opening the door from the outside, by your account, when the valet-man
sprang at him. Naturally they’ll think that he took the jewels,
especially as they won’t find them on him. A man who can open a locked
safe through a closed door is just the sort of fellow who would be able
to get rid of the swag neatly while rolling about the floor with the
valet. His not having the jewels will make the case all the blacker
against him. And what will make them still more certain that he is the
thief is that he really is a detective. Spike, you ought to be in some
sort of a home, you know.”
The Bowery boy looked disturbed.
“I didn’t t’ink of dat, boss,” he admitted.
“Of course not. One can’t think of everything. Now, if you will just
hand me those diamonds, I will put them back where they belong.”
“Put dem back, boss!”
“What else would you propose? I’d get you to do it, only I don’t think
putting things back is much in your line.”
Spike handed over the jewels. The boss was the boss, and what he said
went. But his demeanour was tragic, telling eloquently of hopes
blighted.
Jimmy took the necklace with something of a thrill. He was a connoisseur
of jewels, and a fine gem affected him much as a fine picture affects
the artistic. He ran the diamonds through his fingers, then scrutinized
them again, more closely this time.
Spike watched him with a slight return of hope. It seemed to him that
the boss was wavering. Perhaps, now that he had actually handled the
jewels, he would find it impossible to give them up. To Spike a diamond
necklace of cunning workmanship was merely the equivalent of so many
“plunks”; but he knew that there were men, otherwise sane, who valued a
jewel for its own sake.
“It’s a boid of a necklace, boss,” he murmured encouragingly.
“It is,” said Jimmy. “In its way I’ve never seen anything much better.
Sir Thomas will be glad to have it back.”
“Den you’re going to put it back, boss?”
“I am,” said Jimmy. “I’ll do it just before the theatricals; there
should be a chance then. There’s one good thing—this afternoon’s affair
will have cleared the air of sleuth-hounds a little.”
★ 23 ★
_Family Jars_
Hildebrand Spencer Poyns de Burgh John Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie, twelfth
Earl of Dreever, was feeling like a toad under the harrow. He read the
letter again, but a second perusal made it no better. Very briefly and
clearly Molly had broken off the engagement. She “thought it best”; she
was “afraid it could make neither of us happy.” All very true, thought
his lordship miserably. His sentiments to a T. At the proper time
nothing he would have liked better. But why seize for this declaration
the precise moment when he was intending, on the strength of the
engagement, to separate his uncle from twenty pounds? That was what
rankled. That Molly could have no knowledge of his sad condition did not
occur to him. He had a sort of feeling that she ought to have known by
instinct. Nature, as has been pointed out, had equipped Hildebrand
Spencer Poyns de Burgh with one of those cheap-substitute minds. What
passed for brain in him was to genuine grey matter what just-as-good
imitation coffee is to real Mocha. In moments of emotion and mental
distress, consequently, his reasoning, like Spike’s, was apt to be in a
class of its own.
He read the letter for the third time, and a gentle perspiration began
to form on his forehead. This was awful. The presumable jubilation of
Katie, the penniless ripper of the Savoy, when he should present himself
to her a free man, did not enter into the mental picture that was
unfolding before him. She was too remote. Between him and her lay the
fearsome figure of Sir Thomas, rampant, filling the entire horizon. Nor
is this to be wondered at. There was probably a brief space during which
Perseus, concentrating his gaze upon the monster, did not see Andromeda;
and a knight of the Middle Ages, jousting in the gentlemen’s singles for
a smile from his lady, rarely allowed the thought of that smile to
occupy his whole mind at the moment when his boiler-plated antagonist
was descending upon him in the wake of a sharp spear.
So with Spennie Dreever. Bright eyes might shine for him when all was
over, but in the meantime what seemed to him more important was that
bulging eyes would glare.
If only this had happened later—even a day later! The reckless
impulsiveness of the modern girl had undone him. How was he to pay
Hargate his money? Hargate must be paid—that was certain; no other
course was possible. Lord Dreever’s was not one of those natures which
fret restlessly under debt. During his early career at college he had
endeared himself to the local tradesmen by the magnitude of the
liabilities he had contracted with them. It was not the being in debt
that he minded, it was the consequences. Hargate, he felt instinctively,
was of a revengeful nature. He had given Hargate twenty pounds’ worth of
snubbing, and the latter had presented the bill. If it were not paid
things would happen. Hargate and he were members of the same club, and a
member of a club who loses money at cards to a fellow-member and fails
to settle up does not make himself popular with the committee.
