“Freddie, my boy,” said Mr. Keeble weakly, “I daren’t do it!”

The vision of his thousand pounds slipping from his grasp so wrought upon Freddie that he expressed himself in a manner far from fitting in one of his years towards an older man.

[p. 32]“Oh, I say, don’t be such a rabbit!”

[p. 32]

Mr. Keeble shook his head.

“No,” he repeated, “I daren’t.”

It might have seemed that the negotiations had reached a deadlock, but Freddie, with a thousand pounds in sight, was in far too stimulated a condition to permit so tame an ending to such a promising plot. As he stood there, chafing at his uncle’s pusillanimity, an idea was vouchsafed to him.

“By Jove! I’ll tell you what!” he cried.

“Not so loud!” moaned the apprehensive Mr. Keeble. “Not so loud!”

“I’ll tell you what,” repeated Freddie in a hoarse whisper. “How would it be if I did the pinching?”

“What!”

“How would it . . .”

“Would you?” Hope, which had vanished from Mr. Keeble’s face, came flooding back. “My boy, would you really?”

“For a thousand quid you bet I would.”

Mr. Keeble clutched at his young relative’s hand and gripped it feverishly.

“Freddie,” he said, “the moment you place that necklace in my hands, I will give you not a thousand but two thousand pounds.”

“Uncle Joe,” said Freddie with equal intensity, “it’s a bet!”

Mr. Keeble mopped at his forehead.

“You think you can manage it?”

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