THE GOLD BAG
I have always smiled at those cases of spontaneous combustion which,
like fusing the component parts of a seidlitz powder, unite two people
in a bubbling and ephemeral ecstasy. But surely there is possible, with
but a single meeting, an attraction so great, a community of mind and
interest so strong, that between that first meeting and the next the
bond may grow into something stronger. This is especially true, I
fancy, of people with temperament, the modern substitute for
imagination. It is a nice question whether lovers begin to love when
they are together, or when they are apart.
Not that I followed any such line of reasoning at the time. I would not
even admit my folly to myself. But during the restless hours of that
first night after the accident, when my back ached with lying on it,
and any other position was torture, I found my thoughts constantly
going back to Alison West. I dropped into a doze, to dream of touching
her fingers again to comfort her, and awoke to find I had patted a
teaspoonful of medicine out of Mrs. Klopton’s indignant hand. What was
it McKnight had said about making an egregious ass of myself?
And that brought me back to Richey, and I fancy I groaned. There is no
use expatiating on the friendship between two men who have gone
together through college, have quarreled and made it up, fussed
together over politics and debated creeds for years: men don’t need to
be told, and women can not understand. Nevertheless, I groaned. If it
had been any one but Rich!
Some things were mine, however, and I would hold them: the halcyon
breakfast, the queer hat, the pebble in her small shoe, the gold bag
with the broken chain—the bag! Why, it was in my pocket at that moment.
I got up painfully and found my coat. Yes, there was the purse, bulging
with an opulent suggestion of wealth inside. I went back to bed again,
somewhat dizzy, between effort and the touch of the trinket, so lately
hers. I held it up by its broken chain and gloated over it. By careful
attention to orders, I ought to be out in a day or so. Then—I could
return it to her. I really ought to do that: it was valuable, and I
wouldn’t care to trust it to the mail. I could run down to Richmond,
and see her once—there was no disloyalty to Rich in that.
I had no intention of opening the little bag. I put it under my
pillow—which was my reason for refusing to have the linen slips
changed, to Mrs. Klopton’s dismay. And sometimes during the morning,
while I lay under a virgin field of white, ornamented with strange
flowers, my cigarettes hidden beyond discovery, and _Science and
Health_ on a table by my elbow, as if by the merest accident, I slid my
hand under my pillow and touched it reverently.
McKnight came in about eleven. I heard his car at the curb, followed
almost immediately by his slam at the front door, and his usual clamor
on the stairs. He had a bottle under his arm, rightly surmising that I
had been forbidden stimulant, and a large box of cigarettes in his
pocket, suspecting my deprivation.
“Well,” he said cheerfully. “How did you sleep after keeping me up half
the night?”
I slid my hand around: the purse was well covered. “Have it now, or
wait till I get the cork out?” he rattled on.
“I don’t want anything,” I protested. “I wish you wouldn’t be so darned
cheerful, Richey.” He stopped whistling to stare at me.
“‘I am saddest when I sing!’” he quoted unctuously. “It’s pure
reaction, Lollie. Yesterday the sky was low: I was digging for my best
friend. To-day—he lies before me, his peevish self. Yesterday I thought
the notes were burned: to-day—I look forward to a good cross-country
chase, and with luck we will draw.” His voice changed suddenly.
“Yesterday—she was in Seal Harbor. To-day—she is here.”
“Here in Washington?” I asked, as naturally as I could.
“Yes. Going to stay a week or two.”
“Oh, I had a little hen and she had a wooden leg
And nearly every morning she used to lay an egg—”
“Will you stop that racket, Rich! It’s the real thing this time, I
suppose?”
“She’s the best little chicken that we have on the farm
And another little drink won’t do us any harm—”
he finished, twisting out the corkscrew. Then he came over and sat down
on the bed.
“Well,” he said judicially, “since you drag it from me, I think perhaps
it is. You—you’re such a confirmed woman-hater that I hardly knew how
you would take it.”
“Nothing of the sort,” I denied testily. “Because a man reaches the age
of thirty without making maudlin love to every—”
“I’ve taken to long country rides,” he went on reflectively, without
listening to me, “and yesterday I ran over a sheep; nearly went into
the ditch. But there’s a Providence that watches over fools and lovers,
and just now I know darned well that I’m one, and I have a sneaking
idea I’m both.”
“You are both,” I said with disgust. “If you can be rational for one
moment, I wish you would tell me why that man Sullivan called me over
the telephone yesterday morning.”
“Probably hadn’t yet discovered the Bronson notes—providing you hold to
your theory that the theft was incidental to the murder. May have
wanted his own clothes again, or to thank you for yours. Search me: I
can’t think of anything else.” The doctor came in just then.
