to take leave of the Manager. Several times in the corridor he stopped
to wipe his eyes.
"Max, you unholy fraud," he said, when they were outside, "you knew all
the time."
"No; I told you that I knew nothing of it," replied Carrados frankly. "I
am absolutely sincere."
"Then all I can say is, that I see a good many things happen that I
don't believe in."
Carrados's reply was to hold out a coin to a passing newsboy and to hand
the purchase to his friend who was already in the car.
"There is a slang injunction to 'keep your eyes skinned.' That being out
of my power, I habitually 'keep my ears skinned.' You would be surprised
to know how very little you hear, Louis, and how much you miss. In the
last five minutes up there I have had three different newsboys' account
of this development."
"By Jupiter, she hasn't waited long!" exclaimed Mr Carlyle, referring
eagerly to the headlines. "'PEARL NECKLACE SENSATION. SOCIETY LADY'S
L5000 TRINKET DISAPPEARS.' Things are moving. Where next, Max?"
"It is now a quarter to one," replied Carrados, touching the fingers of
his watch. "We may as well lunch on the strength of this new turn.
Parkinson will have finished packing; I can telephone him to come to us
at Merrick's in case I require him. Buy all the papers, Louis, and we
will collate the points."
The undoubted facts that survived a comparison were few and meagre, for
in each case a conscientious journalist had touched up a few vague or
doubtful details according to his own ideas of probability. All agreed
that on Tuesday evening--it was now Thursday--Mrs Straithwaite had
formed one of a party that had occupied a box at the new Metropolitan
Opera House to witness the performance of _La Pucella_, and that she had
been robbed of a set of pearls valued in round figures at five thousand
pounds. There agreement ended. One version represented the theft as
taking place at the theatre. Another asserted that at the last moment
the lady had decided not to wear the necklace that evening and that its
abstraction had been cleverly effected from the flat during her absence.
Into a third account came an ambiguous reference to Markhams, the
well-known jewellers, and a conjecture that their loss would certainly
be covered by insurance.
Mr Carlyle, who had been picking out the salient points of the
narratives, threw down the last paper with an impatient shrug.
"Why in heaven's name have we Markhams coming into it now?" he demanded.
"What have they to lose by it, Max? What do you make of the thing?"
"There is the second genuine string--the one Bellitzer saw. That belongs
to someone."
"By gad, that's true--only five days ago, too. But what does our lady
stand to make by that being stolen?"
Carrados was staring into obscurity between an occasional moment of
attention to his cigarette or coffee.
"By this time the lady probably stands to wish she was well out of it,"
he replied thoughtfully. "Once you have set this sort of stone rolling
and it has got beyond you----" He shook his head.
"It has become more intricate than you expected?" suggested Carlyle, in
order to afford his friend an opportunity of withdrawing.
Carrados pierced the intention and smiled affectionately.
"My dear Louis," he said, "one-fifth of the mystery is already solved."
"One-fifth? How do you arrive at that?"
"Because it is one-twenty-five and we started at eleven-thirty."
He nodded to their waiter, who was standing three tables away, and paid
the bill. Then with perfect gravity he permitted Mr Carlyle to lead him
by the arm into the street, where their car was waiting, Parkinson
already there in attendance.
"Sure I can be of no further use?" asked Carlyle. Carrados had
previously indicated that after lunch he would go on alone, but, because
he was largely sceptical of the outcome, the professional man felt
guiltily that he was deserting. "Say the word?"
Carrados smiled and shook his head. Then he leaned across.
"I am going to the opera house now; then, possibly, to talk to Markham a
little. If I have time I must find a man who knows the Straithwaites,
and after that I may look up Inspector Beedel if he is at the Yard. That
is as far as I can see yet, until I call at Luneburg Mansions. Come
round on the third anyway."
"Dear old chap," murmured Mr Carlyle, as the car edged its way ahead
among the traffic. "Marvellous shots he makes!"
In the meanwhile, at Luneburg Mansions, Mrs Straithwaite had been
passing anything but a pleasant day. She had awakened with a headache
and an overnight feeling that there was some unpleasantness to be gone
on with. That it did not amount to actual fear was due to the enormous
self-importance and the incredible ignorance which ruled the butterfly
brain of the young society beauty--for in spite of three years'
experience of married life Stephanie Straithwaite was as yet on the
enviable side of two and twenty.
