The Ferret and the Bet

by J. Allan Dunn

The Ferret and the Bet

by J. Allan Dunn
Author of "The Bally," "The Marooner," etc.

THE "Ferret" could have reported the conversation between the warden and the man from headquarters very accurately, that part of it, at least, that generalized upon himself and the three others who were to leave the penitentiary that morning, having, it was supposed, if not generally practised, fully expiated their crimes and being restored to freedom if not full citizenship. For the Ferret was very, very far from being a fool.

"Once a crook, always a crook!" announced the detective, somewhat wearily. "You wait till they begin coming back to you. I ain't running down your dope or your methods but you're new to the game, if you'll pardon my saying so. There's a heap of improvement needed in penitentiaries, I'll grant you, but all your honor system, your free talk and your baseball games ain't going to make an honest man out of a blown-in-the-glass crook. Do what you will with 'em, they figure the mistake they made was in getting caught, not in the crime itself.

"They come in sore and they go out sore, for all your coddling of 'em. You can't make 'em glad to be here. A man in a cell nurses a grouch and a guy with a grouch ain't going to repent. He may think it pays best to run straight but he gets out and he reads about something good that was pulled off and then he meets his woman or some woman and then some of the gang come around and show him an easy thing. Well—he's sick of prison grub and prison fare and so's his woman of the skimping she's done while he was in. The excitement gets him—and then we get him and you see him registering at your hotel inside of a few months at best.

"Take it from me, Mr. Warden, I know 'em. 'Once a crook, always a crook.' Take the Ferret, first-class cracksman and high-flier, going out today after five years less eight months for behaving himself; he'll be back. I'll bet you a month's pay he'll be back inside of six months, or, if he isn't, we'll be looking for him. Why was he good in quod? Because he wanted to get out of quod. Not because he means to go straight."

"I'll take that bet, Henderson," said the new warden quietly. "Call it an even hundred. You know only the seamy side of human nature. There's a right and wrong side to every man, but you never turn over the goods to have a look at the pattern that was intended to be shown. A crook may be always a crook, but all convicts are not crooks, Henderson. Circumstance, environment, desire of that same excitement you mentioned, the same sort of desire that sent men viking in old times, have a lot to do with it. The Ferret," he broke off to smile, "do you know what the Ferret has been doing and what he wants to do?"

"I'd make another little bet on the last end of it. What has he been doing?"

"Doing wonderful things in my garden and greenhouse. The man is a born genius with grafting and crossing."

"I believe all of that," said Henderson. "Double-crossing and grafting are easy to him."

"And he wants—wait, we'll have him in and ask him."

The Ferret was escorted in. He might have been anywhere between forty and fifty. His hair, that had been allowed to grow since his time of freedom approached, was long enough to be laid back in a smooth gray pompadour. The forehead was well-shaped, the nose well-chiseled and the mouth neither small nor thin-lipped. His eyes—Henderson would have called them cunning—to the warden they were shrewd. He was slight but built with all the suggestive agility of the animal after which the underworld had christened him.

The work among the warden's shrubs and flowers had banished all trace of prison pallor, his cheap, ready-made suit fitted him surprisingly well, he looked not at all like a discharged prisoner, not at all like a malefactor, a wizard at coaxing combinations and blowing stubborner safes—he had used oxy-acetylene on the last one. His hands might have been those of a wood-carver, a musician even, or a master-gardener.

Though Henderson would have set them down as the hands of a forger or a master-cracksman. And he stood respectful with a certain dignity, quite at his ease, the hint of an ironic smile on his lips for Henderson, the gleam of a friendly one in his eyes for the warden.

"What are you figuring on doing, Rogers?" asked the latter in kindly fashion.

"I should like to take up the raising of fancy shrubs, sir," answered the Ferret, ignoring Henderson's grin at his words. "It takes more capital than I have. To go into it properly it would take a thousand dollars before I'd get any return but I'll go at it quietly, if I can get an opening."

Henderson snickered.

"Be careful of the kind of opening you choose, Ferret," he said. "Too bad you ain't got something tucked away to start you out. Now, see here, Ferret, I ain't up here on your account so don't let that worry you."

