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