Anticipating an early visit from a particularly obnoxious sister-in-law,
she had remained in bed until after lunch in order to be able to deny
herself with the more conviction. Three journalists who would have
afforded her the mild excitement of being interviewed had called and
been in turn put off with polite regrets by her husband. The
objectionable sister-in-law postponed her visit until the afternoon and
for more than an hour Stephanie "suffered agonies." When the visitor had
left and the martyred hostess announced her intention of flying
immediately to the consoling society of her own bridge circle,
Straithwaite had advised her, with some significance, to wait for a
lead. The unhappy lady cast herself bodily down upon a couch and asked
whether she was to become a nun. Straithwaite merely shrugged his
shoulders and remembered a club engagement. Evidently there was no need
for him to become a monk: Stephanie followed him down the hall, arguing
and protesting. That was how they came jointly to encounter Carrados at
the door.
"I have come from the Direct Insurance in the hope of being able to see
Mrs Straithwaite," he explained, when the door opened rather suddenly
before he had knocked. "My name is Carrados--Max Carrados."
There was a moment of hesitation all round. Then Stephanie read
difficulties in the straightening lines of her husband's face and rose
joyfully to the occasion.
"Oh yes; come in, Mr Carrados," she exclaimed graciously. "We are not
quite strangers, you know. You found out something for Aunt Pigs; I
forget what, but she was most frantically impressed."
"Lady Poges," enlarged Straithwaite, who had stepped aside and was
watching the development with slow, calculating eyes. "But, I say, you
are blind, aren't you?"
Carrados's smiling admission turned the edge of Mrs Straithwaite's
impulsive, "Teddy!"
"But I get along all right," he added. "I left my man down in the car
and I found your door first shot, you see."
The references reminded the velvet-eyed little mercenary that the man
before her had the reputation of being quite desirably rich, his queer
taste merely an eccentric hobby. The consideration made her resolve to
be quite her nicest possible, as she led the way to the drawing-room.
Then Teddy, too, had been horrid beyond words and must be made to suffer
in the readiest way that offered.
"Teddy is just going out and I was to be left in solitary bereavement if
you had not appeared," she explained airily. "It wasn't very compy only
to come to see me on business by the way, Mr Carrados, but if those are
your only terms I must agree."
Straithwaite, however, did not seem to have the least intention of
going. He had left his hat and stick in the hall and he now threw his
yellow gloves down on a table and took up a negligent position on the
arm of an easy-chair.
"The thing is, where do we stand?" he remarked tentatively.
"That is the attitude of the insurance company, I imagine," replied
Carrados.
"I don't see that the company has any standing in the matter. We haven't
reported any loss to them and we are not making any claim, so far. That
ought to be enough."
"I assume that they act on general inference," explained Carrados. "A
limited liability company is not subtle, Mrs Straithwaite. This one
knows that you have insured a five-thousand-pound pearl necklace with
it, and when it becomes a matter of common knowledge that you have had
one answering to that description stolen, it jumps to the conclusion
that they are one and the same."
"But they aren't--worse luck," explained the hostess. "This was a string
that I let Markhams send me to see if I would keep."
"The one that Bellitzer saw last Saturday?"
"Yes," admitted Mrs Straithwaite quite simply.
Straithwaite glanced sharply at Carrados and then turned his eyes with
lazy indifference to his wife.
"My dear Stephanie, what are you thinking of?" he drawled. "Of course
those could not have been Markhams' pearls. Not knowing that you are
much too clever to do such a foolish thing, Mr Carrados will begin to
think that you have had fraudulent designs upon his company."
Whether the tone was designed to exasperate or merely fell upon a
fertile soil, Stephanie threw a hateful little glance in his direction.
"I don't care," she exclaimed recklessly; "I haven't the least little
objection in the world to Mr Carrados knowing exactly how it happened."
Carrados put in an instinctive word of warning, even raised an arresting
hand, but the lady was much too excited, too voluble, to be denied.
"It doesn't really matter in the least, Mr Carrados, because nothing
came of it," she explained. "There never were any real pearls to be
insured. It would have made no difference to the company, because I did
not regard this as an ordinary insurance from the first. It was to be a
loan."