"I won't, Mr. Henderson."

Henderson flushed a little at the irony. He had been the chief instrument in sending the Ferret up for his stretch but it had not been his cleverness, it had been through the treachery of a stool-pigeon and he felt that the Ferret did not rate his professional acumen over-highly.

"The warden tells me you are trying to go on the level," he said. "You go ahead and raise fancy shrubs all you want, I'll never bother you. But I'm going to be on the level with you. I've made a little bet with the warden here, never mind for how much or how long, that you'll be tapping the tumblers again. Now I'll warn you, I'm going to keep close tabs on you, but I am warning you and if you win I lose."

The Ferret raised his expressive eyebrows.

"That's mighty square of you, Mr. Henderson," he said. "And mighty nice of you to take a chance on me, sir," he said to the warden.

But he made no protestation of his determination or ability to win the warden's bet.

"That's all, Rogers," said the latter, rising. "Good-by and good luck."

They shook hands, warden and ex-convict and the latter passed from the private office quietly, unobtrusive but unslinking and, presently, went out of the Gate of Sorrow and down to the train with the others who had also shaken off the shackles of judgment.

"Want to hedge, Henderson?" asked the warden.

"Not me. Wait till he sees Broadway and a Jane he wants and who wants a flash. You can book that bet."

And the warden booked it.

IT HAPPENED that Henderson got through with his penitentiary business in time to take the same train as the Ferret, whom he found in the smoking-car. Being a sport, Henderson, known to all the trainmen, did not help to make the Ferret conspicuous by even nodding to him but he took a seat across the aisle and a little back of his man, lit one of the warden's cigars and kept a casual, but keen eye on the Ferret.

The Ferret looked out of the window for a while at the green meadows of Westchester County, at the green woodlands, the blue distance, the nigh flowers, the birds, at a butterfly that vagrantly fluttered with the train for a few seconds and there was a look in the eyes that would have surprised Henderson, almost a suggestion of the dew that might still be moist on the ferns in the shady coppices. Then he bought a paper from the news-butcher, a paper and an orange, and glanced at one long-forbidden luxury while he slowly swallowed the other, segment by segment. Suddenly he sat up, absorbed in an item.

Henderson noticed the swift change, noticed the heading of the paper, bought one himself when the boy came through again and read where the Ferret was reading for the second time. There was no dewy look in the Ferret's eyes now, only the hard shine of gray steel. And into Henderson's eyes crept a look of triumph.

"What did I tell the warden," said Henderson to himself, "what'd I tell him. What he's reading is like catnip to an old Tom. He's sore he wasn't in on it. His mouth's watering now, I'll bet. Wonder if I'll get on the case?"

And he settled himself to read the item with professional absorption.

There had been a week-end gathering at the Long Island home of a Wall Street successful broker, whose wife affected the close acquaintanceship of Bohemia. Her guests had many names famous in the Four Arts plus the Art of the Theater and the Roof Garden and there were others more eccentric than famous, a rollicking, unconventional crew who had participated in a fancy-dress dance, starting in the house, transferred to the moonlit, lantern-painted lawn and winding up with an early breakfast at the Country Club.

And the next morning the pearls of the hostess were missing, after many of the guests had departed.

It was not a matter for the police, declared the hostess. Not yet, at all events. They might have been taken in mistake. There had been necessarily a great confusion in the leave-takings and donning of wraps. She hoped, she expected, they would be returned. Followed a detailed description of the necklace of matched pearls with a sapphire clasp.

Henderson bit savagely into the stub of his cigar.

"Bah!" he told himself. "One of the Bohemiam bums hooked 'em. Lot's of 'em 'ud starve if it wasn't for a lot of crazy women who want to entertain 'em. I'll bet she suspects one of them right now. Not a matter for the police? Rot. If some of those spangled poets and paint-daubers was jugged once in a while it 'ud do 'em all good. I wonder—yes, there it is."

He had turned over the sheets to the advertising columns and there in the personals he found what he expected.

$500 REWARD and no questions asked for the return of the pearl necklace owned by a certain hostess and missed yesterday morning after a dance. Apply to Throop & Towne, Jewelers, New York City.

