Statement of Sophy Jeffers, lady’s maid
to the Marchioness of Castlecourt 9
Statement of Lilly Bingham, known in
England as Laura Brice, in the
United States as Frances Latimer,
to the police of both countries as
Laura the Lady, besides having recently
figured as a housemaid at
Burridge’s Hotel, London, under
the alias of Sara Dwight 47
Statement of Cassius P. Kennedy, formerly
of Necropolis City, Ohio, now
Manager of the London Branch of
the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage
Company (Ltd.) of Chicago and St.
Louis 95
Statement of John Burns Gilsey, private
detective, especially engaged on the
Castlecourt diamond case 127
The Statement of Daisy K. Fairweather
Kennedy, late of Necropolis City,
Ohio, at present a resident of 15
Farley Street, Knightsbridge, London 157
Statement of Gladys, Marchioness of
Castlecourt 189
Statement of Sophy Jeffers, lady’s maid to the Marchioness of
Castlecourt.
Statement of Sophy Jeffers, lady’s maid to the Marchioness of
Castlecourt.
I had been in Lady Castlecourt’s service two years when the Castlecourt
diamonds were stolen. I am not going to give an account of how I was
suspected and cleared. That’s not the part of the story I’m here to set
down. It’s about the disappearance of the diamonds that I’m to tell,
and I’m ready to do it to the best of my ability.
We were in London, at Burridge’s Hotel, for the season. Lord
Castlecourt’s town house at Grosvenor Gate was let to some rich
Americans, and for two years now we had stayed at Burridge’s. It was
the third of April when we came to town--my lord, my lady, Chawlmers
(my lord’s man), and myself. The children had been sent to my lord’s
aunt, Lady Mary Cranbury--she who’s unmarried, and lives at Cranbury
Castle, near Worcester.
Lord Castlecourt didn’t like going to the hotel at all. Chawlmers used
to tell me how he’d talk sometimes. Chawlmers has been with my lord ten
years, and was born on the estate of Castlecourt Marsh Manor. But my
lord generally did what my lady wanted, and she was not at all partial
to the country. She’d say to me--she was always full of her jokes:
“Yes, it’s an excellent place, the country--an excellent place to get
away from, Jeffers. And the farther away you get the more excellent it
seems.”
My lady had been born in Ireland, and lived there till she was a woman
grown. It’s not for me to comment on my betters, but I’ve heard it said
she didn’t have a decent frock to her back till old Lady Bundy took
her up and brought her to London. Her father was a clergyman, the Rev.
McCarren Duffy, of County Clare, and they do say he hadn’t a penny to
his fortune, and that my lady ran wild in cotton frocks and with holes
in her stockings till Lady Bundy saw her. I’ve heard tell that Lady
Bundy said of her she’d be the most beautiful woman in London since
the Gunnings (whoever they were), and just brought her up to town and
fitted her out from top to toe. In a month she was the talk of the
season, and before it was over she was betrothed to the Marquis of
Castlecourt, who was a great match for her.
But she was the beggar on horseback you hear people talk about. Lord
Castlecourt wasn’t what would be called a millionaire, but he gave her
more in a month than she’d had before in five years, and she’d spend
it all and want more. It seemed as if she didn’t know the value of
money. If she’d see a pretty thing in a shop she’d buy it, and if she
had not got the ready money they’d give her the credit; for, being the
Marchioness of Castlecourt, all the shop people were on their knees to
her, they were that anxious to get her patronage. Then when the bills
would come in she would be quite surprised and wonder how she had come
to spend so much, and hide them from Lord Castlecourt. Afterward she’d
forget all about them, even where she’d put them.
Lord Castlecourt was so fond of her he’d have forgiven her anything.
They’d been married five years when I entered my lady’s service, and he
was as much in love with her as if he’d been married but a month. And
I don’t blame him. She was the prettiest lady, and the most coaxing,
I ever laid eyes on. She might well be Irish: there was blarney on
her tongue for all the world, and money ready to drop off the ends of
her fingers into any palm that was held out. There was no story of
misfortune but would bring the tears to her eyes and her purse to her
hand: generous and soft hearted she was to every creature that walked.
No one could be angry with her long. I’ve seen Lord Castlecourt begin
to scold her, and end by laughing at her and kissing her. Not but what
she respected him and loved him. She did both, and she was afraid of
him too. No one knew better than my lady when it was time to stop
trifling with my lord and be serious.
