Lord Galton stood by the Home Secretary in his study, looked round
suddenly, and said, "May I lock the door?" locked it without leave and
then came back and began talking.
The young fellow talked as impressively as ever he had talked when he
was giving instructions to a jockey, or rather, to the go-between who
took the risk. He knew how to talk, as do most men who are successful in
giving instructions to jockeys. His sentences came, weighty, short,
decisive, and each had its effect. Men said he would have done well in
the House of Commons, but the men who have said that do not know the
House of Commons. Yes, he would have done well in the House of Commons:
not by oratory, but by what I may call the Attaboy side of his
character. He began:
"Humphrey, I'm going to tell you about the emerald. I think I know where
it is."
The Home Secretary looked up, startled; but he did not interrupt.
"I want to begin by saying that I know I am myself under suspicion."
"Oh, my dear Tommy," began his unfortunate host. But the younger man put
up a hand like a slab of stone.
"No," he said. "There's no time to be wasted, and we must have things
absolutely clear. One of us three must have got that brooch. No doubt we
are all under suspicion--but I know why I am under suspicion. People say
I pulled a horse." Again the Home Secretary would have interrupted, but
the heavy hand made an impatient gesture, and again he checked himself.
"Marjorie mayn't believe it, and of course that old fool of a Cousin
Bill hasn't heard of it; and as for that journalist fellow McTibbert, or
whatever his name is, he may or may not have; I don't care. But anyhow,
you know it. _You've_ heard all about it!"
"But, my dear Tommy," broke in the Home Secretary, lying eagerly and
almost with affection, "I don't believe it. Believe me, I don't believe
it. Do you suppose," he added with beautiful tact, "that if I believed
it I'd have you here at Paulings?"
Lord Galton just showed at the muscles of the mouth what a fool he
thought the man. He went on undisturbed.
"It's nothing to do with the value of the lie--they haven't turned me
out of the Posts, for that matter; nor warned me off. But the point is,
the story has gone the rounds. A man that would cheat would steal. Also
you know I'm on the rocks, and therefore I'm under suspicion. Now we're
all three under suspicion, as I say. That old ass, Cousin Bill, got
mixed up with the Mullingar Diamond years ago--too much of a fool to
pinch it for selling; wanted to look at it through one of his
contraptions. Anyhow, he can't keep his hands off crystals. And an
emerald's a crystal."
"Is it?" asked the Head of the Family with great interest.
"I think so--I don't know," said Galton impatiently. "Anyhow, it's a
jewel, a precious stone--what?"
"Oh, yes! It's a jewel, yes, a precious stone. Oh, yes," admitted
Humphrey de Bohun.
"Well then, so's a diamond. A man who'll take diamonds'll take
emeralds--what? ... Then there's that journalist fellow--he's under
suspicion because he's a journalist; they're all on their uppers, and
you told me yourself about the one who stole the spoons when you were at
the Board of Works."
A faint smile appeared for a moment on the face of his host. It was his
favourite funny story--all about a journalist who once stole some
government spoons. He had told it on every occasion. He told it to
journalists. But then he was never really featured by the Press.
"Now of those three," went on Lord Galton, rather more slowly, and
separating his words, "the man who has got it is our miserable old
family goat, Cousin Bill...."
The Home Secretary started.
