"Shall we sit down?" he suggested.
"Let's!" said she. "I'll have a cigarette."
They sat. Frank presently struck a match. If she had looked over her shoulder she would have seen the glare faintly reflected from our white faces. I stole a look at Foxy's ratlike profile. He had shoved up the mask. His teeth were bared. He was amused at the prospect of a little scandalous eavesdropping. Merciful Heavens! what a face!
I need not report the further conversation of the two on the bench. It was merely silly. Frank's voice was trembling. I suppose she ascribed that to the violence of his feelings for her. She is a fool.
Foxy gave them a good while to their talk. Meanwhile I suffered agonies of suspense, and Frank no doubt worse. I at least could see when the blow was going to fall, but he could not. Not until Mrs. Levering said she must go back, but not really meaning it yet, did Foxy pull down the mask and creep forward. I held my breath.
It seemed as if it were all accomplished in a single movement. Foxy rose to his knees behind the woman, snipped the shining thing around her neck—and there it was lying at my knees. I mechanically dropped it in my pocket.
She did not scream. In that, at least, she showed blood. "My necklace!" she gasped, jumping up, hand to throat. "Gone!"
In Frank's little choking cry one heard the snapping of the frightful tension he had been under.
Foxy, bent almost double, started up from behind the bench, and headed diagonally across the path. Another gasping cry, not loud, broke from the woman. "There he is!"
Frank flung himself on the back of the runner, and they rolled over on the ground, all exactly as I had seen it rehearsed a dozen times in the hotel room. They sprang up, grappled, swayed and finally Frank was flung with apparently great violence to the ground. Foxy disappeared.