“I’ve come to think all playing for money is horrible,” Ethel returned, thinking to what trouble Amy’s gambling had brought her. “Me too,” Michael chimed in. “Unless stocks go up, or the Democratic party goes down, I’ll be broke soon. How about a game of pool?” “I’d love to,” Nora said. “I’ve been dying to learn.” “That’ll make it a nice interesting game,” Monty commented. He knew he could never make a decent shot until the confounded necklace was miles away. “Then there’s nothing else to do but dance,” Alice decreed. “Come, Nora.” “No,” Michael cried, “I’ll play pool or auction or poker, I’ll sit or talk or sing, but I’m hanged if I hesitate and get lost, or maxixe!” Alice shook her head mournfully. “Ah, Michael,” she said, “if you were only as light-footed as you are light-headed, what a partner you’d make. We are going to dance anyway.” Ethel hesitated at the doorway. “Aren’t you dancing or playing pool, Mr. Denby?” “In just a moment,” he said. “First I have a word to say to Monty.” “I understand,” she returned. “Man’s god--business! Men use that excuse over the very littlest things sometimes.” “But this is a big thing,” he asserted; “a two hundred thousand dollar proposition, so we’re naturally a bit anxious.” Monty shook his head gravely. “Mighty anxious, believe me.” Whatever hope she might have cherished that Taylor was wrong, and this man she liked so much was innocent, faded when she heard the figure two hundred thousand dollars. That was the amount of the necklace’s value, exactly. And she had wondered at Monty’s strained, nervous manner. Now it became very clear that he was Denby’s accomplice, dreading, and perhaps knowing as well as she, that the house was surrounded. She told herself that the law was just, and those who disobeyed were guilty and should be punished; and that she was an instrument, impersonal, and as such, without blame. But uppermost in her mind was the thought of black treachery, of mean intriguing ways, and the certainty that this night would see the end of her friendship with the man she had sworn to deliver to the ruthless, cruel, insatiable Taylor. It was, as Taylor told her, a question of deciding between two people. She could help, indirectly, to convict a clever smuggler, or she could send her weak, dependent, innocent eighteen-year-old sister to jail. And she had said to Taylor: “I have no choice.” Denby looked at her a little puzzled. In Paris, a year ago, she had seemed a sweet, natural girl, armed with a certain dignity that would not permit men to become too friendly on short acquaintance. And here it seemed that she was almost trying to flirt with him in a wholly different way. He was not sure that her other manner was not more in keeping with the ideal he had held of her since that first meeting. “I should be anxious, too,” she said, “if I had all that money at stake. But all the same, don’t be too long. I think I may ask you for that cigarette presently.” CHAPTER TEN