The Wood Fire in No. 3 Part 2

"'I gave it to _you_, I thought,' said Tim, turning to the physician.

"'No, you didn't. You've got it somewhere around; perhaps you've slipped it in your pocket.' There was a slight tone of suspicion in the voice which jarred on Sam.

"'No,' answered Tim helplessly. 'I didn't put it in my pocket. I don't know what I did with it.'

"'Send for Hawkshaw the detective--lock the doors, and search every man down to his underwear!' shouted Sam in a serio-comic voice.

"Chairs were now being pushed back, and some of the men were on their knees groping around the floor near where Tim sat, the head waiter holding a candle from the table.

"All this time Sam was standing waiting to finish his speech, to him the event of the evening. The table was moved, and every square foot of the carpet gone over, Tim a.s.sisting in the search, but in a perfunctory way that attracted Sam's attention.

"'Never mind, gentlemen, let it go,' Sam said. 'I can do without it. It will turn up somewhere; you've all seen it, anyhow, and so it's just as good as if I held it up before you.'

"'Some men, as I said, I have known from boyhood----'

"The young millionnaire now jumped up.

"'Hold on, Mr. Collins; I'd like to find that opal before we do anything else. n.o.body has swallowed it'--constant a.s.sociation with money had warped his judgment of human nature, perhaps. 'Here's what's in my clothes,' and he began unloading his keys, knife, loose change, and handkerchief from his coat-pocket and piling them up on the table.

"Every man followed his lead, the contagion of his example having spread through the room. The unloading was as much a part of the merriment of the evening as Tim's comic song or Sam's sallies of wit. Tim, all this time, had been edging near where Sam stood.

"'Out with your stuff, Peaslee,' shouted the millionnaire--'here, right on the table--everything.'

"Tim turned pale and made a step nearer Sam.

"'I haven't got the opal, Sam; indeed I haven't!' There was a tone in his voice that was almost pathetic.

"'Of course you haven't, old man, but out with your stuff, just as the others have. Hurry up!'

"'I can't, Sam!' groaned Tim.

"You can't!'

"'No, I can't! Please don't ask me. I must bid you good-night, gentlemen. Please let me go away,' and he moved to the door and shut it behind him.

"Every man looked at Sam. For a moment no one spoke. Collins himself was dumfounded.

"d.a.m.n queer, isn't it?' whispered the millionnaire to Sam. 'What do you think is the matter with him?'

"'Nothing that YOU think!' said Sam, looking him square in the face, a peculiar glitter in his eye that some of his workmen knew when there was any trouble in the mine. 'Let us drink to his health. He is not accustomed to being out, and the wine has perhaps gone to his head.'"

MacWhirter reached for his pipe, knocked the bowl against the brickwork of the big fireplace to free it from its dead ashes, and turned again to the circle about him. At the same instant the back-log settled itself with a sigh of satisfaction, and a crackling of sparks--the fire's applause, no doubt--filled the hearth.

"Is that all?" broke in Boggs.

"Not quite," Mac answered. "All for that night, and all for the next day, so far as Tim was concerned, for the old fellow shut himself up in his room and said he was sick, and Sam had to leave for Mexico without seeing him."

"What did the others think?"

"Just what you would have thought, and _did_, when I told it awhile ago.

That's why I asked you. The millionnaire believed, of course, Tim had stolen it, and so did the physician. Made such an impression on the new directors present that Sam smothered his intended surprise and left his speech unfinished.

"Three months after that Sam came back to New York with more opals, many of them much larger and finer than the one which had so mysteriously disappeared. He arrived after everybody had gone to bed--Tim Peaslee among them--and remembering the dinner, and where he had eaten it, and how good it was, he got into a cab and drove to Solari's. The head waiter looked him over for a moment--he still wore the same sombrero--and went out and got the clerk, who asked him his name; and then Solari came in and asked him more questions and laid the lost opal in his hand. It had been found under a corner of the carpet when it had been taken up and shaken the week before, and Solari had been trying ever since to find some way of letting Sam know.

"It was now eleven o'clock, but that didn't make any difference to Sam.

He laid a five-dollar bill on the table to pay for the supper he had ordered and hadn't time to eat, made a rush for the door, jumped into a cab and drove like mad to Bond Street. The outer door was open. He mounted the stairs three steps at a time and banged away at Tim's door.

It happened to be Tim's night for working over his accounts, and he was still up.

"'I've got it, Tim--rolled under the carpet. Here it is. Let me hug you, you old fraud! Where's Miss Ann? I want to see her. Go and dig her out of bed, I tell you!'

"All this time Sam was hugging Tim like a bear, lifting him up and down as if he had been a baby. When they got inside and Tim had shut the hall door, and had tiptoed toward his sister's room and had seen that her door was shut tight--so tight that she couldn't hear--he came back to where Sam stood and nearly shook his arm off.

"'Found it under the carpet, did they? Oh, I'm so glad! I never shall forget that night, Sam. They wanted me to empty my pockets, and I couldn't. I didn't care what they thought. Oh, Sam, it was awful! You didn't think I had taken it, did you?'

"'No, old man, I didn't, and that's square. But why didn't you unload with the others?'

"Tim craned his head toward Miss Ann's door, listened intently for a moment, and said:

"'I had one of those little fat quail in my coat-tail pocket; they pa.s.sed me two. Ann used to love them, and I knew you wouldn't mind; and I lied about it when I gave it to her and told her you sent it. Don't tell her, please.'"

As Mac finished, a log which had perhaps leaned too far forward in its effort to listen, lost its balance and rolled over on the hearth, sending a shower of astonished sparks scurrying up the chimney. Marny bent forward and sent it back into place with his foot. Wharton pushed back his chair and without a word reached for his coat; so did Pitkin and the others. The story had evidently made a deep impression on them, so much so that Marny didn't speak to Pitkin or Wharton until they reached the Square, and then only to say: "Regular old trump, that book-keeper--wasn't he?"

Boggs still sat hunched up in his chair. He was less emotional than dear old Marny, but his heart was in the right place all the same.

"Bully story, Mac--one of your best. Heard something like that before.

Heard it in two or three ways--as a peach in a Bishop's pocket; as a snuff-box in an admiral's. You're a daisy, Mac, for warming over club chestnuts. But that's all right. Now, what was the surprise Collins had up his sleeve when he got up to make his speech that night?"

"Why, Tim's appointment as book-keeper of the new company. His refusal to be searched of course knocked that in the head. He's treasurer now; has a big slice of the stock that Sam gave him for luck; has lost all his wrinkles, looks ten years younger, and is getting a new crop of hair. Miss Ann has got over her cough and is spry as a kitten--spryer.

They are all out at the mine; she keeps house for them both."

PART II

_Wherein the Gentle Art of Dining is Variously Described._

"Move back, Lonnegan, and let me get at it!" cried MacWhirter the next afternoon. "You jab a fire as if it were something you wanted to kill!

Coddle it a little, like this," and Mac laid the warm cheeks of two logs together and a sputtering of hot kisses filled the hearth.

"Don't call him 'Lonnegan,' Mac, in that rude and boisterous way,"

expostulated Boggs. "It jars on his Royal Highness's finer sensibilities. Say 'Mr. Lonnegan, will you have the kindness to remove your beautiful and well-groomed and fas.h.i.+onable carca.s.s until I can add a stick or two to my fire?' Lonnegan has been in society--out every night this week, I hear."

Mac replaced the tongs and straightened his back, his face turned toward Lonnegan.