[Illustration: _Lord Galton explains to the Home Secretary his
theory--or rather, certitude--upon the
whereabouts of the Great Emerald._]
"Yes, I know what you'll say ... he got the fright of his life over the
Mullingar Diamond. You'd say he'd never dream of doing it in the house
of the head of the family." (A dignified look passed over the features
of the Chieftain of the de Bohuns.) "Then he's such a clumsy old ass
that you can't imagine him doing it so quickly. After all, it took him
half an hour to fish the Mullingar Diamond out of an open drawer, and
even then he left things topsy-turvy. You'll say all that, and if I were
just guessing I'd half agree with you. But I'm not guessing. And I tell
you _he's got it_. I don't pretend to do any of this private detective
work, and I've never read one of their rotten mystery stories in my
life. That's how I've kept my common sense clear--men who are blown upon
need their wits about them. I know Bill's got it for a very simple
reason--_I've seen it in his hand with my own eyes_. Some one told the
old goat that the place to hide anything was where it would be most
obvious and simple. He's got it in the left-hand pocket of that damned
smelly overcoat he wears; but he's such a nervous old balmy that he
can't help fingering it the whole time; and when he thinks no one's
looking he pulls it half out and looks at it furtively out of the corner
of his eye. Dons are always as mad as hatters. He did it three separate
times while we were out walking just now. He couldn't help himself. He's
too much shut up inside his own addled head to notice other people. And
I'll tell you something else, which is also common sense. He won't take
it out of that pocket till he's left the house. An overcoat's the only
thing they don't brush or fold up, in this house; you're old-fashioned,
with these things on pegs and not on marble tables. He knows that. It'll
hang there on the peg till he goes away. That's the whole point of
leaving it in such a place.... _And it's there now_. You look for it
there, and you'll find it."
The Home Secretary put on his expression of gravity in the third
degree--the expression with which he would meet a deputation for saving
an innocent man from the gallows and gratify them with a majestic
refusal.
"What you say, Tommy," he began, slowly, "is very serious. Very serious
indeed. In my judgment ..."
"Oh, look here," said Lord Galton impatiently, "cut out all that! He's
not in the hall. He went off to the library, and when he gets there he
strikes root. There'll be no one about--they're laying the table. Come
with me, and I'll prove it."
"I hesitate ..." began the Home Secretary. His powerful young relative,
by way of reply, hooked him by the arm, unlocked the door, and marched
him straight out into the hall. The ghost of what might well have been
an ancestor--for we all have such things--must have mourned, if, as such
things do, it had taken up its kennel in a suit of armour standing by
the side of the fireplace in the hall: it would have mourned to see the
head of the de Bohuns stand by while the deed was done.
Lord Galton went smartly up to the bunch of coats, plunged his hand into
the left-hand pocket of that one wretched old garment, and turned it
sharply inside out, so that the damning evidence should fall before his
cousin's eyes. There fell out no small amount of gathered dirt, some
paper torn into minute fragments, and a stub of pencil; also a rather
repulsive handkerchief--nothing more. Nothing rang upon the hall floor.
There was no Emerald.
Lord Galton for once did a weak thing--or a superstitious one. As though
not trusting his senses, he picked the repulsive handkerchief up and
shook it. But there was no emerald. Indeed, one could see and hear by
the way it had fallen that there was no emerald within its large but
unattractive folds. He knew that well enough before he touched the
rag--but it was a forlorn hope.
It was the older man who hastily picked up these evidences, not of the
Professor's dishonour, but his own, and rapidly put them back where they
belonged; darting a glance over his left shoulder and sighing with
relief to find that there was still no one about, not the sound of a
distant footfall, not the glide of a serf. His companion's face was
darker and flushed.
"I could have sworn ..." he opened. Then he added, murmuring, "He must
have taken it away."
"I wish we hadn't ..." began the Home Secretary, and then switched off
to, "You're quite sure you saw it with your own eyes, Tommy?"
"Absolutely certain," said the young man, with a fearless steady gaze,
and proud to be telling one truth at least.
The Home Secretary held his chin in his hand, stood silent for a good
quarter of a minute, and then said something characteristic of his
profession as a statesman. He said, "Humm!"
* * * * * * *
What had happened?
Dear--or, if that is too familiar a term--charming reader, this is not
one of the detective stories of commerce. You shall know all about it
beforehand, as you have already known all about it, step by step. You
shall be subjected to no torture of suspense. We will leave that to the
people of our story. They were born for it.