It was Lord Castlecourt’s custom to go to Paris two or three times
every year. He had a sister married there of whom he was very fond, and
he and her husband would go off shooting boars to a place with a name
I can’t remember. My lady was always happy to go to Paris. She’d say
she loved it, and the theaters, and the shops--tho what she could see
in it _I_ never understood. A dirty, messy city, and full of men ready
to ogle an honest, Christian woman, as if she was what half the women
look like that go prancing along the streets. My lady spent a good
deal of her time at the dressmakers, and she and I were forever going
up to top stories in little, silly lifts that go up of themselves. I’d
a great deal rather have walked than trusted myself to such unsafe,
French contrivances--underhand, dangerous things, that might burst at
any moment, _I_ say.
The year before the time I am writing of we went to Paris, as usual, in
March. We stopped at the Bristol, and stayed one month. My lady went
out a great deal, and between-whiles was, as usual, at what they call
there “_couturières’_,” at the jewelers’, or the shops on the Rue de la
Paix. She also bought from Bolkonsky, the furrier, a very smart jacket
of Russian sable that I’ll be bound cost a pretty penny. When we went
back to London for the season her beauty and her costumes were the
talk of the town. Old Lady Bundy’s maid told me that Lady Bundy went
about saying: “And but for me, she’d be the mother of the red-headed
larrykins of an Irish squireen!” Which didn’t seem to me nice talk for
a lady.
We spent that summer at Castlecourt Marsh Manor very quietly, as was my
lord’s wish. My lady did not seem in as good spirits as usual, which I
set down to the country life that she always said bored her. Once or
twice she told me that she felt ill, which I’d never known her to say
before, and one day in the late summer I discovered her in tears. She
did not seem to be herself again till we went to Paris in September.
Then she brightened up, and was soon in higher spirits than ever. She
was on the go continually--often would go out for lunch, and not be
back till it was time to dress for dinner. She enjoyed herself in Paris
very much, she told me. And I think she did, for I never saw her more
animated--almost excited with high spirits and success.
The following spring we left Castlecourt Marsh Manor, and, as I said
before, came to Burridge’s on April the third. The season was soon
in full swing, and my lady was going out morning, noon, and night.
There was no end to it, and I was worn out. When she was away in the
afternoon I’d take forty winks on the sofa, and have Sara Dwight, the
housemaid of our rooms, bring me a cup of tea, when she’d sometimes
take one herself, and we’d gossip a bit over it.
If I’d known what an important person Sara Dwight was going to turn out
I’d have taken more notice of her. But, unfortunately, thieves don’t
have a mark on their brow like Cain, and Sara was the last girl any one
would have suspected was dishonest. All that I ever thought about her
was that she was a neat, civil-spoken girl, who knew her betters and
her elders when she saw them. She was quick on her feet, modest and
well-mannered--not what you’d call good-looking: too pale and small for
my taste, and Chawlmers quite agreed with me. The one thing I noticed
about her were her hands, which were white and fine like a lady’s. Once
when I asked her how she kept them so well, she laughed, and said, not
having a pretty face, she tried to have pretty hands.
“Because a girl ought to have something pretty about her, oughtn’t she,
Miss Jeffers?” she said to me, quiet and respectful as could be.
I answered, as I thought it was my duty, that beauty was only skin
deep, and if your character was honest your face would take care of
itself.
She looked down at her hands, and smiled a little and said:
“Yes, I suppose that’s true, Miss Jeffers. I’ll try to remember it.
It’s what every girl ought to feel, I’m sure.”
Sara Dwight had the greatest admiration for Lady Castlecourt. She’d
manage to be standing about in doorways and on the stairs when my lady
passed down to go to dinner and to the opera. Then she’d come back
and tell me how beautiful my lady was, and how she envied me being
her maid. While she was talking she’d help me tidy up the room, and
sometimes--because she admired my lady so--I’d let her look at the new
clothes from Paris as they hung in the wardrobe. Sara would gape with
admiration over them. She spoke a little about my lady’s jewels, but
not much. I’d have suspected that.
It was in the fifth week after we came to town--to be exact, on the
afternoon of the fourth day of May--that the diamonds were stolen. As
I’d been so badgered and questioned and tormented about it, I’ve got it
all as clear in my head as a photograph--just how it was and just what
time everything happened.
That evening my lady was going to dinner at the Duke of Duxbury’s. It
was to be a great dinner--a prince and a prime minister, and I don’t
know what all besides. My lady was to wear a new gown from Paris and
the diamonds. She told me when she went out what she would want and
when she would be back. That was at four, and I was not to expect her
in till after six.
Some time before that I got her things ready, the gown laid out, and
the diamonds on the dressing-table. They were kept in a leather case
of their own, and then put in a despatch-box that shut with a patent
lock. When we traveled I always carried this box--that is, when my
lady used it. A good deal of the time it was at the bankers’. Lord
Castlecourt was very choice about the diamonds. Some of them had been
in his family for generations. The way they were set now--in a necklace
with pendants, the larger stones surrounded by smaller ones--had been
a new setting made for his mother. My lady wanted them changed, and I
remember that Lord Castlecourt was vexed with her, and she couldn’t
pet and coax him back into a good humor for some days.
