A RIALTO RAIN-STORM
I lifted my face to the sudden pelt of the rain-shower, feeling very
much like a second edition of King Lear as I did so. Not that I had
lost a kingdom, or that I'd ever been turned out of an ungrateful home
circle! But something quite as disturbing, in its own small way, had
overtaken me.
I had been snubbed by Mary Lockwood. While I stood watching that
sudden shower empty upper Broadway as quickly as a fusillade of bullets
might have emptied it, I encountered something which quite as promptly
emptied my own heart. It was the cut direct. For as I crouched back
under my dripping portico, like a toad under a rhubarb-leaf, I caught
sight of the only too familiar wine-colored landaulet as it swung about
into Longacre Square. I must have started forward a little, without
being quite conscious of the movement. And through the sheltering
plate-glass of the dripping hood I caught sight of Mary Lockwood
herself.
She saw me, at the same time that I saw her. In fact, she turned and
stared at me. I couldn't have escaped her, as I stood there under the
street-lamp. But no slightest sign of recognition came from that
coldly inquiring face. She neither smiled nor bowed nor looked back.
And the wine-colored landaulet swept on, leaving me standing there with
my sodden hat in my hand and a great ache of desolation in my heart.
She must have seen me, I repeated as I turned disconsolately back and
stood watching men and women still ducking under doorways and dodging
into side-streets and elbowing into theater-lobbies. It seemed during
the next few moments as though that territory once known as the Rialto
were a gopher-village and some lupine hunger had invaded it. Before
the searching nuzzles of those rain-guests all pleasure-seekers
promptly vanished. Gaily cloaked and slippered women stampeded away as
though they were made of sugar and they and their gracious curves might
melt into nothing at the first touch of water. Above the sidewalk,
twenty paces from the empty doorway where I loitered, an awning
appeared, springing up like a mushroom from a wet meadow. In toward
one end of this awning circled a chain of limousines and taxicabs,
controlled by an impassive Hercules in dripping oil-skins. And as a
carrier-belt empties grain into a mill-bin, so this unbroken chain
ejected hurrying men and women across the wet curb into the
light-spangled hopper of the theater-foyer. And the thought of that
theater, with its companionable crush of humanity, began to appeal to
my rain-swept spirit.
Yet I stood there, undecided, watching the last of the scattering
crowd, watching the street that still seemed an elongated bull-ring
where a matador or two still dodged the taurine charges of vehicles. I
watched the electric display-signs that ran like liquid ivy about the
shop fronts, and then climbed and fluttered above the roofs, misty and
softened by rain. I watched the ironic heavens pour their unabating
floods down on that congested and overripe core of a city that no water
could wash clean.
Then the desolation of the empty streets seemed to grow unbearable.
The spray that blew in across my dampened knees made me think of
shelter. I saw the lights of the theater no more than twenty paces
away. It was already a warren of crowded life. The thought of even
what diluted companionship it might offer me continued to carry an
appeal that became more and more clamorous.
A moment later I stood before its box-office window, no wider than a
medieval leper-squint, from which cramped and hungry souls buy access
to their modern temples of wonder.
"Standing room only," announced the autocrat of the wicket. And I
meekly purchased my admission-ticket, remembering that the head usher
of that particular theater had in the past done me more than one slight
service.
Yet the face of this haughtily obsequious head usher, as his hand met
mine in that free-masonry which is perpetuated by certain silk-threaded
scraps of oblong paper, was troubled.
"I haven't a thing left," he whispered.
I peered disconsolately about that sea of heads seeking life through
the clumsy lattice of polite melodrama.
"Unless," added the usher at my elbow, "you'll take a seat in that
second lower box?"
Even through the baize doors behind me I could hear the beat and patter
of the rain. It was a case of any port in a storm.
"That will do nicely," I told him and a moment later he was leading me
down a side aisle into the curtained recess of the box entrance.
Yet it was not ordained that I should occupy that box in lonely and
unrivaled splendor. One of its chairs, set close to the brass rail and
plush-covered parapet that barred it off from the more protuberant
stage box, was already occupied by a man in full evening dress. He,
like myself, perhaps, had never before shared a box with other than his
own acquaintances. At any rate, before favoring me with the somewhat
limited breadth of his back, he turned on me one sidelong and
unmistakably resentful stare.
Yet I looked at this neighbor of mine, as I seated myself, with more
interest than I looked at the play-actors across the foot-lights, for I
rather preferred life in the raw to life in the sirups of stage
emotionalism.