What had happened was simple enough. The Professor had gone off to the
library. He wanted to make certain of the Society at Berne in the
_Almanac de Gotha_. With men such as he, an obsession having cropped up
has a horrid fascination for the mind and holds it. He was worrying
about the exact title: whether it was Crystallographique, or
Crystallographische, or de Crystallographic. He was determined to get it
right.
He kept on talking to himself, as was his learned habit, repeating with
a hideous smile the words, "Crystals ... ah! yes ... crystals....
Crystals, eh? Crystals ... yes.... Crystallograph ... something, eh? Now
then, it'll be among the books of reference, eh? Crystals.... Oh, what a
dirty trick that was of Leader to play!" His left hand was fumbling in
the left-hand pocket, where he always kept those indispensable
instruments of research, his large tortoise-shell spectacles. His hand
groped. He muttered the word "Berne" three times in less and less
confident tones. Then the message so tardily conveyed reached his
erudite brain. "Oh! ... I've lost my spectacles!"
He never got used to the shock of losing his spectacles, though he
suffered from it a dozen times a day. Each time he lost them it was all
up with him; each time he went through a crisis. Here he was in the
depths of the country and without eyes! There was a touch of agony in
his muttering now, as came louder the words, "My spectacles, oh, ah! my
spectacles ... now where could I ..." He bent his powerful will to the
control of his, if possible, less powerful memory; he traced events back
one after the other for a good three minutes, and then he remembered
that he had gone out in his overcoat and had left it hanging in the
hall.
[Illustration: _The Professor gave an odd little scream like a shot
rabbit._]
He shambled out and groped in the recesses of the left-hand pocket, and
there, side by side with his familiar handkerchief, the faithful
companion of many days, was the feel of the rough spectacle case; it was
all right, but also, what annoyed him a little, a pebble. It was natural
that pebbles should get into one's pockets when one was out walking in
the country; at least, he thought it was. He thought it went with those
terrible animals called cows, and all that sort of thing. But he pulled
it out mechanically, felt the prick of a pin and then gave an odd little
scream, like a shot rabbit. Next (excuse him!) he rapped out a frightful
oath. "My God!" cried the aged blasphemer. No less. But the violence of
his emotion must have shaken his standards.
He stood there, with the emerald in the palm of his right hand, staring
at it, distraught. And once more in his bewilderment he fell to
repeating the name of his Creator--upon whose existence indeed, he had
more than once learnedly discoursed, concluding upon the whole against
it.
It is said that under the strain of very severe emotion men do things
unnatural, out of themselves. And behold! Professor William de Bohun
behaved for the next half hour like a whole group of characters, any one
of whom you would have said he could not have thrown himself into for
the world. Terror inspired him, and the tragic sense of impending doom.
It must be got rid of!
He had a mad impulse to swallow it. Luckily he restrained it in time: it
was too big, its metal fastenings too angular for health; and then,
there was the pin.
After he had given up the swallowing baulk, another, far more feasible,
arose and formed itself more clearly. There appeared before his mind's
eye a young, round naïve face, fresh to the world, an awkward figure,
the whole standing out against the background of known poverty. It was
the figure of McTaggart, the journalist.
A wicked glint illumined the Professor's eye.
"Oh! Baleful, hellish light, thus to suffuse
The inactive optic, wontedly so dulled,
But now with evil purpose all inflamed!"
as Milton has it in the matter of the fish-god, Dagon.
He made no excuses for himself. He recked nothing of the young man's
ruin. He plunged heartily and heavily into sin. As his colleague the
Professor of Pastoral Theology had once finely quoted in his Luther
Commemoration Lecture, "_Si peccas pecca fortiter_."
It is generally held by the more liberal school among theologians that
man acting of his own free will is not mastered by an external evil
impulse, but may well submit to it.
So it was with Cousin William on this never-to-be-forgotten occasion of
his chief downfall.