One of the last things that I did that afternoon while arranging the
dressing-table was to open the despatch-box and take the leather case
out. Tho it was May, and the evenings were very long, I turned on the
electric lights, and, unclasping the case, looked at the necklace.
I was standing this way when Chawlmers comes to the side door of the
room (the whole suite was connected with doors), and asks me if I
could remember the number of the bootmakers where my lady bought her
riding-boots. Some friend of Chawlmers wanted to know the address. I
couldn’t at first remember it, and I was standing this way, trying
to recollect, when I heard the clock strike six. I told Chawlmers I’d
get it for him. I was certain it was in my lady’s desk, and I put the
case down on the bureau, and Chawlmers and I together went into the
sitting-room (the door open between us and my lady’s room) and looked
for it. We found it in a minute, and Chawlmers was writing it down in
his pocket-book when I thought I heard (so light and soft you could
hardly say you’d heard anything) a rustle like a woman’s skirt in the
next room. For a second I thought it was my lady, and I jumped, for I’d
no business at her desk, and I knew she’d be vexed and scold me.
Chawlmers didn’t hear a thing, and looked at me astonished. Then I ran
to the door and peeped in. There was no one there, and I thought, of
course, I’d been mistaken.
We didn’t leave the room directly, but stood by the desk talking for
a bit. When I told this to the detectives, one of the papers said it
showed “how deceptive even the best servants were.” As if a valet and
a lady’s maid couldn’t stop for a moment of talk! Poor things! we
work hard enough most of the time, I’m sure. And that we weren’t long
standing there idle can be seen from the fact that I heard half-past
six strike. I was for urging Chawlmers to go then--as Lady Castlecourt
might be in at any moment--but he hung about, following me into my
lady’s room, helping me draw the curtains and turn on all the lights,
for my lady can’t bear to dress by daylight.
It was nearly seven o’clock when we heard the sound of her skirts in
the passage. Chawlmers slipped off into his master’s rooms, shutting
the door quietly behind him. My lady was looking very beautiful. She
had on a blue hat trimmed with blue and gray hydrangeas, and underneath
it her hair was like spun gold, and her eyes looked soft and dark.
It never seemed to tire her to be always on the go. But I’d thought
lately she’d been going too much, for sometimes she was pale, and once
or twice I thought she was out of spirits--the way she’d been in the
country last summer.
She seemed so to-night, not talking as much as usual. There were
some letters for her on the corner of the dressing-table, and I could
see her face in the glass as she read them. One made her smile, and
then she sat thinking and biting her lip, which was as red as a
cherry. She seemed to me to be preoccupied. When I was making the side
“_ondulations_” of her hair--which everybody knows is a most critical
operation--she jerked her head, and said suddenly she wondered how the
children were. I never before knew my lady to think about the children
when her hair was being attended to.
She was sitting in front of the dressing-table, her toilet complete,
when she stretched out her hand to the leather case of the diamonds.
I was looking at the reflection in the mirror, thinking that she was
as perfect as I could make her. She, too, had been looking at the back
of her head, and still held the small glass in one hand. The other
she reached out for the diamonds. The case had a catch that you had
to press, and I saw, to my surprise, that she raised the lid without
pressing this. Then she gave a loud exclamation. There were no diamonds
there!
She turned round and looked at me, and said:
“How odd! Where are they, Jeffers?”
I felt suddenly as if I was going to fall dead, and afterward, when
my lady stood by me and said it was nonsense to suspect me, one of
the things she brought up as a proof of my innocence was the color I
turned and the way I looked at that moment.
“Jeffers!” she said, suddenly rising up quick out of her chair. And
then, without my saying a word, she went white and stood staring at me.
“My lady, my lady,” was all I could falter out, “I don’t know--I don’t
know!”
“Where are they, Jeffers? What’s happened to them?”
My voice was all husky like a person’s with a cold, as I stammered:
“They were in the case an hour ago.”
My lady caught me by the arm, and her fingers gripped tight into my
flesh.
“Don’t say they’re stolen, Jeffers!” she cried out. “Don’t tell me
that! Lord Castlecourt would never forgive me. He’ll never forgive me!
They’re worth thousands and thousands of pounds! They _can’t_ have been
stolen!”
She spoke so loud they heard her in the next room, and Lord Castlecourt
came in. He was a tall gentleman, a little bald, and I can see him
now in his black clothes, with the white of his shirt bosom gleaming,
standing in the doorway looking at her. He had a surprised expression
on his face, and was frowning a little; for he hated anything like loud
talking or a scene.
“What’s the matter, Gladys?” he said. “You’re making such a noise I
heard you in my room. Is there a fire?”
