Pearl's fears melted in the face of human companionship. She felt calm
again and rather foolish as she explained that she had felt alarmed
for no special reason--had thought about the pearls. Mrs. Conway
glanced at the closed safe.
"I thought," she said, "that the argument for keeping valuables in the
safe was that we could sleep calmly. The safe can't be opened unless
you give the combination."
"It was childish of me," said Pearl. "I was frightened."
Mrs. Conway smiled at her more kindly than she had ever done. It
was one of the contradictions in her nature that she was physically
brave--a fact obscured to most observers on account of her moral
cowardice. Like most brave people, she was kind to the timid.
"It's the storm," she said. "It gets on some people's nerves. I hope
the roof isn't leaking; it nearly always does in one of these storms.
What were you afraid of?"
"I don't exactly know," said Pearl.
"Would you like me to go back to your room with you? Would you like to
sleep on my sofa?" Edna asked.
But that was too ignominious. A faint wild dawn was breaking, and Pearl
knew that with the night her terror had gone. She went back to bed.
The next morning the wind was still blowing like a hurricane from
the south, though the rain had stopped. Great waves were running
up the beach, in some places as far as the sand hills, and forming
a long, narrow pool at the base of the dunes. As soon as lessons
were over Antonia dragged Miss Exeter to the beach--it was no easy
matter, for the wind blew the sand stingingly against face and hands.
There was no use in going to the public beach that morning, for the
bathing apparatus of barrels and life lines had been washed away, the
bathhouses were threatened, and there was a rumor that the sea was
washing into Lake Agawam.
Pearl and Antonia sat on their own dunes, watching the wild scene,
and suddenly Antonia said, "Look here, Miss Exeter, I want to ask you
something. Perhaps I oughtn't to."
Pearl had so completely lost any sense of having a guilty secret that
she answered tranquilly, "Go ahead."
"Is Uncle Anthony in love with you--like Mr. Williams?"
Ah, Pearl knew what that meant: Antonia had taken a long drive with
her mother and Miss Wellington the day before! She picked her words
carefully.
"I only saw your uncle once," she said.
"But Allen only saw you once or twice--and look at the darn thing!"
"Mr. Williams is not in the least in love with me."
"Miss Wellington said that some women have the power of rousing----"
"Antonia, I don't want to hear what she said."
"You don't like her, do you?"
"No."
"Shake," said Antonia heartily. "I don't like her, though she's very
kind to me; but it doesn't seem to me"--Antonia's voice took on the
flavor of meditation--"that she quite tells the truth. For instance,
just before Uncle Anthony went away, she telephoned to him one morning
and asked him to come over. He was playing a game of parcheesi with
me--I'd teased him a good deal to play--and he said he couldn't come,
and she--well, I couldn't hear what she was saying, but at last he
said, rather ungraciously, 'All right then, I'll come.' And he went,
and he took me with him. And we only stayed about ten minutes,
although she wanted us to stay longer. And then later at the bathing
beach I heard her telling someone that she was late--she was sorry--she
couldn't help it, because Anthony Wood came in just as she was
starting--of course she adored having him run in like that, but it did
take a good deal of one's time--'one's time'--that's what she said. I
call that a lie, don't you?"
"I certainly do," said Pearl.
"That's what I like about you, Miss Exeter; you say right out what
you think--even to a child." Antonia looked thoughtful. "It's a great
mistake not to tell children the truth; it makes it so hard for them
to know what to do. For instance, we have an aunt--a great aunt--Aunt
Sophia. She's awful, or as you would say, just terrible, but it seems
she's going to leave us all her money. Now if mother would tell us
that, it would be simple; but she doesn't. She says to be nice to Aunt
Sophia because she's such a dear. She isn't a bit a dear. So I had
to find out all by myself why mother, who's so awful to most of her
relations, is so nice to Aunt Sophia. I did. And it's the same thing
about my father. He tried to kidnap me once--at least he met me on my
way to school and asked me to take a drive with him. I wouldn't do
it. Mother said it was lucky I didn't. But it wasn't luck. It was good
judgment. Grown-up people are queer about that. When they do something
wise they say it was wise. But when a child does something wise they
say it was lucky. Children have more sense than people think; they have
to have."
"You have," said Pearl, who had never thought of all this before.
"Now this morning, do you know why mother wanted to get us all out of
the house?" Antonia continued.
Pearl felt tempted to say that Mrs. Conway always wanted to get her
out of the house, but she merely shook her head, and Antonia went on,
"Because she is going to have an interview with my father."
"With your father?" Pearl sprang to her feet. "Are you sure?"
Antonia nodded.
"When mother is going to see father she looks the way I feel as if
I looked when I'm going to the dentist--don't you know, you say to
yourself, 'I wouldn't think twice about this if I were brave'--and then
you think about it all the time. You know, mother doesn't think she
tells us everything, but she really does, except about my father. And
so, you see, if it's something about my father I always know, because
mother's worried without saying why."