"A loan?" repeated Carrados.
"Yes. I shall come into heaps and heaps of money in a few years' time
under Prin-Prin's will. Then I should pay back whatever had been
advanced."
"But would it not have been better--simpler--to have borrowed purely on
the anticipation?"
"We have," explained the lady eagerly. "We have borrowed from all sorts
of people, and both Teddy and I have signed heaps and heaps of papers,
until now no one will lend any more."
The thing was too tragically grotesque to be laughed at. Carrados turned
his face from one to the other and by ear, and by even finer
perceptions, he focussed them in his mind--the delicate, feather-headed
beauty, with the heart of a cat and the irresponsibility of a kitten,
eye and mouth already hardening under the stress of her frantic life,
and, across the room, her debonair consort, whose lank pose and
nonchalant attitude towards the situation Carrados had not yet
categorized.
Straithwaite's dry voice, with its habitual drawl, broke into his
reflection.
"I don't suppose for a moment that you either know or care what this
means, my dear girl, but I will proceed to enlighten you. It means the
extreme probability that unless you can persuade Mr Carrados to hold his
tongue, you, and--without prejudice--I also, will get two years' hard.
And yet, with unconscious but consummate artistry, it seems to me that
you have perhaps done the trick; for, unless I am mistaken, Mr Carrados
will find himself unable to take advantage of your guileless confidence,
whereas he would otherwise have quite easily found out all he wanted."
"That is the most utter nonsense, Teddy," cried Stephanie, with petulant
indignation. She turned to Carrados with the assurance of meeting
understanding. "We know Mr Justice Enderleigh very well indeed, and if
there was any bother I should not have the least difficulty in getting
him to take the case privately and in explaining everything to him. But
why should there be? Why indeed?" A brilliant little new idea possessed
her. "Do you know any of these insurance people at all intimately, Mr
Carrados?"
"The General Manager and I are on terms that almost justify us in
addressing each other as 'silly ass,'" admitted Carrados.
"There you see, Teddy, you needn't have been in a funk. Mr Carrados
would put everything right. Let me tell you exactly how I had arranged
it. I dare say you know that insurances are only too pleased to pay for
losses: it gives them an advertisement. Freddy Tantroy told me so, and
his father is a director of hundreds of companies. Only, of course, it
must be done quite regularly. Well, for months and months we had both
been most frightfully hard up, and, unfortunately, everyone else--at
least all our friends--seemed just as stony. I had been absolutely
racking my poor brain for an idea when I remembered papa's wedding
present. It was a string of pearls that he sent me from Vienna, only a
month before he died; not real, of course, because poor papa was always
quite utterly on the verge himself, but very good imitation and in
perfect taste. Otherwise I am sure papa would rather have sent a silver
penwiper, for although he had to live abroad because of what people
said, his taste was simply exquisite and he was most romantic in his
ideas. What do you say, Teddy?"
"Nothing, dear; it was only my throat ticking."
"I wore the pearls often and millions of people had seen them. Of course
our own people knew about them, but others took it for granted that
they were genuine for me to be wearing them. Teddy will tell you that I
was almost babbling in delirium, things were becoming so ghastly, when
an idea occurred. Tweety--she's a cousin of Teddy's, but quite an aged
person--has a whole coffer full of jewels that she never wears and I
knew that there was a necklace very like mine among them. She was going
almost immediately to Africa for some shooting, so I literally flew into
the wilds of Surrey and begged her on my knees to lend me her pearls for
the Lycester House dance. When I got back with them I stamped on the
clasp and took it at once to Karsfeld in Princess Street. I told him
they were only paste but I thought they were rather good and I wanted
them by the next day. And of course he looked at them, and then looked
again, and then asked me if I was certain they were imitation, and I
said, Well, we had never thought twice about it, because poor papa was
always rather chronic, only certainly he did occasionally have fabulous
streaks at the tables, and finally, like a great owl, Karsfeld said:
"'I am happy to be able to congratulate you, madam. They are undoubtedly
Bombay pearls of very fine orient. They are certainly worth five
thousand pounds.'"
