Beneath a nature so superficially shallow that it shone only with the
reflected lustre of the more brilliant personalities to which it was
attracted, Mrs. Ilkington had a heart--sentiment and a capacity for
sympathetic affection. She had met Eleanor Searle in Paris, and knew a
little more than something of the struggle the girl had been making to
prepare herself for the operatic stage. She managed to discover that she
had no close friends in New York, and shrewdly surmised that she wasn't
any too well provided with munitions of war--in the shape of money--for
her contemplated campaign against the army of professional people,
marshalled by indifferent-minded managers, which stood between her and
the place she coveted.
Considering all this, Mrs. Ilkington had suggested, with an accent of
insistence, that Eleanor should go to the hotel which she intended to
patronise--wording her suggestion so cunningly that it would be an easy
matter for her, when the time came, to demonstrate that she had invited
the girl to be her guest. And with this she was thoughtful enough to
select an unpretentious if thoroughly well-managed house on the West
Side, in the late Seventies, in order that Eleanor might feel at ease
and not worry about the size of the bill which she wasn't to be
permitted to pay.
Accordingly the two ladies (with Mr. Bangs tagging) went from the pier
directly to the St. Simon, the elder woman to stay until her town-house
could be opened and put in order, the girl while she looked round for a
spinster's studio or a small apartment within her limited means.
Promptly on their arrival at the hotel, Mrs. Ilkington began to run up a
telephone bill, notifying friends of her whereabouts; with the result
(typical of the New York idea) that within an hour she had engaged
herself for a dinner with theatre and supper to follow--and, of course,
had managed to have Eleanor included in the invitation. She was one of
those women who live on their nerves and apparently thrive on
excitement, ignorant of the meaning of rest save in association with
those rest-cure sanatoriums to which they repair for a fortnight
semi-annually--or oftener.
Against her protests, then, Eleanor was dragged out in full dress when
what she really wanted to do was to eat a light and simple meal and go
early to bed. In not unnatural consequence she found herself, when they
got home after one in the morning, in a state of nervous disquiet caused
by the strain of keeping herself keyed up to the pitch of an animated
party.
Insomnia stared her in the face with its blind, blank eyes. In the
privacy of her own room, she expressed a free opinion of her countrymen,
conceiving them all in the guise of fevered, unquiet souls cast in the
mould of Mrs. Ilkington.
Divesting herself of her dinner-gown, she slipped into a negligee and
looked round for a book, meaning to read herself sleepy. In the course
of her search she happened to recognise her bandbox and conceive a
desire to reassure herself as to the becomingness of its contents.
The hat she found therein was becoming enough, even if it wasn't hers.
The mistake was easily apparent and excusable, considering the confusion
that had obtained on the pier at the time of their departure.
She wondered when Staff would learn the secret of his besetting mystery,
and wondered too why Alison had wished to make a mystery of it. The joke
was hardly apparent--though one's sense of American humour might well
have become dulled in several years of residence abroad.
Meanwhile, instinctively, Eleanor was trying on the hat before the long
mirror set in the door of the closet. She admitted to herself that she
looked astonishingly well in it. She was a sane and sensible young
woman, who knew that she was exceedingly good looking and was glad of it
in the same wholesome way that she was glad she had a good singing
voice. Very probably the hat was more of a piece with the somewhat
flamboyant if unimpeachable loveliness of Alison Landis; but it would
seem hard to find a hat better suited to set off the handsome, tall and
slightly pale girl that confronted Eleanor in the mirror.
It seemed surprisingly heavy, even for a hat of its tremendous size. She
was of the opinion that it would make her head ache to wear it for many
hours at a time. She was puzzled by its weight and speculated vaguely
about it until, lifting it carefully off, her fingers encountered
something hard, heavy and unyielding between the lining and the crown.
After that it didn't take her long to discover that the lining had been
ripped open and resewn with every indication of careless haste. Human
curiosity did the rest. Within a very few minutes the Cadogan collar lay
in her hands and she was marvelling over it--and hazily surmising the
truth: Staff had been used as a blind agent to get the pearls into the
country duty-free.
Quick thoughts ran riot in Eleanor's mind. Alison Landis would
certainly not delay longer than a few hours before demanding her hat of
Mr. Staff. The substitution would then be discovered and she, Eleanor
Searle, would fall under suspicion--at least, unless she took immediate
steps to restore the jewels.