She made a sort of grasp at the case, and tried to hide it. Chawlmers
was in the doorway behind my lord, and I saw him staring at her and
trying not to. He told me afterward she was as white as paper.
“The diamonds,” she faltered out--“your diamonds--your family’s--your
mother’s.”
Lord Castlecourt gave a start, and seemed to stiffen. He did not move
from where he was, but stood rigid, looking at her.
“What’s the matter with them?” he said, quick and quiet, but not as if
he was calm.
She threw the case she had been trying to hide on the dressing-table.
It knocked over some bottles, and lay there open and empty. My lord
sprang at it, took it up, and shook it.
“Gone?” he said, turning to my lady. “Stolen, do you mean?”
“Yes--yes--yes,” she said, like that--three times; and then she fell
back in the chair and put her hands over her face.
Lord Castlecourt turned to me.
“What’s this mean, Jeffers? You’ve had charge of the diamonds.”
I told him all I knew and as well as I could, what with my legs
trembling that they’d scarce support me, and my tongue dry as a piece
of leather. When I got toward the end, my lady interrupted me, crying
out:
“Herbert, it isn’t my fault, it isn’t! Jeffers will tell you I’ve taken
good care of them. I’ve not been careless or forgetful about them, as
I have about other things. I _have_ been careful of them! It isn’t my
fault, and you mustn’t blame me!”
Lord Castlecourt made a sort of gesture toward her to be still. I
could see it meant that. He kept the case, and, going to the door,
locked it.
“How long have you been in these rooms?” he said, turning round on me
with the key in his hand.
I told him, trembling, and almost crying. I had never seen my lord look
so terribly stern. I don’t know whether he was angry or not, but I was
afraid of him, and it was for the first time; for he’d always been a
kind and generous master to me and the other servants.
“Oh, my lord,” I said, feeling suddenly weighed down with dread and
misery, “you surely don’t think I took them?”
“I’m not thinking anything,” he said. “You and Chawlmers are to stay
in this room, and not move from it till you get my orders. I’ll send at
once for the police.”
My lady turned round in her chair and looked at him.
“The police?” she said. “Oh, Herbert, wait till to-morrow! You’re not
even sure yet that they are stolen.”
“Where are they, then?” he says, quick and sharp. “Jeffers says she saw
them in that case an hour ago. They are not in the case now. Do either
you or she know where they are?”
I was down on my knees, picking up the bottles that had been knocked
over by the empty jewel-case.
“Not I, God knows,” I said, and I began to cry.
“The matter must be put in the hands of the police at once,” my
lord said. “I’ll have the hotel policeman here in a few minutes, and
the rooms searched. Jeffers and Chawlmers and their luggage will be
searched to-morrow.”
My lady gave a sort of gasp. I was close to her feet, and I heard her.
But, for myself, I just broke down, and, kneeling on the floor with the
overturned bottles spilling cologne all around me, cried worse than
I’ve done since I was in short frocks.
“Oh, my lady, I didn’t take them! I didn’t! You know I didn’t!” I
sobbed out.
My lady looked very miserable.
“My poor Jeffers,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder, “I’m sure
you didn’t. If I’d only a sixpence in the world I’d stake that on
your honesty.”
Lord Castlecourt didn’t say anything. He went to the bell and pressed
it. When the boy answered it he gave him a message in a low tone, and
it didn’t seem five minutes before two men were in the room. I did
not know till afterward that one was the manager, and the other the
hotel policeman. I stopped my crying the best I could, and heard my
lord telling them that the diamonds were gone, and that Chawlmers and
I had been the only people in the room all the afternoon. Then he said
he wanted them to communicate at once with Scotland Yard, and have a
capable detective sent to the hotel.
“Lady Castlecourt and I are going to dinner,” he said, looking at his
watch. “We will have to leave, at the latest, within the next twenty
minutes.”
Lady Castlecourt cried out at that:
“Herbert, I don’t see how I can go to that dinner. I am altogether too
upset, and, besides, it will be too late. It’s eight o’clock now.”
“We can make the time up in the carriage,” my lord said; and he went
into the next room with the policeman, where they talked together in
low voices. I helped my lady on with her cloak, and she stood waiting,
her eyebrows drawn together, looking very pale and worried. When my
lord came back he said nothing, only nodded to my lady that he was
ready, and, without a word, they left the room.
I tried to tidy the bureau and pick up the bottles as well as I could,
and every time I looked at the door into the sitting-room I saw that
policeman’s head peering round the door-post at me.