He must get the money—there was no avoiding that conclusion—but how?
Financially, his lordship was like a fallen country with a glorious
history. There had been a time, during his first two years at college,
when he had revelled in the luxury of a handsome allowance. This was the
golden age, when Sir Thomas Blunt, being, so to speak, new to the job,
and feeling that, having reached the best circles, he must live up to
them, had scattered largesse lavishly. For two years after his marriage
with Lady Julia he had maintained this admirable standard, crushing his
natural parsimony. He had regarded the money so spent as capital sunk in
an investment. By the end of the second year he had found his feet, and
began to look about him for ways of retrenchment. His lordship’s
allowance was an obvious way. He had not to wait long for an excuse for
annihilating it. There is a game called poker, at which a man without
much control over his features may exceed the limits of the handsomest
allowance. His lordship’s face during a game of poker was like the
surface of some quiet pond, ruffled by every breeze. The blank despair
of his expression when he held bad cards made bluffing expensive. The
honest joy that bubbled over in his eyes when his hand was good acted as
an efficient danger-signal to his grateful opponents. Two weeks of poker
had led to his writing to his uncle a distressed but confident request
for more funds; and the avuncular foot had come down with a joyous bang.
Taking his stand on the evils of gambling, Sir Thomas had changed the
conditions of the money-market for his nephew with a thoroughness that
effectually prevented the possibility of his being again led astray by
the fascinations of poker. The allowance vanished absolutely, and in its
place there came into being an arrangement. By this his lordship was to
have whatever money he wished for, but he must ask for it, and state why
it was needed. If the request were reasonable, the cash would be
forthcoming; if preposterous, it would not. The flaw in the scheme, from
his lordship’s point of view, was the difference of opinion which can
exist in the minds of two men as to what the words reasonable and
preposterous may be taken to mean.
Twenty pounds, for instance, would, in the lexicon of Sir Thomas Blunt,
be perfectly reasonable for the current expenses of a man engaged to
Molly McEachern, but preposterous for one to whom she had declined to
remain engaged. It is these subtle shades of meaning which make the
English language so full of pitfalls for the foreigner.
So engrossed was his lordship in his meditations that it was not till a
voice spoke at his elbow that he was aware that Sir Thomas himself was
standing by his side.
“Well, Spennie, my boy,” said the knight. “Time to dress for dinner, I
think. Eh? Eh?”
He was plainly in high good-humour. The thought of the distinguished
company he was to entertain that night had changed him temporarily, as
with some wave of a fairy wand, into a thing of joviality and
benevolence. One could almost hear the milk of human kindness gurgling
and splashing within him. The irony of Fate! To-night—such was his
mood—a dutiful nephew could have come and felt his pockets and helped
himself—if circumstances had been different. Oh, woman, woman, how you
bar us from Paradise!
His lordship gurgled a wordless reply, thrusting the fateful letter
hastily into his pocket. He would break the news anon—soon. Not
yet—later on; in fact, anon.
“Up in your part, my boy?” continued Sir Thomas. “You mustn’t spoil the
play by forgetting your lines. That wouldn’t do.”
His eye was caught by the envelope which Spennie had dropped. A
momentary relapse from the jovial and benevolent was the result. His
fussy little soul abhorred small untidinesses.
“Dear me,” he said, stooping, “I wish people would not drop paper about
the house. I cannot endure a litter.”
He spoke as if somebody had been playing hare-and-hounds and scattering
the scent on the stairs. This sort of thing sometimes made him regret
the old days. In Blunt’s Stores Rule 67 imposed a fine of half a crown
on employés convicted of paper-dropping.
“I——” began his lordship.
“Why”—Sir Thomas straightened himself—“it’s addressed to you!”
“I was just going to pick it up. It’s—er—there was a note in it.”
Sir Thomas Blunt gazed at the envelope again. Joviality and benevolence
resumed their thrones.
“And the feminine handwriting,” he chuckled. He eyed the limp peer
almost roguishly. “I see, I see,” he said. “Very charming. Quite
delightful! Girls must have their little romance. I suppose you two
young people are exchanging love-letters all day? Delightful—quite
delightful! Don’t look as if you were ashamed of it, my boy. I like it.
I think it’s charming.”