Curiously enough, the Ferret had also turned to that column. But now he was reading the sporting page with zest. Apparently his interest had ceased with the fact that the job had been turned—and turned by an amateur. But Henderson still mentally spluttered.

"—— fool ad. Wrote it herself. Got her husband to put up the five hundred. It's a cinch she not only guesses who it was and wants to cover them but she wants to help 'em out of the mess that put them up to the swipe. Maybe——"

His eyes narrowed as his mind wandered down the devious and dirty alleys that his profession sometimes led him to. An infatuated, foolish woman, a shrewd adventurer, the five hundred an acknowledgment of attempted blackmail and an implied willingness to meet it. Busy husband and idle wife. The old triangle stuff. It was old to Henderson.

Presently he too was deep in the possibilities of war-time baseball. But he kept the Ferret in view when the train got in. The Ferret wandered along almost jauntily, an idler in New York. He bought a gardenia from a police-dodging vender, smelled it and set it in his lapel and strolled on again, the flower utterly redeeming the cheapness of his suit.

At Fifth Avenue he made his way to the library steps and, standing beside one of the supercilious twin lions, a woman met him. She was no taller than the Ferret and she was slender, her clothes giving her a youth that still lingered in her quick, impetuous rush, matched by the Ferret's embrace. Henderson caught sight of a carefully tinted face, that yet did not avoid the Ferret's kiss, of hair carefully made golden, and he smiled as he passed on. He was through with the Ferret for the present. But he felt reasonably sure of his bet. He even pondered as to how he should spend it.

"A painted moll. They all fall for them," he told himself.

He was looking at the only side he knew, the seamy one, he did not guess that rouge and powder and eyebrow-pencils that hide the ravages of time are sometimes the camouflage of love, love that seeks to hold and is a little afraid.

"You're lookin' fine, Jim. Who gave you the gardenia?"

"I bought it for you, Nan. Lookin' great yourself. Let's get out of here. Let's get a regular meal. Somewhere where there's music and singing stuff and dancing."

"Got any money, Jim?"

"Seven dollars, old girl. Enough for eats."

"I've got nearly four hundred left, Jim."

"You wonder! You ain't been starving yourself, have you?"

"Not me. Do I look it? But I moved to a smaller place."

"Good dope. Keep the bunch off for a while."

She looked earnestly at him.

"Don't you want to see them, Jim? I saw Flynn on the street. He told me to tell you he had something good that needed you. They was waiting for you to come out, he said."

"Did you tell him where you was living?"

"No, Jim. He told me where I could find him."

"Good! Nan," he took her arm, "I'm going to cut out all that stuff."

"Jim! You mean it?"

Her voice rang out so that people turned to look at them. The Ferret nodded.

"We'll talk it over later. But I'll tell you this much. I'm going into growing fancy shrubs. Got it all doped out. Remember how I always could make things grow? Remember the first garden we had? You was always good at it too, Nan—brace up, old girl, here's the grill."

She winked back the happy tears that welled and they turned into the grill.

Looking at things dispassionately it seemed as if the chances of winning lay even between Henderson and the warden at that moment.

Later that afternoon the Ferret started down-town to take the Long Island ferry. There was a famous arboriculturist whose plantations and nurseries were located there, close to many of his customers, and the Ferret, who never allowed the grass to grow under his feet, intended to get his prices and other information at first-hand as well as look for a likely piece of land for the leasing.

Just how he was going to tackle the problem of an independent nursery on the three hundred-odd dollars that constituted his and Nan's capital he could not figure out but his consuming energy to get going forced him to a start. Also, at the arboriculturist's he might hear of a job. For the warden had promised to give him references that would not hold the taint of his work having been done in the penitentiary. And, to the Ferret, the warden was a good deal of a surprise and somewhat of a god, a superman, at least, one who never failed in his promises.

WHEN he walked aboard the ferry and made his way forward to the bows, a red-headed, pasty-faced man spotted him and followed him. The Ferret did not see the man, for he walked silently as a cat, until the latter caught him by the elbow and, as the Ferret swiftly slewed his neck to look at him, led the way to the rail.

