that Rankin has supplied the reason why the supply of detective
fiction is inexhaustible. It does all come down to the simplest
terms. Seven possibilities, one answer. It is a formula, ludicrously
simple, mechanical, and yet we will always pursue it to the end. The
marvel is that writers should seek for any other formula when here
is one so safe, that can never fail. Be George, I could start up a
factory on it.”
“The reason is,” said Rankin, “that the situation does constantly
occur. It’s a situation that any of us might get into any time. As a
matter of fact, now, I personally know two such occasions when I was
of the party; and very uncomfortable it was too.”
“What happened?” said Steingall.
“Why, there is no story to it particularly. Once a mistake had been
made, and the other time the real thief was detected by accident a
year later. In both cases only one or two of us knew what had
happened.”
De Gollyer had a similar incident to recall. Steingall, after
reflection, related another that had happened to a friend.
“Of course, of course, my dear gentlemen,” said Quinny impatiently,
for he had been silent too long, “you are glorifying commonplaces.
Every crime, I tell you, expresses itself in the terms of the
picture puzzle that you feed to your six-year-old. It’s only the
variation that is interesting. Now quite the most remarkable turn of
the complexities that can be developed is, of course, the well-known
instance of the visitor at a club and the rare coin. Of course every
one knows that? What?”
Rankin smiled in a bored, superior way, but the others protested
their ignorance.
“Why, it’s very well known,” said Quinny lightly. “A distinguished
visitor is brought into a club—dozen men, say, present, at dinner,
long table. Conversation finally veers around to curiosities and
relics. One of the members present then takes from his pocket what
he announces as one of the rarest coins in existence—passes it
around the table. Coin travels back and forth, every one examining
it, and the conversation goes to another topic, say the influence of
the automobile on domestic infelicity, or some other such asininely
intellectual club topic—you know? All at once the owner calls for
his coin.
“The coin is nowhere to be found. Every one looks at every one else.
First, they suspect a joke. Then it becomes serious—the coin is
immensely valuable. Who has taken it?
“The owner is a gentleman—does the gentlemanly idiotic thing, of
course, laughs, says he knows some one is playing a practical joke
on him and that the coin will be returned to-morrow. The others
refuse to leave the situation so. One man proposes that they all
submit to a search. Every one gives his assent until it comes to the
stranger. He refuses, curtly, roughly, without giving any reason.
Uncomfortable silence—the man is a guest. No one knows him
particularly well—but still he is a guest. One member tries to make
him understand that no offense is offered, that the suggestion was
simply to clear the atmosphere, and all that sort of bally rot, you
know.
“‘I refuse to allow my person to be searched,’ says the stranger,
very firm, very proud, very English, you know, ‘and I refuse to give
my reason for my action.’
“Another silence. The men eye him and then glance at one another.
What’s to be done? Nothing. There is etiquette—that magnificent
inflated balloon. The visitor evidently has the coin—but he is their
guest and etiquette protects him. Nice situation, eh?
“The table is cleared. A waiter removes a dish of fruit and there
under the ledge of the plate where it had been pushed—is the coin.
Banal explanation, eh? Of course. Solutions always should be. At
once every one in profouse apologies! Whereupon the visitor rises
and says:
“‘Now I can give you the reason for my refusal to be searched. There
are only two known specimens of the coin in existence, and the
second happens to be here in my waistcoat pocket.’”
“Of course,” said Quinny with a shrug of his shoulders, “the story
is well invented, but the turn to it is very nice—very nice indeed.”
“I did know the story,” said Steingall, to be disagreeable; “the
ending, though, is too obvious to be invented. The visitor should
have had on him not another coin, but something absolutely
different, something destructive, say, of a woman’s reputation, and
a great tragedy should have been threatened by the casual misplacing
of the coin.”
“I have heard the same story told in a dozen different ways,” said
Rankin.
“It has happened a hundred times. It must be continually happening,”
said Steingall.
“I know one extraordinary instance,” said Peters, who up to the
present, secure in his climax, had waited with a professional smile
until the big guns had been silenced. “In fact, the most
extraordinary instance of this sort I have ever heard.”
“Peters, you little rascal,” said Quinny with a sidelong glance, “I
perceive you have quietly been letting us dress the stage for you.”
“It is not a story that will please every one,” said Peters, to whet
their appetite.
