"Certainly not," said Madame Beattie, but without offence. "I told you a Royal Personage. Besides, everybody knows. If your people here don't, it's because the're provincial and it doesn't matter whether they know it or not. I will continue. The necklace, I told you, became almost as famous as I. Then there was trouble."
"When?" ventured Weedon.
"Oh, a long time after, a very long time. The Royal Personage was going to be married and her Royal Highness—"
"Her Royal Highness?"
"Of course. Do you suppose he would have been allowed to marry a commoner? That was always the point. She made a row, very properly. The necklace was famous and some of the gems in it are historic. She was a thrifty person. I don't blame her for it. She wasn't going to see historic jewels drift back to the rue de la Paix. So they made me a proposition."
Moore was forgetting to be shy. He licked his lips, the story promised so enticingly.
"As I say," Madame Beattie pursued, "they made me a proposition." She stopped and Moore, pencil poised, looked at her inquiringly. She closed her fan, with a decisive snap, and rose. "There," said she, "you can elaborate that. Make it as long as you please, and it'll do for one issue."
Weedon felt as if somehow he had been done.
"But you haven't told me anything," he implored. "Everybody knows as much as that."
"I reminded you of that," said Madame Beattie. "But I know several things everybody doesn't know. Now you do as I tell you. Head it: 'The True Story of Patricia Beattie's Necklace. First Instalment.' And you'll sell a paper to every man, woman and baby in this ridiculous town. And when the next day's paper doesn't have the second instalment, they'll buy the next and the next to see if it's there."