Undoubtedly this was the opening. Beyond a question his lordship should
have said at this point, “Uncle, I cannot tell a lie. I cannot even
allow myself to see you labouring under a delusion which a word from me
can remove. The contents of this note are not what you suppose. They run
as follows——”
What he did say was, “Uncle, can you let me have twenty pounds?”
Those were his amazing words. They slipped out. He could not stop them.
Sir Thomas was taken aback for an instant, but not seriously. He started
as might a man who, stroking a cat, receives a sudden but trifling
scratch.
“Twenty pounds, eh?” he said reflectively.
Then the milk of human kindness swept over displeasure like a tidal
wave. This was a night for rich gifts to the deserving.
“Why, certainly, my boy, certainly. Do you want it at once?”
His lordship replied that he did, please; and he had seldom said a thing
more fervently.
“Well, well. We’ll see what we can do. Come with me.”
He led the way to his dressing-room. Like nearly all the rooms at the
castle, it was large. One wall was completely hidden by the curtain
behind which Spike had taken refuge that afternoon.
Sir Thomas went to the dressing-table and unlocked a small drawer.
“Twenty, you said? Five—ten—fifteen—here you are, my boy.”
Lord Dreever muttered his thanks. Sir Thomas accepted the guttural
acknowledgment with a friendly pat on the shoulder.
“I like a little touch like that,” he said.
His lordship looked startled.
“I wouldn’t have touched you,” he began, “if it hadn’t been——”
“A little touch like that letter-writing,” Sir Thomas went on. “It shows
a warm heart. She is a warm-hearted girl, Spennie—a charming,
warm-hearted girl! You’re uncommonly lucky, my boy.”
His lordship, crackling the four bank-notes, silently agreed with him.
“But come, I must be dressing. Dear me, it is very late. We shall have
to hurry. By the way, my boy, I shall take the opportunity of making a
public announcement of the engagement to-night. It will be a capital
occasion for it, I think, perhaps, at the conclusion of the theatricals,
a little speech—something quite impromptu and informal, just asking them
to wish you happiness, and so on. I like the idea. There is an old-world
air about it that appeals to me. Yes.”
He turned to the dressing-table and removed his collar.
“Well, run along, my boy,” he said. “You must not be late.”
His lordship tottered from the room. He did quite an unprecedented
amount of thinking as he hurried into his evening clothes; but the
thought which occurred most frequently was that, whatever happened, all
was well in one way, at any rate. He had the twenty pounds. There would
be something colossal in the shape of disturbances when his uncle
learned the truth. It would be the biggest thing since the San Francisco
earthquake. But what of it? He had the money.
He slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. He would take it down with him,
and pay Hargate directly after dinner.
He left the room. The flutter of a skirt caught his eye as he reached
the landing. A girl was coming down the corridor on the other side. He
waited at the head of the stairs to let her go down before him. As she
came on to the landing he saw that it was Molly.
For a moment there was an awkward pause.
“Er—I got your note,” said his lordship.
She looked at him, and then burst out laughing.
“You know you don’t mind the least little bit,” she said—“not a scrap.
Now, do you?”
“Well, you see——”
“Don’t make excuses. Do you?”
“Well, it’s like this, you see. I——”
He caught her eye. Next moment they were laughing together.
“No; but look here, you know,” said his lordship. “What I mean is, it
isn’t that I don’t—I mean, look here, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t
be the best of pals.”
“Why, of course there isn’t.”
“No, really, I say? That’s ripping. Shake hands on it.”
They clasped hands; and it was in this affecting attitude that Sir
Thomas Blunt, bustling downstairs, discovered them.
“Aha!” he cried archly. “Well, well, well! But don’t mind me, don’t mind
me!”
Molly flushed uncomfortably; partly because she disliked Sir Thomas even
when he was not arch, and hated him when he was: partly because she felt
foolish; and principally because she was bewildered. She had not looked
forward to meeting Sir Thomas that night. It was always unpleasant
meeting him, but it would be more unpleasant than usual after she had
upset the scheme for which he had worked so earnestly. She had wondered
whether he would be cold and distant or voluble and heated. In her
pessimistic moments she had anticipated a long and painful scene. That
he should be behaving like this was not very much short of a miracle.
She could not understand it.
A glance at Lord Dreever enlightened her. That miserable creature was
wearing the air of a timid child about to pull a large cracker. He
seemed to be bracing himself up for an explosion.
