Indifferent to all about him, the young man strode on his way through
the festive crowds that only the most inclement weather can prevent from
promenading Oxford Street on a night in June. He saw nothing, he heard
nothing; he was in a great hurry; and it was only as his determined
steps were brought almost to a standstill by the great concourse of
people about Oxford Circus that his eyes found leisure to examine the
placards of the evening journals which were exhibited at the mouth of
the Tube Station. “Countess Divorces Husband.” Well, thought he, she
couldn’t very well divorce her brother, could she? “Famous Diamond
Stolen.” Ah! “Garden Party Thief.” “£2000 Ring Stolen at Society
Function.” “Society Hostess Robbed.” It’s almost worth it for her, he
thought cattishly, to be called a Society Hostess. And he grinned, and,
assuming a fierce expression, which it was not difficult for him to do
under the angle of his dilapidated felt hat, he parted the crowds about
him and went his way. Maybe it was that the placards had had a
stimulating effect on him, or maybe it was that he needed violent
exercise, but now he walked even more swiftly than before, oblivious of
the remarks which his arrogant passage aroused from the leisurely
promenaders.
Soon he turned into a quiet street, and from that into another; and came
at last to a large building which, despite the name of Lyonesse
Mansions, was a block of flats of the meaner sort. He entered and strode
up and up, until the genteel strip of carpet on the stairway gave up all
pretence of being a genteel strip of carpet and frankly became a drugget
of the consistency of a Gruyère cheese.
To the very top of Lyonesse Mansions strode the cavalier of the streets,
and when further progress was barred by a mean-looking door he banged
upon that door without restraint, once, twice, thrice; and was then
opposed by a feminine person who had all the attributes and mannerisms
of a Slut, but was in reality a respectable woman with a vote, the wife
of a chauffeur who lived in a neighbouring Mews and whose comforts she
increased by doing a bit of charing here and there. She was doing a bit
of it here at the moment, and seemed inclined to resent any interruption
on behalf of both herself and her employer, for before he had said a
word she had snapped “Out,” and only the dexterous shoe of the cavalier
of the streets prevented the door from being slammed in his face.
“You’ll get a sore throat if you snarl like that,” he advised her
kindly, and pushed past her into the narrow little hall. Thoughtfully,
he looked at the three closed doors with which the narrow little hall
was decorated; and, by the abstracted expression of his face, seemed to
be in a place far removed from the comments on his manners, appearance,
and antecedents, if any, which the char-lady, having left the open
doorway, poured into his ear.
Then, having thought out his thought, he strode to the middle door and
flung it open. The room was dimly lit, which was just as well, for there
was in it but one ornament which might have repaid a more exact
scrutiny; and that was a girl, who, dressed for solitude in a faded blue
_peignoir_, her fair hair loose about her shoulders, a copy of the
_Sketch_ in her hands, lay negligently on a wretched sofa. She was a
pretty girl; that has been remarked before; but then she had been
dressed like a flower, a flower from a garden sweeter than the spacious
garden of Mrs. Felix Waite, and now she was dressed like nothing at all;
and the faded blue of her covering was stained by a flat yellow packet
of cigarettes. She was obviously no lady, and had given up pretending
she was.
“You dirty beast! How dare you come here!” cried the pretty girl,
amazement turning to disgust, disgust to anger. But the cavalier of the
streets, still framed in the doorway, his head uncovered, only smiled at
her. And in his smile there was no hint of apology for the intrusion
which his hostess seemed to resent so deeply.
“Good-evening, Betty,” said he, in a friendly way. “Just thought I’d
come and look at you, you know. Pretty Betty! You last remarkably well,
I must say. How are you, child?” And he advanced into the room, threw
his hat on a chair, dug his hands into his pockets, and grinned at her
again; while her eyes, pretty blue eyes hardened by despair, stared up
at him in helpless anger.
“Michael,” she said bitterly, “you are the world’s worst man. Why can’t
you leave me alone?--my Gawd, why can’t you leave me alone?” And as her
voice rose, her eyes swept him in utter contempt.
“You poor kid, I _have_ left you alone,” he told her gently, wearily.
The fact that the cavalier of the streets had at one time been a
gentleman was apparent in the way he took abuse. Abuse made him tired.
“I haven’t been near you for years, Betty, so it’s no good your handing
me any rough stuff about _that_....”
His gentleness provoked her. The pretty girl sat up in her disorder, and
the expression on her face was not pretty. He smiled curiously, thinking
of a very young man up at Magdalen College and of a very pretty girl at
a flower-shop near the station, and how the young man had loved the
pretty girl from a distance, until one day he had realised that the
pretty girl was very willing to be loved by him; whereupon she had got
the sack from the flower-shop, and had come up to London for to be a
chorus-girl, and in due course the young man had forgotten her....
“Anyway,” he added, “I didn’t leave you so stranded as that Thomas Felix
Waite fellow.”