It was Flynn. Flynn of his old crowd, Flynn who found the plants and did the scouting and preliminary investigation.

"Been looking for you, Jim," said Flynn. "Figured you'd ring up some time to-morrow. I gave Nan the number. But the sooner the better. We been waiting for you to get back. Where you bound?"

"To look at a place on the Island, Flynn. Where you off to?"

Flynn grinned.

"I got a date," he said. "There's a flash maid over at this plant we're figuring on you for, and she and me is keeping company. Where's this dump you're after? Who put you wise to it. Tip from up there, eh?"

"You're a way off, Flynn," said the Ferret. "I'm through."

"Through what?"

"I'm going straight, Flynn."

"The —— you are. Say, what's the idea. You ain't got converted to that Billy Sunday stuff have you?"

"Figure it how you want to, Flynn. I'm through."

The other fell back and studied the Ferret's face, inflexible with purpose. Then he whistled softly.

"You've gone balmy up there, Jim. You'll come out of it after a while, after what you got salted is used up. Nan didn't seem to be extra flush, at that. Say, Jim, you ain't in earnest, are you? Listen, this plant is a cinch. Five thou' apiece in it, easy. Don't be a mutt, Jim. What's your lay?"

"I'll tell you what my lay is, Flynn. I'm sick of this hide-out game. There's nothing in it to offset what you lose. I want to be able to live in one place and know it's mine and it ain't going to be taken away from me and Nan, or me taken away from it. Nan feels the same way about it. She's always wanted to be on the level, Flynn, and I guess she's got something coming to her after my trip up the river."

"Lost your nerve up there?" sneered Flynn.

"No," said the Ferret, looking him straight in the eyes, "I don't believe I have, Flynn. I hope not, I'm going to need it all. But I'm through."

Flynn shrugged his shoulders.

"You know your own business best," he said. "Anyway Nan's got my 'phone number. So long."

He turned away and the Ferret lost him when they took different trains. He looked out at the fields and gardens and the earth seemed calling to him. What he had told Nan was quite true. Things grew for him, he was a born gardener, a real craftsman. A vision of peace grew slowly, of him with his shrubs and Nan with her flowers—she always loved flowers—there were geraniums struggling in the tiny apartment he had just left. But it would be a hard road and he did not yet see the start. And then, timed to his own pulse, the wheels seemed clacking out a rhythm that presently voiced itself persistently.

"Five - thou' - apiece. Five - thousand - easy."

To turn this one trick and then the way would be clear! He saw what he could do with that. Land, a house, tools, young plants in the upturned soil....

He swept the thoughts from his brain and sat frowning until his station was reached.

The big grower was cordial and sympathetic but the Ferret was soon convinced how utterly impracticable was his plan. With war-prices and war-payments he would have to spend all his scanty hundreds for fertilizer alone. The grower offered him a certain credit for plants when he was once established but where was the rent to come from for the land, the dwelling, the living-expenses?

"You say you can get recommendations," said the grower. "I can place you in a job. Good salary. I wouldn't wonder if they could find a place for your wife if she's handy. No kids, you say?"

"No," said the Ferret slowly, "no kids."

"Well, I know they are having a hard time with their help. It isn't far from here, Mr. Rogers. You can tell them I sent you up. They are a bit upset at this time. Had a robbery night before last. But I dare say Mrs. Haskins'll see you."

The Ferret listened to the directions and started for the Haskins place. It would be the best thing to do for the present, especially if Nan got on, and that should be easy. For Nan was more than just handy, she had been a maid when he first met her, much as Flynn was going to meet the girl he mentioned. But there was a peculiar irony in it all. He and Nan, ex-con and ex-con's wife, applying for a job in a place where a pearl necklace had been stolen, for this was the Mrs. Haskins of the news item. It was risky.

If he was ever tipped off of course he had an alibi as to the necklace; no one could accuse a man of robbery who was in jail when it occurred. But every place was risky in a way and, since he had no capital, he could not turn down the first chance. The warden would manage his credentials. The warden did not believe in showing the seamy side of a man who was trying to make good. He would only say that he recommended the pattern.