“Why not?”
“Because you will want to know what no one can ever know.”
“It has no conclusion then?”
“Yes and no. As far as it concerns a woman, quite the most
remarkable woman I have ever met, the story is complete. As for the
rest, it is what it is, because it is one example where literature
can do nothing better than record.”
“Do I know the woman?” asked De Gollyer, who flattered himself on
passing through every class of society.
“Possibly, but no more than any one else.”
“An actress?”
“What she has been in the past I don’t know—a promoter would better
describe her. Undoubtedly she has been behind the scenes in many an
untold intrigue of the business world. A very feminine woman, and
yet, as you shall see, with an unusual instantaneous masculine power
of decision.”
“Peters,” said Quinny, waving a warning finger, “you are destroying
your story. Your preface will bring an anti-climax.”
“You shall judge,” said Peters, who waited until his audience was in
strained attention before opening his story. “The names are, of
course, disguises.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Rita Kildair inhabited a charming bachelor-girl studio, very
elegant, of the duplex pattern, in one of the buildings just off
Central Park West. She knew pretty nearly every one in that
indescribable society in New York that is drawn from all levels, and
that imposes but one condition for membership—to be amusing. She
knew every one and no one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest
rumors her history or her means. No one had ever heard of a Mr.
Kildair. There was always about her a certain defensive reserve the
moment the limits of acquaintanceship had been reached. She had a
certain amount of money, she knew a certain number of men in Wall
Street affairs, and her studio was furnished with taste and even
distinction. She was of any age. She might have suffered everything
or nothing at all. In this mingled society her invitations were
eagerly sought, her dinners were spontaneous, and the discussions,
though gay and usually daring, were invariably under the control of
wit and good taste.
On the Sunday night of this adventure she had, according to her
invariable custom, sent away her Japanese butler and invited to an
informal chafing-dish supper seven of her more congenial friends,
all of whom, as much as could be said of any one, were habitués of
the studio.
At seven o’clock, having finished dressing, she put in order her
bedroom, which formed a sort of free passage between the studio and
a small dining room to the kitchen beyond. Then, going into the
studio, she lit a wax taper and was in the act of touching off the
brass candlesticks that lighted the room when three knocks sounded
on the door and a Mr. Flanders, a broker, compact, nervously alive,
well groomed, entered with the informality of assured acquaintance.
“You are early,” said Mrs. Kildair, in surprise.
“On the contrary, you are late,” said the broker, glancing at his
watch.
“Then be a good boy and help me with the candles,” she said, giving
him a smile and a quick pressure of her fingers.
He obeyed, asking nonchalantly:
“I say, dear lady, who’s to be here to-night?”
“The Enos Jacksons.”
“I thought they were separated.”
“Not yet.”
“Very interesting! Only you, dear lady, would have thought of
serving us a couple on the verge.”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“Assuredly. Where did you know Jackson?”
“Through the Warings. Jackson’s a rather doubtful person, isn’t he?”
“Let’s call him a very sharp lawyer,” said Flanders defensively.
“They tell me, though, he is on the wrong side of the market—in
deep.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I? I’m a bachelor,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “and
if I come a cropper it makes no difference.”
“Is that possible?” she said, looking at him quickly.
“Probable even. And who else is coming?”
“Maude Lille—you know her?”
“I think not.”
“You met her here—a journalist.”
“Quite so, a strange career.”
“Mr. Harris, a clubman, is coming, and the Stanley Cheevers.”
“The Stanley Cheevers!” said Flanders with some surprise. “Are we
going to gamble?”
“You believe in that scandal about bridge?”
“Certainly not,” said Flanders, smiling. “You see I was present. The
Cheevers play a good game, a well united game, and have an unusual
system of makes. By-the-way it’s Jackson who is very attentive to
Mrs. Cheever, isn’t it?”
“Quite right.”
“What a charming party,” said Flanders flippantly. “And where does
Maude Lille come in?”
“Don’t joke. She is in a desperate way,” said Mrs. Kildair, with a
little sadness in her eyes.
“And Harris?”
“Oh, he is to make the salad and cream the chicken.”
“Ah, I see the whole party. I, of course, am to add the element of
respectability.”
“Of what?”
She looked at him steadily until he turned away, dropping his
glance.
“Don’t be an ass with me, my dear Flanders.”