It startled me a little to find that the man, at the moment, was
equally oblivious of anything taking place on the stage. His eyes, in
fact, seemed fixed on the snowy shoulders of the woman who sat at the
back of the stage box, directly in front of him. As I followed the
direction of his gaze I was further surprised to discover the object on
which it was focused. He was staring, not at the woman herself, but at
a pigeon-blood ruby set in the clasp of some pendant or necklace
encircling her throat.
There was, indeed, some excuse for his staring at it. In the first
place it was an extraordinarily large and vivid stone. But against the
background where it lay, against the snow-white column of the neck
(whitened, perhaps, by a prudent application of rice powder) it stood
out in limpid ruddiness, the most vivid of fire against the purest of
snow. It was a challenge to attention. It caught and held the eye.
It stood there, just below where the hair billowed into its crown of
Venetian gold, as semaphoric as a yard-lamp to a night traveler. And I
wondered, as I sat looking at it, what element beyond curiosity could
coerce the man at my side into studying it so indolently and yet so
intently.
About the man himself there seemed little that was exceptional. Beyond
a certain quick and shrewd alertness in his eye-movements as he looked
about at me from time to time with muffled resentment which I found not
at all to my liking, he seemed medium in everything, in coloring, in
stature, in apparel. His face was of the neutral sallowness of the
sedentary New Yorker. His intelligence seemed that of the preoccupied
office-worker who could worm his way into an ill-fitting dress suit and
placidly approve of second-rate melodrama. He seemed so without
interest, in fact, that I was not averse to directing my glance once
more toward the pigeon-blood ruby which glowed like a live coal against
the marble whiteness of the neck in front of me.
It may have been mere accident, or it may have been that out of our
united gaze arose some vague psychic force which disturbed this young
woman. For as I sat there staring at the shimmering jewel, its wearer
suddenly turned her head and glanced back at me. The next moment I was
conscious of her nod and smile, unmistakably in my direction.
Then I saw who it was. I had been uncouthly staring at the
shoulder-blades of Alice Churchill--they were the Park Avenue
Churchills--and farther back in the box I caught a glimpse of her
brother Benny, who had come north, I knew, from the Nicaraguan coast to
recuperate from an attack of fever.
Yet I gave little thought to either of them, I must confess. At the
same time that I had seen that momentarily flashing smile I had also
discovered that the jeweled clasp on the girl's neck was holding in
place a single string of graduated pearls, of very lovely pearls, the
kind about which the frayed-cuff garret-author and the Sunday "yellows"
forever love to romance. I was also not unconscious of the quick and
covert glance of the man who sat so close to me.
Then I let my glance wander back to the ruby, apparently content to
study its perfect cutting and its unmatchable coloring. And I knew
that the man beside me was also sharing in that spectacle. I was, in
fact, still staring at it, so unconscious of the movement of the play
on the stage that the "dark scene," when every light in the house went
out for a second or two, came to me with a distinct sense of shock.
A murmur of approval went through the house as the returning light
revealed to them a completely metamorphosed stage-setting. What this
setting was I did not know, nor did I look up to see. For as my idly
inquisitive glance once more focused itself on the columnar white neck
that towered above the chair-back a second and greater shock came to
me. Had that neck stood there without a head I could have been
scarcely more startled.
The pigeon-blood ruby was gone. There was no longer any necklace
there. The column of snow was without its touch of ruddy light. It
was left as disturbingly bare as a target without its bull's-eye. It
reminded me of a marble grate without its central point of fire.
My first definite thought was that I was the witness of a crime as
audacious as it was bewildering. Yet, on second thought, it was simple
enough. The problem of proximity had already been solved. With the
utter darkness had come the opportunity, the opportunity that obviously
had been watched for. With one movement of the hand the necklace had
been quietly and cunningly removed.
My next quick thought was that the thief sat there in my immediate
neighborhood. There could be no other. There was no room for doubt.
By some mysterious and dextrous movement the man beside me had reached
forward and with that delicacy of touch doubtless born of much
experience had unclasped the jewels, all the time shrouded by the utter
darkness. The audacity of the thing was astounding, yet the
completeness with which it had succeeded was even more astounding.
I sat there compelling myself to a calmness which was not easy to
achieve. I struggled to make my scrutiny of this strange companion of
mine as quiet and leisured as possible.
Yet he seemed to feel that he was still under my eye. He seemed to
chafe at that continued survey; for even as I studied him I could see a
fine sweat of embarrassment come out on his face. He did not turn and
look at me directly, but it was plain that he was only too conscious of
my presence. And even before I quite realized what he was about, he
reached quietly over, and taking up his hat and coat, rose to his feet
and slipped out of the box.