Shame that the blue of the pretty girl’s eyes was so hard, so wretched
and so hard. “Oh, yes,” she sneered; “there ain’t much to choose
between you two rotten gentlemen!” And she laughed; and then, because
she was a girl, she sobbed. “Oh, Christ, why’ve I always been so
wretched!”
He was silent for what seemed a long time. Her sobs spent themselves
quietly in the depths of her self-pity, and at last he said softly:
“Anyway, Betty, you’ve got your own back on the Felix Waite family now.
You’ll be able to go back to the country, as you’ve always wanted to,
and live comfortably for a time. Or perhaps you’ll be able to start a
little shop of some kind.”
She stared at him in immense amazement, but he was looking out of the
little window....
“Michael Wagstaffe,” she breathed, “what the blazes are you talking
about?”
“A diamond ring worth £2000,” said Michael Wagstaffe to the window.
“Balmy!” she jeered at him.
“Hand it over, Betty,” said the cavalier of the streets sharply. He
stared down her frightened incredulous look. “It’s no good your saying
you haven’t got it, because I guessed you had when I saw you leaving the
Felix Waite house this evening, and I _know_ you have now I’ve seen your
face....” She began shrilly, but he snapped her up. “Now don’t be
silly, child. It’s no good your being selfish with it because you’ll
never be able to get rid of it on your own, and you’ll only get copped
if you try. I know about these things. So hand it over and try not to
look as though I was boring you with a tale about potatoes sprouting
from the Albert Memorial. We’ll go halves on it, I’m telling you. But
you’ll have to trust me.”
She leapt up, faced him, a figure of tense fury. “I trust _you_! You
poor silly cad, I trust _you_! Get away from my sight before----” And
she suddenly realised that she had not denied having the diamond-ring,
that he had provoked her outburst, that he was laughing at her. She
threw herself down on the sofa again and fumbled in the yellow packet
for a cigarette.
“Clever, aren’t you!” she sneered.
“Only by contrast,” smiled the cavalier of the streets. “I shall have to
find it myself, then?”
She made a move as though to spring from the sofa, but it was only a
little move, for she knew her man, and he was standing just beside her.
“You’re just a blamed fool,” was all she said.
“Don’t move, Betty,” he begged her gently. “Please don’t move. Because
I don’t want to have to tie you up. All I want to do is to find that
diamond-ring. It’s silly of you to put me to the trouble of having to
look for it, but even so I shall give you half of whatever I get for it,
for which you must thank my late mother for the way she brought me up.”
He seemed to have fallen into a conversational vein; he heeded not the
contemptuous sounds with which the pretty girl--now, alas! not so pretty
as she had been--sought to disturb the even tenor of his conversation;
and all the while his eyes were busy about the room, a largish and dingy
bed-sitting-room, the bed being inadequately hidden in an alcove behind
a frayed green curtain.
“You see, Betty dear,” he went on, “I have come to a point in my life
when I must have money or bust. I am telling you this that you may know
I shall not spend half your ill-gotten gains in riotous living. I am
tired of riotous living, Betty. I am tired of my life, I am tired of
England. And so I am going abroad, far abroad, and there I shall make a
new start”--she tried frantically to jump up, but he caught her wrist
and held it--“make a new start, as I was saying. You will not see me
again for a long time, Betty, and when you do, you will see a rich and
generous man, for I shall never forget that I owe you a good turn for
the wrong I did you. But to go abroad and to begin an entirely new life
I need money. And so,” and his eyes still wandered thoughtfully about
the room, “I must find your diamond-ring, sell it for you, and keep half
the proceeds as commission....”
“Even if it was here,” jeered the pretty girl, “you’d never find it. You
think you’re the only clever one in the world, don’t you?” But there was
not much conviction in her voice.
“No, I’ve always said you had brains, Betty. You are no fool; and I
shall conduct my investigations on those premises. But don’t move--” and
his hand fell sharply on her wrist again, while his eyes still
thoughtfully embraced every corner of the room. “Now, if you were a
fool, where would you hide a stolen diamond-ring so that your maid would
not find it? You would hide it in a far corner of a drawer, or under a
pile of linen, or you would sew it into the lining of a dress, or bury
it in a hole in the floor--in fact, Betty dear, if you were a fool you
would hide that diamond-ring in some secret place which any char-woman
or detective searching this room would find at once. But you are not a
fool. Now, if you are a student of Edgar Allan Poe, which I doubt, you
will remember his tale about a young Frenchman called Duval, or Dupin, I
forget which, who found a purloined letter, after the Paris police had
searched in vain for it for weeks, in the most obvious place in the
robber’s house: which was, of course, the letter-rack. Now what, I ask
myself, is the most obvious place in this room in which to hide a stolen
diamond-ring? The answer at once leaps to my mind, my eyes wander to a
dilapidated-looking arm-chair a few yards away and fix on a hand-bag
which is lying in the seat thereof. It is a pretty hand-bag,
unpretentious but decorative; and a diamond-ring in your hand-bag would
be quite safe from the prying fingers of your maid or char-woman for the
simple reason that she has long ago given up hoping that she will find
any money in it. But I am neither your maid nor your char-woman,
and--oh!” She had bitten the hand that held her wrist, and only by a
very quick effort did he restrain her from reaching the arm-chair on
which lay the hand-bag. “Allow me,” he said politely, nursing his hand.
