"You must be a magician," she said, "because I'm certain no one saw me take my jewel-case out of the drawer—no one was in the room! And as I put it in my muff immediately, no one could have seen it as I left the house. Besides, I never told a soul I intended pawning it, so how is it possible you could know—and be able to repeat the whole of the conversation I had with Walter Le-Grand, to whom I lost so heavily last night? Tell me, how do you know all this?"
But Kelson would tell her nothing—nothing beyond her own sins and misfortunes.
"I have nothing to give you," she told him. "I dare not ask my husband for more money."
"What, nothing!" Kelson replied, "When the pawnbroker has just advanced you fifty thousand dollars. You call that nothing? Be pleased to give me one thousand, and congratulate yourself that I do not ask for all your 'nothing.'" And as neither tears nor prayers had any effect, she was obliged to pay him the sum he asked.
Flushed and excited with victory, and thinking, perhaps, that he had done enough for one day, Kelson took his spoils to a bank near the Palace Hotel, and for the first time in his career opened a banking account. As he was leaving the building he ran into Hamar, bent on a similar errand. The two gleefully compared notes.
"I thought," Hamar said, "my turn would never come, and that I must have done something to get out of favour with the Unknown; but as I was sitting in the Pig and Whistle Saloon in Corn Street drinking a lager, I suddenly felt a peculiar throbbing sensation run up my left leg into my left hand, and the floor seemed to open up, and I saw deep below me, in a black pit, a skeleton clutching hold of a linen bag, full of coins. I could see the gold quite distinctly—Spanish doubles, none newer than the eighteenth century. I knew then that the Unknown had not forgotten me. 'Look here, boss,' I said to old man Moss—the proprietor, you know—'You're a bit of a juggins to go on working with so much money under here,'—and I pointed to the floor.
"'I'm surprised at you, Hamar,' Moss said, cocking an eye at me, 'and lager, too!'
"'No, old man!' I said, 'I'm not drunk. I'm sober and serious. You've got a cellar below here, haven't you?'
"'Well, and what if I have!' Moss retorted, drawing a step closer and running his eyes carefully over me. 'What if I have! There's no harm in that, is there?'
"'You keep all your stock down there,' I went on, 'and more beside. I can see a hat-pin with a gold nob, that's not your wife's, and a pair of shoes with dandy silver buckles, that's not intended for your wife, nohow.'