She acted hastily, on impulse. One minute she was at the telephone,
ordering a taxicab, the next she was hurriedly dressing herself in a
tailor-made suit. The hour was late, but not too late--although (this
gave her pause) it might be too late before she could reach Staff's
rooms. She had much better telephone him she was coming. Of course he
would have a telephone--everybody has, in New York.
Consultation of the directory confirmed this assumption, giving her both
his address and his telephone number. But before she could call up, her
cab was announced. Nevertheless she delayed long enough to warn him
hastily of her coming. Then she snatched up the necklace, dropped it
into her handbag, replaced the hat in its bandbox and ran for the
elevator.
It was almost half-past one by the clock behind the desk, when she
passed through the office. She had really not thought it so late. She
was conscious of the surprised looks of the clerks and pages. The porter
at the door, too, had a stare for her so long and frank as to approach
impertinence. None the less he was quick enough to take her bandbox
from the bellboy who carried it and place it in the waiting taxi, and
handed her in after it with civil care. Having repeated to the operator
the address she gave him, the porter shut the door and went back to his
post as the vehicle darted out from the curb.
Eleanor knew little of New York geography. Her previous visits to the
city had been very few and of short duration. With the shopping district
she was tolerably familiar, and she knew something of the district
roundabout the old Fifth Avenue Hotel and the vanished Everett House.
But with these exceptions she was entirely ignorant of the lay of the
land: just as she was too inexperienced to realise that it isn't
considered wholly well-advised for a young woman alone to take, in the
middle of the night, a taxicab whose chauffeur carries a companion on
the front seat. If she had stopped to consider this circumstance at all,
she would have felt comforted by the presence of the superfluous man, on
the general principle that two protectors are better then one: but the
plain truth is that she didn't stop to consider it, her thoughts being
fully engaged with what seemed more important matters.
The cab bounced across Amsterdam Avenue, slid smoothly over to Columbus,
ran for a block or so beneath the elevated structure and swung into
Seventy-seventh Street, through which it pelted eastward and into
Central Park. Then for some moments it turned and twisted through the
devious driveways, in a fashion so erratic that the passenger lost all
grasp of her whereabouts, retaining no more than a confused impression
of serpentine, tree-lined ways, chequered with lamplight and the soft,
dense shadows of foliage, and regularly spaced with staring electric
arcs.
The night had fallen black beneath an overcast sky; the air that fanned
her face was warm and heavy with humidity; what little breeze there was,
aside from that created by the motion of the cab, bore on its leaden
wings the scent of rain.
A vague uneasiness began to colour the girl's consciousness. She grew
increasingly sensitive to the ominous quiet of the hour and place: the
stark, dark stillness of the shrouded coppices and thickets, the
emptiness of the paths. Once only she caught sight of a civilian,
strolling in his shirt-sleeves, coat over his arm, hat in hand; and once
only she detected, at a distance, the grey of a policeman's tunic, half
blotted out by the shadow in which its wearer lounged at ease.
And that was far behind when, abruptly, with a grinding crash of brakes,
the cab came from full headlong tilt to a dead halt within twice its
length. She pitched forward from the seat with a cry of alarm, only
saving herself a serious bruising through the instinct that led her to
thrust out her hands and catch the frame of the forward windows.
Before she could recover, the chauffeur's companion had jumped out and
run ahead, pausing in front of the hood to stoop and stare. In another
moment he was back with a report couched in a technical jargon
unintelligible to her understanding. She caught the words "stripped the
gears" and from them inferred the irremediable.
"What is the matter?" she asked anxiously, bending forward.
The chauffeur turned his head and replied in a surly tone: "We've broken
down, ma'm. You can't go no farther in this cab. I'll have to get
another to tow us back to the garage."
"Oh," she cried in dismay, "how unfortunate! What am I to do?"
"Guess you'll have to get out 'n' walk back to Central Park West," was
the answer. "You c'n get a car there to C'lumbus Circle. You'll find
a-plenty taxis down there."
"You're quite sure--" she began to protest.
"Ah, they ain't no chanst of this car going another foot under its own
power--not until it's been a week 'r two in hospital. The only thing
for you to do 's to hoof it, like I said."
"That's dead right," averred the other man. He was standing beside the
body of the cab and now unlatched the door and held it open for her.
"You might as well get down, if you're in any great hurry, ma'm."
Eleanor rose, eyeing the man distrustfully. His accent wasn't that of
the kind of man who is accustomed to saying "ma'm." His back was toward
the nearest lamp post, his face in shadow. She gained no more than a dim
impression of a short, slender figure masked in a grey duster buttoned
to the throat, and, above it, a face rendered indefinite by a short,
pointed beard and a grey motor-cap pulled well down over the eyes....