That movement on his part swept away my last shred of hesitation. The
sheer precipitancy of his flight was proof enough of his offense. His
obvious effort to escape made me more than ever determined to keep on
his trail.
And keep on his trail I did, from the moment he sidled guiltily out of
that lighted theater foyer into the still drizzling rain of Broadway.
Stronger and ever stronger waves of indignation kept sweeping through
me as I watched him skulk northward, with a furtive glance over his
shoulder as he fled.
He was a good two hundred feet ahead of me when I saw him suddenly turn
and at the risk of a visit to the hospital or the morgue, cross the
street in the middle of the block, dodge desperately between the
surface cars and automobiles, and beat it straight for the Times
Building. I promptly threw decorum away and ran, ran like a rabbit,
until I came to the Forty-second Street entrance to the drug store
through whose revolving doors I had seen my man disappear. I felt
reasonably certain he wouldn't stop to drink an ice-cream soda and he
didn't, for as I hurried past the fountain I caught sight of him
turning into the stairway that leads to the subway station. I dashed
ahead but he was through the gate before I could catch up with him. I
had no time for a ticket as the guards were already slamming shut the
doors of a south-bound "local."
"Buy me a ticket," I called to the astonished "chopper" as I tossed a
dollar bill over the arm which he thrust out to stop me. I did not
wait to argue it out, for the car door in front of me was already
beginning to close. I had just time to catapult my body in between
that sliding door and its steel frame. I knew, as I caught my breath
again, that I was on the platform of the car behind the jewel thief.
And I stood there, carefully scrutinizing the line of car doors as we
pulled into the Grand Central Station. I did the same as we passed
Thirty-third Street, and the same again at Twenty-eighth Street. The
man had given no sign that he actually knew I was on his track. He
might or might not have seen me. As to that I had no means of being
certain. But I was certain of the fact that he was making off in a
panic of indeterminate fear, that he was doing his utmost to evade
pursuit.
This came doubly home to me as the train stopped at Twenty-third Street
and I saw him step quickly out of the far end of the car, look about
him, and dart across the station platform and up the stairway two steps
at a time.
I was after him, even more hurriedly. By the time I reached the street
he was swinging up on the step of a cross-town surface car. To catch
that car was out of the question, but I waited a moment and swung
aboard the one that followed it, thirty yards in the rear. Peering
ahead, I could plainly see him as he dropped from his car on the
northeast corner of Sixth Avenue. I could see him as he hurried up the
steps of the Elevated, crossed the platform, and without so much as
buying a ticket, hurried down the southeast flight of steps.
I had closed in on him by this time, so that we were within a biscuit
toss of each other. Yet never once did he look about. He was now
doubling on his tracks, walking rapidly eastward along Twenty-third
Street. I was close behind him as he crossed Broadway, turning south,
and then suddenly tacking about, entered the hallway of the building
that was once the Hotel Bartholdi and promptly directed his steps
toward the side entrance on Twenty-third Street.
Even as he emerged into the open again he must have seen the
antediluvian night-hawk cab waiting there at the curb. What his
directions to the driver were I had no means of knowing. But as that
dripping and water-proofed individual brought his whip lash down on his
steaming horse a door slammed shut in my face. Once more I so far
forgot my dignity as to dodge and run like a rabbit, this time to the
other side of the cab as it swung briskly northward. One twist and
pull threw the cab door open and I tumbled in--tumbled in to see my
white-faced and frightened jewel thief determinedly and frenziedly
holding down the handle of the opposite door.
His face went ashen as I came sprawling and lurching against him. He
would have leaped bodily from the carriage, which was now swinging up
an all but deserted Fifth Avenue, had I not caught and held him there
with a grimness born of repeated exasperation.
He showed no intention of meekly submitting to that detaining grasp.
Seeing that he was finally cornered, he turned on me and fought like a
rat. His strength, for one of his weight, was surprising. Much more
surprising, however, was his ferocity. And it was a strange struggle,
there in the half light of that musty and many-odored night-hawk cab.
There seemed something subterranean about it, as though it were a
battle at the bottom of a well. And but for one thing, I imagine, it
would not, for me, have been a pleasant encounter. It's a marvelous
thing, however, to know that you have Right on your side. The panoply
of Justice is as fortifying as any chain armor ever made.
And I knew, as we fought like two wharf-rats under a pier-end, that I
was right. I knew that my cause was the cause of law and order. That
knowledge gave me both strength and a boldness which carried me through
even when I saw my writhing and desperate thief groping and grasping
for his hip pocket, even when I saw him draw from it a
magazine-revolver that looked quite ugly enough to stampede a regiment.