That was an awful night. I did not know it till afterward, but both
Chawlmers and I were under what they call “surveillance.” I did not
know either that Lord Castlecourt had told the policeman he believed us
to be innocent; that we were of excellent character, and nothing but
positive proof would make him think either of us guilty. All I felt, as
I tossed about in bed, was that I was suspected, and would be arrested
and probably put in jail. Fifteen years of honest service in noble
families wouldn’t help me much if the detectives took it into their
heads I was guilty.
The next morning we heard about the disappearance of Sara Dwight, and
things began to look brighter. Sara had left the hotel at a little
after seven the evening before, speaking to no one, and carrying a
small portmanteau. When they came to examine her room and her box
they found a jacket and skirt hanging on the wall, some burnt papers
in the grate, and the box almost empty, except for some cheap cotton
underclothes and a dirty wadded quilt put in to fill up. Sara had given
no notice, and had not at any time told any of her fellow servants
that she was dissatisfied with her place or wanted to leave.
That morning Mr. Brison, the Scotland Yard detective, had us up in the
sitting-room asking us questions till I was fair muddled, and didn’t
know truth from lies. Lord Castlecourt and my lady were both present,
and Mr. Brison was forever politely asking my lady questions till she
got quite angry with him, and said she wasn’t at all sure the diamonds
were stolen; they might have been mislaid, and would turn up somewhere.
Mr. Brison was surprised, and asked my lady if she had any idea where
they were liable to turn up; and my lady looked annoyed, and said it
was a silly question, and that she “wasn’t a clairvoyant.”
Three days after this Mr. John Gilsey, who is a detective, and, I have
heard since, a very famous gentleman, was engaged by Lord Castlecourt
to “work upon the case.” Mr. Gilsey was very soft-spoken and pleasant.
He did not muddle you, as Mr. Brison did, and it was very easy to tell
him all you knew or could remember, which he always seemed anxious to
hear. He had me up in the sitting-room twice, once alone and once with
Mr. Brison, and they asked me a host of questions about Sara Dwight. I
told them all I could think of; and when I came to her hands, and how
they were white and fine, like a lady’s, I saw Mr. Brison look at Mr.
Gilsey and raise his eyebrows.
“Does it seem to you,” he says, scribbling words in his note-book,
“that this sounds like Laura the Lady?”
And Mr. Gilsey answered:
“The manner of operating sounds like her, I must admit.”
“She was in Chicago when last heard of,” says Mr. Brison, stopping in
his scribbling, “but we’ve information within the last week that she’s
left there.”
“Laura the Lady is in London,” Mr. Gilsey remarked, looking at his
finger nails. “I saw her three weeks ago at Earlscourt.”
Mr. Brison got red in the face and puffed out his lips, as if he was
going to say something, but decided not to. He scribbled some more,
and then, looking at what he had written as if he was reading it over,
says:
“If that’s the case, there’s very little doubt as to who planned and
executed this robbery.”
“That’s a very comfortable state of affairs to arrive at,” says Mr.
Gilsey, “and I hope it’s the correct one.” And that was all he said
that time about what he thought.
After this we stayed on at Burridge’s for the rest of the season, but
it was not half as cheerful or gay as it had been before. My lord was
often moody and cross, for he felt the loss of the diamonds bitterly;
and my lady was out of spirits and moped, for she was very fond of him,
and to have him take it this way seemed to upset her. Mr. Brison or Mr.
Gilsey were constantly popping in and murmuring in the sitting-room,
but they got no further on--at least, there was no talk of finding the
diamonds, which was all that counted.
This is all I know of the theft of the necklace. What happened at that
time, and what Mr. Gilsey calls “the surrounding circumstances of the
case,” I have tried to put down as clearly and as simply as possible. I
have gone over them so often, and been forced to be so careful, that I
think they will be found to be quite correct in every particular.
Statement of Lilly Bingham, known in England as Laura Brice, in the
United States as Frances Latimer, to the police of both countries as
Laura the Lady, besides having recently figured as a housemaid at
Burridge’s Hotel, London, under the alias of Sara Dwight.
Statement of Lilly Bingham, known in England as Laura Brice, in the
United States as Frances Latimer, to the police of both countries as
Laura the Lady, besides having recently figured as a housemaid at
Burridge’s Hotel, London, under the alias of Sara Dwight.
I never was so glad of anything in my life as to get out of that
beastly hole, Chicago. I’ll certainly never go back there unless there
is an inducement big enough to compensate for the elevated railroad,
the lake, the noise, the winds, the restaurants, the climate, and the
people. Ugh, what a nightmare!
England’s the country for me, and London is the focus of it. You can
live like a Christian here, and enjoy all the refinements and decencies
of life for a reasonable consideration. How my heart leaped when I
saw the old, gray, sooty walls looming up through the river haze--I
thought it best to sneak by the back way, because if I go up the front
stairs and ring the bell there may be loiterers round who had seen
Laura the Lady before, and might become impertinently curious about
her future movements. And then when I saw Tom waiting for me--my own
Tom, that I lawfully married, in a burst of affection, three years ago,
at Leamington--I shouted out greetings, and danced on the deck, and
waved my handkerchief. It was worth while having lived in Chicago for
a year to come back to London and Tom and a little furnished flat in
Knightsbridge.
