I don’t believe he heard me at all.  That flashing trinket was far more eloquent than any words of mine.  He laid his head in his hands beside it, and his whole body trembled with emotion.  He trembled and trembled, till finally I got tired of waiting.  I poked him in the back, and reminded him that my car was waiting down stairs.  He rose with a strange, bewildered air, and submitted like a child to be led into the street.  He had the locket clenched in his hand, and every now and then he would glance at it as though unable to believe his eyes.  I shut him into the tonneau, and took a seat beside my chauffeur.

“Let her out, James,” I said.

James let her out with a vengeance.  There was a sunny-haired housemaid at the Van Coorts’ . . . and it was a crack, new four-cylinder car with a direct drive on the top speed.  Off we went like the wind, jouncing poor Jones around the tonneau like a pea in a pill-box.  But he didn’t care.  Was he not seraphically whizzing through space, obeying the diamond telegram of love?  In the general whizzle and bang of the whole performance he even ventured to raise his voice in song, and I could overhear him behind me, adding a lyrical finish to the hum of the machinery.  It was a walloping run, and we only throttled down on the outskirts of Morristown.  You see I had to coach him about that Japanese war business, or else there might be trouble!  So I leaned over the back seat and gently broke it to him I thought I had managed it rather well.  I felt sure he could understand, I said, the absolute need of a little—­embellishing and—­

“Let me out,” he said.

I feverishly went on explaining.

“If you don’t let me out I’ll climb out,” he said, and began to make as good as his word over the tonneau.

Of course, there was nothing for it but to stop the car.

Jones deliberately descended and headed for New York.

I ran after him, while the chauffeur turned the car round and slowly followed us both.  It was a queer procession.  First Jones, then I, then the car.

Finally I overtook him.

“Jones,” I panted.  “Jones.”

He muttered something about Ananias, and speeded up.

“But it was an awfully tight place,” I pleaded.  “Something had to be done; you must make allowances; it was the first thing that came into my head—­and you must admit that it worked, Jones.  Didn’t she send you the locket?  Didn’t she—?”

“What a prancing, show-of, matinee fool you’ve made me look!” he burst out.  “I have an old mother to support.  I have an increasing practice.  I have already attracted some little attention in my chosen field—­eye, ear and throat.  A nice figure I’d cut, traipsing around battle-fields in a kimono, and looking for a kindly bullet to lay me low.  If I were ever tempted by such a thing—­which God forbid—­wouldn’t I prefer to spread bacilli on buttered toast?”