She picked up the two segments of the plate and handed them to Leith, who took them in his left hand, still holding the frying pan in his right hand.
“Oh,” he said, “this isn’t bad.”
Ora Sanders stepped forward, swiftly passing between Leith and the audience. A half second later, Leith gave his left hand a deft twist, and there was the plate unbroken and apparently none the worse for having been dropped.
“Now,” Lester Leith said, “we’ll put the egg into the plate.”
He tilted the frying pan and shook it.
“Hello!” he exclaimed. “What’s this?”
What came out of the frying pan was not a cooked egg, but a very fine pearl necklace which dangled for a moment on the lip of the frying pan, then dropped with a clatter to the plate which Leith was holding.
Leith dropped the frying pan, picked up the pearl necklace, and said, “What an egg!”
The audience applauded. Leith, as though the trick had been completed, turned back toward the table on which Ora Sanders was rearranging his stage properties.
For a long moment Shogiro stood rigid, the smile frozen on his face. Then he took a quick step toward Leith and said, “Begging honorable pardon, but that is my necklace!”
Leith turned to face him, urbanely smiling, holding the necklace in his hand. “Certainly it’s your necklace,” he said, and handed it to the Japanese.
Shogiro took the necklace, stared at it for a moment, then said ominously, “Begging honorable pardon, but this is not same necklace which came from frying pan.”
Leith looked at it and said, “By George, I don’t believe it is! It does seem different.”
“It is different,” Shogiro said. “Begging pardon, this necklace very cheap. Other necklace my property.”
Leith said, “Well, there’s only one thing for us to do then, and that’s put the necklace in the frying pan, and see if we can change it back into the original necklace.”
He dropped the necklace into the frying pan, shook it for a moment, then snatched up the plate which Miss Sanders had placed on the table. He tilted the frying pan over the plate — and what came out was not a necklace, but apparently an omelette.
“Tut, tut,” Lester Leith said, “I’m afraid we dropped the necklace into those eggs, and we now have a pearl omelette. Here. I’ll wrap it up in a handkerchief, and you can take it with you.”
He picked up a silk handkerchief, placed it over the plate, apparently wrapped up the omelette, and handed it to Shogiro.
Shogiro took the handkerchief. He shook it out. It was empty. The plate was empty. With quick, purposeful strides, Shogiro walked over to the table and snatched up the frying pan. It too was empty.
The audience roared.
Leith, smiling broadly, bowed to the right and left, marking the termination of the act.
Shogiro, standing ominously tense, watched him for several seconds, then without a word turned and walked back to his seat.
Leith looked over the audience. Mah Foy was no longer in the front row, and Silman Shore seemed to have vanished as completely as had the omelette in the handkerchief.
Sergeant Ackley and Beaver sat in their stateroom staring moodily at each other.
“Well,” Beaver said, “there it is.”
Sergeant Ackley said, “It’s plain as the nose on your face. Shogiro had the necklace all the time. Leith knew it. He wanted an opportunity to pick his pockets. If he’d tried to do it surreptitiously, there’d have been hell to pay.
“Beaver, do you realize what it means? It means that everyone figures that necklace was as much a part of Leith’s magic show as the frying pan and the fake goldfish bowl. Here we’ve traveled thousands of miles and organized an elaborate spy system to find out when he was going to steal that necklace, and damned if he doesn’t do it right in front of an audience.”
Beaver said, “Well, he can’t get away from us. We know who has the necklace now.”
Sergeant Ackley nodded..
There was a moment of silence, then Beaver said, “What pocket did he get the necklace out of, Sergeant? It was done so quick I couldn’t see.”
“You didn’t see?” Ackley asked.
“No.”
Sergeant Ackley frowned at the undercover man. “I thought so,” he said. “The whole thing was staged to happen according to schedule. The girl pretended to fall and dropped the plate. That distracted the attention of the women in the audience. A broken plate is a domestic tragedy to a woman. The men just don’t give a damn about a broken plate, so the girl had her stockings fixed so that when she stumbled, she could pull a run in one of them. She ran her hands up along her leg and that grabbed the men’s attention. At any rate, it accounted for yours.”
“I only glanced there for half a second,” Beaver said. “As soon as I did, I knew I mustn’t take my eyes off Leith, so I looked right back.”
“That half second was all he needed,” Sergeant Ackley said.
“Well,” Beaver insisted, “what pocket did he take it out of?”
“Well,” Sergeant Ackley said, “it was—”
“I thought so,” said Beaver. “You were looking at her leg too.”
There was a period of uncomfortable silence, then Sergeant Ackley said, “Okay, Beaver, we won’t try to do anything here. There are too many places on the ship where he can hide it. He’s far too clever to keep it in his stateroom, but he won’t dare to leave it on the ship. When he gets ashore in Honolulu, he’ll have it in his baggage, or on him. Now then, Beaver, it’s up to you to go through that baggage the minute he hits shore. I’ll see to it that he’s detained, and you’ll have an opportunity.”
“Suppose he has it on him?”
Sergeant Ackley laughed grimly and said, “There’s lots of ways of playing that little game. Beaver, send a wireless to the chief of police at Honolulu. Make it read like this: MAN WHO WILL DISEMBARK FROM MONTEREY WITH WHITE RIBBON PINNED TO CROWN OF HAT WILL HAVE TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS IN DOPE CONCEALED SOMEWHERE IN HIS CLOTHES.”
Sergeant Ackley beamed.
“That means they’ll search his baggage, and find the necklace,” Beaver said.
“No, it won’t,” Sergeant Ackley observed. “You see, they won’t know who it is until they see the white ribbon on the hat. As his valet, you can take his hat and brush it just before he starts ashore. Then is when you’ll pin on the white ribbon. They’ll search him first. You’ll get the baggage through before they find out anything about the setup. When they do, I’ll explain to them that it was just a joke on the part of Shogiro who was sore because Leith had made a monkey out of him in front of an audience.”
Beaver blinked thoughtfully. “It sounds like a good scheme,” he said, “only...”
“Only what?” Sergeant Ackley snapped.
“Only I have an idea it won’t work,” the undercover man blurted.
Leith, lying in a deck chair, enjoyed the tropical ocean breeze. He seemed relaxed, completely at his ease.
Mah Foy slipped into the adjoining deck chair, leaned forward, and spoke in a low voice. “It was Silman Shore who left the social ball,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” Leith said. “Where did he go, to his stateroom or somewhere else?”
“He went to his stateroom.”
“And what did he do? Do you know?”
“Yes,” she said. “I could watch him through the window. He made no attempt to conceal what he was doing. He went to his gun case, picked up his gun, took it out on deck, and started practicing. I strolled by and asked him why he wasn’t at the entertainment, and he said that amateurish stuff annoyed him, that he had to put on an exhibition the next day, and he wanted to limber up his muscles.”