In Mr. Roberts’s dressing-room, that gentleman is discovered tragically confronting Mr. Willis Campbell, with a watch uplifted in either hand.

Willis: ‘Well?’

Roberts, gasping: ‘My—my watch!’

Willis: ‘Yes. How comes there to be two of it?’

Roberts: ‘Don’t you understand? When I went out I—didn’t take my watch—with me. I left it here on my bureau.’

Willis: ‘Well?’

Roberts: ‘Oh, merciful heavens! don’t you see? Then I couldn’t have been robbed!’

Willis: ‘Well, but whose watch did you take from the fellow that didn’t rob you, then?’

Roberts: ‘His own!’ He abandons himself powerlessly upon a chair. ‘Yes; I left my own watch here, and when that person brushed against me in the Common, I missed it for the first time. I supposed he had robbed me, and ran after him, and—’

Willis: ‘Robbed him!’

Roberts: ‘Yes.’

Willis: ‘Ah, ha, ha, ha! I, hi, hi, hi! O, ho, ho, ho!’ He yields to a series of these gusts and paroxysms, bowing up and down, and stamping to and fro, and finally sits down exhausted, and wipes the tears from his cheeks. ‘Really, this thing will kill me. What are you going to do about it, Roberts?’

Roberts, with profound dejection and abysmal solemnity: ‘I don’t know, Willis. Don’t you see that it must have been—that I must have robbed—Mr. Bemis?’

Willis: ‘Bemis!’ After a moment for tasting the fact. ‘Why, so it was! Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! And was poor old Bemis that burly ruffian? that bloodthirsty gang of giants? that—that—oh, Lord! oh, Lord!’ He bows his head upon his chair-back in complete exhaustion, demanding, feebly, as he gets breath for the successive questions, ‘What are you going to d-o-o-o? What shall you s-a-a-a-y? How can you expla-a-ain it?’

Roberts: ‘I can do nothing. I can say nothing. I can never explain it. I must go to Mr. Bemis and make a clean breast of it; but think of the absurdity—the ridicule!’

Willis, after a thoughtful silence: ‘Oh, it isn’t that you’ve got to think of. You’ve got to think of the old gentleman’s sense of injury and outrage. Didn’t you hear what he said—that he would have handed over his dearest friend, his own brother, to the police?’

Roberts: ‘But that was in the supposition that his dearest friend, his own brother, had intentionally robbed him. You can’t imagine, Willis—’

Willis: ‘Oh, I can imagine a great many things. It’s all well enough for you to say that the robbery was a mistake; but it was a genuine case of garotting as far as the assault and taking the watch go. He’s a very pudgicky old gentleman.’

Roberts: ‘He is.’

Willis: ‘And I don’t see how you’re going to satisfy him that it was all a joke. Joke? It wasn’t a joke! It was a real assault and a bona fide robbery, and Bemis can prove it.’

Roberts: ‘But he would never insist—’

Willis: ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. He’s pretty queer, Bemis is. You can’t say what an old gentleman like that will or won’t do. If he should choose to carry it into court—’

Roberts: ‘Court!’

Willis: ‘It might be embarrassing. And anyway, it would have a very strange look in the papers.’

Roberts: ‘The papers! Good gracious!’

Willis: ‘Ten years from now a man that heard you mentioned would forget all about the acquittal, and say: “Roberts? Oh yes! Wasn’t he the one they sent to the House of Correction for garotting an old friend of his on the Common!” You see, it wouldn’t do to go and make a clean breast of it to Bemis.’

Roberts: ‘I see.’

Willis: ‘What will you do?’

Roberts: ‘I must never say anything to him about it. Just let it go.’

Willis: ‘And keep his watch? I don’t see how you could manage that. What would you do with the watch? You might sell it, of course—’

Roberts: ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that.’

Willis: ‘You might give it away to some deserving person; but if it got him into trouble—’

Roberts: ‘No, no; that wouldn’t do, either.’

Willis: ‘And you can’t have it lying around; Agnes would be sure to find it, sooner or later.’

Roberts: ‘Yes.’

Willis: ‘Besides, there’s your conscience. Your conscience wouldn’t let you keep Bemis’s watch away from him. And if it would, what do you suppose Agnes’s conscience would do when she came to find it out? Agnes hasn’t got much of a head—the want of it seems to grow upon her; but she’s got a conscience as big as the side of a house.’

Roberts: ‘Oh, I see; I see.’

Willis, coming up and standing over him, with his hands in his pockets: ‘I tell you what, Roberts, you’re in a box.’

Roberts, abjectly: ‘I know it, Willis; I know it. What do you suggest? You must know some way out of it.’

Willis: ‘It isn’t a simple matter like telling them to start the elevator down when they couldn’t start her up. I’ve got to think it over.’ He walks to and fro, Roberts’s eyes helplessly following his movements. ‘How would it do to—No, that wouldn’t do, either.’

Roberts: ‘What wouldn’t?’

Willis: ‘Nothing. I was just thinking—I say, you might—Or, no, you couldn’t.’

Roberts: ‘Couldn’t what?’

Willis: ‘Nothing. But if you were to—No; up a stump that way too.’

Roberts: ‘Which way? For mercy’s sake, my dear fellow, don’t seem to get a clew if you haven’t it. It’s more than I can bear.’ He rises, and desperately confronts Willis in his promenade. ‘If you see any hope at all—’

Willis, stopping: ‘Why, if you were a different sort of fellow, Roberts, the thing would be perfectly easy.’

Roberts: ‘Very well, then. What sort of fellow do you want me to be? I’ll be any sort of fellow you like.’

Willis: ‘Oh, but you couldn’t! With that face of yours, and that confounded conscience of yours behind it, you would give away the whitest lie that was ever told.’