A Minor Devil happened at that moment to be wandering rather emptily
through Paulings, seeking what he might devour. He was hungry, poor
spirit; he had eaten nothing since he had left his own place at midnight
and he had got lost in the fog all morning. He had almost caught a small
housemaid, but she had slipped away through the efforts of her patron
saint, sweet Millicent, and left him perfectly ravenous. It was almost
noon and devils are not built for fasting. Judge then his joy at coming,
by pure chance, upon this evil old man. He almost jumped out of his
black fiendish skin for joy to perceive the flashing violet light which
surrounds, in the eyes of supernatural beings, the head of a wicked man.
He spotted it first from a corner of the hall where he had just come out
of a corridor. He rubbed his hands together and even flapped his clawed
wings in his excitement. He flew up to the Professor and began pouring
all sorts of excellent suggestions into his ear--his left ear.
Young McTaggart could play billiards ... the Professor had heard them
say that ... young McTaggart was probably proud of his billiards ... he
could be got to go round the table exhibiting his billiards. He would
take off his coat before exhibiting his billiards. And when the coat was
once off, and its owner's eye was concentrated on the billiard table ...
oh, then!...
The Devil, who can see through walls, gently shepherded his pupil into
the little room next the library where the overflow of books was kept.
That door, with horrid smile, the old conspirator opened; and there,
indeed, he found the youth, looking miserably enough out of the window
with his hands in his trousers pockets. He had slunk into that
inhospitable fireless den in order to be free for a while from the
terrors of high society.
"Ah, Mr. McTaggart, Mr. McTaggart, Mr. McTaggart!" carolled the
scientist--and as he said it he opened his arms wide in a most genial
gesture. "I've been looking for you everywhere!" There slyly wagging a
knotted forefinger, "And I wonder if you can guess why? Eh? Why? Guess
why!" Which words said, and smiling still broader, he repeated them once
more three times, as was his wont, and then added: "I wonder whether you
can guess why, Mr. McTaggart, whether you can guess why ... whether you
can guess why?"
The Devil was now so happy that he could hardly refrain from manifesting
himself, which would have been fatal. He whisked all round the room,
jeering at McTaggart.
Poor young Mr. McTaggart! He had been all night and all that morning a
most unhappy man. He exaggerated in his own mind the suspicions under
which he lay. He was too innocent to believe that he shared it with such
exalted beings as the lord and the Professor, of whom--though he had
never heard his name--he was assured the fame to be European, and who,
anyhow, was connected by blood with a cabinet minister.
The lad imagined himself watched by a thousand eyes. He dared not take
his leave, and yet he was in hell during those hours he passed at
Paulings. He would have been unhappy anyhow, for it was not his world;
but to be within all that set and at the same time a marked
criminal--for that is what he felt himself to be--was almost
intolerable. How he had sprung up when the learned Ancient approached
him, with those seeming kindly eyes! Ah! had McTaggart enjoyed a few
more years of human experience he would have seen in those eyes such a
mixture of cunning and evil joy as might have put him on his guard. But
no; he thought that in his loneliness he had found a friend. Who
knew?--perhaps a supporter.
The Professor's plan was simple, but McTaggart was simpler still.
[Illustration: _Sudden interest in the game of Billiards upon the
part of the Professor of Crystallography
to the University._]
"Mr. McTaggart," said the Ancient, with horrible geniality, "I hear that
you are astonishing at billiards.... Billiards, billiards, yes,
billiards.... Billiards. The Home Secretary was telling me, Humphrey, I
mean, my cousin, my cousin Humphrey ... the Home Secretary, yes ... the
Home Secretary was telling me that you were astonishing at billiards.
Now you know"--and here he went so far as to make a step sideways and
seize the young man by the arm--"it is the one thing I can watch for
hours ... billiards ... good billiards.... I have gone into the
mechanics of the thing"--he was lying freely, and gambling, rightly, on
the idea that his companion could not distinguish between
Crystallography and any other science--"and it fascinates me ...
fascinates me ... oh! fascinates me. I wonder whether--" and in a
fashion which would have been crude to any other man, but to the lonely
McTaggart was heavenly kindness, he urged with linked arm and long
sidling crablike step towards the billiard-room.