She pitied him sincerely. So he had not told his uncle the news yet! Of
course, he had scarcely had time. Saunders must have given him the note
as he was going up to dress.
However, there was no use in prolonging the agony. Sir Thomas must be
told sooner or later. She was glad of the chance to tell him herself.
She would be able to explain that it was all her doing.
“I’m afraid there’s a mistake,” she said.
“Eh?” said Sir Thomas.
“I’ve been thinking it over, and I came to the conclusion that we
weren’t——Well, I broke off the engagement.”
Sir Thomas’s always prominent eyes protruded still farther. The colour
of his florid face deepened. Suddenly he chuckled.
Molly looked at him amazed. Sir Thomas was indeed behaving unexpectedly
to-night.
“I see it,” he wheezed. “You’re having a joke with me! So this is what
you were hatching as I came downstairs! Don’t tell me! If you had really
thrown him over you wouldn’t have been laughing together like that. It’s
no good, my dear. I might have been taken in if I had not seen you, but
I did.”
“No, no,” cried Molly. “You’re wrong—you’re quite wrong. When you saw us
we were just agreeing that we should be very good friends—that was all.
I broke off the engagement before that. I——”
She was aware that his lordship had emitted a hollow croak, but she took
it as his method of endorsing her statement—not as a warning.
“I wrote Lord Dreever a note this evening,” she went on, “telling him
that I couldn’t possibly——”
She broke off in alarm. With the beginning of her last speech Sir Thomas
had begun to swell, until now he looked as if he were in imminent danger
of bursting. His face was purple. To Molly’s lively imagination his eyes
appeared to move slowly out of his head, like a snail’s. From the back
of his throat came strange noises.
“S-s-so——” he stammered.
He gulped and tried again.
“So this,” he said, “so this—so that was what was in that letter, eh?”
Lord Dreever smiled weakly.
“Eh?” yelled Sir Thomas.
His lordship started convulsively.
“Er—yes,” he said. “Yes, yes—that was it, don’t you know!”
Sir Thomas eyed him with a baleful stare. Molly looked from one to the
other in bewilderment.
There was a pause, during which Sir Thomas seemed partially to recover
command of himself. Doubts as to the propriety of a family row in
mid-stairs appeared to occur to him. He moved forward.
“Come with me,” he said, with awful curtness.
His lordship followed bonelessly. Molly watched them go, and wondered
more than ever. There was something behind this. It was not merely the
breaking-off of the engagement that had roused Sir Thomas. He was not a
just man, but he was just enough to be able to see that the blame was
not Lord Dreever’s. There had been something more. She was puzzled.
In the hall Saunders was standing, weapon in hand, about to beat the
gong.
“Not yet!” snapped Sir Thomas. “Wait!”
Dinner had been ordered especially early that night because of the
theatricals. The necessity for strict punctuality had been straitly
enjoined upon Saunders. At some inconvenience he had ensured strict
punctuality. And now—— But we all have our cross to bear in this world.
Saunders bowed with dignified resignation.
Sir Thomas led the way into his study.
“Be so good as to close the door,” he said.
His lordship was so good.
Sir Thomas backed to the mantelpiece and stood there in the attitude
which for generations has been sacred to the elderly Briton—feet well
apart, hands clasped beneath his coat tails. His stare raked Lord
Dreever like a searchlight.
“Now, sir!” he said.
His lordship wilted before his gaze.
“The fact is, uncle——”
“Never mind the facts. I know them! What I require is an explanation.”
He spread his feet farther apart. The years had rolled back, and he was
plain Thomas Blunt again, of Blunt’s Stores, dealing with an erring
employé.
“You know what I mean,” he went on. “I am not referring to the
breaking-off of the engagement. What I insist upon learning is your
reason for failing to inform me earlier of the contents of that letter.”
His lordship said that somehow, don’t you know, there didn’t seem to be
a chance, you know. He had several times been on the point—but—well,
somehow—— Well, that’s how it was.
“No chance?” cried Sir Thomas. “Indeed! Why did you require that money I
gave you?”
“Oh—er—I wanted it for something.”
“Very possibly. For what?”
“I—the fact is, I owed it to a fellow.”
“Ha! How did you come to owe it?”
His lordship shuffled.
“You have been gambling,” boomed Sir Thomas. “Am I right?”
“No, no! I say, no, no. It wasn’t gambling—it was a game of skill. We
were playing piquet.”