“By George, if this were Europe I’d wager you were in the secret
service, Mrs. Kildair.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled appreciatively and moved about the studio, giving the
finishing touches. The Stanley Cheevers entered, a short fat man
with a vacant fat face and a slow-moving eye, and his wife, voluble,
nervous, overdressed and pretty. Mr. Harris came with Maude Lille, a
woman, straight, dark, Indian, with great masses of somber hair held
in a little too loosely for neatness, with thick, quick lips and
eyes that rolled away from the person who was talking to her. The
Enos Jacksons were late and still agitated as they entered. His
forehead had not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn.
He was of the type that never lost his temper, but caused others to
lose theirs, immovable in his opinions, with a prowling walk, a
studied antagonism in his manner, and an impudent look that fastened
itself unerringly on the weakness in the person to whom he spoke.
Mrs. Jackson, who seemed fastened to her husband by an invisible
leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate
dash, which she assumed rather than felt in her attitude toward
life. One looked at her curiously and wondered what such a nature
would do in a crisis, with a lurking sense of a woman who carried
with her her own impending tragedy.
As soon as the company had been completed and the incongruity of the
selection had been perceived, a smile of malicious anticipation ran
the rounds, which the hostess cut short by saying:
“Well, now that every one is here, this is the order of the night:
You can quarrel all you want, you can whisper all the gossip you can
think of about one another, but every one is to be amusing! Also
every one is to help with the dinner—nothing formal and nothing
serious. We may all be bankrupt to-morrow, divorced or dead, but
to-night we will be gay—that is the invariable rule of the house!”
Immediately a nervous laughter broke out and the company,
chattering, began to scatter through the rooms.
Mrs. Kildair, stopping in her bedroom, donned a Watteaulike cooking
apron, and slipping her rings from her fingers fixed the three on
her pincushion with a hatpin.
“Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful,” said the low voice of
Maude Lille, who, with Harris and Mrs. Cheever, was in the room.
“There’s only one that is very valuable,” said Mrs. Kildair,
touching with her thin fingers the ring that lay uppermost, two
large diamonds, flanking a magnificent sapphire.
“It is beautiful—very beautiful,” said the journalist, her eyes
fastened to it with an uncontrollable fascination. She put out her
fingers and let them rest caressingly on the sapphire, withdrawing
them quickly as though the contact had burned them.
“It must be very valuable,” she said, her breath catching a little.
Mrs. Cheever, moving forward, suddenly looked at the ring.
“It cost five thousand six years ago,” said Mrs. Kildair, glancing
down at it. “It has been my talisman ever since. For the moment,
however, I am cook; Maude Lille, you are scullery maid; Harris is
the chef, and we are under his orders. Mrs. Cheever, did you ever
peel onions?”
“Good Heavens, no!” said Mrs. Cheever, recoiling.
“Well, there are no onions to peel,” said Mrs. Kildair, laughing.
“All you’ll have to do is to help set the table. On to the kitchen!”
Under their hostess’s gay guidance the seven guests began to
circulate busily through the rooms, laying the table, grouping the
chairs, opening bottles, and preparing the material for the chafing
dishes. Mrs. Kildair, in the kitchen, ransacked the ice box, and
with her own hands chopped the _fines herbes_, shredded the chicken
and measured the cream.
“Flanders, carry this in carefully,” she said, her hands in a towel.
“Cheever, stop watching your wife and put the salad bowl on the
table. Everything ready, Harris? All right. Every one sit down. I’ll
be right in.”
She went into her bedroom, and divesting herself of her apron hung
it in the closet. Then going to her dressing table she drew the
hatpin from the pincushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her
fingers. All at once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand.
Only two rings were there, the third ring, the one with the sapphire
and the two diamonds, was missing.
“Stupid,” she said to herself, and returned to her dressing table.
All at once she stopped. She remembered quite clearly putting the
pin through the three rings.
She made no attempt to search further, but remained without moving,
her fingers drumming slowly on the table, her head to one side, her
lip drawn in a little between her teeth, listening with a frown to
the babble from the outer room. Who had taken the ring? Each of her
guests had had a dozen opportunities in the course of the time she
had been busy in the kitchen.
“Too much time before the mirror, dear lady,” called out Flanders
gaily, who from where he was seated could see her.