It was in the Professor's conception of things that when one is
deceiving a fellow being one must talk the whole time. He is not the
only one to suffer from that delusion.
He talked all the way to the billiard-room; he talked while McTaggart
was pulling off the cloth; he talked while McTaggart was putting on the
lights to see clearly on that dim January day; he talked while McTaggart
was chalking his cue and thoughtfully placing the three balls in
position.
The torrent of rapid words--all dealing with excellency at billiards,
all squeaky--was interrupted only at one moment. It was the moment when
McTaggart did what he had been expected to do--the moment when he took
off his coat and threw it on the leather cushions by the side of his
newly-made and slightly eccentric friend.
The sight of that coat so thrown immediately by his side, and subject to
his hand, almost choked the senile conspirator with joy. But he
recovered himself, and still poured out a torrent of repeated words as
the young fellow walked slowly round the table, getting absorbed in a
continuous break. The Professor interrupted that verbal spate only now
and then to gaze with a murderous keenness at a projected stroke and to
mutter "Marvellous!" two or three times; but all the while his heart was
failing him. It was not the only mean thing he had done in his life by a
long chalk. He had spent the whole of his life doing nothing but mean
things; but it was the first actively and perhaps dangerously wrong
thing the old booby had ever dared to do: for he did not count the
Mullingar Diamond--that was in the cause of Science, and in the cause of
Science you can do anything.
But the Devil chose his moment for him; it was a moment of silence when
young McTaggart was waiting long and breathlessly to be certain of a
stroke that would bring his break over the hundred. His back was turned
to the Professor; he was intent upon his play.
The old bony hand, with the gesture of one that takes rather than gives,
put the emerald into a side pocket of the coat, where lay he knew not
what--but in point of fact, a tobacco pouch, a pipe, a pencil, and a
piece of chocolate--of all things in the world!--no longer clean. Nor
had the Emerald ever been in such society before, from the day when it
had started life in the splendid court of Moscovy to these last evil
days of ours.
McTaggart had brought off his shot: his break was 102, and the spot and
the red lay perfect for a cannon and red in the pocket.
But you exaggerate the diplomatic value of the Professor if you think
that he had the wit to continue his stream of gabble after the deed was
done.
It was lucky for him that he was dealing with the candour of youth, or
that abrupt retreat of his from the scene of his crime would have
brought suspicion. For, his deed accomplished, he simply got up with a
jerk, dropped all attention to the play, looked at his watch, muttered
the time of day with an exclamation, and sidled out of the room, leaving
his companion marooned ... and with him, full of success, went the
Lesser Devil.
McTaggart could do without him; he went on playing for another ten
minutes or so, till the break ended, and had reached the pretty figure
of 151. Then he in turn looked at his watch in his waistcoat pocket,
found it would be time for luncheon in a few minutes, put up his cue,
and sadly resumed his coat.
Had he been of those who smoke all day he would have pulled out his
pipe, and ten to one would have found the thing lurking there next his
tobacco; but he thought of the meal coming on, and much more did he
think with dread that it would be breaking some mysterious etiquette of
country houses if he were to smoke a pipe. He would not dare to do it
till he saw some one of his betters at the same work. For the same
reason, after he had heard them going towards the dining-room and had
joined them, he was too nervous to put his hands in his pockets in a
gesture of repose. He kept them dangling in his extreme anxiety to
commit no solecism. He moved nervously about amid the sullen silence of
the rest and wondered a little why the burst of geniality upon the part
of the man of gems should have dried up so suddenly. For not a word more
did the Professor speak to him; and all through luncheon McTaggart sat
there in the same terror and the same misfortune of soul, never daring
to speak some artificial word during the rare moments when anyone broke
the silence.
