GOLD PLATE
A motor ran swiftly along a country road.
Two men sat in the front seat.
"My friend, Runnells," said one of the two quizzically, after a silence that had endured for miles, "what in hell is the matter with you to-night?"
"I don't know," said Runnells, who drove the car. "What the captain was talking about last night, maybe—the things you feel in the air."
"Bah!" said Paul Cremarre composedly. "If it is only the air! For three years we have found nothing in the air but good fortune."
"That's all right," Runnells returned sullenly. "But just the same that's the way I feel, and I can't help it. We're going to lay low for a spell after to-night, and maybe that's what's wrong too—kind of as though we were pushing our luck over the edge by sticking it just one night too many."
The Frenchman whistled a bar lightly under his breath.
"I should be delighted—delighted," he said, "to leave to-night alone—but not the Earl of Cloverley's gold plate! Have you forgotten that I told you I had made a promise to our little Père Mouche—to eat ragoût from a gold plate? I have never eaten from a gold plate. It is a dream!"
"You're bloody well right, it is!" said Runnells gruffly. "And I only hope it ain't going to be anything worse'n a dream to-night."