“I stumbled as though I had been hit in the face, and fell back into one of the chairs on the sidewalk.  I tore off the wrappings and spread out the diamonds on the cafe-table; I could not believe they were real.  I twisted the necklace between my fingers and crushed it between my palms and tossed it up in the air.  I believe I almost kissed it.  The women in the cafe stood up on the chairs to see better, and laughed and screamed, and the people crowded so close around me that the waiters had to form a body-guard.  The proprietor thought there was a fight, and called for the police.  I was so happy I didn’t care.  I laughed, too, and gave the proprietor a five-pound note, and told him to stand everyone a drink.  Then I tumbled into a fiacre and galloped off to my friend the Chief of Police.  I felt very sorry for him.  He had been so happy at the chance I gave him, and he was sure to be disappointed when he learned I had sent him off on a false alarm.

“But now that I had found the necklace, I did not want him to find the woman.  Indeed, I was most anxious that she should get clear away, for, if she were caught, the truth would come out, and I was likely to get a sharp reprimand, and sure to be laughed at.

“I could see now how it had happened.  In my haste to hide the diamonds when the woman was hustled into the carriage, I had shoved the cigars into the satchel, and the diamonds into the pocket of my coat.  Now that I had the diamonds safe again, it seemed a very natural mistake.  But I doubted if the Foreign Office would think so.  I was afraid it might not appreciate the beautiful simplicity of my secret hiding-place.  So, when I reached the police-station, and found that the woman was still at large, I was more than relieved.

“As I expected, the Chief was extremely chagrined when he learned of my mistake, and that there was nothing for him to do.  But I was feeling so happy myself that I hated to have anyone else miserable, so I suggested that this attempt to steal the Czarina’s necklace might be only the first of a series of such attempts by an unscrupulous gang, and that I might still be in danger.

“I winked at the Chief, and the Chief smiled at me, and we went to Nice together in a saloon-car with a guard of twelve carabineers and twelve plain-clothes men, and the Chief and I drank champagne all the way.  We marched together up to the hotel where the Russian Ambassador was stopping, closely surrounded by our escort of carabineers, and delivered the necklace with the most profound ceremony.  The old Ambassador was immensely impressed, and when we hinted that already I had been made the object of an attack by robbers, he assured us that his Imperial Majesty would not prove ungrateful.

“I wrote a swinging personal letter about the invaluable services of the Chief to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and they gave him enough Russian and French medals to satisfy even a French soldier.  So, though he never caught the woman, he received his just reward.”