"Mrs. Haskins is somewhere in the garden," the maid told him, and, if he had come about a gardener's position, he might as well see her there.

So the Ferret trod the walks between trim lawns and flower-beds, through a rose garden and so down, as directed by a man who was handling watering-hose, to a terrace backed by a yew hedge, high as the Ferret's head.

He walked along the hedge toward the gap of its entrance on to the terrace, The Ferret and the Bet screened himself by masses of shrubbery, and his trained ears caught the syllables of earnest talk and, from a nature not yet subdued, listened with the habit of his recent profession.

"So, when I saw the news in the paper this morning, Helen, I made up my mind to come over and see what could be done. I got up late but I came as soon as I could. I'm terribly sorry about it."

Now the Ferret had learned to read men in many ways, by looks, by apparently trivial actions and by the intonations of the voice. This voice sounded frank, sympathetic as it was cultured, but there was a purring quality to it that made the Ferret distrust its owner before he saw him, and feel sure that his suspicion was well placed. It was the voice of a man accustomed to talk much with women—a voice that could flatter readily and did—that could charm and woo, the voice of a stage-lover.

The woman's voice was harder to interpret. It held a hint of fear, a hint of insincerity, or of fence, but it was charming. And the Ferret, rooted suddenly, still listened.

"Did you see the reward I offered, Clinton? Harry was very kind about it. He offered to make it more but I thought it was enough. And I want my pearls back, Clinton. I love them. The money does not matter so much but they were Harry's wedding-gift to me and I want them."

The insincerity, or whatever it was, left the voice as she spoke of her desire for the gems. Then it came back.

"Can you suggest anything, Clinton?"

"I can't. I'm a dub at such things. I suppose you might double the reward if you don't get any response. The necklace is worth much more."

"It cost ten thousand dollars. But—whoever took it—would not be easily able to dispose of it, Harry says. Mr. Throop, the jeweler, told him that the pearls would lose value immediately they were separated or sold unmatched, and of course the full description was in the paper."

"Yes. But I think I should double that reward tomorrow."

The Ferret did not shift his position but his eyes hardened and his fists clenched.

"Clinton," went on the woman. "Do you remember you promised to return to me those two letters I sent you. They did not mean anything. They were just foolish letters but Harry—won't you let me have them?"

"I will, tomorrow, Belle. If there is nothing else I can do, I'll be getting back on the 5:50. That is, if you're not going to ask me to stay to dinner."

He laughed as he spoke.

"No, it isn't convenient tonight, Clinton."

"If I were you I'd telephone to those jeweler people and also to the paper, doubling that reward. I think it will bring results. You say your husband was willing to increase it. And I'll send you those—foolish—letters you speak of."

The Ferret looked at his cheap but competent watch. It was 5:30 and the station was a full mile back. He intended to catch the 5:30. The job—could wait. The man and the woman moved on. Doubtless they were going back to the house. The Ferret ambuscaded behind the shrubs, glimpsed the graceful figure and pretty face of the woman and paid especial attention to the man, a handsome, somewhat haggard chap, faultlessly dressed, who passed on with a covert smile as he passed out of sight.

Within a hundred yards of the station a car sped by the hurrying Ferret and in it sat the man whose first name was Clinton. He got out at the station and the car returned toward the Haskins place.

Up-town, and later, the man whose first name was Clinton descended from the elevated in the nineties and walked to the door of a bachelor-apartment house which he opened with a key. He entered. A minute later the Ferret inspected the small foyer and noted a card that read:

Clinton Howard Bowdin. Apt. 8.

He looked at the rest of the names, apparently comparing them with an envelop he carried, frowned and crossed the street, seemingly looking at numbers.

But he glanced back at the house he had left, quite casually. It was dark and some of the windows were already illuminated.

"Apartment eight," mused the Ferret. "That should be on the top floor back. Seven is in front. No one home there."

He walked up the street and back again slowly. Three doors from the house that Clinton Bowdin had entered was one evidently vacant—"To Let" signs in its windows.

