BEGINNING OF THE SERIES
No man who had not known the seamy side of life could have guessed the
effect of Milton Savage's paragraph upon the minds of Lord and Lady
Annesley-Seton.
"I told you if you bet against me you would bet wrong," Knight said, when
the astonished girl handed the letter across the breakfast table. Even he
had hardly reckoned on such extreme cordiality. He had expected a bid for
acquaintanceship with the "millionaire" and his bride, but he had fancied
there would be a certain stiffness in the effort.
Lady Annesley-Seton had begun, "My dear Cousin," and her frank American
way was disarming. She wrote four pages of apology for herself and her
husband, explaining why they had neglected "looking up Mrs. Nelson Smith
when she was Miss Annesley Grayle." The letter went on:
I hadn't been married long when my husband read out of some newspaper
the notice of a clergyman's death, and mentioned that he was a cousin
by marriage whom he hadn't met since boyhood, although the clergyman's
living was in our county--somewhere off at the other end.
My husband thought there was a daughter, and I remember his remarking
that we ought to write and find out if she'd been left badly off. Of
course, it was _my_ duty to have kept his idea alive, and to have
carried it out. But I was young and having such a good time that I'm
afraid it was a case of "out of sight, out of mind."
We forgot to inquire, and heard no more. It was _horrid_ of us, and I'm
sure it was _our_ loss. Probably we should have remembered if things
had gone well with us: but perhaps you know that my father (whose money
used to seem unlimited to me) lost it all, and we were mixed up in the
smash. We've been poorer than any church mice since, and trying to make
ends meet has occupied our attention from that day to this.
I have to confess that, if our attention hadn't been drawn to your
name, we might never have thought of it again. But now I've eased my
conscience, and as fate seems to have brought us within close touch, do
let us see what she means to do with us. We should so like to meet you
and Mr. Nelson Smith, who is, apparently, more or less a countryman of
mine.
I'm not allowed out yet, in this cold weather, after an attack of
"flu"; but my husband will call this afternoon on the chance of finding
you in, carrying a warm invitation to you both to "waive ceremony" and
dine with us at Valley House _en famille_.
Looking forward to meeting you,
Yours most cordially,
Constance Annesley-Seton.
"Sweet of her, isn't it?" Annesley exclaimed when she and Knight had read
the letter through.
Knight glanced at his wife quizzically, opened his lips to speak, and
closed them. Perhaps he thought it would be unwise as well as wrong to
disturb the girl's faith in Lady Annesley-Seton's disinterestedness.
"Yes, it's _real_ sweet!" he said, exaggerating his American accent, but
keeping a grave face.
They were duly "at home" that afternoon, though they had intended to go
out, and the caller found them in a private sitting room filled with
flowers, suggesting much money and a love of spending it. Annesley had
put on Knight's favourite frock, one of the "model dresses" he had chosen
for her in their whirlwind rush through Bond Street, a white cloth
trimmed with narrow bands of dark fur; and she had never looked prettier.
Lord Annesley-Seton, a tall thin man of the eagle-nosed soldier type,
wearing pince-nez, but youthful-looking for the forty-four years Burke
gave him, could not help thinking her a satisfactory cousin to pick up:
and Nelson Smith was far from being in appearance the rough, self-made
man he had dreaded.
He was delighted with them both--so young, so handsome, so happy,
so fortunate, and luckily so well bred. He did not make the short
conventional call he had intended, but stayed to tea, and at last went
home to give his wife an enthusiastic account of the visit.
"The girl's a lady, and might be a beauty if she had more confidence in
herself--you know what I mean: taking herself for granted as a charmer,
the way you smart women do," he said. "She isn't that kind. But with you
to show her the ropes, she'll be liked by the right people. There's a
softness and sweetness and genuineness that you don't often see in girls
now. As for the man, you'll think him a ripper, Connie--so will other
women. Has the air of being a gentleman born, and then having roughed it
all over the world. A strong man, I should say. A man's man as well as a
woman's. Might 'take' if he's started right."
"_We'll_ see to that," said Constance Annesley-Seton, who was not too ill
to go out but had not wanted to seem too eager.
She was less than thirty, but looked more because she had worried and
drawn faint lines between her delicate auburn brows and at the corners
of her greenish-gray eyes. There were also a few fading threads in the
red locks which were her one real beauty; but she had a marvellous
hair-varnish which prevented them from showing.
"We'll see to that! If they'll _let_ us. Are they going to let us?"
"Yes, I think so," Annesley-Seton reassured her. "They're a pair of
children, willing to be guided. They can have anything they want in the
world, but they don't seem to know what to want."
"Splendid!" laughed Constance. "Can't we will them to want our house in
town, and invite us to visit them?"
"I shouldn't wonder," replied her husband. "You might make a start in
that direction when they come to dinner to-morrow evening."
Lord Annesley-Seton had outgrown such enthusiasms as he might once have
had, therefore his account of the cousins encouraged Constance to hope
much, and she was not disappointed. On the contrary, she thought that he
had not said enough, especially about the man.
