“It’s such an old, old scheme, though, laddie,” objected Mr. Bellaby.
“You wait and listen to me. I tell you candid that I want this idea worked because it’s bound to be a good hadvertisement for me as well as for ’er. She’ll get most good out of it. People’ll talk about it, and they’ll flock to see ’er at the theayter. But they’ll ’ear about my business, too, and that’s what I want.”
“Well, let’s hear, anyway,” said Mr. Bellaby.
“It begins with ’er ’aving ’er jew’l’ry stole. That’s to say, you arrange things with ’er, and brings the whole lot down to me secret. Well, next thing, you plasters all over the town a full list of the missing jewels, except, of course, there’s no need to use the word ’himitation.’”
“Of course not,” agreed Mr. Bellaby.
“You ’eads the bill ‘One ’Undred Pounds Reward,’ promising that to anyone assisting in the recovery of ’er jewels. And you lets the town study that ’ere bill for a day or two. And then a chap brings the jewels to my shop and tries to get me to buy ’em.”
“Eh?”
“’E can’t read print,” explained Mr. Dobb, with a wink, “so ’e don’t know about them bills. I charges ’im with ’aving stolen ’em, and am just going to send for the police, when ’e clears out in a ’urry, leaving the jewels with me.”
“Ah, now I see!” observed the other.
“Hexactly. I’ve ’ad ’em all the time. Well, I now applies for the reward. The affair ’as got into the papers, and every one’s talking about it. There’s a special performance, where she wears all ’er recovered jew’l’ry, and you ’ave me up on the stage and ’and over the reward to me—simply a bit of blank paper in a henvelope, of course, but I get a little publicity and she gets a lot of publicity, and—”