We were very respectable and quiet for a month--just a few callers
climbing up the front stairs, and demure female tea-parties at
intervals. I bought plants to put in the windows, and did knitting in a
conspicuous solitude which the neighbors could overlook. When I saw the
maiden lady opposite scrutinizing me through an opera-glass I felt like
sending her my marriage certificate to run her eye over and return.
We even hired a maid of all work from an agency as a touch of local
color on this worthy domestic picture. But when the Castlecourt diamond
scheme began to ripen I nagged at her till she was impudent and bundled
her off. Maud Durlan came in then, put on a cap and apron, and played
her part a good deal better than she used to when she acted soubrettes
in the vaudeville.
We were two weeks lying low, maturing our plans, tho when I left
Chicago I knew what I was coming back for. Outwardly all was the same
as usual--the decent callers still climbed the front stairs, and
elderly ladies who, without any stretch of imagination, might have
been my mother and aunts, dropped in for tea. I used to wonder how
the people on the floor below--they were the family of a man who made
rubber tires for bicycles--would have felt if they could have seen
Maud, our neat and respectable slavy, sitting with the French heels
of her slippers caught on the third shelf of the bookcase, dropping
cigarette ashes into the waste-paper basket.
When all was ready, Tom and I left for a “business” trip on the
Continent. We went away in a four-wheeler, driven by Handsome Harry,
the top piled with luggage, my face at the window smiling a last,
cautioning good-by at Maud. Five days later, under the name of Sara
Dwight, I was installed as housemaid on the third floor of Burridge’s
Hotel.
I had done work of that kind before--once in New York, and at another
time in Paris; having been born and spent my childhood in that cheerful
city, my French is irreproachable. The famous robbery of the Comtesse
de Chateaugay’s rubies was my work--but I mustn’t brag about past
exploits. I had never been engaged in a hotel theft of the importance
of the Castlecourt one. The necklace was valued at between eight
thousand and nine thousand pounds. The stones were not so remarkable
for size as for quality. They were of an unusually even excellence and
pure water.
After I had been in the hotel for a few days and watched the
Castlecourt party, all apprehension left me, and I felt confident and
cool. They were an extremely simple layout. Lady Castlecourt was a
beauty--a seductive, smiling, white and gold person, without any sense
at all. Her husband adored her. Being a man of some brains, that was
what might have been expected. What might not have been expected was
that she appeared to reciprocate his affection. Having made a careful
study of the manners and customs of the upper classes, I was not
prepared for this. I note it as one of those exceptions to rule which
occur now and then in the animal kingdom.
Besides the marquis and his lady, there were a maid and a valet to be
considered. The former was a dense, honest woman named Sophy Jeffers,
close on to forty, and of the unredeemed ugliness of the normal lady’s
maid. Such being the case, it was but natural to find that she was in
love with Chawlmers, the valet, who was twenty-seven and good-looking.
Jeffers was too truthful to tamper with her own age, but she did not
feel it necessary to keep up the same rigid standard when it came to
Chawlmers. It was less of a lie to make him ten years older than
herself ten years younger. From these facts I drew my deductions as to
the sort of adversary Jeffers might be, and I found that, by a modest
avoidance of Chawlmers’ society, I could make her my lifelong friend.
The evening of the Duke of Duxbury’s dinner was the time I decided upon
as the most convenient for taking the stones. I had heard from Jeffers
that the marquis and marchioness were going. When her ladyship left
her rooms that afternoon I heard her tell Jeffers that she would not
be back till after six, and to have everything ready at that hour. Off
and on for the next two hours I was doing work about the corridor with
a duster. It was near six when I heard the two servants talking in the
sitting-room. A bird’s-eye view through the keyhole showed me where
they were, and that they were engaged in searching for something in
the desk. It was my chance. With my housemaid’s pass-key I opened the
door a crack, and peeped in. The leather case of the diamonds stood on
the dressing-table not twenty feet from the door. It did not take five
minutes to enter, open the case, take the necklace, and leave. Jeffers
heard me. She was in the room almost as I closed the door. Before she
could have got into the hall I was in the broom-closet hunting for a
dust-pan. But she evidently suspected nothing, for the door did not
open and there was no indication of disturbance.
Two days later Tom and I returned from our “business trip” to the
Continent. I quite prided myself on the way our luggage was labeled.
