“Good God!” he cried. “They’ve been stolen from me and they put the pouch back!”

“What has?” the other exclaimed.

“The pearls,” Monty groaned. “I took them for a joke, and now they’re gone!”

He looked apprehensively at Steven, meditating meanwhile how quickly he could turn certain scrip he held into ready money.

Steven evinced no surprise. Instead he rose from his seat and placed a foot upon it as though engaged in tying a lace. But he pointed to the cuff on the bottom of the trouser leg that was on the seat by Monty’s side. And Monty, gazing as he was bid, saw his friend’s slender fingers pick therefrom a string of pearls.

“I know no safer place,” Denby commented judicially. “Of course the customs fellows are on to it, but no pickpocket who ever lived can get anything away from you if you cache it there. On board ship I shall carry it in my pocket, but this is the best place in Paris when one is in strange company.”

Monty said no word. His relief was too great and he felt weak and helpless.

“What’s the matter?” Denby demanded.

“I want a drink,” Monty returned, “but it isn’t on you.”

CHAPTER THREE

THERE are still restaurants in Paris where a well chosen dinner delights the chef who is called upon to cook it and the waiters who serve. And although it is true that most of the diners of to-day know little of that art which is now disappearing, it happened that Steven Denby was one who delighted the heart of the Ambassadeurs’ chef.

T

Monty was a happy soul who had never been compelled to consult his pocketbook in a choice of restaurants, and Mrs. Michael Harrington was married to a gourmand who well distinguished the difference between that and the indefensible fault of gluttony. Thus both of Denby’s guests were in a sense critical. They admitted that they had dined with one who agreed with Dumas’ dictum that a dinner is a daily and capital action that can only worthily be accomplished by gens d’esprit.

There are few places in Paris where a dinner in summer can be more pleasantly eaten than the balcony at the Ambassadeurs, among slim pillars of palest green and banks of pink roses. In the distance—not too near to be disturbed by the performers unless they chose—the 

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