They had not yet risen from table; he was still wondering what one did
at the end of luncheon in the houses of the great--at what point one got
up, whether immediately after one's host or simultaneously with one's
host; whether the women went out first, as he knew they did at dinner;
whether it was his duty to open the door for them--when Lord Galton
pulled out his pipe, filled it deliberately enough, and lit it. After
the easy manners of our happy times he slowly and with deliberation blew
a cloud of smoke across the board which wreathed itself, not
ungracefully, about the venerable head of Aunt Amelia. So natural an
action was followed by his host, who in turn thoughtfully pulled out his
own pipe and lit it, as he rose to fetch himself wine: he mixed tobacco
and wine, did Humphrey de Bohun.
"Then," thought McTaggart to himself, in an agony of desire for tobacco,
"it seems this kind of thing _can_ be done,"--and he felt for his pipe,
and pulled out his pouch.
[Illustration: _Mr. McTaggart discovers the Emerald._]
Now there happened to be in the room at that moment an Angel. He had
come to Paulings express to counteract the Devil who had been putting in
such strong work on the Professor, and the Angel saved the quill driver,
whom, for his poverty, he loved. For that innocent, finding something
that felt like his slab of chocolate in among his tobacco, and knowing
himself to be well capable of having put it there, was just about to
pull it out, and was already speculating on what sort of flavour
chocolate gave to Bondman--or Bondman to chocolate--when the Angel
seized his wrist and pinned it. He did not know the Angel was doing
this--we never know our luck--he could not have told you what happened,
except that he hesitated, and being of the opposite sex, was not lost.
But for the Angel, he would have pulled out the thing before them all,
and said, "Hallo, what's this?" and there would have been an end of
McTaggart. Instead of which the Angel, with angelic swiftness, put a
thought into his head.
"Don't pull out that lump of chocolate! It will make you look a fool.
The great don't eat chocolate, except out of large expensive wooden
boxes with Japanese pictures outside; elaborate boxes. The rich do not
carry half-broken slabs of chocolate in their pockets--still less in
their tobacco pouches!"
Therefore was it that McTaggart did not take out the lump, whatever it
was; he grasped a fingerful of tobacco and peered down with one eye into
the recesses of the pouch. When he saw what was there, his heart stopped
beating! For a moment he felt faint and giddy.... But the angel firmly
put the pouch back again, leaving the tobacco in his fingers, and with
shaking hand he filled his pipe, and with shaking hand he lit it!
What the devil?
How on earth ...?
The unfortunate boy actually examined his own mind to see whether he
could possibly have done such a thing, and then forgotten it--have done
it inadvertently. Then he thought it had fallen into his coat when
Marjorie had let it drop. Then he remembered that he had not been
wearing that coat, that he had been in evening dress. Then he thought
that the universe was made in some way that he did not understand. He
looked at his coat, and fingered it. It was all right. His mind would
not work properly again until he had satisfied himself beyond a doubt
not once, but many times. He allowed--through terror--too long a time to
pass lest he should seem in haste; strolled, looking as careless as he
could, towards the library, looked round to make sure that no one had
noticed him, leaped upstairs to his room, locked the door, took out his
pouch and that which was within. He gazed at it for something like half
a minute, putting it down on his dressing-table in the strong light to
make sure.
There was no doubt at all. Either he was mad, or that was the emerald.
He remembered some odiously vivid dreams that he had had as a child
during the air raids--but he was certain this was no dream. He was
McTaggart all right, a miserable young journalist against whom fate had
woven some hellish plot; and there was the Emerald.
Next he tortured himself as to what he should do; obviously he must keep
it upon him; he dared not secrete it anywhere. If one secretes things
one can be traced. Conscience for one moment bade him go and tell his
host, and risk all; but unfortunately the Angel had been called away at
that very moment to tackle the Devil again, who had settled in the
Vicarage; and in lack of such heavenly aid McTaggart fell, as any one of
us would have fallen. He put the emerald into the inner pocket of his
coat, pinned three pins round it carefully to make certain that it
should not escape; and then went down with leaden heart to mix with his
fellow beings and to trust to time.