But there was nothing to do but accept the situation. An accident was an
accident--unpleasant but irreparable. There was no alternative; she
could do nothing but adopt the chauffeur's suggestion. She stepped out,
turning back to get her bandbox.
"Beg pardon, ma'm. I'll get that for you."
The man by the door interposed an arm between Eleanor and the bandbox.
She said, "Oh no!" and attempted to push past his arm.
Immediately he caught her by the shoulder and thrust her away with
staggering violence. She reeled back half a dozen feet. Simultaneously
she heard the fellow say, sharply: "All right--go ahead!" and saw him
jump upon the step. On the instant, the cab shot away through the
shadows, the door swinging wide while Eleanor's assailant scrambled into
the body.
Before she could collect herself the car had disappeared round a curve
in the roadway.
Her natural impulse was to scream, to start a hue-and-cry: "Stop thief!"
But the strong element of common-sense in her make-up counselled her to
hold her tongue. In a trice she comprehended precisely the meaning of
the passage. Somebody else--somebody aside from herself, Staff and
Alison Landis--knew the secret of the bandbox and the smuggled necklace,
and with astonishing intuition had planned this trap to gain possession
of it. She was amazed to contemplate the penetrating powers of inference
and deduction, the cunning and resource which had not only in so short a
time fathomed the mystery of the vanished necklace, but had discovered
the exchange of bandboxes, had traced the right one to her hotel and
possession, had divined and taken advantage of her impulse to return the
property to its rightful owner without an instant's loss of time. And
with this thought came another, more alarming: in a brace of minutes
the thieves would discover that the necklace had been abstracted from
the hat and--men of such boldness wouldn't hesitate about turning back
to run her down and take their booty by force.
It was this consideration that bade her refrain from crying out.
Conceivably, if she did raise an alarm, help might be longer in coming
than the taxicab in returning. They had the hat and bandbox, and were
welcome to them, for all of her, as long as she retained the real
valuables. Her only chance lay in instant and secret flight, in hiding
herself away in the gloomy fastnesses of these unknown pleasure-grounds,
so securely that they might not find her.
She stood alone in the middle of a broad road. There was nobody in
sight, whichever way she looked. On one hand a wide asphalt path ran
parallel with the drive; on the other lay a darksome hedge of trees and
shrubbery. She hesitated not two seconds over her choice, and in a third
was struggling and forcing a way through the undergrowth and beneath the
low and spreading branches whose shadows cloaked her with a friendly
curtain of blackness.
Beyond--she was not long in winning through--lay a broad meadow,
glimmering faintly in the glow of light reflected from the bosoms of
low, slow-moving clouds. A line of trees bordered it at a considerable
distance; beneath them were visible patches of asphalt walk, shining
coldly under electric arcs.
Having absolutely no notion whatever of where she was in the Park, after
some little hesitation she decided against attempting to cross the lawn
and turned instead, at random, to her right, stumbling away in the
kindly penumbra of trees.
She thanked her stars that she had chosen to wear this dark,
short-skirted suit that gave her so much freedom of action and at the
same time blended so well with the shadows wherein she must skulk....
Before many minutes she received confirmation of her fears in the drone
of a distant motor humming in the stillness and gaining volume with
every beat of her heart. Presently it was strident and near at hand; and
then, standing like a frozen thing, not daring to stir (indeed, half
petrified with fear) she saw the marauding taxicab wheel slowly past,
the chauffeur scrutinising one side of the way, the man in the grey
duster standing up in the body and holding the door half open, while he
raked with sweeping glances the coppice wherein she stood hiding.
But it did not stop. Incredible though it seemed, she was not detected.
Obviously the men were at a loss, unable to surmise which one she had
chosen of a dozen ways of escape. The taxicab drilled on at a snail's
pace for some distance up the drive, then swung round and came back at a
good speed. As it passed her for the second time she could hear one of
its crew swearing angrily.
Again the song of the motor died in the distance, and again she found
courage to move. But which way? How soonest to win out of this strange,
bewildering maze of drives and paths, crossing and recrossing, melting
together and diverging without apparent motive or design?
She advanced to the edge of the drive, paused, listening with every
faculty alert. There was no sound but the muted soughing of the night
wind in the trees--not a footfall, not the clap of a hoof or the echo of
a motor's whine. She moved on a yard or two, and found herself suddenly
in the harsh glare of an arc-lamp. This decided her; she might as well
go forward as retreat, now that she had shown herself. She darted at a
run across the road and gained the paved path, paused an instant, heard
nothing, and ran on until forced to stop for breath.
