To write an end to the tale, a sort of Miami Beach Rififi, Florida Insurance Millionaire John D. MacArthur, 68, agreed to pay $25,000 as ransom for the $140,000 DeLong ruby, stolen last October in the great jewel robbery at Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History. MacArthur packed the cash in a bundle of $100 and $50 bills for Freelance Writer Francis P. Antel to deliver to the usurers who had held the 100.32-carat ruby as collateral on a loan. He then drove out to a phone booth near Palm Beach and found the stone perched like a pebble on a ledge over the door. MacArthur announced that the ruby will quickly rejoin nine other jewels recovered so far--including the priceless 563.35-carat Star of India sapphire. Why did he put up the ransom? "Public service," smiled MacArthur proudly.

Their affair started off nervously, with French Fashion Model Bettina shuffling around for a full hour waiting for her date. Then things began to relax. Her ever-after date, Aly Khan, would round up a group of friends in Paris and drag them all off to a horror film, then drop off to sleep, leaving instructions with Bettina to wake him instantly if he snored. Actually, writes Bettina in Bettina, a history of her five years with the late Aly, the cinema was one of the few places where Aly could get a decent sleep. He was a compulsive gambler, a lover of outhouse humor and intricately vulgar practical jokes. "But never once did he fail to treat me as a wife," says Bettina of Aly, who never did get around to marrying her.

"In this book," says the new King Korn Stamp Co.'s catalogue, "you will find a wide selection of the finest gifts from America's leading manufacturers." For example, 5 3/5 books of stamps will fetch you a Gooney-Cycle unicycle, five books, a Kidee Krome table and chair set. And for just 1,975 books you may have, from one of America's leading manufacturers indeed, Rice Threshing by Thomas Hart Benton, 76. Did putting his work up for stamps bother the crusty Missouri artist? Not a bit, said Benton, who was paid around $5,000 for the painting. "I've always liked the idea of popularizing paintings." The next question is what popularized art lover is going to buy the $296,250 worth of merchandise and lick the 2,962,500 stamps he will need to purchase it.

First merry George Murphy danced on as a U.S. Senator. Then Good Guy Ronald Reagan strolled in from stage right to thrill his audience with the idea he might run for Governor of California against Pat Brown. Now, with Jimmy Roosevelt giving up his congressional seat from Los Angeles' 26th District to represent the U.S. on the United Nations Economic and Social Council, liberal Showman Steve Allen, 46, says he too might want to get in on the act by trying out for Roosevelt's part. Trouble with the Congress bit, says Steve, is that it's not liberal enough--with money: "In Las Vegas they pay you in a week what a Congressman makes in a year."

Judy Garland, 43, is about to take a fourth husband for the third time. Or maybe it is the first time. In June 1964, she announced in Hong Kong that she had been married twice--once by a ship's captain, once by a Buddhist priest--to longtime Traveling Companion Mark Herron. Then she said no, she hadn't at all, when it turned out that her marriage to Hollywood Producer Sid Luft had not been dissolved. The Dissolution came in May, and as she opened a concert series last week at the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, Calif., Judy quavered to the audience: "I'm going to marry my beloved Mark on the 19th of September." The bridegroom pronounced himself "stunned, thrilled and overwhelmed."

With due ceremony, the Denison, Texas, school board decided to rename the local high school in honor of Dwight David Eisenhower, 74, who was born in that little two-story frame house near the tracks. Would Ike attend? He'd be delighted. So everything was arranged, until some townspeople started to grumble. Why, they sniffed, that Eisenhower boy lived here only three months before the family moved up to Abilene. And hadn't one of the papers said he was "born in Denison by accident"? The school board backed off, sheepishly offered to name, well, the school auditorium after him. But would Ike still attend? He'd be delighted. And so were the townspeople when the general arrived, flashing the famous grin and sternly telling young people to respect law and order. "The nicest part," said a woman who has lived there 76 years, "is he never said anything about the squabble."

French Ambassador Herve Alphand, 58, and his wife Nicole had been close to the Kennedys, but when Lyndon Johnson came to the White House, the entente was not all that cordiale ("I suppose we will have to learn zee bar-bee-cue," quipped Nicole). For more than a year there has been gossip that the Alphands would be leaving Washington. Now called home to Paris to take over the No. 2 post in the Quai d'Orsay under Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, Alphand makes way in Washington for a Frenchman who might better understand "zee bar-bee-cue"--possibly the Quai's political section chief, Charles Lucet, who has 16 years' diplomatic service in the U.S.

"Calm down!" yelled Paul McCartney through the pelting jelly-bean rain in San Francisco's Cow Palace. "Things are getting dangerous." That was nothing new, but as the Beatles fought through the last engagement of their late-summer U.S. campaign, the casualties were especially heavy. One cop was knocked cold, conked by a flying Coke bottle, two others had minor injuries, 231 beatlenuts fainted, 94 got first aid, and five-months-pregnant Julia Stewart, wife of the Kingston Trio's John Stewart, was nearly trampled when she was jostled to the bedlam floor. C'est la guerre. Flying back to London, the shaggy O.B.E.s relaxed by counting the booty--well over $1,000,000 for a two-week tour in eight cities--and decided that, after all, war was swell.

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