And as that sodden-leathered night-hawk went placidly rolling up Fifth
Avenue we twisted and panted and grunted on its floor as though it were
a mail-coach in the Sierras of sixty years ago, fighting for the
possession of that ugly firearm.
How I got it away from him I never quite knew. But when I came to my
senses I had him on the cab floor and my knee on his chest, with his
body bent up like a letter U. I held him there while I went through
his pockets, quietly, deliberately, one by one, with all the care of a
customs inspector going through a suspected smuggler.
I had no time to look over his wallet (which I remembered as being as
big as a brief-bag) or his papers, nor had I time to make sure how much
of the jewelry he wore might be his own. The one thing I wanted was
the pearl necklace with the pigeon-blood ruby. And this necklace I
found, carefully wrapped in a silk handkerchief tucked down in his
right-hand waistcoat pocket--which, by the way, was provided with a
buttoned flap to make it doubly secure.
I looked over the necklace to make sure there could be no mistake.
Then I again wrapped it up in the silk handkerchief and thrust it well
down in my own waistcoat pocket.
"Get up!" I told the man on the cab floor.
I noticed, as I removed my knee from his chest, what a sorry condition
his shirt-front was in and how his tie had been twisted around under
his right ear. He lay back against the musty cushions, breathing hard
and staring at me out of eyes that were by no means kindly.
"You couldn't work it!" I said, as I pocketed the revolver and, having
readjusted my own tie, buttoned my overcoat across a sadly crumpled
shirt-front. Then for the first time the thief spoke.
"D'you know what this'll cost you?" he cried, white to the lips.
"That's not worrying me," was my calm retort. "I got what I came
after."
He sat forward in his seat with a face that looked foolishly
threatening.
"Don't imagine you can get away with that," he declared. I could
afford to smile at his impotent fury.
"Just watch me!" I told him. Then I added more soberly, with my hand
on the door-knob, "And if you interfere with me after I leave this cab,
if you so much as try to come within ten yards of me to-night, I'll
give you what's coming to you."
I opened the door as I spoke, and dropped easily from the still moving
cab to the pavement. I stood there for a moment, watching its placid
driver as he went on up the avenue. The glass-windowed door still
swung open, swaying back and forth like a hand slowly waving me good-by.
Then I looked at my watch, crossed to the University Club, jumped into
a waiting taxi, and dodged back to the theater, somewhat sore in body
but rather well satisfied in mind.
A peculiar feeling of superiority possessed me as I presented my
door-check and was once more ushered back to my empty box. During the
last hour and a half that pit full of languid-eyed people had been
witnessing a tawdry imitation of adventure. They had been swallowing a
capsule of imitation romance, while I, between the time of leaving and
reentering that garishly lighted foyer, had reveled in adventure at
first hand, had taken chances and faced dangers and righted a great
wrong.
I felt inarticulately proud of myself as I watched the final curtain
come down. This pride became a feeling of elation as I directed my
glance toward Alice Churchill, who had risen in the box in front of
mine, and was again showering on me the warmth of her friendly smile.
I knew I was still destined to be the god from the machine. It was as
plain that she was still unconscious of her loss.
I stopped her and her hollow-cheeked brother on their way out,
surprising them a little, I suppose, by the unlooked-for cordiality of
my greeting.
"Can't you two children take a bite with me at Sherry's?" I amiably
suggested. I could see brother and sister exchange glances.
"Benny oughtn't to be out late," she demurred.
"But I've something rather important to talk over," I pleaded.
"And Benny _would_ like to get a glimpse of Sherry's again," interposed
the thin-cheeked youth just back from the wilds. And without more ado
I bundled them into a taxi and carried them off with me, wondering just
what would be the best way of bringing up the subject in hand.
I found it much harder, in fact, than I had expected. I was, as time
went on, more and more averse to betraying my position, to descending
mildly from my pinnacle of superiority, to burning my little pin-wheel
of power. I was like a puppy with its first buried bone. I knew what
I carried so carefully wrapped up in my waistcoat pocket. I remembered
how it had come there, and during that quiet supper hour I was
inordinately proud of myself.
I sat looking at the girl with her towering crown of reddish-gold hair.
She, in turn, was gazing at her own foolishly distorted reflection in
the polished bowl of the chafing-dish from which I had just served her
with _capon a la reine_. She sat there gazing at her reflected face,
gazing at it with a sort of studious yet impersonal intentness. Then I
saw her suddenly lean forward in her chair, still looking at the
grotesque image of herself in the polished silver. I could not help
noticing her quickly altering expression, the inarticulate gasp of her
parted lips, the hand that went suddenly up to her throat. I saw the
fingers feel around the base of the compactly slender neck, and the
momentary look of stupor that once more swept over her face.
