"Two chops, please," Gerald had just said, playing with a plainly
shown handful of money, so as to leave no doubt of his honourable
intentions. Then at the next table he heard the words, "Ah, yes,
curious old family heirloom," the ring was drawn off the finger of
That, and Mr. U. W. Ugli, murmuring something about a unique
curio, reached his impossible hand out for it. The door-mat-headed
boy was watching breathlessly.
"There's a ring right enough," he owned. And then the ring slipped
from the hand of Mr. U. W. Ugli and skidded along the floor.
Gerald pounced on it like a greyhound on a hare. He thrust the dull
circlet on his finger and cried out aloud in that crowded place:
"I wish Jimmy and I were inside that door behind the statue of
Flora."
It was the only safe place he could think of.
The lights and sounds and scents of the restaurant died away as a
wax-drop dies in fire a rain-drop in water. I don't know, and Gerald
never knew, what happened in that restaurant. There was nothing
about it in the papers, though Gerald looked anxiously for
'Extraordinary Disappearance of well-known City Man.' What the
door-mat-headed boy did or thought I don't know either. No more
does Gerald. But he would like to know, whereas I don't care
tuppence. The world went on all right, anyhow, whatever he
thought or did. The lights and the sounds and the scents of Pym's
died out.
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