NAN greeted the Ferret expectantly. Supper was ready for him. "The first home meal, Jim," she said. "Any news? Or do you want to keep it until after supper?"

"No news, old girl," he said. "But prospects. And I have to go out after supper."

She did not question him but, after he had gone, she went into the bedroom where he had been rummaging in a closet and herself reached down a box on the back of the shelf. Hardly knowing she carried it she bore it into the next room and sat down heavily with the box on her lap. Her face was old now, old and pinched between the lines, and gray.

"He has taken his keys and his gun," she repeated to herself over and over as she rocked, her face a mask of dread—dread and sorrow.

THE Ferret entered the doorway of the vacant house like a shadow and deftly set in the lock a twisted piece of tempered wire. A little pull, a pause, a quick thrust and a turn and the lock slid, the shadowed door opened and closed again.

Two minutes later the scuttle leading to the roof lifted and the Ferret emerged, keeping well back from the front coping and making his swift and subtle progress over the roofs. He tried the scuttle-hatch of the house that stood the third below and found it tightly fastened from within. Hardly visible in the gloom, he glided to the back of the roof, peered over, tested a gutter, let himself down with the agility of a gymnast, swinging to his hands, and dropped without noise on to the top landing of a fire-escape.

The landing was outside a room before whose window a blind was drawn, almost to the bottom, all but an inch. The Ferret bent—looked through.

Handsome Clinton Bowdin was seated at a table gazing at a lustrous string of pearls clasped by a sapphire.

"Wondering if she's doubled that reward," the Ferret told himself. "He's figuring on getting up early tomorrow to see that paper. But he can't cash in until the jeweler opens."

He stood upright, struck silently a safety-match, showing the barest glimmer through his shielding fingers while he briefly surveyed the latch of the window. With the precision of an expert he inserted something between the sashes upward, gave a twist to the handle of the instrument and the catch was sprung with the tiniest of clicks. Within, Bowdin did not move.

The Ferret nosed the breeze, almost imperceptible, tried its strength with a wet finger and then a loosely held bit of paper.

He eased up the bottom sash with the tool that had started the catch and, inch by inch under his wide-spread fingers, quick to sense any lack of balance, the lower pane moved upward, back of the blind.

Bowdin put back the necklace into its case and took up two letters that he read through with a sneering smile.

"Cheap at the price," he said. "The little fool to— Hell!"

He jumped to his feet as the spring blind rushed up and flapped about its roller. Coming through the window was a slight man of whose face nothing could be seen but a resolute chin and two eyes, hard as steel, showing through a mask. One remarkably steady hand held an automatic aimed for Bowdin's heart.

Bowdin did not move.

"I'll put up my hands if you want me to," he said. "But you've come to the wrong apartment. I am broke, my murderous friend, always, perennially broke. Nothing worth your while shooting for. Besides the house is full, some one might hear the shot."

"You wouldn't," said the Ferret. "You'd see the flash and feel the smash of the bullet and that would be the end of you. I'll look out for myself afterward. But I'll shoot."

Bowdin turned pale, sweat broke out on his forehead and the fingers of his hand on the table trembled. The brutal description and the tone that backed it had broken his bravado.

"What do you want?" he said in a low voice.

"The necklace you were admiring. Don't move!"

He shoved the automatic forward so that its grim muzzle brushed the serge of Bowdin's coat and picked up the case with one hand, sliding it into his own pocket. Then he took up the letters.

"What do you want those for? They are private letters."

"Same thing you wanted them for. Now, Mr. Bowdin, don't start anything after I go. I'm going out the front way. It might be awkward for you to explain how you got that necklace. Get me?"

He deftly ran his hand over Bowdin in a search for a weapon.

"Now then," he said, "you climb out that window on to the fire-escape. Go on."

With a glance of furious but futile resentment Bowdin obeyed.

"You can break the glass after a while if you can't open the sash like I did. Or you can climb down and stir up the janitor. Good night."

He pulled down the pane and set the catch, leaving the discomfited Bowdin glaring at him through the glass, went down the stairs, opened the front door-latch and passed into the street, confident that he would not be followed.

Nan looked up with a white face and red-rimmed eyes as he entered and tossed the jeweler's case into her lap.

