Mrs. Raffles by John Kendrick Bangs

Author:John Kendrick Bangs [Bangs, John Kendrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Humorous
Publisher: Feedbooks
Published: 1905-04-08T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

"Isn't it a beauty, Bunny," said Henriette the next morning, as she held up the tiara to my admiring gaze, a flashing, coruscating bit of the jeweler's art that, I verily believe, would have tempted the soul of honor itself into rascally ways.

"Magnificent!" I asserted. "But—which is this, the forty-eight-dollar one or the original?"

"The original," said Henriette, caressing the bauble. "You see, when we got to my room last night and I had Mrs. Rockerbilt sitting before the mirror, and despite her protestations was fixing her dishevelled locks with my own fair hands, I arranged to have the lights go out again just as the tiara was laid on the dressing-table. The copy was in the table drawer, and while my right hand was apparently engaged in manipulating the refractory light, and my voice was laughingly calling down maledictions upon the electric lighting company for its wretched service, my left hand was occupied with the busiest effort of its career in substituting the spurious tiara for the other."

"And Mrs. Rockerbilt never even suspected?"

"No," said Henriette. "In fact, she placed the bogus affair in her hair herself. As far as her knowledge goes, I never even touched the original."

"Well, you're a wonder, Henriette," said I, with a sigh. "Still, if Mrs. Rockerbilt should ever discover—"

"She won't, Bunny," said Henriette. "She'll never have occasion to test the genuineness of her tiara. These Newport people have other sources of income than the vulgar pawnshops."

But, alas! later on Henriette made a discovery herself that for the time being turned her eyes red with weeping. The Rockerbilt tiara itself was as bogus as our own copy. There wasn't a real stone in the whole outfit, and the worst part of it was that under the circumstances Henriette could not tell anybody over the teacups that Mrs. Rockerbilt was, in vulgar parlance, "putting up a shine" on high society.

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