“I will get it for you.” Swiftly he got it--and the diamond-ring lay in
his open palm.
All fight had left the pretty girl; she sat listlessly on the sofa and
gave way to her misery.
“Oh, you beast, you beast!” she kept whispering between dry sobs.
The cavalier of the streets stared at the stone in his hand. It winked
and glittered, a bright white light on a dingy palm in a dingy room,
arrogantly daring the eye with its innumerable carats. He whistled
softly, in wonder. “And they say,” he murmured, “that diamonds aren’t
fashionable nowadays!”
From the diamond in his palm he looked at the bowed head of the girl. He
said harshly:
“Haven’t I told you I’m going to give you half of what I get?”
“I don’t want to sell it,” sobbed the girl. “I got reasons. You wouldn’t
understand--_you_ wouldn’t understand anything to do with sentiment. You
was born without a heart, Michael Wagstaffe. When young Thomas Felix
Waite loved me he promised me that he’d get that diamond-ring from his
mother and give it to me. I didn’t want it then, nor believe him, but he
went on so about it that I came to fix my mind on it. And then one day
he left me--just like that, without a word. He was a weak idiot, but I
loved him--_you_ wouldn’t understand. And when he left me my mind
somehow ran on that diamond-ring he’d promised me--I wanted it, d’you
see, as I might want some money that’s owing to me. God’s treated me
pretty rough, I thought, and so He owes me that diamond-ring just so as
I can look at it now and then. And I been thinking about it months and
months, not thinking to steal it, you know, but just wanting it. _You_
wouldn’t understand how soft a girl gets when she’s eaten up with
loneliness in a big place like London. Why didn’t you let me be at
Oxford, Michael, living with my father? And so when I saw this
garden-party billed in the Society columns this morning, I just thought
I’d try to get in and have a look at the diamond on her hand. I never
thought she’d be fool enough to take it off in that catch-as-catch-can
crowd to show to a friend, and then lay it on the edge of the
fight-for-a-cup-of-tea-table to grab a cake which she could have done
well without, she being already so fat with over-feeding....” And for
the first time she looked up at the young man, who stood above her
absently playing with the glittering toy in his hand. She stared at him
with babyish, unbelieving eyes. “Gawd, you’re a bad kind of man, Michael
Wagstaffe. You’re very bad.”
“You don’t want to sell it, then?” he asked sardonically.
“I want the diamond--my diamond!” she whispered. “Give me back my
diamond-ring, Michael Wagstaffe. It’ll do for the sun you’ve took from
me since we met at Oxford....”
He smiled at her suddenly. “Here you are, pretty Betty,” he said, and
held out the diamond.
But Betty was afraid; she didn’t believe the _beau geste_. Few _beaux
gestes_ had come pretty Betty’s way. “Don’t play with me,” she
whispered.
“Go on, take the damn thing. I’ll swim the Channel.” There was no doubt
about it now. She stretched out her hand to his, to the glittering thing
in his palm; but her hand never reached the glittering thing. He
followed her staring, terrified eyes to the door behind him.
“Evening, _Mr._ Wagstaffe,” said the plain-clothes man with a grin; and
he fixed a delighted eye on the glittering thing in the palm of Mr.
Wagstaffe’s hand. “How’s business with diamonds to-night?”
“Rotten,” said Mr. Wagstaffe slowly. “Girl’s afraid even to touch it.”
The plain-clothes man was delighted with himself; he didn’t hurry; he
turned to the two constables who filled the doorway behind him. “See,
boys! There’s not a thief in the world who won’t take a stolen jool to
show off to his best girl. That’s why I’ve kept you chasing this smart
young man all evening--I knew he had it, but I wanted to catch him in
_flagrante delicto_, which is Latin for making a fool of himself.” He
possessed himself of the ring from the young man’s hand. “Sorry to have
disturbed you, miss. I didn’t like doing it, but he was such a long time
in here, and he’s given us the go-by so often, that I thought I’d come
up and fetch him, as he and I are going the same way home to-night. Come
on, _Mr._ Wagstaffe.”
The pretty girl, who had sat like a numbed thing, stirred violently; she
opened her mouth: “But----”
“I’m glad,” said the cavalier sharply, “to see that you took my advice
about bringing a posse with you. I’m coming.”
“But I----” began Betty, incredulously, desperately.
“That’s all right, miss,” the detective soothed her. “He won’t be any
more trouble to you for sixteen months or so.”
“Look here, I took----” began Betty furiously, as they moved to the
door.
“Good-night, pretty Betty,” called the cavalier of the streets. “I’m
sorry about the wrong I did you at Oxford. But I’ll do you a good turn
one day....”
Betty rushed frantically towards them, but the detective slammed the
door in her face; and through the flimsy panels she heard the gay voice
of the cavalier of the streets:
“Come, gentlemen, remove the body.”