From this point Mrs Straithwaite's narrative ran its slangy, obvious
course. The insurance effected--on the strict understanding of the lady
with herself that it was merely a novel form of loan, and after
satisfying her mind on Freddy Tantroy's authority that the Direct and
Intermediate could stand a temporary loss of five thousand pounds--the
genuine pearls were returned to the cousin in the wilds of Surrey and
Stephanie continued to wear the counterfeit. A decent interval was
allowed to intervene and the plot was on the point of maturity when the
company's request for a scrutiny fell like a thunderbolt. With many
touching appeals to Mr Carrados to picture her frantic distraction, with
appropriate little gestures of agony and despair, Stephanie described
her absolute prostration, her subsequent wild scramble through the jewel
stocks of London to find a substitute. The danger over, it became
increasingly necessary to act without delay, not only to anticipate
possible further curiosity on the part of the insurance, but in order to
secure the means with which to meet an impending obligation held over
them by an inflexibly obdurate Hebrew.
The evening of the previous Tuesday was to be the time; the opera house,
during the performance of _La Pucella_, the place. Straithwaite, who was
not interested in that precise form of drama, would not be expected to
be present, but with a false moustache and a few other touches which his
experience as an amateur placed within his easy reach, he was to occupy
a stall, an end stall somewhere beneath his wife's box. At an agreed
signal Stephanie would jerk open the catch of the necklace, and as she
leaned forward the ornament would trickle off her neck and disappear
into the arena beneath. Straithwaite, the only one prepared for
anything happening, would have no difficulty in securing it. He would
look up quickly as if to identify the box, and with the jewels in his
hand walk deliberately out into the passage. Before anyone had quite
realized what was happening he would have left the house.
Carrados turned his face from the woman to the man.
"This scheme commended itself to you, Mr Straithwaite?"
"Well, you see, Stephanie is so awfully clever that I took it for
granted that the thing would go all right."
"And three days before, Bellitzer had already reported misrepresentation
and that two necklaces had been used!"
"Yes," admitted Straithwaite, with an air of reluctant candour, "I had a
suspicion that Stephanie's native ingenuity rather fizzled there. You
know, Stephanie dear, there _is_ a difference, it seems, between Bombay
and Californian pearls."
"The wretch!" exclaimed the girl, grinding her little teeth vengefully.
"And we gave him champagne!"
"But nothing came of it; so it doesn't matter?" prompted Straithwaite.
"Except that now Markhams' pearls have gone and they are hinting at all
manner of diabolical things," she wrathfully reminded him.
"True," he confessed. "That is by way of a sequel, Mr Carrados. I will
endeavour to explain that part of the incident, for even yet Stephanie
seems unable to do me justice."
He detached himself from the arm of the chair and lounged across the
room to another chair, where he took up exactly the same position.
"On the fatal evening I duly made my way to the theatre--a little late,
so as to take my seat unobserved. After I had got the general hang I
glanced up occasionally until I caught Stephanie's eye, by which I knew
that she was there all right and concluded that everything was going
along quite jollily. According to arrangement, I was to cross the
theatre immediately the first curtain fell and standing opposite
Stephanie's box twist my watch chain until it was certain that she had
seen me. Then Stephanie was to fan herself three times with her
programme. Both, you will see, perfectly innocent operations, and yet
conveying to each other the intimation that all was well. Stephanie's
idea, of course. After that, I would return to my seat and Stephanie
would do her part at the first opportunity in Act II.
"However, we never reached that. Towards the end of the first act
something white and noiseless slipped down and fell at my feet. For the
moment I thought they were the pearls gone wrong. Then I saw that it was
a glove--a lady's glove. Intuition whispered that it was Stephanie's
before I touched it. I picked it up and quietly got out. Down among the
fingers was a scrap of paper--the corner torn off a programme. On it
were pencilled words to this effect:
"'Something quite unexpected. Can do nothing to-night. Go back
at once and wait. May return early. Frightfully worried.--S.'"
"You kept the paper, of course?"
"Yes. It is in my desk in the next room. Do you care to see it?"
"Please."
Straithwaite left the room and Stephanie flung herself into a charming
attitude of entreaty.
"Mr Carrados, you will get them back for us, won't you? It would not
really matter, only I seem to have signed something and now Markhams
threaten to bring an action against us for culpable negligence in
leaving them in an empty flat."
