"I like it," Nick assured her. "It's a mighty clean place. I wish you could see some of the holes I've slept in--that is, I _don't_ wish so! But it's all right. And now, just say how much money you want. Anything up to three thousand dollars I can give you in a minute----" "Oh, not nearly so much. A few hundreds. But I'm going to lunch now. Would you care to lunch at the same table, and we can arrange about the loan? Also you can tell me more of Dutchy." "I'd like it better than anything," said Nick. "But first I've got to fix things about your bag with the police. I'll be back, and look you up by the time you're halfway to dessert. I remember just what that bag was like, because--maybe you've forgotten--I picked it up in the hotel hall when you dropped it. I can see it as plain as if it was here. 'Twas a kind of knitted gold, like chain armour for a doll. And there was a rim all smothered in diamonds and blue stones." "Sapphires," said Angela. "That's right. Well, I'll be back in twenty minutes." It was useless to protest against his going, for he had gone before she could speak. And instead of beginning luncheon, Angela went upstairs to take from its diamond frame her father's miniature. On the gold back of this frame there was an inscription: "Angela, on her eleventh birthday, from her father. The day before she sails." And it was because of the inscription that she could not have offered the frame to an ordinary person as security, no matter how desperately she had wanted a loan. But Mr. Nickson Hilliard was not an ordinary person. VII A POLICE MYSTERY It was a blow to Nick to be told that there was little hope of finding the lost bag. He had pledged himself to "see the thing through," but he had reasons--immensely important reasons they seemed to him--for wishing to leave New Orleans next day. So far as was known, Cohensohn was an honest man. There was nothing against him, and his shop could not be searched by the police. All they could do was to get a description of the people who had called between the times of Mrs. May's going out and coming in. But ten chances to one, like most women, she had mislaid her bag somewhere else, or left it at home. Nick did not like these insinuations against the sex to which an angel deigned to belong; but he took them quietly, and instructed the police to offer five-hundred dollars reward for the bag alone, or a thousand with the contents intact. Then he went back and had lunch with Mrs. May, which was, without exception, the most exquisite experience of his life. Yet he did not know what he ate, or afterward, whether he had eaten anything at all--unless it was some bread which, with bitter disgust at his bad manners, he vaguely remembered crumbling on the table. He was cheered, however, by a plan he had, and by the inscription on Angela's miniature frame. He would have hated the thing if it had been her husband's.