“O, ain’t it, sir?” he said. “ ’Ow do you know?”
“Because I searched you myself,” said B 90 shortly.
“The patient, infinitely tolerant, waved his hand.
“ ’E searched me, ladies and gentlemen! Ho, lor! Look at ’im; I only arsks that—look at ’im! Why, he doesn’t even know as there’s a smut on his nose at this moment.” (B 90 hastily rubbed that organ, and remembering himself, lapsed into stolidity once more.) Mr. Hurley addressed him with exaggerated politeness—“Would you be so good, sir, as to go and fetch my boots?”
B 90 thought profoundly, and officially, a minute; wheeled suddenly, withdrew, and returned shortly with the articles, very massive and muddy, which he laid on the counterpane before the prisoner. The latter, cherishing the ineffable dénouement, deliberately took and examined the left one, paused a moment, smilingly canvassing his company, and then quickly, with an almost imperceptible wrench and twirl, had unscrewed the heel bodily from its place and held it out.
“ ’Ere!” he said; and, with his arm extended, sank back in an invertebrate ecstasy upon his pillow.
The heel was pierced with a tiny compartment on its inner side, and within the aperture lay the button.
They all saw it, but not as I, who, standing as I did at the bed-head, and being something of an amateur conjurer myself, was conscious in a flash of the rascal “passing” the trinket into its receptacle even as he exposed it.
There followed an exclamation or two, and silence. Then Captain Naylor said “Haw!” and Miss Belmont, with a gasp, turned a mild reproachful gaze upon her sister-in-law. But Mrs. John had not the grace to accept it. She gave a little vexed, covetous laugh, and stepped forward. “Well,” she said to Miss Emma, “you must go without it still, dear, it seems.” Then, coldly, to Hurley: “Give it me, please.”
Now, so far so good; and, though I was enraged with, I could not combat the decision. But truly I was not prepared for the upshot.