Page:The Intrusion of Jimmy.djvu/277

Rh I can explain everything. Do you feel better now? Can you listen? I can explain everything."

"Pitt, old boy," protested his lordship, "you don't understand. We aren't going to give you away. We're all—"

Jimmy ignored him.

"Molly, listen," he said.

She sat up.

"Go on, Jimmy," she said.

"I wasn't stealing the necklace. I was putting it back. The man who came to the castle with me, Spike Mullins, took it this afternoon, and brought it to me."

Spike Mullins! Molly remembered the name.

"He thinks I am a crook, a sort of Raffles. It was my fault. I was a fool. It all began that night in New York, when we met at your house. I had been to the opening performance of a play called, 'Love, the Cracksman,' one of those burglar plays."

"Jolly good show," interpolated his lordship, chattily. "It was at the Circle over here. I went twice."

"A friend of mine, a man named Mifflin, had been playing the hero in it, and after the show, at the club, he started in talking about the art of burglary—he'd been studying it—and I said that anybody could burgle a house. And, in another minute, it somehow happened that I had made a bet that I would do it that night. Heaven knows whether I ever really meant to; but, that same night, this man