She ate a mouthful of capon, studiously, without speaking. Then she
looked up at us again. It was then that her brother Benny for the
first time noticed her change of color.
"What's wrong?" he demanded, his thin young face touched suddenly with
anxiety.
The girl, when she finally answered him, spoke very quietly. But I
could see what a struggle it was costing her.
"Now, Benny, I don't want any fuss," she said, almost under her breath.
"I don't want either of you to get excited, for it can't do a bit of
good. But my necklace is gone."
"Gone?" gasped Benny. "It can't be!"
"It's gone," she repeated, with her vacant eyes on me as her brother
prodded and felt about her skirt, and then even shook out her crumpled
opera cloak.
"Does this happen to be it?" I asked, with all the nonchalance at my
command. And as I spoke I unwrapped the string of pearls with the
pigeon-blood ruby and let them roll on the white damask that lay
between us.
She looked at them without moving, her eyes wide with wonder. I could
see the color come back into her face. It was quite reward enough to
witness the relieving warmth return to those widened eyes, to bask in
that lovely and liquid glance of gratitude.
"How," she asked a little weakly, as she reached over and took them up
in her fingers, "how did you get them?"
"You lost them in the theater-box during the first act," I told her.
Her brother Benny wiped his forehead.
"And it's up to a woman to drop forty thousand dollars and never know
it," he cried.
I watched her as she turned them over in her hands. Then she suddenly
looked up at me, then down at the pearls, then up at me again.
"_This is not my necklace_," were the astonishing words that I heard
fall from her lips. I knew, of course, that she was mistaken.
"Oh, yes, it is," I quietly assured her.
She shook her head in negation, still staring at me.
"What makes you think so?" she asked.
"I don't think it, I know it," was my response. "Those aren't the sort
of stones that grow on every bush in this town."
She was once more studying the necklace. And once more she shook her
head.
"But I am left-handed," she was explaining, as she still looked down at
them, "and I had my clasp, here on the ruby at the back, made to work
that way. This clasp is right-handed. Don't you see, it's on the
wrong side."
"But you've only got the thing upside down," cried her brother. And I
must confess that a disagreeable feeling began to manifest itself in
the pit of my stomach as he moved closer beside her and tried to
reverse the necklace so that the clasp would stand a left-handed one.
He twisted and turned it fruitlessly for several moments.
"Isn't that the limit?" he finally murmured, sinking back in his chair
and regarding me with puzzled eyes. The girl, too, was once more
studying my face, as though my movement represented a form of uncouth
jocularity which she could not quite comprehend.
"What's the answer, anyway?" asked the mystified youth.
But his bewilderment was as nothing compared to mine. I reached over
for the string of pearls with the ruby clasp. I took them and turned
them over and over in my hands, weakly, mutely, as though they
themselves might in some way solve an enigma which seemed inscrutable.
And I had to confess that the whole thing was too much for me. I was
still looking down at that lustrous row of pearls, so appealing to the
eye in their absolute and perfect graduation, when I heard the younger
man at my side call my name aloud.
"Kerfoot!" he said, not exactly in alarm and not precisely in anxiety,
yet with a newer note that made me look up sharply.
As I did so I was conscious of the figure so close behind me, so near
my chair that even while I had already felt his presence there, I had
for the moment taken him for my scrupulously attentive waiter. But as
I turned about and looked up at this figure I saw that I was mistaken.
My glance fell on a wide-shouldered and rather portly man with quiet
and very deep-set gray eyes. What disturbed me even more than his
presence there at my shoulder was the sense of power, of unparaded
superiority, on that impassive yet undeniably intelligent face.
"I want to see you," he said, with an unemotional matter-of-factness
that in another would have verged on insolence.
"About what?" I demanded, trying to match his impassivity with my own.
He nodded toward the necklace in my hand.
"About that," he replied.
"What about that?" I languidly inquired.
The portly man at my shoulder did not answer me. Instead he turned and
nodded toward a second man, a man standing half a dozen paces behind
him, in a damp overcoat and a sadly rumpled shirt-front.
I felt my heart beat faster of a sudden, for it took no second glance
to tell me that this second figure was the jewel thief whom I had
trailed and cornered in the musty-smelling cab.
I felt the larger man's sudden grip on my shoulder--and his hand seemed
to have the strength of a vise--as the smaller man, still pale and
disheveled, stepped up to the table. His face was not a pleasant one.
Benny Churchill, whose solicitous eyes bent for a moment on his
sister's startled face, suddenly rose to his feet.