If she had not had so many anxieties that her youthful love of "larks"
had been crushed out, she would have "adored" a flirtation with Nelson
Smith. It would have been "great fun" to steal him from the pretty
beanpole of a girl who would not know how to use her claws in a fight
for her man; but as it was, Connie thought only of conciliating "Cousin
Anne," and winning her confidence. Other women would try to take Nelson
Smith from his wife, but Connie would have her hands full in playing a
less amusing game.
She thought, seeing that the handsome, dark young man she admired had a
mind of his own, it would be a difficult game to play; and Nelson Smith
saw that she thought so. His sense of humour caused him to smile at his
own cleverness in producing the impression; and he would have given a
good deal for someone to laugh with over her maneuvers to entice him
along the road he wished to travel.
But he dared not point out to Annesley the fun of the situation. To do so
would be to put her against him and it.
She, too, had a sense of humour, suppressed by five years of Mrs.
Ellsworth, but coming delightfully to life, like a half-frozen bird, in
the sunshine of safety and happiness. Knight appealed to and encouraged
it often, for he could not have lived with a humourless woman, no matter
how sweet.
Yet he did not dare wake it where her cousins were concerned. Her sense
of honour was more valuable to him than her sense of humour. He was
afraid to put the former on the defensive, and he was glad to let her
believe the Annesley-Setons were genuinely "warming" to them in a way
which proved that blood was thicker than water.
The girl had wondered from the first why he was determined to make
friends with these cousins whom she had never known, and he was grateful
because she believed in him too loyally to attribute his desire to
"snobbishness." He wished her to suppose he had set his heart on
providing her with influential guidance on the threshold of a new life;
and it was important that she should not begin criticizing his motives.
By the time dinner was over Constance Annesley-Seton had decided that the
Nelson Smiths had been sent to her by the Powers that Be, and that it
would be tempting Providence not to annex them. Not that she put it in
that way to herself, for she did not trouble her mind about Providence.
All she knew was that she and Dick would be fools to let the chance slip.
It was as much as she could do not to suggest the idea in her mind: that
the Nelson Smiths should take the house in Portman Square; that she and
her husband should introduce them to society, and that the Devonshire
place should either be let to them or that they should visit there when
they wished to be in the country, as paying guests.
But she controlled her impatience, limiting herself to proposing plans
for future meetings. She suggested giving a dinner in honour of the bride
and bridegroom, and inviting people whom it would be "nice for them to
know" in town.
Knight said that he and "Anita" (his new name for Annesley, a souvenir
of Spanish South America) would accept with pleasure. And the girl agreed
gladly, because she thought her cousin and his wife were very kind.
After dinner Annesley-Seton and Knight followed Constance and "Anita"
almost directly, the former asking his guests if they would like to see
some of the family treasures which they could only have glanced at in
passing with the crowd the other day.
"Before sugar went to smash, we blazed into all sorts of extravagances
here," he said, bitterly, with a glance at the deposed Sugar King's
daughter. "Among others, putting electric light into this old barn. We'll
have an illumination, and show you some trifles Connie and I wish to
Heaven a kind-hearted burglar would relieve us of.
"Of course the beastly things are heirlooms, as I suppose you know. We
can't sell or pawn them, or I should have done one or the other long ago.
They're insured by the trustees, who are the bane of our lives, for the
estate. But a sporting sort of company has blossomed out lately, which
insures against 'loss of use'--I think that's the expression. I pay the
premium myself--even when I can't pay anything else!--and if the valuable
contents of this place are stolen or burned, we shall benefit personally.
"I don't mind you or all the world knowing we're stony broke," he went
on, frankly. "And everyone _does_ know, anyhow, that we'd be in the deuce
of a hole without the tourists' shillings which pour in twice a week the
year round. You see, each object in the collection helps bring in those
shillings; and 'loss of use' of a single one would be a real deprivation.
So it's fair and above board. But thus far, I've paid my premium and got
no return, these last three years. Our tourists are so disgustingly
honest, or our burglars so clumsy and unenterprising, that, as you say
in the States, 'there's nothing doing.'"
As he talked Dick Annesley-Seton sauntered about the immense room into
which they had come from the state banqueting hall, switching on more and
more of the electric candle-lights set high on the green brocade walls.
This was known as the "green drawing room" by the family, and the "Room
of the Miniatures" by the public, who read about it in catalogues.
"Come and look at our white elephants," he went on, when the room, dimly
and economically lit at first, was ablaze with light; and Mr. and Mrs.
Nelson Smith joined him eagerly. Constance followed, too, bored but
resigned; and her husband paused before a tall, narrow glass cabinet
standing in a recess.
"See these miniatures!" he exclaimed, fretfully. "There are plenty more,
but the best are in this cabinet; and there's a millionaire chap, in New
York--perhaps you can guess his name, Smith?--who has offered a hundred
thousand pounds for the thirty little bits of ivory in it."
"I think that must have been the great Paul Van Vreck," Knight hazarded.