“It is not he,” she said quickly. Then she reconsidered. “Why not?
He is clever—who knows? Let me think.”
To gain time she walked back slowly into the kitchen, her head
bowed, her thumb between her teeth.
“Who has taken it?”
She ran over the characters of her guests and their situations as
she knew them. Strangely enough, at each her mind stopped upon some
reason that might explain a sudden temptation.
“I shall find out nothing this way,” she said to herself after a
moment’s deliberation; “that is not the important thing to me just
now. The important thing is to get the ring back.”
And slowly, deliberately, she began to walk back and forth, her
clenched hand beating the deliberate rhythmic measure of her
journey.
Five minutes later, as Harris, installed _en maître_ over the
chafing dish, was giving directions, spoon in the air, Mrs. Kildair
came into the room like a lengthening shadow. Her entrance had been
made with scarcely a perceptible sound, and yet each guest was aware
of it at the same moment, with a little nervous start.
“Heavens, dear lady,” exclaimed Flanders, “you come in on us like a
Greek tragedy! What is it you have for us, a surprise?”
As he spoke she turned her swift glance on him, drawing her forehead
together until the eyebrows ran in a straight line.
“I have something to say to you,” she said in a sharp, businesslike
manner, watching the company with penetrating eagerness.
There was no mistaking the seriousness of her voice. Mr. Harris
extinguished the oil lamp, covering the chafing dish clumsily with a
discordant, disagreeable sound. Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Enos Jackson
swung about abruptly, Maude Lille rose a little from her seat, while
the men imitated these movements of expectancy with a clumsy
shuffling of the feet.
“Mr. Enos Jackson?”
“Yes, Mrs. Kildair.”
“Kindly do as I ask you.”
“Certainly.”
She had spoken his name with a peremptory positiveness that was
almost an accusation. He rose calmly, raising his eyebrows a little
in surprise.
“Go to the door,” she continued, shifting her glance from him to the
others. “Are you there? Lock it. Bring me the key.”
He executed the order without bungling, and returning stood before
her, tendering the key.
“You’ve locked it?” she said, making the words an excuse to bury her
glance in his.
“As you wished me to.”
“Thanks.”
She took from him the key and, shifting slightly, likewise locked
the door into her bedroom through which she had come.
Then transferring the keys to her left hand, seemingly unaware of
Jackson, who still awaited her further commands, her eyes studied a
moment the possibilities of the apartment.
“Mr. Cheever?” she said in a low voice.
“Yes, Mrs. Kildair.”
“Blow out all the candles except the candelabrum on the table.”
“Put out the lights, Mrs. Kildair?”
“At once.”
Mr. Cheever, in rising, met the glance of his wife, and the look of
questioning and wonder that passed did not escape the hostess.
“But, my dear Mrs. Kildair,” said Mrs. Jackson with a little nervous
catch of her breath, “what is it? I’m getting terribly worked up! My
nerves—”
“Miss Lille?” said the voice of command.
“Yes.”
The journalist, calmer than the rest, had watched the proceedings
without surprise, as though fore-warned by professional instinct
that something of importance was about to take place. Now she rose
quietly with an almost stealthy motion.
“Put the candelabrum on this table—here,” said Mrs. Kildair,
indicating a large round table on which a few books were grouped.
“No, wait. Mr. Jackson, first clear off the table. I want nothing on
it.”
“But, Mrs. Kildair—” began Mrs. Jackson’s shrill voice again.
“That’s it. Now put down the candelabrum.”
In a moment, as Mr. Cheever proceeded methodically on his errand,
the brilliant crossfire of lights dropped in the studio, only a few
smoldering wicks winking on the walls, while the high room seemed to
grow more distant as it came under the sole dominion of the three
candles bracketed in silver at the head of the bare mahogany table.
“Now listen!” said Mrs. Kildair, and her voice had in it a cold
note. “My sapphire ring has just been stolen.”
She said it suddenly, hurling the news among them and waiting
ferret-like for some indications in the chorus that broke out.
“Stolen!”
“Oh, my dear Mrs. Kildair!”
“Stolen—by Jove!”
“You don’t mean it!”
“What! Stolen here—to-night?”
“The ring has been taken within the last twenty minutes,” continued
Mrs. Kildair in the same determined, chiseled tone. “I am not going
to mince words. The ring has been taken and the thief is among you.”
