I considered.
“You must undo what you’ve done,” I repeated. “Don’t you see? Unless you can prove that it’s been in your possession all the time, and is now, her character’s gone for ever. Mrs. John will see to that.”
He did not, professionally, lack wits. He understood perfectly. “You’re ’er friend?” he asked.
I nodded.
“All right,” he said, “you get ’old of it private, and smuggle of it ’ere, and I’ll manage the rest.”
“But, my good fellow! You’ve been overhauled, I suppose, and pretty thoroughly. How can you convince—convince, you understand—that you’ve kept the thing snug through it all?”
“You go and smuggle of it ’ere,” he repeated doggedly.
It needed only a very little manœuvring. I hurried back to Miss Belmont’s, heard the lady was still confined to her room, forbade the servant to report me, and claimed the privacy of the dining-room for the purpose of writing a prescription. The moment I was alone, I made an excited and perfectly undignified plunge under the table, found the ledge (the thing, in auctioneer’s parlance, was a “capital set,” in four leaves), and the button, which in a feverish ecstasy I pocketed. Then, very well satisfied, I hurried back to Mr. Hurley.
I found him, even in that short interval, changed for the worse; so much changed, that, in face of his condition, a certain sense of novel vigour, an overweening confidence in my own importance which had grown up, and lusty, in me during my return journey, seemed nothing less than an indecency. However, curiously enough, this mood began to ebb and sober from the very moment of my handing over the pièce de conviction to its purloiner. He “palmed” it professionally, cleared his throat, and took instant command of the occasion. “Now,” he said, “tell ’em I’ve confessed to you, and let ’em all come.”
His confidence mastered the depression which had overtaken me. I returned, with fair assurance, to Miss Belmont, who received my news with a perfect rapture of relief. What she had suffered, poor good woman, none but herself might know.