The Mystery Megapack

opportunity at once of talking to this youthful marvel. My affair is serious. The dinner I have mentioned comes off in three days and—”
    “I know. I recognize your need; but I think you had better enter Mr. Pratt’s box without my intervention. Miss Strange’s value to us will be impaired the moment her connection with us is discovered.”
    “Ah, there’s Ruthven! He will take me to Mr. Pratt’s box,” remarked Driscoll as the curtain fell on the second act. “Any suggestions before I go?”
    “Yes, and an important one. When you make your bow, touch your left shoulder with your right hand. It is a signal. She may respond to it; but if she does not, do not be discouraged. One of her idiosyncrasies is a theoretical dislike of her work. But once she gets interested, nothing will hold her back. That’s all, except this. In no event give away her secret. That’s part of the compact, you remember.”
    Driscoll nodded and left his seat for Ruthven’s box. When the curtain rose for the third time he could be seen sitting with the Misses Pratt and their vivacious young friend. A widower and still on the right side of fifty, his presence there did not pass unnoted, and curiosity was rife among certain onlookers as to which of the twin belles was responsible for this change in his well-known habits. Unfortunately, no opportunity was given him for showing. Other and younger men had followed his lead into the box, and they saw him forced upon the good graces of the fascinating but inconsequent Miss Strange whose rapid fire of talk he was hardly of a temperament to appreciate.
    Did he appear dissatisfied? Yes; but only one person in the opera house knew why. Miss Strange had shown no comprehension of or sympathy with his errand. Though she chatted amiably enough between duets and trios, she gave him no opportunity to express his wishes though she knew them well enough, owing to the signal he had given her.
    This might be in character but it hardly suited his views; and, being a man of resolution, he took advantage of an absorbing minute on the stage to lean forward and whisper in her ear:
    “It’s my daughter for whom I request your services; as fine a girl as any in this house. Give me a hearing. You certainly can manage it.”
    She was a small, slight woman whose naturally quaint appearance was accentuated by the extreme simplicity of her attire. In the tier upon tier of boxes rising before his eyes, no other personality could vie with hers in strangeness, or in the illusive quality of her ever-changing expression. She was vivacity incarnate and, to the ordinary observer, light as thistledown in fibre and in feeling. But not to all. To those who watched her long, there came moments—say when the music rose to heights of greatness—when the mouth so given over to laughter took on curves of the rarest sensibility, and a woman’s lofty soul shone through her odd, bewildering features.
    Driscoll had noted this, and consequently awaited her reply in secret hope.
    It came in the form of a question and only after an instant’s display of displeasure or possibly of pure nervous irritability.
    “What has she done?”
    “Nothing. But slander is in the air, and any day it may ripen into public accusation.”
    “Accusation of what?” Her tone was almost pettish.
    “Of—of theft,” he murmured. “On a great scale,” he emphasized, as the music rose to a crash.
    “Jewels?”
    “Inestimable ones. They are always returned by somebody. People say, by me.”
    “Ah!” The little lady’s hands grew steady,—they had been fluttering all over her lap. “I will see you tomorrow morning at my father’s house,” she presently observed; and turned her full attention to the stage.
    Some three days after this Mr. Driscoll opened his house on the Hudson to notable guests. He had not desired the publicity of such an event, nor the opportunity it gave for an increase of the scandal secretly in circulation against his daughter. But the Ambassador and his wife were foreign and any evasion of the promised hospitality would be sure to be misunderstood; so the scheme was carried forward though with less eclat than possibly was expected.
    Among the lesser guests, who were mostly young and well acquainted with the house and its hospitality, there was one unique figure,—that of the lively Miss Strange, who, if personally unknown to Miss Driscoll, was so gifted with the qualities which tell on an occasion of this kind, that