The Diamond Pin

Baffling detective stories in which Fleming Stone, the great American Detective, displays his remarkable ingenuity for unravelling mysteries
FIBSY AIMED IT STRAIGHT AT THE MASKED MAN—Page 258
Author of A Chain of Evidence, Vicky Van, etc.
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

Well, go to church then, and I hope to goodness you'll come back in a more spiritual frame of mind! Though how you can feel spiritual in that flibbertigibbet dress is more than I know! An actress, indeed! No mummers' masks have ever blotted the scutcheon of my family tree. The Clydes were decent, God-fearing people, and I don't propose, Miss, that you shall disgrace the name.
Ursula Pell shook her good-looking gray head and glowered at her pretty niece, who was getting into a comfortable though not elaborate motor car.
I know you didn't propose it, Aunt Ursula, returned the smiling girl, I thought up the scheme myself, and I decline to let you have credit of its origin.
Discredit, you mean, and Mrs. Pell sniffed haughtily. Here's some money for the contribution plate. Iris; see that you put it in, and don't appropriate it yourself.
The slender, aristocratic old hand, half covered by a falling lace frill, dropped a coin into Iris' out-held palm, and the girl perceived it was one cent.
She looked at her aunt in amazement, for Mrs. Pell was a millionaire; then, thinking better of her impulse to voice an indignant protest, Iris got into the car. Immediately, she saw a dollar bill on the seat beside her and she knew that was for the contribution plate, and the penny was a joke of her aunt's.
For Ursula Pell had a queer twist in her fertile old brain that made her enjoy the temporary discomfiture of her friends, whenever she was able to bring it about. To see anyone chagrined, nonplused, or made suddenly to feel ridiculous, was to Mrs. Pell an occasion of sheer delight.