T/ie Great Ruby Robbery :

a Detective Story.

By GraNtT ALLEN,

[ ERSIS REMANET was an Amcerican heiress. As o she justly remarked, this was a commonplace profession for a young woman nowadays; for almost everybody of late ycars has been an American and an heiress. A poor Californian, indeed, would be a charm- ing novelty in London society. But London socicty, so far, has had to go withcut one. Persis Remanct was on her way back from the Wilcoxes’ ball. She was stopping, of course, with Sir Iiverard and Lady Maclure at their house at Hampstead. 1 say “of course 7 advisedly ; because if you or I go to sce New York, we have to put up at our own expense (five dollars a day, without wine or extras) at the Windsor or the Iifth Avenuc: but when the pretty American comes to [London (and every American girl is ex officio pretty, in Europe at least; I supposc they keep their ugly ones at home for domestic consumption) she 1s invariably the guest cither of a dowager duchess or of a Royal Academician, like Sir Kverard, of the first distinction. Yankees visit Furope, i fact, to see, among other things, our art and our old nobility ; and by dint of native persist- ence they get into places that you and I could never succeed in penetrating, unless we devoted all the energies of a long and blameless life to securing an nvitation. Persis hadn’t been to the Wilcoxes with lady Maclure, however. The Maclures were too really great to know such people as the Wilcoxes, who were something tremendous in the City, but didn’t buy pictures; and Academicians, you know, don't care to culti- vate City people—unless they're customers. (“ Patrons,” the Academicians more usually call them ; but I prefer the simple business word myself, as being a deal less patronizing.) So Persis had accepted an invitation from Mrs. Duncan Harrison, the wife of the well- known member for the Hackness Division of Elmetshire, to take a seat in her carrtage to and from the Wilcoxes. Mrs. Harrison knew the habits and manners of American heiresses too well to offer to chaperon Persis; and

indeed, Persis, as a free-horn American eitizen, was quite as well able to take care of herself, the wide world over, as any three ordinary married IEnglishwomen.

Now, Mrs. Harrison had a brother, an Trish baronet, Sir Justin O’Byrne, late of the Iighth Hussars, who had been with them to the Wilcoxes, and who accompanied them home to Hampstead on the back seat of the carringe. Sir Justin was one of those charim- ing, incffective, clusive Irishmen whom every- hody likes and cverybody disapproves ol He had been everywhere, and done every- thing exceept to earn an honest livelihood. The total absence of rents during the sixties and seventies had never prevented his father, old Sir Terence O’Byrne, who sat so long for Connemara in the unreformed Parhament, from sending his son Justin in state to Kton, and afterwards to a fashionable college at Oxford. = He gave me the education of a centleman,” Sir Justin was wont regretfully to observe 5 but he omitted to give me also the income to keep it up with.”

Nevertheless, society felt O'Byrne was the sort of man who must be kept afloat some- how ; and ic kept him afloat accordingly in thosc mysterious ways that only society understands, and that you and I, who are not socicty, could never get to the bottom of 1f we tried for a century. Sir Justin himself had essayed Parliament, too, where he sat for a while behind the great Parnell with- out for & moment forfeiting society’s regard cven in those earlier days when it was held as o prime article of faith by the world that no gentleman could possibly call himselfl a Home-Ruler. “I'was only one of O’Byrne’s wild Irish tricks, socicty said, complacently, with that singular indulgence 1t always extends to its special favourites, and which is, in fact, the correlative of that unsparing cruclty it shows in turn to those who happen o offend against its unwritten precepts. If Sir Justin had blown up a Czar or two mn a (it of political exuberance, society would only have regarded the escapade as “one of O Byrne’s eccentricities.” He had also held a commission for a while in a cavalry regi- ment, which he left, it was understood, owing