cannot be denied that, in certain circumstances, it offers an admirable
solution of a financial difficulty, and, if the penalties were not so
exceedingly unpleasant, it is probable that it would become far more
fashionable than it is.
His lordship’s mind did not turn immediately to this outlet from his
embarrassment. He had never stolen before, and it did not occur to him
directly to do so now. There is a conservative strain in all of us. But
gradually, as it was borne in upon him that it was the only course
possible, unless he were to grovel before Hargate on the morrow and ask
for time to pay—an unthinkable alternative—he found himself
contemplating the possibility of having to secure the money by unlawful
means. By the time he had finished his theatrical toilet, he had
definitely decided that this was the only thing to be done.
His plan was simple. He knew where the money was—in the dressing-table
in Sir Thomas’s room. He had heard Saunders instructed to put it there.
What could be easier than to go and get it? Everything was in his
favour. Sir Thomas would be downstairs receiving his guests. The coast
would be clear. Why, it was like finding the money.
Besides, he reflected, as he worked his way through a bottle of Mumm
which he had had the forethought to abstract from the supper-table as a
nerve-steadier, it was not really stealing. Dash it all, the man had
given him the money! It was his own! He had half a mind—he poured
himself out another glass of the elixir—to give Sir Thomas a jolly good
talking to into the bargain. Yes, dash it all!
He pushed on his cuffs fiercely. The British lion was roused.
A man’s first crime is, as a rule, a shockingly amateurish affair. Now
and then, it is true, we find beginners forging with the accuracy of old
hands or breaking into houses with the finish of experts. But these are
isolated cases. The average tyro lacks generalship altogether. Spennie
Dreever may be cited as a typical novice. It did not strike him that
inquiries might be instituted by Sir Thomas when he found the money
gone, and that suspicion might conceivably fall upon himself. Courage
may be born of champagne, but rarely prudence.
The theatricals began at half-past eight with a duologue. The audience
had been hustled into their seats, happier than is usual in such
circumstances, owing to the rumour which had been circulated that the
proceedings were to terminate with an informal dance. The castle was
singularly well constructed for such a purpose. There was plenty of room
and a sufficiency of retreat for those who sat out, in addition to a
conservatory large enough to have married off half the couples in the
country.
Spennie’s idea had been to establish an alibi by mingling with the
throng for a few minutes, and then to get through his burglarious
speciality during the duologue, when his absence would not be noticed.
It might be that if he disappeared later in the evening people would
wonder what had become of him.
He lurked about till the last of the audience had taken their seats. As
he was moving off through the hall a hand fell upon his shoulder.
Conscience makes cowards of us all. Spennie bit his tongue and leaped
three inches into the air.
“Halloa, Charteris!” he said gaspingly.
Charteris appeared to be in a somewhat overwrought condition. Rehearsals
had turned him into a pessimist, and now that the actual moment of
production had arrived his nerves were in a thoroughly jumpy condition,
especially as the duologue was to begin in two minutes and the obliging
person who had undertaken to prompt had disappeared.
“Spennie,” said Charteris, “where are you off to?”
“What—what do you mean? I was just going upstairs.”
“No, you don’t. You’ve got to come and prompt. That fellow Blake has
vanished. I’ll wring his neck! Come along!”
Spennie went reluctantly. Half-way through the duologue the official
prompter returned, with the remark that he had been having a bit of a
smoke on the terrace and that his watch had gone wrong. Leaving him to
discuss the point with Charteris, Spennie slipped quietly away.
The delay, however, had had the effect of counteracting the uplifting
effects of the Mumm. The British lion required a fresh fillip. He went
to his room to administer it. By the time he emerged he was feeling just
right for the task in hand. A momentary doubt occurred to him whether it
would not be a good thing to go down and pull Sir Thomas’s nose as a
preliminary to the proceedings; but he put the temptation aside.
Business before pleasure.
With a jaunty, if somewhat unsteady, step he climbed the stairs to the
floor above, and made his way down the corridor to Sir Thomas’s room. He
switched on the light and went to the dressing-table. The drawer was
locked, but in his present mood Spennie, like Love, laughed at
locksmiths. He grasped the handle and threw his weight into a sudden
tug. The drawer came out with a report like a pistol-shot.
“There!” said his lordship, wagging his head severely.
In the drawer lay the four bank-notes. The sight of them brought back
his grievances with a rush. He would teach Sir Thomas to treat him like
a kid. He would show him!
