I got it firmly by the handle this time, and I recognised Emily's special cake-knife, an instrument wrought to perfection by long years of service, sharp as a razor down both sides, with a flexible tip that slithered round a basin and scooped up the last morsels of candied-peel.
But the flexible tip was gone. I understood Emily's distraught condition. You can replace a diamond tiara; money won't buy a twenty-year-old cake-knife.
"Try and bear it, dear," I said.
Emily pointed to the table weighed down with Madeiras and rocks and almonds and sultanas and gingers. "It's inside one of them," she said.
For the moment I failed to grasp her meaning. She explained. "I've made six dozen. The knife was all right when I started; a little bent, nothing more. It was when I was mixing the last that I noticed the tip was missing."
It was a difficult position. There was no time to submit the cakes to the X-rays; the advance party was streaming through the gate.
"Dear fellows! I wonder which one it will be," said Emily, and clung round my neck.
I put her on one side. "I'll manage it; leave it to me," I said, and went forward and welcomed our guests. My mind was working clearly and rapidly, as it always does in a crisis. When I had got them seated round the tea-table, "My dear friends," I said, "this isn't a Christmas party, but my wife couldn't help indulging in a little Christmas fun. She's just whispered to me that she's put a surprise in one of the cakes. I know her. It won't be an ordinary sort of surprise. I should advise you all to keep a sharp look-out. There's a pound" (it was worth a pound to save a hero's throat from being cut) "for the man who finds anything in his cake which hasn't any business to be there."
Within five minutes two pebbles, a tin-tack, a chunk of wood and a black-beetle were on the tablecloth....
"Do you know that flutter's cost me five pounds, and there wasn't a sign of your infernal knife after all?" I said to Emily when they'd gone.