It had just the right knock-about, piebald look. We drove up in a
four-wheeler, Handsome Harry on the box, and Maud opened the door for
us. For the next few days we were quiet and kept indoors. We spent the
time peacefully in the kitchen, breaking the settings of the diamonds
and reading about the robbery in the papers. As soon as things simmered
down, Tom was to take the stones across to Holland, where they would
be distributed. We threw away the settings, and put the diamonds in a
small box of chamois-skin that I pinned to my corset with a safety-pin.
That was the way things were--untroubled as a summer sea--till ten
days after our return, when I began to get restive. I had had what
they call in America “a strenuous time” at Burridge’s, working like a
slave all day, with not a soul to speak to but a parcel of ignorant
servant women, and I wanted livening up. I longed for the light and
noise of Piccadilly, the crowd and the restaurants; but what I wanted
particularly was to go to the theater and see a play called “The
Forgiven Prodigal.”
Maud and Tom raised a clamor of disapproval: What was the use of
running risks? did I think, because I’d been in Chicago for nearly a
year, that I was forgotten? did I think the men in Scotland Yard who
knew me were all dead? did I think the excitement of the Castlecourt
robbery was over and done? I yawned at them, and then told them, with
a gentle smile, that they were a “pusillanimous pair.” There might
be many men in Scotland Yard who knew me, and that, as they say in
Chicago, “is all the good it would do them.” They couldn’t arrest
me for sitting peacefully at a theater looking at a play. As for
connecting me with Sara Dwight, I would give any one a hundred pounds
who, when I was dressed and had my war-paint on, would find in me a
single suggestion of the late housemaid at Burridge’s. So I talked
them down; and if I didn’t convince them of the reasonableness of my
arguments, I at least managed to soothe their fears.
I dressed myself with especial care, and when the last rite of my
toilet was accomplished looked critically in the glass to see if
anything of Sara Dwight remained. The survey contented me. Sara’s
mother, if there be such a person, would have denied me. I was all in
black, a sweeping, spangly dress I had bought in New York, cut low, and
my neck is not my weak point, especially when _crême des violettes_
has been rubbed over it. My hair was waved (Maud does it very well,
much better than she cooks, I regret to say), and dressed high, with a
small red wreath of geraniums round it. Nose powdered to a probable,
ladylike whiteness, a touch of rouge, a tiny _mouche_ near the corner
of one eye, and long, black gloves--and, presto change! I wore no
jewels--their owners might recognize them. One could hardly say I
“wore” the Castlecourt diamonds, which were fastened to my corset with
a safety-pin. They were rather uncomfortable, but they were the only
thing about me that were.
As I stood in front of the glass putting on finishing touches, Maud
left the room, and went to the drawing-room to watch for Handsome
Harry, who was to drive our hansom. I did not like taking a hired
driver, and, thank goodness, I didn’t! I was putting a last _soupçon_
of scarlet on my lips, when she came back, stepping softly, and with
her eyes round and uneasy looking.
“I don’t know whether I’m nervous,” she says, “but there’s a man just
gone by in a hansom, and he leaned out and looked hard at our windows.”
“I hope it amused him,” I said, looking critically at my lips, to see
if they were not a little too incredibly ruddy. “It’s a harmless and
innocent way of passing the time, so we mustn’t be hard on him if it
doesn’t happen to be very intellectual. Come, help me on with my cloak,
and don’t stand there like Patience on a monument staring at thieves.”
I was irritated with Maud, trying to upset my peace of mind that way.
She’d had any amount of good times while I’d been at Burridge’s with
my nose to the grindstone. And here she was, the first time I’d got a
chance to have a spree, looking like a depressed owl and talking like
the warning voice of Conscience! As she silently held up my cloak and I
thrust my hand in the sleeve, I said, over my shoulder:
“And you needn’t go upsetting Tom by telling him about strange men in
hansoms who stare up at our front windows. I want to have a good time
this evening, not feel that I’m sitting by a guilty being who jumps
every time he’s spoken to as if the curse of Cain was on him.”
Maud said nothing, and I shook myself into my cloak and swept out to
the hall, where Tom was waiting.
There had been a slight fog all afternoon, and now it was thick; not a
“pea-soup” one, but a good, damp, obscuring fog--a regular “burglar’s
delight.” As we came down the steps we saw the two hansom lamps making
blurs, like lights behind white cotton screens. Tom was grumbling about
it and about going out generally as he helped me in. And just at that
minute, still and quick, like a picture going across a magic-lantern
slide, I saw a man on the other side of the street step out of the
shadow of a porch, and glide swiftly and softly past the light of the
lamp and up the street, to where the form of a waiting hansom loomed.
It was all very simple and natural, but his walk was odd--so noiseless
and stealthy.