"Look here," he said, with a quiet vigor of which I had not dreamed him
capable, "there's not going to be any scene here." He turned to the
man at my shoulder. "I don't know who you are, but I want you to
remember there's a lady at this table. Remember that, please, or I'll
be compelled to teach you how to!"
"Sit down!" I told him. "For heaven's sake, sit down, all of you!
There's nothing to be gained by heroics. And if we've anything to say,
we may as well say it decently."
The two men exchanged glances as I ordered two chairs for them.
"Be so good," I continued, motioning them toward these chairs. "And
since we have a problem to discuss, there's no reason we can't discuss
it in a semi-civilized manner."
"It's not a problem," said the man at my shoulder, with something
disagreeably like a sneer.
"Then by all means don't let's make it one," I protested.
The man behind me was the first to drop into the empty seat on my left.
The other man crossed to the farther side of the table, still watching
me closely. Then he felt for the chair and slowly sank into it; but
not once did he take his eyes from my face. I was glad that our circle
had become a compact one, for the five of us were now ranged
sufficiently close about the table to fence off our little white-linen
kingdom of dissension from the rest of the room.
"That man's armed, remember!" the jewel thief suddenly cried to the
stranger on my left. He spoke both warningly and indignantly. His
flash of anger, in fact, seemed an uncontrollable one.
"Where's your gun?" said the quiet-eyed man at my side. His own hand
was in his pocket, I noticed, and there was a certain malignant line of
purpose about his mouth which I did not at all like.
Yet I was able to laugh a little as I put the magazine revolver down on
the table; it had memories which were amusing.
The quick motion with which he removed that gun, however, was even more
laughable. Yet my returning sense of humor in no way impressed him.
"Where'd you get that gun?" he inquired.
I nodded my head toward the white-faced man opposite me.
"I took it away from your friend there," was my answer.
"And what else did you take?"
There was something impressive about the man's sheer impersonality. It
so kept things down to cases.
"This pearl necklace with the ruby clasp," I answered.
"Why?" demanded my interlocutor.
"Because he stole it," was my prompt retort. The big man was silent
for a moment.
"From whom?"
"From the lady you have the honor of facing," I answered.
"Where?" was his next question.
I told him. He was again silent for a second or two.
"D'you know who this man is?" he said, with a curt head-nod toward his
white-faced colleague.
"Yes," I answered.
"What is he?"
"He's a jewel thief."
The two men stared at each other. Then the man at my side rubbed his
chin between a meditative thumb and forefinger. He was plainly
puzzled. He began to take on human attributes, and he promptly became
a less interesting and a less impressive figure. He looked at Alice
Churchill and at her brother, and then back at me again.
Then, having once more absently caressed his chin, he swung about and
faced the wondering and silent girl who sat opposite him.
"Excuse me, miss, but would you mind answering a question or two?"
It was her brother who spoke before she had time to answer.
"Wait," he interposed. "Just who are you, anyway?"
The man, for answer, lifted the lapel of his coat and exhibited a
silver badge.
"Well, what does that mean?" demanded the quite unimpressed youth.
"That I'm an officer."
"What kind--a detective?"
"Yes."
"For what? For this place?"
"No, for the Maiden Lane Protective Association."
"Well, what's that got to do with us?"
The large-bodied man looked at him a little impatiently.
"You'll understand that when the time comes," was his retort. "Now,
young lady," he began again, swinging back to the puzzled girl, "do you
say you lost a necklace in that theater-box?"
The girl nodded.
"Yes, I must have," she answered, looking a little frightened.
"And you say it was stolen from you?"
"No, I didn't say that. I had my necklace on when I was in the
box--both Benny and I know that."
"And it disappeared?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"I noticed it was gone when I sat down at the table here."
The dominating gentleman turned round to me.
"You saw the necklace from the second box?" he demanded.
"I did," was my answer.
"And you saw it disappear?" he demanded.
"I saw _when_ it disappeared," I retorted.
The jewel thief with the crumpled shirt-front tried to break in at this
juncture, but the bigger man quickly silenced him with an impatient
side swing of the hand.
"When was that?" he continued.
"What difference does it make?" I calmly inquired, resenting the
peremptoriness of his interrogations.
He stopped short and looked up at me. Then the first ghost of a smile,
a patient and almost sorrowful smile, came to his lips.
"Well, we'll go at it another way. You witnessed this man across the
table take the necklace from the young lady?"
"It practically amounts to that."
"That is, you actually detected him commit this crime?"
"I don't think I said that."
"But you assumed he committed this crime?"
"Rather."