This reasoning seemed sound to Pearl. She felt that in order to fulfill
Anthony's instructions she must go to Mrs. Conway's assistance at once.
She did not like to burst in upon them from the open windows of the
sitting-room, and so ran round the house to the front door. A small,
shabby automobile was standing in the circle, and as Pearl bounded up
the steps a man came out quickly and got into it--a pale man, with long
white hands and something of Durland's birdlike quality. She saw that
she was too late. She went into the sitting-room.
Mrs. Conway was standing in the middle of the room, supporting one
elbow in one hand and two fingers of the other resting against her
chin. She looked so white that every grain of rouge seemed to stand
out--away from her cheeks. She turned her eyes coldly upon Pearl.
"Well?" she said.
Pearl had not thought at all what she was going to say, and blurted
out, "Oh, Mrs. Conway, I thought you might need me! I thought I could
help you if--Mr. Wood said----"
Edna, rather to her own surprise, suddenly lost her temper.
"I'm tired of being considered a perfect fool," she said. "Anthony!
I know what Anthony thinks--that I'm always going to give Gordon
all the children's money. As a matter of fact, I know better than
anyone--though it isn't always very easy to say no, no, no, to a man
who has been your husband and who insists if he had five dollars he
could make a fortune; but I do say it--I always have--always--almost
always. It's a little too much to be watched over and lectured by you,
Miss Exeter."
After which speech Mrs. Conway left the room.
Luncheon was more than usually silent that day, although Edna attempted
to take an interest in the children's morning, asking whether it had
been pleasant in the water.
"My goodness, mother," Antonia answered, "have you looked at the water?
We'd certainly have been drowned if we'd gone in."
After lunch was over Edna was obliged to address Miss Exeter directly.
"I think you went off this morning without unlocking my safe," she said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Pearl.
Mrs. Conway smiled faintly.
"It was quite what I expected--it always happens with safes," she said.
"But now perhaps you will get me my pearls."
Pearl went eagerly, and as she went she remembered that she had
remembered to unlock the safe--just before she went to the beach with
Antonia. Yes, as she thought, the safe was very slightly ajar. She took
the long, slim, blue velvet case from its compartment and brought it to
Mrs. Conway in the drawing-room.
It was empty!
The surprise was like a physical blow, and yet no one at first supposed
that the pearls were actually gone. Mrs. Conway, as so often happens to
anyone who has sustained a loss, was instantly severely lectured by her
three children on her habitual carelessness.
Then a superficial search was made on her dressing table, on the glass
shelves in the bathroom. Then a recapitulation was made--a joint effort
on the part of everybody--of just what had occurred since the pearls
were last seen.
Everyone agreed that Mrs. Conway had been wearing them at dinner
the night before. She had gone to bed rather early, and distinctly
remembered that she had put the pearls in their slim blue velvet
case and put the case in the safe and shut the safe, which was then
automatically locked. She did not remember seeing the safe unlocked in
the morning.
No, Pearl explained, the reason for this was that she, Pearl, had
knocked at the door about eleven, just after finishing Durland's
algebra lesson. There had been no answer, because Mrs. Conway was in
her bath--her bathroom opened out of her bedroom. Pearl had been in a
hurry, so that she had just run and unlocked the safe and had called to
Mrs. Conway that it was unlocked. There had been no one in the room at
the time; but the maid--the maid had been Dolly's nurse when she was a
baby, and was therefore absolutely above suspicion--had been sewing in
the next room.
Mrs. Conway did not contradict this story. She simply raised her
eyebrows and said that she had not noticed that the safe was open.
Evidently it must have been open all day long--very unfortunate.
Pearl felt and probably looked horribly guilty. Of course she ought
to have looked to see whether the pearls were in their case when she
opened the safe. She usually did. She remembered, too, her strange
terror of the night before. Was it possible that that had been based
on something real? Had she really heard a footstep under the noise of
the storm? Could there have been a burglar in the house, hidden perhaps
all night, and stepping out at the right moment about noon when the
upstairs rooms were deserted?
It was Pearl who insisted on telephoning to New York for a detective.
Mrs. Conway at first objected and said she would feel like a goose if
the pearls were immediately discovered--caught in the lace of her tea
gown, or something like that. But Pearl was quite severe. If there had
been a robbery, she knew that every minute was of importance.
Just before dinner she called an agency. Two detectives arrived by
motor about ten o'clock that night. They had a long secret conference
with Mrs. Conway. Then one went back to New York and the other--the
head man, Mr. Albertson--took up his residence in the house.
Pearl went to bed more worried than ever. It didn't seem to her that
the detectives had really taken hold of the situation. She herself
could think of a dozen things they might have done that night. It did
not occur to her that their first action was to look up the past record
of everyone in the household.