I got in, and Tom followed me. He hadn’t seen anything. For the moment
I didn’t speak of it, because I wasn’t sure. But I’ve got to admit
that my heart beat against the Castlecourt diamonds harder than was
comfortable. We started, and I listened, and faintly, some way behind
us, I heard the _ker-lump!--ker-lump!--ker-lump!_ of another horse’s
hoofs on the asphalt. I leaned forward over the door, and tried to look
back. Through the mist I saw the two yellow eyes of the hansom behind
us. Tom asked me what was the matter, and I told him. He whistled--a
long, single note--then leaned back very steady and still. We didn’t
say anything for a bit, but just sat tight and listened.
It kept behind us that way for about ten minutes. Then I pushed up the
trap, and said to Harry:
“What’s this hansom behind us up to, Harry?”
“That’s what I want to know,” he says, quiet and low.
“Lose it, if you can, without being too much of a Jehu,” I answered,
and shut the trap.
He tried to lose it, and we began a chase, slow at first, and then
faster and faster, down one street and up the other. The fog by this
time was as thick and white as wool, and we seemed to break through
it like a ship, as if we were going through something dense and
hard to penetrate. It seemed to me, too, a maddeningly quiet night.
There was no traffic, no noise of wheels to get mixed with ours. The
_ker-lump!--ker-lump!_ of our horse’s hoofs came back as clear as
sounds in a calm at sea from the long lines of house fronts. And that
devilish hansom never lost us. It kept just the same distance behind
us. We could hear its horse’s hoofs, like an echo of our own, beating
through the fog. It got no nearer; it went no faster. It did not seem
in a hurry, it never deviated from our track. There was something
hideously unagitated and cool about it--a sort of deadly, sinister
persistence. I saw it in imagination, like a live monster with bulging
yellow eyes, staring with gloating greediness at us as we ran feebly
along before it.
Tom didn’t say much. He doesn’t in moments like this. He’s got the
nerve all right, but not the brain. There’s no inventive ability in
Tom, he’s not built for crises. Handsome Harry now and then dropped
some remark through the trap, which was like a trickle of icy water
down one’s spine. I began to realize that my lips were dry, and that
the insides of my gloves were damp. I knew that whatever was to be
done had to come from me. I’d got them into this, and, as they say in
Chicago, “it was up to me” to get them out.
I leaned over the doors, and looked at the street we were going
through. I know that part of London like a book--the insides of some
of the houses as well as the outsides; it’s a part of our business in
which I’m supposed to be quite an expert. The street was a small one
near Walworth Crescent, the houses not the smartest in the locality,
but good, solid, reliable buildings inhabited by good, solid, reliable
people. The lower floors were all alight. It was the heart of the
season, and in many of them there were dinners afoot. I thought, with
a flash of longing--such as a drowning man might feel if he thought
of suddenly finding himself on terra firma--of serene, smiling people
sitting down to soup. I’d have given the Castlecourt diamonds at that
moment to have been sitting down with them to cold soup, sour soup,
greasy soup, any kind of soup--only to be sitting down to soup!
We turned a corner sharp, going now at a tearing pace, and I saw
before us a length of street wrapped in fog, and blurred at regular
intervals by the lights of lamps. It looked ghostlike--so white, so
noiseless, lined on either side by dim house fronts blotted with an
indistinct sputter of lights. There was not a sound but our own horse’s
hoof-beats, and far off, like a noise muffled by cotton wool, the echo
of our pursuer’s. Through the opaque, motionless atmosphere I saw that
the vista into which I stared was deserted. There was not a human
figure or a vehicle in sight. It was a lull, a brief respite, a moment
of incalculable value to us!
My mind was as clear as crystal, and I felt a sense of cool, high
exhilaration. I have only felt this way in desperate moments, and this
was a truly desperate moment--a pursuer on our heels and the diamonds
in my possession!
I leaned over the doors, and looked up the line of houses. It was
Farley Street. Who lived in Farley Street? Suddenly I remembered that
I knew all about the people who lived in No. 15. They were Americans
named Kennedy--a man, his wife, and a little girl. He was manager of
the London branch of a Chicago concern called the “Colonial Box, Tub,
and Cordage Company,” that I had often heard of in America. We had
marked the house, and made extensive investigations before I left,
intending to add it to our list, as Mrs. Kennedy had some handsome
jewelry and silver. Since my return I had seen her name in the papers
at various entertainments, and Maud had told me a lot about her
social successes. She was pretty, and people were taking her up. All
this--that it takes me some minutes to tell--flashed through my mind
in a revolution of the wheels.
I could see now that the windows of No. 15 were lit up. The Kennedys
were evidently at home, perhaps had a dinner on. They, along with the
rest of the world, would in a minute be sitting down to soup. They
might be sitting down now; it was close on to half-past eight. Why
could not we sit down with them?