He was removing the notes, frowning fiercely the while, when he heard a
cry of surprise from behind him.
He turned, to see Molly. She wore the costume of a stage milkmaid, and
her eyes were round with wonder. Leaving her room a few moments earlier,
after dressing for her part, she had almost reached the end of the
corridor that led to the landing when she observed his lordship, flashed
of face and moving like some restive charger, come curveting out of his
bedroom in a dazzling suit of tweeds and make his way upstairs. Ever
since their mutual encounter with Sir Thomas before dinner she had been
hoping for a chance of seeing him alone. She had not failed to notice
his depression during the meal, and her good little heart had been
troubled by the thought that she must have been responsible for it. She
knew that for some reason what she had said about the letter had brought
his lordship into his uncle’s bad books, and she wanted to find him and
say she was sorry.
Accordingly, she had followed him. His lordship, still in the war-horse
vein, had made the pace upstairs too hot, and had disappeared while she
was still half-way up. She had arrived at the top just in time to see
him turn down the passage into Sir Thomas’s dressing-room. She could not
think what his object might be. She knew that Sir Thomas was downstairs,
so it could not be with the idea of a chat with him that Spennie was
seeking the dressing-room.
Faint, yet pursuing, she followed on his trail, and arrived in the
doorway just as the pistol-report of the burst lock rang out.
She stood looking at him blankly. He was holding a drawer in one hand.
Why, she could not imagine.
“Lord Dreever!” she exclaimed.
The sombre determination of his lordship’s face melted into a twisted
but kindly smile.
“Good!” he said, perhaps a trifle thickly. “Good! Glad you’ve come—we’re
pals—you said so—on stairs—b’fore dinner. Very glad you’ve come. Won’t
you sit down?”
He waved the drawer benevolently, by way of making her free of the room.
The movement disturbed one of the bank-notes, which fluttered in Molly’s
direction and fell at her feet.
She stooped and picked it up. When she saw what it was her bewilderment
increased.
“But—but——” she said.
His lordship beamed upon her with a pebble-beached smile of
indescribable goodwill.
“Sit down,” he urged. “We’re pals—no quol with you—you’re good friend.
Quol—Uncle Thomas.”
“But, Lord Dreever, what are you doing? What was that noise I heard?”
“Opening drawer,” said his lordship affably.
“But——” She looked again at what she had in her hand. “But this is a
five pound note.”
“Five pound note,” said his lordship—“quite right. Three more of them in
here.”
Still she could not understand.
“But—— Were you—stealing them?”
His lordship drew himself up.
“No,” he said. “No! Not stealing. No.”
“Then——”
“Like this: before dinner old boy friendly as you please; couldn’t do
enough for me. Touched him for twenty of the best and got away with it.
So far all well. Then met you on stairs. You let cat out of bag.”
“But why? Surely——”
His lordship gave the drawer a dignified wave.
“Not blaming you,” he said magnanimously. “Not your fault—misfortune.
You didn’t know—about letter.”
“About the letter?” said Molly. “Yes; what was the trouble about the
letter? I knew something was wrong directly I had said that I wrote it.”
“Trouble was,” said his lordship, “that old boy thought it was love
letter. Didn’t undeceive him.”
“You didn’t tell him? Why?”
His lordship raised his eyebrows.
“Wanted touch him twenty of the best,” he explained simply.
For the life of her Molly could not help laughing.
“Don’t laugh,” protested his lordship, wounded. “No joke—serious—honour
at stake.”
He removed the three notes and replaced the drawer.
“Honour of the Dreevers!” he added, pocketing the money.
“But, Lord Dreever!” she cried. “You can’t! You mustn’t! You can’t be
going, really, to take that money? It’s stealing! It isn’t yours!”
His lordship wagged a forefinger very solemnly at her.
“That,” he said, “is where you make error. Mine! Old boy gave them to
me.”
“Gave them to you! Then why did you break open the drawer?”
“Old boy took them back again, when he found out about letter.”
“Then they don’t belong to you?”
“Yes. Error! They do. Moral right.”
Molly wrinkled her forehead in her agitation. Men of Lord Dreever’s type
appeal to the motherly instinct of women. As a man his lordship was a
negligible quantity—he did not count; but as a wilful child, to be kept
out of trouble, he had a claim on Molly.
She spoke soothingly.
“But, Lord Dreever——” she began.
“Call me Spennie,” he urged. “We’re pals. You said so—on stairs.
Everybody calls me Spennie, even Uncle Thomas. I’m going to pull his
nose,” he broke off suddenly, as one recollecting a forgotten
appointment.