And still no sign of pursuit! She began to feel a little reassured, and
after a brief rest went on aimlessly, with the single intention of
sticking to one walk as far as it might lead her, in the hope that it
might lead her to the outskirts of the Park.
Vain hope! Within a short time she found herself scrambling over bare
rocks, with shrubbery on either hand and a looming mass of masonry
stencilled against the sky ahead. This surely could not be the way. She
turned back, lost herself, half stumbled and half fell down a sharp
slope, plodded across another lawn and found another path, which led her
northwards (though she had no means of knowing this). In time it crossed
one of the main drives, then recrossed. She followed it with patient
persistence, hoping, but desperately weary.
Now and again she passed benches upon which men sprawled in crude,
uneasy attitudes, as a rule snoring noisily. She dared not ask her way
of these. Once one roused to the sharp tapping of her heels, stared
insolently and, as she passed, spoke to her in a thick, rough voice. She
did not understand what he said, but quickened her pace and held on
bravely, with her head high and her heart in her mouth. Mercifully, she
was not followed.
Again--and not once but a number of times--the sound of a motor drove
her from the path to the safe obscurity of the trees and undergrowth.
But in every such instance her apprehensions were without foundation;
the machines were mostly touring-cars or limousines beating homeward
from some late festivity.
And twice she thought to descry at a distance the grey-coated figure of
a policeman; but each time, when she had gained the spot, the man had
vanished--or else some phenomenon of light and shadow had misled her.
Minutes, in themselves seemingly endless, ran into hours while she
wandered (so heavy with fatigue that she found herself wondering how it
was that she didn't collapse from sheer exhaustion on any one of the
interminable array of benches that she passed) dragging her leaden feet
and aching limbs and struggling to hold up her hot and throbbing head.
It was long after three when finally she emerged at
One-hundred-and-tenth Street and Lenox Avenue. And here fortune proved
more kind: she blundered blindly almost into the arms of a policeman,
stumbled through her brief story and dragged wearily on his arm over to
Central Park West. Here he put her aboard a southbound Eighth Avenue
surface-car, instructing the conductor where she was to get off and then
presumably used the telephone on his beat to such effect that she was
met on alighting by another man in uniform who escorted her to the St.
Simon. She was too tired, too thoroughly worn out, to ask him how it
happened that he was waiting for her, or even to do more than give him a
bare word of thanks. As for complaining of her adventure to the
night-clerk (who stared as she passed through to the elevator) no
imaginable consideration could have induced her to stop for any such
purpose.
But one thing was clear to her intelligence, to be attended to before
she toppled over on her bed: Staff must be warned by telephone of the
attempt to steal the necklace and the reason why she had not been able
to reach his residence. And if this were to be accomplished, she must do
it before she dared sit down.
In conformance with this fixed idea, she turned directly to the
telephone after closing the door of her room--pausing neither to strip
off her gloves and remove her hat nor even to relieve her aching wrist
of the handbag which, with its precious contents, dangled on its silken
thong.
She had to refresh her memory with a consultation of the directory
before she could ask for Staff's number.
The switchboard operator was slow to answer; and when he did, there
followed one of those exasperating delays, apparently so inexcusable....
She experienced a sensation of faintness and dizziness; her limbs were
trembling; she felt as though sleep were overcoming her as she stood;
but a little more and she had strained endurance to the
breaking-point....
[Illustration: Fascinated, dumb with terror, she watched
_Page 193_]
At length the connection was made. Staff's agitated voice seemed drawn
thin by an immense distance. By a supreme effort she managed to spur her
flagging faculties and began to falter her incredible story, but had
barely swung into the second sentence when her voice died in her throat
and her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth.
The telephone instrument was fixed to the wall near the clothes-closet,
the door of which framed a long mirror. This door, standing slightly
ajar, reflected to her vision the hall door.
She had detected a movement in the mirror. The hall door was
opening--slowly, gently, noiselessly, inch by inch. Fascinated, dumb
with terror, she watched. She saw the hand that held the knob--a small
hand, thin and fragile; then the wrist, then part of the arm.... A head
appeared in the opening, curiously suggesting the head of a bird, thinly
thatched with hair of a faded yellow; out of its face, small eyes
watched her, steadfastly inquisitive.
Almost mechanically she replaced the receiver on the hook and turned
away from the wall, stretching forth her hands in a gesture of pitiful
supplication....