nervous laughter broke out and the company chattering
began to scatter through the rooms.

Mrs. Kildair, stopping in her bedroom, donned a Watteaulike cooking
apron, and slipping her rings from her fingers fixed the three on her
pincushion with a hatpin.

"Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful," said the low voice of Maude
Lille, who with Harris and Mrs. Cheever were in the room.

"There's only one that is very valuable," said Mrs. Kildair, touching
with her thin fingers the ring that lay uppermost, two large diamonds,
flanking a magnificent sapphire.

"It is beautiful--very beautiful," said the journalist, her eyes
fastened to it with an uncontrollable fascination. She put out her
fingers and let them rest caressingly on the sapphire, withdrawing them
quickly as though the contact had burned them.

"It must be very valuable," she said, her breath catching a little. Mrs.
Cheever, moving forward, suddenly looked at the ring.

"It cost five thousand six years ago," said Mrs. Kildair, glancing down
at it. "It has been my talisman ever since. For the moment, however, I
am cook; Maude Lille, you are scullery maid; Harris is the chef, and we
are under his orders. Mrs. Cheever, did you ever peel onions?"

"Good Heavens, no!" said Mrs. Cheever, recoiling.

"Well, there are no onions to peel," said Mrs. Kildair, laughing. "All
you'll have to do is to help set the table. On to the kitchen!"

Under their hostess's gay guidance the seven guests began to circulate
busily through the rooms, laying the table, grouping the chairs, opening
bottles, and preparing the material for the chafing dishes. Mrs. Kildair
in the kitchen ransacked the ice box, and with her own hands chopped the
_fines herbes_, shredded the chicken and measured the cream.

"Flanders, carry this in carefully," she said, her hands in a towel.
"Cheever, stop watching your wife and put the salad bowl on the table.
Everything ready, Harris? All right. Every one sit down. I'll be right
in."

She went into her bedroom, and divesting herself of her apron hung it in
the closet. Then going to her dressing table she drew the hatpin from
the pincushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her fingers. All at
once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand. Only two rings were
there, the third ring, the one with the sapphire and the two diamonds,
was missing.

"Stupid," she said to herself, and returned to her dressing table. All
at once she stopped. She remembered quite clearly putting the pin
through the three rings.

She made no attempt to search further, but remained without moving, her
fingers drumming slowly on the table, her head to one side, her lip
drawn in a little between her teeth, listening with a frown to the
babble from the outer room. Who had taken the ring? Each of her guests
had had a dozen opportunities in the course of the time she had been
busy in the kitchen.

"Too much time before the mirror, dear lady," called out Flanders gaily,
who from where he was seated could see her.

"It is not he," she said quickly. Then she reconsidered. "Why not? He is
clever--who knows? Let me think."

To gain time she walked back slowly into the kitchen, her head bowed,
her thumb between her teeth.

"Who has taken it?"

She ran over the character of her guests and their situations as she
knew them. Strangely enough, at each her mind stopped upon some reason
that might explain a sudden temptation.

"I shall find out nothing this way," she said to herself after a
moment's deliberation; "that is not the important thing to me just now.
The important thing is to get the ring back."

And slowly, deliberately, she began to walk back and forth, her
clenched hand beating the deliberate rhythmic measure of her journey.

Five minutes later, as Harris, installed _en maître_ over the chafing
dish, was giving directions, spoon in the air, Mrs. Kildair came into
the room like a lengthening shadow. Her entrance had been made with
scarcely a perceptible sound, and yet each guest was aware of it at the
same moment, with a little nervous start.

"Heavens, dear lady," exclaimed Flanders, "you come in on us like a
Greek tragedy! What is it you have for us, a surprise?"

As he spoke she turned her swift glance on him, drawing her forehead
together until the eyebrows ran in a straight line.

"I have something to say to you," she said in a sharp, businesslike
manner, watching the company with penetrating eagerness.

There was no mistaking the seriousness of her voice. Mr. Harris
extinguished the oil lamp, covering the chafing dish clumsily with a
discordant, disagreeable sound. Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Enos Jackson swung
about abruptly, Maude Lille rose a little from her seat, while the men
imitated these movements of expectancy with a clumsy shuffling of the
feet.

"Mr. Enos Jackson?"

"Yes, Mrs. Kildair."

"Kindly do as I ask you."

"Certainly."

She had spoken his name with a peremptory positiveness that was almost
an accusation. He rose calmly, raising his eyebrows a little in
surprise.

"Go to the door," she continued, shifting her glance from him to the
others. "Are you there? Lock it. Bring me the key."

