"Shut up!" snapped P. Sybarite. "What do you know about it? You've lied yourself out of court already."

A transitory expression of bewilderment clouded Shaynon's eyes.

"I'm no judge," the detective announced doubtfully.

"It makes no difference," Shaynon insisted. "Theft's theft!"

"It makes a deal of difference whether it's grand or pet.i.t larceny,"

P. Sybarite flashed--"a difference almost as wide and deep as that which yawns between attempted and successful wife-murder, Mr.

Shaynon!"

His jaw dropped and a look of stupefying terror stamped itself upon Shaynon's face.

It was the turn of P. Sybarite to laugh.

"Well?" he demanded cuttingly. "Are you ready to come to the station-house and make a charge against me? I'll go peaceful as a lamb with the kind cop, if by so doing I can take you with me. But if I do, believe me, you'll never get out without a bondsman."

Shaynon recollected himself with visible effort.

"The man 's crazy," he muttered sickishly, rising. "I don't know what he 's talking about. Arrest him--take him to the station-house--why don't you?"

"Who'll make the charge?" asked the detective, eyeing Shaynon without favour.

"Not Bayard Shaynon!" P. Sybarite a.s.severated.

"It's not my brooch," Shaynon a.s.serted defensively.

"You saw him take it," the detective persisted.

"No--I didn't; I suspected him. It's you who found the brooch on him, and it's your duty to make the charge."

"You're one grand little lightning-change-of-heart-artist--gotta slip it to you for that," the detective observed truculently. "Now, lis'n: I don't make no charge--"

"Any employee of the establishment will do as well, for _my_ purpose,"

P. Sybarite cut in. "Come, Mr. Manager! How about you? Mr. Shaynon declines; your detective has no stomach for the job. Suppose you take on the dirty work--kind permission of Bayard Shaynon, Esquire. I don't care, so long as I get my grounds for suit against the Bizarre."

The manager spread out expostulatory palms. "Me, I have nossing whatever to do with the matter," he protested. "To me it would seem Mrs. Strone should make the charge."

"Well?" mumbled the detective of Shaynon. "How aboutcha?"

"Wait," mumbled Shaynon, moving toward the door. "I'll fetch Mrs.

Strone."

"Don't go without saying good-bye," P. Sybarite admonished him severely. "It isn't pretty manners."

The door slammed tempestuously, and the little man chuckled with an affectation of ease to which he was entirely a stranger: ceaselessly his mind was engaged with the problem of this trumped-up charge of Shaynon's.

Was simple jealousy and resentment, a desire to "get even," the whole explanation?

Or was there something of an uglier complexion at the bottom of the affair?

His head buzzed with doubts and suspicions, and with misgivings on Marian's behalf but indifferently mitigated by the reflection that, at worst, the girl had escaped unhindered and alone in her private car.

By now she ought to be safe at the Plaza....

"He won't be back," P. Sybarite observed generally to detective and manager; and sat him down serenely.

"You feel pretty sure about that?" the detective asked.

"Wait and see."

Bending forward, the little man examined the gilt clock on the manager's desk. "Twenty minutes past four," he announced: "I give you ten minutes to find some one to make a charge against me--Shaynon, Mrs. What's-her-name, or either of yourselves, if you like the job. If you fail to produce a complainant by half-past four precisely, out of here I go--and I'm sorry for the man who tries to stop me."

The detective took a chair, crossed his legs, and produced a cigar which he began to trim with tender care. The manager, anxiously pacing the floor, after another moment or so paused at the door, fidgeted, jerked it open, and with a m.u.f.fled "Pardon!" disappeared--presumably in search of Shaynon.

Striking a match, the detective puffed his cigar aglow. Over its tip his small eyes twinkled at P. Sybarite.

"Maybe you're a gentleman crook, and maybe not," he returned with fine impartiality. "But you're all there, son, with the tongue action. You got me still goin' round in circles. d.a.m.n 'f I know yet what to think."

"Well, if that's your trouble," P. Sybarite told him coolly, "this is your cue to squat on your haunches, scratch your left ear with your hind leg, and gaze up into my face with an intelligent expression in your great brown eyes."

"I'll do better 'n that," chuckled the man. "Have a cigar."

"Thank you," said P. Sybarite politely, accepting the peace offering.

"All I need now is a match: I acknowledge the habit."

The match supplied, he smoked in silence.

Four minutes pa.s.sed, by the clock: no sign of the manager, Shaynon, or Mrs. Strone.

"Story?" the detective suggested at length.

"Plant," retorted P. Sybarite as tersely.

"You mean he salted you?"

"In the elevator, of course."

"It come to me, that was the way of it when he sprung that bunk stuff about you coa.r.s.ely loading said loot into your coat-tail," admitted the detective. "That didn't sound sensible, even if you did have a skirt to fuss into a cab. The ordinary vest-pocket of commerce would've kept it just as close, besides being more natural--easy to get at. Then the guy was too careful to tip me off not to pinch you until the lady had went--didn't want her name dragged into it.... A fellow in my job's gotta have a lot of imagination," he concluded complacently. "That's why I'm letting you get away with it in this unprofessional manner."

"More human than in line with the best literary precedent, eh?"

"That's me. I seen he was sore when the dame turned him down, too, and started right off wondering if maybe it wasn't a jealousy plant. I seen this sorta thing happen before. Not that I blame him for feeling cut up: that was one swell piece of goods you bundled into numba two-thirty."

P. Sybarite's cigar dropped unheeded from his lips.

"_What!_" he cried.

The detective started.