“Spennie, then,” said Molly. “You mustn’t, Spennie. You mustn’t, really.
You——”
“You look rippin’ in that dress,” he said irrelevantly.
“Thank you, Spennie, dear. But listen.” She spoke as if she were
humouring a rebellious infant. “You really mustn’t take that money. You
must put it back. See, I’m putting this note back. Give me the others,
and I’ll put them in the drawer too. Then we’ll shut the drawer, and
nobody will know.”
She took the notes from him, and replaced them in the drawer. He watched
her thoughtfully, as if he were pondering the merits of her arguments.
“No,” he said suddenly. “No—must have them—moral right! Old boy——”
She pushed him gently away.
“Yes, yes, I know,” she said. “I know it’s a shame that you can’t have
them; but you mustn’t take them. Don’t you see that he would suspect you
the moment he found they were gone? And then you’d get into trouble.”
“Something in that,” admitted his lordship.
“Of course there is, Spennie, dear. I’m so glad you see. There they all
are, safe again in the drawer. Now we can go downstairs again, and——”
She stopped. She had closed the door earlier in the proceedings, but her
quick ear caught the sound of a footstep in the passage outside.
“Quick!” she whispered, taking his hand and darting to the electric
light switch. “Somebody’s coming. We mustn’t be caught here. They’d see
the broken drawer, and you’d get into awful trouble. Quick!”
She pushed him behind the curtain where the clothes hung, and switched
off the light.
From behind the curtain came the muffled voice of his lordship.
“It’s Uncle Thomas. I’m coming out. Pull his nose.”
“Be quiet!”
She sprang to the curtain and slipped noiselessly behind it.
“But, I say——” began his lordship.
“Hush!”
She gripped his arm. He subsided.
The footsteps had halted outside the door. Then the handle turned
softly. The door opened and closed again with hardly a sound.
The footsteps passed on into the room.
★ 25 ★
_Explanations and an Interruption_
Jimmy, like Lord Dreever, had been trapped at the beginning of the
duologue, and had not been able to get away till it was nearly over. He
had been introduced by Lady Julia to an elderly and adhesive baronet,
who had recently spent ten days in New York, and escape had not been won
without a struggle. The baronet, on his return to England had published
a book entitled “Modern America and its People” and it was with regard
to the opinions expressed in this volume that he invited Jimmy’s views.
He had no wish to see the duologue, and it was only after the loss of
much precious time that Jimmy was enabled to tear himself away on the
plea of having to dress. He anathematized the authority on “Modern
America and its People” freely as he ran upstairs.
While the duologue was in progress there had been no chance of Sir
Thomas taking it into his head to visit his dressing-room. He had been,
as his valet detective had observed to Mr. Galer, too busy jollying
among the swells. It would only be the work of a few moments restoring
the necklace to its place. But for the tenacity of the elderly baronet
the thing would have been done by this time. But now there was no
knowing what might not happen—anybody might come along the passage and
see him.
He had one point in his favour: there was no likelihood of the jewels
being required by their owner till the conclusion of the theatricals.
The part which Lady Julia had been persuaded by Charteris to play
mercifully contained no scope for the display of gems.
Before going down to dinner he had locked up the necklace in a drawer.
It was still there, Spike having, apparently, been able to resist the
temptation of recapturing it. He took it out and went into the corridor.
He looked up and down it. There was nobody about. He shut his door and
walked quickly in the direction of the dressing-room.
He had provided himself with a lamp from a bicycle belonging to one of
the grooms. Once inside, having closed the door, he lit this and looked
about him.
Spike had given him minute directions as to the position of the jewel
box. He found it without difficulty. To his untrained eye it seemed
tolerably massive and impregnable, but Spike had evidently known how to
open it without much difficulty. The lid was shut, but it came up
without an effort when he tried to raise it, and he saw that the lock
had been broken.
“Spike’s coming on!” he said.
He was dangling the necklace over the box, preparatory to dropping it
in, when there was a quick rustle at the other side of the room. The
curtain was plucked aside and Molly came out.
“Jimmy!” she cried.
Jimmy’s nerves were always in pretty good order, but at the sight of
this apparition he certainly jumped.
“Great Scot!” he said.
The curtain again became agitated by some unseen force, violently this
time, and from its depths a plaintive voice made itself heard.
“Dash it all,” said the voice, “I’ve stuck!”
