Kate plus 10

I. Eighty-three pearls on a string II. Mike said nothing--there was nothing to say III. Other eyes watched Michael IV. “The ideal Criminal is a strategist” V. A Chorus Girl at Sebo’s VI. Kate came to the flat VII. The Princess Bacheffski--beautifully dressed VIII. An artist makes an exhibition of himself IX. The shareholders and an interruption X. Sir Ralph lost a princess and found a policeman XI. Lady Moya was curiously unlike herself XII. A motor car was met by a special train XIII. The chronology of a great theft XIV. The remarkable train that did strange tricks XV. As Sir Ralph said, “Business is Business” XVI. On the unmorality of professional thieves XVII. The independent strategy of Señor Gregori XVIII. The colonel was a gentlemen at the last XIX. Michael developed a fondness for the criminal classes

KATE PLUS 10

CHAPTER I. EIGHTY-THREE PEARLS ON A STRING

The Earl of Flanborough pressed a bell push by the side of his study table and, after an interval of exactly three seconds, pressed it again, though the footman’s lobby could not have been far short of fifty yards from the library and the serving man was never born who could sprint that distance in three seconds.

Yet, in such awe was his lordship held that morning by his man-servants, his maid-servants and everything within his gates, that Sibble, the first footman, made the distance in five.

“Why the dickens don’t you answer my bell when I ring?” snapped the Earl and glared at his red-faced servant.

Sibble did not reply, knowing by experience that, even as silence was insolence, speech could be nothing less than impertinence.

Lord Flanborough was slightly over middle age, thin, bald and dyspeptic. His face was mean and insignificant and if you looked for any resemblance to the somewhat pleasant faces of the Feltons and Flanboroughs of past generations which stared mildly or fiercely, or (as in the case of the first Baron Felton and Flanborough, a poet and contemporary of Lovelace) with gentle melancholy from their massive frames in the long hall, you looked in vain. For George Percy Allington Felton, Earl of Flanborough, Baron Felton and Baron Sedgely of Waybrook, was only remotely related to the illustrious line of Feltons and had inherited the title and the heavily mortgaged estates of his great-uncle by sheer bad luck. This was the uncharitable view of truer Feltons who stood, however, more remotely in the line of succession.

Lord Flanborough had been Mr. George Felton of Felton, Heinrich and Somes, a firm which controlled extensive mining properties in various parts of the world, and the one bright spot in his succession to the peerage lay in the fact that he brought some two millions sterling to the task of freeing the estates of their encumbrances.

He was a shrewd man and an unpleasant man, but he had never been so objectionably unpleasant until he assumed the style and title of Flanborough and never so completely and impossibly unpleasant in the period of his lordship as he had been that morning.

“Now, what did I want you for?” asked Lord Flanborough in vexation. “I rang for something--if you had only answered at once instead of dawdling about, I should--ah, yes--tell Lady Moya that I wish to see her.”

Sibble made his escape thankfully.

Lord Flanborough pulled at his weedy moustache and looked at the virgin sheet of paper before him. Then he took up his pen and wrote:

“Lost or Stolen: Valuable pearl chain consisting of eighty-three graduated pearls. Any person giving information which will lead to their recovery will receive a reward of two hundred pounds.”