"Just when was it committed?"
"During what they call a dark change in the first act."
"You mean the necklace was on before that change and gone when the
lights were turned up again?"
"Precisely."
"And the position and actions of this man were suspicious to you?"
"Extremely so."
"In what way?"
"In different ways."
"He had crowded suspiciously close to the wearer of the necklace?"
"He had."
"And his eyes were glued on it during the early part of that act?"
"They certainly were."
"And you watched him?"
"With almost as much interest as he watched the necklace."
"And after the dark change, as you call it, the lady's neck was bare?"
"It was."
"You're sure of this?"
"Positive."
"And what did this man across the table do?"
"Having got what he was after, he hurried out of the theater and made
his escape--or tried to make his escape."
"It embarrassed him, I suppose, to have you studying him so closely?"
"He certainly looked embarrassed."
"Of course," admitted my interrogator. Then he sighed deeply, almost
contentedly, after which he sat with contemplative and pursed-up lips.
"I guess I've got this whole snarl now," he complacently admitted.
"All but one kink."
"What one kink?" demanded Benny Churchill.
The man at my side did not answer him. Instead, he rose to his feet.
"I want you to come with me," he had the effrontery to remark, with a
curt head-nod in my direction.
"I much prefer staying here," I retorted. And for the second time he
smiled his saddened smile.
"Oh, it's nothing objectionable," he explained. "Nobody's going to
hurt you. And we'll be back here in ten minutes."
"But, oddly enough, I have rooted objections to deserting my guests."
"Your guests won't be sorry, I imagine," he replied, as he looked at
his silver turnip of a watch. "And we're losing good time."
"Please go," said Alice Churchill, emboldened, apparently, by some
instinctive conclusion which she could not, or did not care to,
explain. And she was backed up, I noticed, by a nod from her brother.
I also noticed, as I rose to my feet, that I still held the necklace in
my hand. I was a little puzzled as to just what to do with it.
"That," said the sagacious stranger, "you'd better leave here. Let the
young lady keep it until we get back. And you, Fessant," he went on,
turning to the belligerent-lipped jewel thief, "you stay right here and
make yourself pleasant. And without bein' rude, you might see that the
young lady and her brother stay right here with you."
Then he took me companionably by the arm and led me away.
"What's the exact meaning of all this?" I inquired as we threaded our
course out to the cab-stand and went dodging westward along Forty-third
Street in a taxi. The rain, I noticed, through the fogged window, was
still falling.
"I want you to show me exactly where that man sat in that box," was his
answer. "And two minutes in the theater will do it."
"And what good," I inquired, "is that going to do me?"
"It may do you a lot of good," he retorted, as he flung open the cab
door.
"I feel rather sorry for you if it doesn't," was my answer as I
followed him out. We had drawn up before a desolate-looking stage door
over which burned an even more desolate-looking electric bulb. The man
turned and looked at me with a short ghost of a grunt, more of disgust
than contempt.
"You're pretty nifty, aren't you, for a New York edition of Jesse
James?"
And without waiting for my answer he began kicking on the
shabby-looking stage door with his foot. He was still kicking there
when the door itself was opened by a man in a gray uniform, obviously
the night watchman.
"Hello, Tim!" said the one.
"Hello, Bud!" said the other.
"Doorman gone?"
"'Bout an hour ago!"
Then ensued a moment of silence.
"Burnside say anything was turned in?"
"Didn't hear of it," was the watchman's answer.
"My friend here thinks he's left something in a box. Could you let us
through?"
"Sure," was the easy response. "I'll throw on the house-lights for
youse. Watch your way!"
He preceded us through a maze of painted canvas and what looked like
the backs of gigantic picture-frames. He stepped aside for a moment to
turn on a switch. Then he opened a narrow door covered with
sheet-iron, and we found ourselves facing the box entrances.
My companion motioned me into the second box while he stepped briskly
into that nearer the foot-lights.
"Now, the young lady sat there," he said, placing the gilt chair back
against the brass railing. Then he sat down in it, facing the stage.
Having done so, he took off his hat and placed it on the box floor.
"Now you show me where that man sat."
I placed the chair against the plush-covered parapet and dropped into
it.
"Here," I explained, "within two feet of where you are."
"All right!" was his sudden and quite unexpected rejoinder. "That's
enough! That'll do!"
He reached down and groped about for his hat before rising from the
chair. He brushed it with the sleeve of his coat absently, and then
stepped out of the box.
"We'd better be getting back," he called to me from the sheet-iron
covered doorway.