There was another upheaval, and his lordship emerged, his yellow locks
ruffled and upstanding, his face crimson.
“Caught my head in a coat or something,” he explained at large. “Halloa,
Pitt!”
Pressed rigid against the wall, Molly had listened with growing
astonishment to the movements on the other side of the curtain. Her
mystification deepened every moment. It seemed to her that the room was
still in darkness. She could hear the sound of breathing; and then the
light of the lantern caught her eye. Who could this be, and why had he
not switched on the electric light?
She strained her ears to catch a sound. For a while she heard nothing
except the soft breathing. Then came a voice that she knew well; and,
abandoning her hiding-place, she came out into the room, and found Jimmy
standing with a lamp in his hand over some dark object in the corner of
the room.
It was a full minute after Jimmy’s first exclamation of surprise before
either of them spoke again. The light of the lamp hurt Molly’s eyes. She
put up a hand to shade them. It seemed to her that they had been
standing like this for years.
Jimmy had not moved. There was something in his attitude which filled
Molly with a vague fear. In the shadow behind the lamp he looked
shapeless and inhuman.
“You’re hurting my eyes,” she said at last.
“I’m sorry,” said Jimmy. “I didn’t think. Is that better?” He turned the
light from her face. Something in his voice and the apologetic haste
with which he moved the lamp seemed to relax the strain of the
situation. The feeling of stunned surprise began to leave her. She found
herself thinking coherently again.
The relief was but momentary. Why was Jimmy in the room at that time?
Why had he a lamp? What had he been doing? The questions shot from her
brain like sparks from an anvil.
The darkness began to tear at her nerves. She felt along the wall for
the switch and flooded the room with light.
Jimmy laid down the lantern and stood for a moment undecided. He had
concealed the necklace behind him. Now he brought it forward and dangled
it silently before the eyes of Molly and his lordship. Excellent as were
his motives for being in that room with the necklace in his hand, he
could not help feeling, as he met Molly’s startled gaze, quite as guilty
as if his intentions had been quite different.
His lordship, having by this time pulled himself together to some
extent, was the first to speak.
“I say, you know, what ho!” he observed, not without emotion. “What?”
Molly drew back.
“Jimmy! You were——. Oh, you can’t have been!”
“Looks jolly like it!” said his lordship judicially.
“I wasn’t,” said Jimmy. “I was putting them back.”
“Putting them back?”
“Pitt, old man,” said his lordship solemnly, “that sounds a bit thin.”
“Dreever, old man,” said Jimmy, “I know it does. But it’s the truth.”
His lordship’s manner became kindly.
“Now, look here, Pitt, old son,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry
about—we’re all pals here—you can pitch it straight to us. We won’t give
you away. We——”
“Be quiet!” cried Molly. “Jimmy!”
Her voice was strained; she spoke with an effort; she was suffering
torments. The words her father had said to her on the terrace were
pouring back into her mind. She seemed to hear his voice now, cool and
confident, warning her against Jimmy, saying that he was crooked. There
was a curious whirring in her head. Everything in the room was growing
large and misty. She heard Lord Dreever begin to say something that
sounded as if some one were speaking at the end of a telephone; and then
she was aware that Jimmy was holding her in his arms and calling to Lord
Dreever to bring water.
“When a girl goes like that,” said his lordship, with an insufferable
air of omniscience, “you want to cut her——”
“Come along!” said Jimmy. “Are you going to be a week getting that
water?”
His lordship proceeded to soak a sponge without further parley; but as
he carried his dripping burden across the room Molly recovered. She
tried weakly to free herself.
Jimmy helped her to a chair. He had dropped the necklace on the floor,
and Lord Dreever nearly trod on it.
“What ho!” observed his lordship, picking it up. “Go easy with the
jewellery!”
Jimmy was bending over Molly. Neither of them seemed to be aware of his
lordship’s presence. Spennie was the sort of person whose existence is
apt to be forgotten. Jimmy had had a flash of intuition. For the first
time it occurred to him that Mr. McEachern might have hinted to Molly
something of his own suspicions.
“Molly, dear,” he said, “it isn’t what you think. I can explain
everything. Do you feel better now? Can you listen? I can explain
everything.”
“Pitt, old boy,” protested his lordship, “you don’t understand. We
aren’t going to give you away. We’re all——”
Jimmy ignored him.
“Molly, listen,” he said.
She sat up.
“Go on, Jimmy,” she said.
“I wasn’t stealing the necklace—I was putting it back. The man who came
to the castle with me, Spike Mullins, took it this afternoon and brought
it to me.”