As I said before, I think a lot of my doctor—when I am ill. He is a
young man, with an air of breezy self-confidence and good humor. He
looked directly past the bottle, which is a very valuable
accomplishment, and shook hands with McKnight until I could put the
cigarettes under the bedclothes. He had interdicted tobacco. Then he
sat down beside the bed and felt around the bandages with hands as
gentle as a baby’s.
“Pretty good shape,” he said. “How did you sleep?”
“Oh, occasionally,” I replied. “I would like to sit up, doctor.”
“Nonsense. Take a rest while you have an excuse for it. I wish to
thunder I could stay in bed for a day or so. I was up all night.”
“Have a drink,” McKnight said, pushing over the bottle.
“Twins!” The doctor grinned.
“Have two drinks.”
But the medical man refused.
“I wouldn’t even wear a champagne-colored necktie during business
hours,” he explained. “By the way, I had another case from your
accident, Mr. Blakeley, late yesterday afternoon. Under the tongue,
please.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth.
I had a sudden terrible vision of the amateur detective coming to
light, note-book, cheerful impertinence and incriminating data. “A
small man?” I demanded, “gray hair—”
“Keep your mouth closed,” the doctor said peremptorily. “No. A woman,
with a fractured skull. Beautiful case. Van Kirk was up to his eyes and
sent for me. Hemorrhage, right-sided paralysis, irregular pupils—all
the trimmings. Worked for two hours.”
“Did she recover?” McKnight put in. He was examining the doctor with a
new awe.
“She lifted her right arm before I left,” the doctor finished cheerily,
“so the operation was a success, even if she should die.”
“Good Heavens,” McKnight broke in, “and I thought you were just an
ordinary mortal, like the rest of us! Let me touch you for luck. Was
she pretty?”
“Yes, and young. Had a wealth of bronze-colored hair. Upon my soul, I
hated to cut it.”
McKnight and I exchanged glances.
“Do you know her name, doctor?” I asked.
“No. The nurses said her clothes came from a Pittsburg tailor.”
“She is not conscious, I suppose?”
“No; she may be, to-morrow—or in a week.”
He looked at the thermometer, murmured something about liquid diet,
avoiding my eye—Mrs. Klopton was broiling a chop at the time—and took
his departure, humming cheerfully as he went down-stairs. McKnight
looked after him wistfully.
“Jove, I wish I had his constitution,” he exclaimed. “Neither nerves
nor heart! What a chauffeur he would make!”
But I was serious.
“I have an idea,” I said grimly, “that this small matter of the murder
is going to come up again, and that your uncle will be in the deuce of
a fix if it does. If that woman is going to die, somebody ought to be
around to take her deposition. She knows a lot, if she didn’t do it
herself. I wish you would go down to the telephone and get the
hospital. Find out her name, and if she is conscious.”
McKnight went under protest. “I haven’t much time,” he said, looking at
his watch. “I’m to meet Mrs. West and Alison at one. I want you to know
them, Lollie. You would like the mother.”
“Why not the daughter?” I inquired. I touched the little gold bag under
the pillow.
“Well,” he said judicially, “you’ve always declared against the
immaturity and romantic nonsense of very young women—”
“I never said anything of the sort,” I retorted furiously.
“‘There is more satisfaction to be had out of a good saddle horse!’” he
quoted me. “‘More excitement out of a polo pony, and as for the eternal
matrimonial chase, give me instead a good stubble, a fox, some decent
hounds and a hunter, and I’ll show you the real joys of the chase!’”
“For Heaven’s sake, go down to the telephone, you make my head ache,” I
said savagely.
I hardly know what prompted me to take out the gold purse and look at
it. It was an imbecile thing to do—call it impulse, sentimentality,
what you wish. I brought it out, one eye on the door, for Mrs. Klopton
has a ready eye and a noiseless shoe. But the house was quiet.
Down-stairs McKnight was flirting with the telephone central and there
was an odor of boneset tea in the air. I think Mrs. Klopton was
fascinated out of her theories by the “boneset” in connection with the
fractured arm.
Anyhow, I held up the bag and looked at it. It must have been
unfastened, for the next instant there was an avalanche on the
snowfield of the counterpane—some money, a wisp of a handkerchief, a
tiny booklet with thin leaves, covered with a powdery substance—and a
necklace. I drew myself up slowly and stared at the necklace.
It was one of the semi-barbaric affairs that women are wearing now, a
heavy pendant of gold chains and carved cameos, swung from a thin neck
chain of the same metal. The necklace was broken: in three places the
links were pulled apart and the cameos swung loose and partly detached.
But it was the supporting chain that held my eye and fascinated with
its sinister suggestion. Three inches of it had been snapped off, and
as well as I knew anything on earth, I knew that the bit of chain that
the amateur detective had found, blood-stain and all, belonged just
there.