"Jim," she said. Jim! You said——"

"Nan. There's a reward of one thousand hung up for this and no questions asked. I fell on to it. The thousand means everything to us just now. I turned down Flynn's job, though there was five times the amount in it. The people who put up this reward won't miss a thousand as much as we would ten cents. A cheap thief swiped it and I took it from the thief. I took something else from him, two letters a woman would give the thousand for without a murmur."

"You said you'd go straight, Jim. I was so happy till I saw what you'd taken from the box."

"We'll chuck them all in the river to-morrow, Nan, after I get the thousand."

"But it's stealing, Jim. Stealing and blackmail."

"Where do you get that? I ain't selling the letters. I ain't read 'em and I ain't going to. I'm sending 'em back. I didn't take the necklace. Luck chucked it my way when I most needed it and I'm going to get that thousand."

His face was dogged.

"Jim, it's just the same. You didn't earn the thousand."

"The —— I didn't."

"Jim, I'll put it to you this way. Maybe I don't put it well but I know it ain't straight. Which way would the warden look at it?"

The Ferret flushed. He sat down with a straight line between his brows. Then he laughed.

"The warden! If the warden knew he'd figure he'd lost his bet, I reckon."

"How's that, Jim?"

And he told her of the wager.

THROOP, senior partner of Throop & Towne, Fifth Avenue jewelers, looked in perplexity at the slight, gray-headed man who sat opposite him in his private office. Between them the Haskins necklace lay on the leather-topped desk like a coiling snake.

"You say you don't want any reward?" he asked. "But the money is here. I give you my word the matter goes no further."

The Ferret shook his head.

"Won't you leave your name—confidentially? This is most extraordinary. Do you realize the necklace is worth ten thousand dollars?"

"Yes, I realize that, Mr. Throop. But you are breaking the compact."

"What compact?"

"No questions asked. Good morning, sir."

Outside the store the Ferret dropped a letter in a mail-box. It was addressed to Mrs. Belle Haskins of Long Island and marked "personal." As he turned away, some one tapped him on the shoulder and he whirled.

"Hello, Ferret," said Henderson. "What are you doing in Throop & Towne's?"

"Pricing diamonds with Mr. Throop," said the Ferret. "If you don't believe me, ask him."

Henderson looked at him with a half-grin.

"You're a foxy one, Ferret, but I've got my eye on you. I'm going to collect that bet."

"Will you do me a favor, Mr. Henderson?"

"What is it?"

"Just how much did you bet with the warden about me?"

The detective looked at him quizzically.

"A century. Why? Want to pay it for the warden?"

"I might. I'm going up to see him this afternoon."

He walked off, leaving Henderson looking after him in a muddle of speculation. Presently the detective shadowed him, the Ferret perfectly conscious of the operation. And, when Henderson, flashing his badge, asked his question at the ticket office, the puzzle on his face deepened at the answer.

"Ossining. Round trip."

In the train the Ferret skinned off his roll. Five twenties he put in his vest pocket, the balance, a little over two hundred and seventy dollars, he returned to his hip.

"I'LL tell you what I think of it, Rogers," said the warden as he handed the Ferret a cigar. "I should like to meet that wife of yours. I wish you'd arrange it."

"Why, of course, I'm proud to, sir."

"For one thing I want to ask her if she considers I've lost this bet to Henderson. Because I'm not at all sure about it myself, Rogers, and her vision is rather wonderful. So you had better keep the hundred till we talk it over. I've been thinking about you, Rogers. How would you like to have me as a business partner?"

"Why—why?"

The Ferret gasped and choked.

"I've got a thousand or so I could invest in, say the fancy shrub business, Rogers. Like to go into it?"

"You'd trust me?"

"I'd trust you and that wife of yours, together, anywhere, Rogers. You've won your own best bet."

In the eyes of the Ferret, riding through Westchester County in the early evening, was a look that might have suggested the dew on the ferns in the shady coppices that graced the verdant hills. And a vision came again, to stay, a vision of upturned earth and the balm of shrubs, of fragrant flowers, and, tending them, himself and Nan.