He executed the order without bungling, and returning stood before her,
tendering the key.

"You've locked it?" she said, making the words an excuse to bury her
glance in his.

"As you wished me to."

"Thanks."

She took from him the key and, shifting slightly, likewise locked the
door into her bedroom through which she had come.

Then transferring the keys to her left hand, seemingly unaware of
Jackson, who still awaited her further commands, her eyes studied a
moment the possibilities of the apartment.

"Mr. Cheever?" she said in a low voice.

"Yes, Mrs. Kildair."

"Blow out all the candles except the candelabrum on the table."

"Put out the lights, Mrs. Kildair?"

"At once."

Mr. Cheever, in rising, met the glance of his wife, and the look of
questioning and wonder that passed did not escape the hostess.

"But, my dear Mrs. Kildair," said Mrs. Jackson with a little nervous
catch of her breath, "what is it? I'm getting terribly worked up! My
nerves--"

"Miss Lille?" said the voice of command.

"Yes."

The journalist, calmer than the rest, had watched the proceedings
without surprise, as though forewarned by professional instinct that
something of importance was about to take place. Now she rose quietly
with an almost stealthy motion.

"Put the candelabrum on this table--here," said Mrs. Kildair, indicating
a large round table on which a few books were grouped. "No, wait. Mr.
Jackson, first clear off the table. I want nothing on it."

"But, Mrs. Kildair--" began Mrs. Jackson's shrill voice again.

"That's it. Now put down the candelabrum."

In a moment, as Mr. Cheever proceeded methodically on his errand, the
brilliant crossfire of lights dropped in the studio, only a few
smoldering wicks winking on the walls, while the high room seemed to
grow more distant as it came under the sole dominion of the three
candles bracketed in silver at the head of the bare mahogany table.

"Now listen!" said Mrs. Kildair, and her voice had in it a cold note.
"My sapphire ring has just been stolen."

She said it suddenly, hurling the news among them and waiting
ferret-like for some indications in the chorus that broke out.

"Stolen!"

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Kildair!"

"Stolen--by Jove!"

"You don't mean it!"

"What! Stolen here--to-night?"

"The ring has been taken within the last twenty minutes," continued Mrs.
Kildair in the same determined, chiseled tone. "I am not going to mince
words. The ring has been taken and the thief is among you."

For a moment nothing was heard but an indescribable gasp and a sudden
turning and searching, then suddenly Cheever's deep bass broke out:

"Stolen! But, Mrs. Kildair, is it possible?"

"Exactly. There is not the slightest doubt," said Mrs. Kildair. "Three
of you were in my bedroom when I placed my rings on the pincushion. Each
of you has passed through there a dozen times since. My sapphire ring is
gone, and one of you has taken it."

Mrs. Jackson gave a little scream, and reached heavily for a glass of
water. Mrs. Cheever said something inarticulate in the outburst of
masculine exclamation. Only Maude Lille's calm voice could be heard
saying:

"Quite true. I was in the room when you took them off. The sapphire ring
was on top."

"Now listen!" said Mrs. Kildair, her eyes on Maude Lille's eyes. "I am
not going to mince words. I am not going to stand on ceremony. I'm going
to have that ring back. Listen to me carefully. I'm going to have that
ring back, and until I do, not a soul shall leave this room." She tapped
on the table with her nervous knuckles. "Who has taken it I do not care
to know. All I want is my ring. Now I'm going to make it possible for
whoever took it to restore it without possibility of detection. The
doors are locked and will stay locked. I am going to put out the lights,
and I am going to count one hundred slowly. You will be in absolute
darkness; no one will know or see what is done. But if at the end of
that time the ring is not here on this table I shall telephone the
police and have every one in this room searched. Am I quite clear?"

Suddenly she cut short the nervous outbreak of suggestions and in the
same firm voice continued:

"Every one take his place about the table. That's it. That will do."

The women, with the exception of the inscrutable Maude Lille, gazed
hysterically from face to face while the men, compressing their fingers,
locking them or grasping their chins, looked straight ahead fixedly at
their hostess.

Mrs. Kildair, having calmly assured herself that all were ranged as she
wished, blew out two of the three candles.

"I shall count one hundred, no more, no less," she said. "Either I get
back that ring or every one in this room is to be searched, remember."

Leaning over, she blew out the remaining candle and snuffed it.

"One, two, three, four, five--"

She began to count with the inexorable regularity of a clock's ticking.

In the room every sound was distinct, the rustle of a dress, the
grinding of a shoe, the deep, slightly asthmatic breathing of a man.