Roberts: ‘Do you wish me to lie? Very well, then, I will lie. What is the lie?’

Willis: ‘Ah, now you’re talking like a man! I can soon think up a lie if you’re game for it. Suppose it wasn’t so very white—say a delicate blonde!’

Roberts: ‘I shouldn’t care if it were as black as the ace of spades.’

Willis: ‘Roberts, I honour you! It isn’t everybody who could steal an old gentleman’s watch, and then be so ready to lie out of it. Well, you have got courage—both kinds—moral and physical.’

Roberts: ‘Thank you, Willis. Of course I don’t pretend that I should be willing to lie under ordinary circumstances; but for the sake of Agnes and the children—I don’t want any awkwardness about the matter; it would be the death of me. Well, what do you wish me to say? Be quick; I don’t believe I could hold out for a great while. I don’t suppose but what Mr. Bemis would be reasonable, even if I—’

Willis: ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t trust him. The only way is for you to take the bull by the horns.’

Roberts: ‘Yes?’

Willis: ‘You will not only have to lie, Roberts, but you will have to wear an air of innocent candour at the same time.’

Roberts: ‘I—I’m afraid I couldn’t manage that. What is your idea?’

Willis: ‘Oh, just come into the room with a laugh when we go back, and say, in an offhand way, “By the way, Agnes, Willis and I made a remarkable discovery in my dressing-room; we found my watch there on the bureau. Ha, ha, ha!” Do you think you could do it?’

Roberts: ‘I—I don’t know.’

Willis: ‘Try the laugh now.’

Roberts: ‘I’d rather not—now.’

Willis: ‘Well, try it, anyway.’

Roberts: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’

Willis: ‘Once more.’

Roberts: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’

Willis: ‘Pretty ghastly; but I guess you can come it.’

Roberts: ‘I’ll try. And then what?’

Willis: ‘And then you say, “I hadn’t put it on when I went out, and when I got after that fellow and took it back, I was simply getting somebody else’s watch!” Then you hold out both watches to her, and laugh again. Everybody laughs, and crowds round you to examine the watches, and you make fun and crack jokes at your own expense all the time, and pretty soon old Bemis says, “Why, this is my watch, now!” and you laugh more than ever—’

Roberts: ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t laugh when he said that. I don’t believe I could laugh. It would make my blood run cold.’

Willis: ‘Oh no, it wouldn’t. You’d be in the spirit of it by that time.’

Roberts: ‘Do you think so? Well?’

Willis: ‘And then you say, “Well, this is the most remarkable coincidence I ever heard of. I didn’t get my own watch from the fellow, but I got yours, Mr. Bemis;” and then you hand it over to him and say, “Sorry I had to break the chain in getting it from him,” and then everybody laughs again, and—and that ends it.’

Roberts, with a profound sigh: ‘Do you think that would end it?’

Willis: ‘Why, certainly. It’ll put old Bemis in the wrong, don’t you see? It’ll show that instead of letting the fellow escape to go and rob him, you attacked him and took Bemis’s property back from him yourself. Bemis wouldn’t have a word to say. All you’ve got to do is to keep up a light, confident manner.’

Roberts: ‘But what if it shouldn’t put Bemis in the wrong? What if he shouldn’t say or do anything that we’ve counted upon, but something altogether different?’

Willis: ‘Well, then, you must trust to inspiration, and adapt yourself to circumstances.’

Roberts: ‘Wouldn’t it be rather more of a joke to come out with the facts at once?’

Willis: ‘On you it would; and a year from now—say next Christmas—you could get the laugh on Bemis that way. But if you were to risk it now, there’s no telling how he’d take it. He’s so indignant he might insist upon leaving the house. But with this plan of mine—’

Roberts, in despair: ‘I couldn’t, Willis. I don’t feel light, and I don’t feel confident, and I couldn’t act it. If it were a simple lie—’

Willis: ‘Oh, lies are never simple; they require the exercise of all your ingenuity. If you want something simple, you must stick to the truth, and throw yourself on Bemis’s mercy.’

Roberts, walking up and down in great distress: ‘I can’t do it; I can’t do it. It’s very kind of you to think it all out for me, but’—struck by a sudden idea—‘Willis, why shouldn’t you do it?’

Willis: ‘I?’

Roberts: ‘You are good at those things. You have so much aplomb, you know. You could carry it off, you know, first-rate.’

Willis, as if finding a certain fascination in the idea: ‘Well, I don’t know—’

Roberts: ‘And I could chime in on the laugh. I think I could do that if somebody else was doing the rest.’

Willis, after a moment of silent reflection: ‘I should like to do it. I should like to see how old Bemis would look when I played it on him. Roberts, I will do it. Not a word! I should like to do it. Now you go on and hurry up your toilet, old fellow; you needn’t mind me here. I’ll be rehearsing.’

Mrs. Roberts, knocking at the door, outside: ‘Edward, are you never coming?’

Roberts: ‘Yes, yes; I’ll be there in a minute, my dear.’

Willis: ‘Yes, he’ll be there. Run along back, and keep it going till we come. Roberts, I wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for this chance.’

Roberts: ‘I’m glad you like it.’

Willis: ‘Like it? Of course I do. Or no! Hold on! Wait! It won’t do! No; you must take the leading part, and I’ll support you, and I’ll come in strong if you break down. That’s the way we have got to work it. You must make the start.’

Roberts: ‘Couldn’t you make it better, Willis? It’s your idea.’

Willis: ‘No; they’d be sure to suspect me, and they can’t suspect you of anything—you’re so innocent. The illusion will be complete.’

Roberts, very doubtfully: ‘Do you think so?’

Willis: ‘Yes. Hurry up. Let me unbutton that collar for you.’