And there was no one I could talk to about it, no one to tell me how
hideously absurd it was, no one to give me a slap and tell me there are
tons of fine gold chains made every year, or to point out the long arm
of coincidence!
With my one useful hand I fumbled the things back into the bag and
thrust it deep out of sight among the pillows. Then I lay back in a
cold perspiration. What connection had Alison West with this crime? Why
had she stared so at the gun-metal cigarette case that morning on the
train? What had alarmed her so at the farm-house? What had she taken
back to the gate? Why did she wish she had not escaped from the wreck?
And last, in Heaven’s name, how did a part of her necklace become torn
off and covered with blood?
Down-stairs McKnight was still at the telephone, and amusing himself
with Mrs. Klopton in the interval of waiting.
“Why did he come home in a gray suit, when he went away in a blue?” he
repeated. “Well, wrecks are queer things, Mrs. Klopton. The suit may
have turned gray with fright. Or perhaps wrecks do as queer stunts as
lightning. Friend of mine once was struck by lightning; he and the
caddy had taken refuge under a tree. After the flash, when they
recovered consciousness, there was my friend in the caddy’s clothes,
and the caddy in his. And as my friend was a large man and the caddy a
very small boy—”
McKnight’s story was interrupted by the indignant slam of the
dining-room door. He was obliged to wait some time, and even his
eternal cheerfulness was ebbing when he finally got the hospital.
“Is Doctor Van Kirk there?” he asked. “Not there? Well, can you tell me
how the patient is whom Doctor Williams, from Washington, operated on
last night? Well, I’m glad of that. Is she conscious? Do you happen to
know her name? Yes, I’ll hold the line.” There was a long pause, then
McKnight’s voice:
“Hello—yes. Thank you very much. Good-by.”
He came up-stairs, two steps at a time.
“Look here,” he said, bursting into the room, “there may be something
in your theory, after all. The woman’s name—it may be a coincidence,
but it’s curious—her name is Sullivan.”
“What did I tell you?” I said, sitting up suddenly in bed. “She’s
probably a sister of that scoundrel in lower seven, and she was afraid
of what he might do.”
“Well, I’ll go there some day soon. She’s not conscious yet. In the
meantime, the only thing I can do is to keep an eye, through a
detective, on the people who try to approach Bronson. We’ll have the
case continued, anyhow, in the hope that the stolen notes will sooner
or later turn up.”
“Confound this arm,” I said, paying for my energy with some
excruciating throbs. “There’s so much to be looked after, and here I
am, bandaged, splinted, and generally useless. It’s a beastly shame.”
“Don’t forget that I am here,” said McKnight pompously. “And another
thing, when you feel this way just remember there are two less
desirable places where you might be. One is jail, and the other is—” He
strummed on an imaginary harp, with devotional eyes.
But McKnight’s light-heartedness jarred on me that morning. I lay and
frowned under my helplessness. When by chance I touched the little gold
bag, it seemed to scorch my fingers. Richey, finding me unresponsive,
left to keep his luncheon engagement with Alison West. As he clattered
down the stairs, I turned my back to the morning sunshine and abandoned
myself to misery. By what strain on her frayed nerves was Alison West
keeping up, I wondered? Under the circumstances, would I dare to return
the bag? Knowing that I had it, would she hate me for my knowledge? Or
had I exaggerated the importance of the necklace, and in that case had
she forgotten me already?
But McKnight had not gone, after all. I heard him coming back, his
voice preceding him, and I groaned with irritation.
“Wake up!” he called. “Somebody’s sent you a lot of flowers. Please
hold the box, Mrs. Klopton; I’m going out to be run down by an
automobile.”
I roused to feeble interest. My brother’s wife is punctilious about
such things; all the new babies in the family have silver rattles, and
all the sick people flowers.
McKnight pulled up an armful of roses, and held them out to me.
“Wonder who they’re from?” he said, fumbling in the box for a card.
“There’s no name—yes, here’s one.”
He held it up and read it with exasperating slowness.
“‘Best wishes for an early recovery.
A COMPANION IN MISFORTUNE.’
“Well, what do you know about that!” he exclaimed. “That’s something
you didn’t tell me, Lollie.”
“It was hardly worth mentioning,” I said mendaciously, with my heart
beating until I could hear it. She had not forgotten, after all.
McKnight took a bud and fastened it in his button-hole. I’m afraid I
was not especially pleasant about it. They were her roses, and anyhow,
they were meant for me. Richey left very soon, with an irritating final
grin at the box.
“Good-by, sir woman-hater,” he jeered at me from the door.
So he wore one of the roses she had sent me, to luncheon with her, and
I lay back among my pillows and tried to remember that it was his game,
anyhow, and that I wasn’t even drawing cards. To remember that, and to
forget the broken necklace under my head!