"I thought you'd guess! There aren't many who'd make such an offer. Think
what it would mean to me if it could be accepted, and I could have the
handling of the money. There are three small pictures in the little
octagon gallery next door, too, Van Vreck took a fancy to on a visit he
paid us from Saturday to Monday last summer. We never thought much of
them, and they're in a dark place, labelled in the catalogue 'Artist
unknown: School of Fragonard'; but _he_ swore they were authentic
Fragonards, and would have backed his opinion to the tune of fifteen
thousand pounds for the trio, or six thousand for the one he liked best.
Isn't it aggravating? In the Chinese room he went mad over some bits of
jade, especially a Buddha nobody else had ever admired."
"He's one of the few millionaire collectors who is really a judge of all
sorts of things," Knight replied. "But, great Scott! I'm no expert, yet
it strikes me these miniatures are something out of the ordinary!"
"Well, yes, they are," Annesley-Seton admitted, modestly. "That queer one
at the top is a Nicholas Hilliard. I believe he was the first of the
miniaturists. And the two just underneath are Samuel Coopers. They say he
stood at the head of the Englishmen. There are three Richard Cosways and
rather a nice Angelica Kauffmann."
"It was the Fragonard miniature Mr. Van Vreck liked best," put in
Constance. "It seems he painted only a few. And next, the Goya----"
"Good heavens! where is the Fragonard?" cried Dick, his eyes bulging
behind his pince-nez. "Surely it was here----"
"Oh, surely, yes!" panted his wife. "It was never anywhere else."
For an instant they were stricken into silence, both staring at a blank
space on the black velvet background where twenty-nine miniatures hung.
There was no doubt about it when they had reviewed the rows of little
painted faces. The Fragonard was gone.
"Stolen!" gasped Lady Annesley-Seton.
"Unless one of you, or some servant you trust with the key, is a
somnambulist," said Knight. "I don't see how it would pay a thief to
steal such a thing. It must be too well known. He couldn't dispose of
it--that is if he weren't a collector himself; and even then he could
never show it. But--by Jove!"
"What is it? What have you seen?" Annesley-Seton asked, sharply.
Knight pointed, without touching the cabinet. He had never come near
enough to do that. "It looks to me as if a square bit of glass had been
cut out on the side where the lost miniature must have hung," he said.
"I can't be sure, from where I stand, because the cabinet is too close
to the wall of the recess."
Dick Annesley-Seton thrust his arm into the space between green brocade
and glass, then slipped his hand through a neatly cut aperture just big
enough to admit its passage. With his hand in the square hole he could
reach the spot where the miniature had hung, and could have taken it off
the hook had it been there. But hook, as well as miniature, was missing.
"That settles it!" he exclaimed. "It _is_ a theft, and a clever one!
Strange we should find it out when I was demonstrating to you how much I
wished it would happen. Hurrah! That miniature alone is insured against
burglary for seven or eight hundred pounds. Nothing to what it's worth,
but a lot to pay a premium on, with the rest of the things besides. I
wish now I hadn't been so cheese-paring. You'll be witnesses, you two, of
our discovery. I'm glad Connie and I weren't alone when we found it out.
Something nasty might have been said."
"We'll back you up with pleasure," Knight replied. "What was the
miniature like? I wonder if we saw it when we were here the other day,
Anita? I remember these, but can't recall any other."
"Neither can I," returned Annesley. "But I am stupid about such things.
We saw so many--and passed so quickly."
"I wonder if Paul Van Vreck was here in disguise among the tourists?"
said Dick, beginning to laugh. "It would have been the one he'd have
chosen if he couldn't grab the lot."
"Oh, surely no one in the crowd could have cut a piece of glass out of a
cabinet and stolen a miniature without being seen!" Annesley cried.
"Dick is half in joke," Constance explained. "It would have been a
miracle, yet the servants are above suspicion. Those horrid trustees
never let me choose a new one without their interference. And, of
_course_ Dick didn't mean what he said about Mr. Van Vreck."
"Of course not. I understood that," Annesley excused herself, blushing
lest she had appeared obtuse.
"All the same, to carry on the joke, let's go into the octagon room
and see if the alleged Fragonard pictures have gone, too," said
Annesley-Seton. He led the way, turning on more light in the adjoining
room as he went; and, outdistancing the others, they heard him stammer,
"Good Lord!" before they were near enough to see what he saw.
"They aren't gone?" shrieked his wife, hurrying after him.
"One of them is."
In an instant the three had grouped behind him, where he stood staring at
an empty frame, between two others of the same pattern and size, charming
old frames twelve or fourteen inches square, within whose boundaries of
carved and gilded wood, nymphs held hands and danced.
"Are we _dreaming_ this?" gasped Constance.
"Thank Heaven we're not!" the husband answered. "The two paintings are on
wood, you see. So was the missing one. Someone has simply unfastened it
from the frame, and trusted to this being a dark, out-of-the-way corner,
not to have the theft noticed for hours or maybe days. By all that's
wonderful, here's _another_ insurance haul for me! What about the jade
Buddha in the Chinese room?"
They rushed back into the green drawing room, and so to the beautiful
Chinese room beyond, with its priceless lacquer tables and cabinets. In
one of these latter a collection of exquisite jade was gathered together.
And the Buddha which Paul Van Vreck had coveted was gone!