“Kindly refrain from quibbling. You lost this money at cards, then, as I
supposed. Just so.”
He widened the space between his feet. He intensified his glare. He
might have been posing to an illustrator of _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ for
a picture of “Apollyon straddling right across the way”.
“So,” he said, “you deliberately concealed from me the contents of that
letter, in order that you might extract money from me under false
pretences? Don’t speak!” (his lordship had gurgled). “You did! Your
behaviour was that of a—of a——”
There was a very fair selection of evil-doers in all branches of
business from which to choose. He gave the preference to the race-track.
“Of a common welsher,” he concluded. “But I won’t put up with it. No;
not for an instant. I insist upon you returning that money to me here
and now. If you have not got it with you, go and fetch it.”
His lordship’s face betrayed the deepest consternation. He had been
prepared for much, but not for this. That he would have to undergo what,
in his school-days, he would have called a “jaw” was inevitable, and he
had been ready to go through with it. It might hurt his feelings,
possibly, but it would leave his purse intact. A ghastly development of
this kind he had not foreseen.
“But, I say, uncle!” he bleated.
Sir Thomas silenced him with a grand gesture.
Ruefully his lordship produced his little all. Sir Thomas took it with a
snort and went to the door.
Saunders was still brooding statuesquely over the gong.
“Sound it!” said Sir Thomas.
Saunders obeyed him with the air of an unleashed hound.
“And now,” said Sir Thomas, “go to my dressing-room and place these
notes in the small drawer of the table.”
The butler’s calm, expressionless, yet withal observant eye took in at a
glance the signs of trouble. Neither the inflated air of Sir Thomas nor
the punctured-balloon bearing of Lord Dreever escaped him.
“Something hup,” he said to his immortal soul as he moved upstairs.
“Been a fair old, rare old row, seems to me.”
He reserved his more polished periods for use in public. In conversation
with his immortal soul he was wont to unbend somewhat.
★ 24 ★
_The Treasure-Seeker_
Gloom wrapped his lordship about during dinner as with a garment. He
owed twenty pounds; his assets amounted to seven shillings and
fourpence. He thought, and thought again. Quite an intellectual pallor
began to appear on his normally pink cheeks. Saunders silently
sympathetic—he hated Sir Thomas as an interloper, and entertained for
his lordship, under whose father also he had served, a sort of paternal
fondness—was ever at his elbow with the magic bottle; and to Spennie,
emptying and re-emptying his glass almost mechanically, wine, the
healer, brought an idea. To obtain twenty pounds from any one person of
his acquaintance was impossible; to divide the twenty by four and
persuade a generous quartet to contribute five pounds apiece was more
feasible.
Hope began to stir within him again.
Immediately after dinner he began to flit about the castle like a family
spectre of active habits. The first person he met was Charteris.
“Halloa, Spennie!” said Charteris. “I wanted to see you. It is currently
reported that you are in love. At dinner you looked as if you had
influenza. What’s your trouble? For goodness’ sake bear up until the
show’s over. Don’t go swooning on the stage, or anything. Do you know
your lines?”
“The fact is,” said his lordship eagerly, “it’s this way. I happen to
want—— Can you lend me a fiver?”
“All I have in the world at this moment,” said Charteris, “is eleven
shillings and a postage-stamp. If the stamp would be of any use to you
as a start——No? You know, it’s from small beginnings like that great
fortunes are amassed. However——”
Two minutes later Lord Dreever had resumed his hunt.
The path of the borrower is a thorny one, especially if, as in the case
of Spennie, his reputation as a payer-back is not of the best.
Spennie, in his time, had extracted small loans from most of his male
acquaintances, rarely repaying the same. He had a tendency to forget
that he had borrowed half-a-crown here to pay a cab fare and ten
shillings there to settle up for a dinner; and his memory was not much
more retentive of larger sums. This made his friends somewhat wary. The
consequence was that the great treasure-hunt was a failure from start to
finish. He got friendly smiles, he got honeyed apologies, he got earnest
assurances of goodwill; but he got no money, except from Jimmy Pitt.
He had approached Jimmy in the early stages of the hunt and Jimmy, being
in the mood when he would have lent anything to anybody, yielded the
required five pounds without a murmur.
But what was five pounds? The garment of gloom and the intellectual
pallor were once more prominent when his lordship repaired to his room
to don the loud tweeds which, as Lord Herbert, he was to wear in the
first act.