"Back to what?" I demanded, as I followed him out through the
canvas-lined maze again, feeling that he was in some way tricking me,
resenting the foolish mystery which he was flinging about the whole
foolish maneuver.
"Back to those guests of yours and some good old-fashioned common
sense," was his retort.
But during the ride back to Sherry's he had nothing further to say to
me. His answers to the questions I put to him were either evasive or
monosyllabic. He even yawned, yawned openly and audibly, as we drew up
at the carriage entrance of that munificently lighted hostelry. He now
seemed nothing more than a commonplace man tired out at the completion
of a commonplace task. He even seemed a trifle impatient at my delay
as I waited to check my hat and coat--a formality in which he did not
join me.
"Now, I can give you people just two minutes," he said, as the five of
us were once more seated at the same table and he once more consulted
his turnip of a watch. "And I guess that's more'n we'll need."
He turned to the wan and tired-eyed girl, who, only too plainly, had
not altogether enjoyed her wait.
"You've got the necklace?" he asked.
She held up a hand from which the string of graduated pearls dangled.
The man then turned to me.
"You took this string of pearls away from this man?" he asked, with a
quick nod toward the jewel thief.
"I assuredly did," was my answer.
"Knowing he had taken them from this young lady earlier in the evening?"
"Your assumption bears every mark of genius!" I assured him.
He turned back to the girl.
"Is that your necklace?" he curtly demanded.
The girl looked at me with clouded and troubled eyes. We all felt, in
some foolish way, that the moment was a climactic one.
"No!" she answered, in little more than a whisper.
"You're positive?"
She nodded her head without speaking. The man turned to me.
"Yet you followed this man, assaulted him, and forcibly took that
necklace away from him?"
"Hold on!" I cried, angered by that calmly pedagogic manner of his. "I
want you to un--"
He stopped me with a sharp move of the hand.
"Don't go over all that!" he said. "It's a waste of time. The point
is, that necklace is not your friend's. But I'm going to tell you what
it is. It's a duplicate of it, stone for stone. The lady, I think,
will agree with me on that. Am I right?"
The girl nodded.
"Then what the devil's this man doing with it?" demanded Benny
Churchill, before any of us could speak.
"S'pose you wait and find out who this man is!"
"Well, who is he?" I inquired, resolved that no hand, however artful,
was going to pull the wool over my eyes.
"This man," said my unperturbed and big-shouldered friend, "is the
pearl-matcher for Cohen and Greenhut, the Maiden Lane importers. Wait,
don't interrupt me. Miss Churchill's necklace, I understand, was one
of the finest in this town. His house had an order to duplicate it.
He took the first chance, when the pearls had been matched and strung,
to see that he'd done his job right."
"And you mean to tell me," I cried, "that he hung over a box-rail and
lifted a string of pearls from a lady's neck just to--"
"Hold on there, my friend," cut in the big-limbed man. "He found this
lady was going to be in that box wearin' that necklace."
"And having reviewed its chaste beauty, he sneaked out of his own box
and ran like a chased cur!"
"Hold your horses now! Can't you see that he thought you were the
crook? If you had a bunch of stones like that on you and a stranger
butted in and started trailin' you, wouldn't you do your best to melt
away when you had the chance?" demanded the officer. Then he looked at
me again with his wearily uplifted eyebrows. "Oh, I guess you were all
right as far as you went, but, like most amateurs, you didn't go quite
far enough!"
It was Benny Churchill who spoke up before I could answer. His voice,
as he spoke, was oddly thin and childlike.
"But why in heaven's name should he want to duplicate my sister's
jewelry?"
"For another woman, with more money than brains, or the know-how, or
whatever you want to call it," was the impassive response.
I saw the girl across the table from me push the necklace away from
her, and leave it lying there in a glimmering heap on the white table.
I promptly and quietly reached out and took possession of it, for I
still had my own ideas of the situation.
"That's all very well," I cried, "and very interesting. But what I
want to know is: _who got the first necklace?_"
The big-framed man looked once more at his watch. Then he looked a
little wearily at me.
"I got 'em!"
"You've got them?" echoed both the girl and her brother. It was plain
that the inconsequentialities of the last hour had been a little too
much for them.
The man thrust a huge hand down in the pocket of his damp and somewhat
unshapely overcoat.
"Yes, I got 'em here," he explained as he drew his hand away and held
the glimmering string up to the light. "I picked 'em up from the
corner of that box where they slipped off the lady's neck."
He rose placidly and ponderously to his feet.
"And I guess that's about all," he added as he squinted through an
uncurtained strip of plate glass and slowly turned up his coat collar,
"except that some of us outdoor guys'll sure get webfooted if this rain
keeps up!"