For a moment nothing was heard but an indescribable gasp and a
sudden turning and searching, then suddenly Cheever’s deep bass
broke out:
“Stolen! But, Mrs. Kildair, is it possible?”
“Exactly. There is not the slightest doubt,” said Mrs. Kildair.
“Three of you were in my bedroom when I placed my rings on the
pincushion. Each of you has passed through there a dozen times
since. My sapphire ring is gone, and one of you has taken it.”
Mrs. Jackson gave a little scream, and reached heavily for a glass
of water. Mrs. Cheever said something inarticulate in the outburst
of masculine exclamation. Only Maude Lille’s calm voice could be
heard saying:
“Quite true. I was in the room when you took them off. The sapphire
ring was on top.”
“Now listen!” said Mrs. Kildair, her eyes on Maude Lille’s eyes. “I
am not going to mince words. I am not going to stand on ceremony.
I’m going to have that ring back. Listen to me carefully. I’m going
to have that ring back, and until I do, not a soul shall leave this
room.” She tapped on the table with her nervous knuckles. “Who has
taken it I do not care to know. All I want is my ring. Now I’m going
to make it possible for whoever took it to restore it without
possibility of detection. The doors are locked and will stay locked.
I am going to put out the lights, and I am going to count one
hundred slowly. You will be in absolute darkness; no one will know
or see what is done. But if at the end of that time the ring is not
here on this table I shall telephone the police and have every one
in this room searched. Am I quite clear?”
Suddenly she cut short the nervous outbreak of suggestions and in
the same firm voice continued:
“Every one take his place about the table. That’s it. That will do.”
The women, with the exception of the inscrutable Maude Lille, gazed
hysterically from face to face; while the men, compressing their
fingers, locking them or grasping their chins, looked straight ahead
fixedly at their hostess.
Mrs. Kildair, having calmly assured herself that all were ranged as
she wished, blew out two of the three candles.
“I shall count one hundred, no more, no less,” she said. “Either I
get back that ring or every one in this room is to be searched,
remember.”
Leaning over, she blew out the remaining candle and snuffed it.
“One, two, three, four, five—”
She began to count with the inexorable regularity of a clock’s
ticking.
In the room every sound was distinct, the rustle of a dress, the
grinding of a shoe, the deep, slightly asthmatic breathing of a man.
“Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—”
She continued to count, while in the methodic unvarying note of her
voice there was a rasping reiteration that began to affect the
company. A slight gasping breath, uncontrollable, almost on the
verge of hysterics, was heard, and a man nervously clearing his
throat.
“Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven—”
Still nothing had happened. Mrs. Kildair did not vary her measure
the slightest, only the sound became more metallic.
“Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine and seventy—”
Some one had sighed.
“Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six,
seventy-seven—”
All at once, clear, unmistakable, on the resounding plane of the
table was heard a slight metallic note.
“The ring!”
It was Maude Lille’s quick voice that had spoken. Mrs. Kildair
continued to count.
“Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one—”
The tension became unbearable. Two or three voices protested against
the needless prolonging of the torture.
“Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine and one
hundred.”
A match sputtered in Mrs. Kildair’s hand and on the instant the
company craned forward. In the center of the table was the sparkling
sapphire and diamond ring. Candles were lit, flaring up like
searchlights on the white accusing faces.
“Mr. Cheever, you may give it to me,” said Mrs. Kildair. She held
out her hand without trembling, a smile of triumph on her face,
which had in it for a moment an expression of positive cruelty.
Immediately she changed, contemplating with amusement the horror of
her guests, staring blindly from one to another, seeing the
indefinable glance of interrogation that passed from Cheever to Mrs.
Cheever, from Mrs. Jackson to her husband, and then without emotion
she said:
“Now that that is over we can have a very gay little supper.”
* * * * *
When Peters had pushed back his chair, satisfied as only a trained
raconteur can be by the silence of a difficult audience, and had
busied himself with a cigar, there was an instant outcry.
“I say, Peters, old boy, that is not all!”
“Absolutely.”
“The story ends there?”
“That ends the story.”
“But who took the ring?”
Peters extended his hands in an empty gesture.
“What! It was never found out?”
“Never.”
“No clue?”
“None.”
“I don’t like the story,” said De Gollyer.
“It’s no story at all,” said Steingall.