"You see," explained Straithwaite, coming back in time to catch the
drift of his wife's words, "except to a personal friend like yourself,
it is quite impossible to submit these clues. The first one alone would
raise embarrassing inquiries; the other is beyond explanation.
Consequently I have been obliged to concoct an imaginary burglary in our
absence and to drop the necklace case among the rhododendrons in the
garden at the back, for the police to find."
"Deeper and deeper," commented Carrados.
"Why, yes. Stephanie and I are finding that out, aren't we, dear?
However, here is the first note; also the glove. Of course I returned
immediately. It was Stephanie's strategy and I was under her orders. In
something less than half-an-hour I heard a motor car stop outside. Then
the bell here rang.
"I think I have said that I was alone. I went to the door and found a
man who might have been anything standing there. He merely said: 'Mr
Straithwaite?' and on my nodding handed me a letter. I tore it open in
the hall and read it. Then I went into my room and read it again. This
is it:
"'DEAR T.,--Absolutely ghastly. We simply must put off
to-night. Will explain that later. Now what do you think?
Bellitzer is here in the stalls and young K. D. has asked him
to join us at supper at the Savoy. It appears that the creature
is Something and I suppose the D.'s want to borrow off him. I
can't get out of it and I am literally quaking. Don't you see,
he will spot something? Send me the M. string at once and I
will change somehow before supper. I am scribbling this in the
dark. I have got the Willoughby's man to take it. Don't, don't
fail.--S.'"
"It is ridiculous, preposterous," snapped Stephanie. "I never wrote a
word of it--or the other. There was I, sitting the whole evening. And
Teddy--oh, it is maddening!"
"I took it into my room and looked at it closely," continued the
unruffled Straithwaite. "Even if I had any reason to doubt, the internal
evidence was convincing, but how could I doubt? It read like a
continuation of the previous message. The writing was reasonably like
Stephanie's under the circumstances, the envelope had obviously been
obtained from the box-office of the theatre and the paper itself was a
sheet of the programme. A corner was torn off; I put against it the
previous scrap and they exactly fitted." The gentleman shrugged his
shoulders, stretched his legs with deliberation and walked across the
room to look out of the window. "I made them up into a neat little
parcel and handed it over," he concluded.
Carrados put down the two pieces of paper which he had been minutely
examining with his finger-tips and still holding the glove addressed his
small audience collectively.
"The first and most obvious point is that whoever carried out the scheme
had more than a vague knowledge of your affairs, not only in general but
also relating to this--well, loan, Mrs Straithwaite."
"Just what I have insisted," agreed Straithwaite. "You hear that,
Stephanie?"
"But who is there?" pleaded Stephanie, with weary intonation.
"Absolutely no one in the wide world. Not a soul."
"So one is liable to think offhand. Let us go further, however, merely
accounting for those who are in a position to have information. There
are the officials of the insurance company who suspect something; there
is Bellitzer, who perhaps knows a little more. There is the lady in
Surrey from whom the pearls were borrowed, a Mr Tantroy who seems to
have been consulted, and, finally, your own servants. All these people
have friends, or underlings, or observers. Suppose Mr Bellitzer's
confidential clerk happens to be the sweetheart of your maid?"
"They would still know very little."
"The arc of a circle may be very little, but, given that, it is possible
to construct the entire figure. Now your servants, Mrs Straithwaite? We
are accusing no one, of course."
"There is the cook, Mullins. She displayed alarming influenza on Tuesday
morning, and although it was most frightfully inconvenient I packed her
off home without a moment's delay. I have a horror of the influ. Then
Fraser, the parlourmaid. She does my hair--I haven't really got a maid,
you know."
"Peter," prompted Straithwaite.
"Oh yes, Beta. She's a daily girl and helps in the kitchen. I have no
doubt she is capable of any villainy."
"And all were out on Tuesday evening?"
"Yes. Mullins gone home. Beta left early as there was no dinner, and I
told Fraser to take the evening after she had dressed me so that Teddy
could make up and get out without being seen."
Carrados turned to his other witness.
"The papers and the glove have been with you ever since?"
"Yes, in my desk."
"Locked?"
"Yes."
"And this glove, Mrs Straithwaite? There is no doubt that it is yours?"