Spike Mullins! Molly remembered the name.
“He thinks I am a crook—a sort of Raffles. It was my fault. I was a
fool. It all began that night in New York when we met at your house. I
had been to the opening performance of a play called _Love, the
Cracksman_—one of those burglar plays.”
“Jolly good show!” interpolated his lordship chattily. “It was at the
Circle over here. I went twice.”
“A friend of mine, a man named Mifflin, had been playing the hero in it,
and after the show, at the club, he started in talking about the art of
burglary—he’d been studying it—and I said that anybody could burgle a
house. And in another minute it somehow happened that I had made a bet
that I would do it that night. Heaven knows whether I ever really meant
to; but that same night this man Mullins broke into my flat, and I
caught him. We got into conversation, and I worked off on him a lot of
technical stuff I’d heard from this actor friend of mine, and he jumped
to the conclusion that I was an expert. And then it suddenly occurred to
me that it would be a good joke on Mifflin if I went out with Mullins
and did break into a house. I wasn’t in the mood to think what a fool I
was at the time. Well, anyway, we went out, and—well, that’s how it all
happened. And then I met Spike in London, down and out, and brought him
here.”
He looked at her anxiously. It did not need his lordship’s owlish
expression of doubt to tell him how weak his story must sound. He had
felt it even as he was telling it. He was bound to admit that if ever a
story rang false in every sentence it was this one.
“Pitt, old man,” said his lordship, shaking his head, more in sorrow
than in anger, “it won’t do, old top. What’s the point of putting up any
old yarn like that? Don’t you see, what I mean is, it’s not as if we
minded. Don’t I keep telling you we’re all pals here? I’ve often thought
what a jolly good feller old Raffles was—regular sportsman. I don’t
blame a chappie for doing the gentleman burglar touch. Seems to me it’s
a dashed sporting——”
Molly turned on him suddenly, cutting short his views on the ethics of
gentlemanly theft in a blaze of indignation.
“What do you mean?” she cried. “Do you think I don’t believe every word
Jimmy has said?”
His lordship jumped.
“Well, don’t you know, it seemed to me a bit thin. What I mean is——” He
met Molly’s eye.
“Oh, well!” he concluded lamely.
Molly turned to Jimmy.
“Jimmy, of course I believe you—I believe every word.”
“Molly!”
His lordship looked on, marvelling. The thought crossed his mind that he
had lost the ideal wife. A girl who would believe any old yarn a feller
cared to—— If it hadn’t been for Katie—— For a moment he felt almost
sad.
Jimmy and Molly were looking at each other in silence. From the
expression on their faces his lordship gathered that his existence had
once more been forgotten. He saw her hold out her hands to Jimmy. It was
embarrassing for a chap! He looked away.
The next moment the door opened and closed again, and she had gone.
He looked at Jimmy. Jimmy was still apparently unconscious of his
presence.
His lordship coughed.
“Pitt, old man——”
“Halloa!” said Jimmy, coming out of his thoughts with a start. “You
still here? By the way”—he eyed Lord Dreever curiously—“I never thought
of asking before—what on earth are you doing here? Why were you behind
the curtain? Were you playing hide and seek?”
His lordship was not one of those who invent circumstantial stories
easily on the spur of the moment. He searched rapidly for something that
would pass muster, then abandoned the hopeless struggle. After all, why
not be frank? He still believed Jimmy to be of the class of the hero of
_Love, the Cracksman_. There would be no harm in confiding in him. He
was a good fellow, a kindred soul, and would sympathise.
“It’s like this,” he said. And, having prefaced his narrative with the
sound remark that he had been a bit of an ass, he gave Jimmy a summary
of recent events.
“What!” said Jimmy. “You taught Hargate piquet? Why, my dear man, he was
playing piquet like a professor when you were in short frocks. He’s a
wonder at it.”
His lordship stared.
“How’s that?” he said. “You don’t know him, do you?”
“I met him in New York at the Strollers’ Club. A pal of mine, an
actor—this fellow Mifflin I mentioned just now—put him up as a guest. He
coined money at piquet. And there were some pretty useful players in the
place, too. I don’t wonder you found him a promising pupil.”
“Then—then—why, dash it! then he’s a bally sharper?”
“You’re a genius at crisp description,” said Jimmy. “You’ve got him
summed up to rights first shot.”
“I shan’t pay him a bally penny.”
“Of course not. If he makes any objection refer him to me.”