“All right,” he said, “you get ’old of it private, and smuggle of it
’ere, and I’ll manage the rest.”
“But, my good fellow! You’ve been overhauled, I suppose, and pretty
thoroughly. How can you convince—_convince_, you understand—that
you’ve kept the thing snug through it all?”
“You go and smuggle of it ’ere,” he repeated doggedly.
It needed only a very little manœuvring. I hurried back to Miss
Belmont’s, heard the lady was still confined to her room, forbade the
servant to report me, and claimed the privacy of the dining-room for
the purpose of writing a prescription. The moment I was alone, I made
an excited and perfectly undignified plunge under the table, found the
ledge (the thing, in auctioneer’s parlance, was a “capital set,” in
four leaves), and the button, which in a feverish ecstasy I pocketed.
Then, very well satisfied, I hurried back to Mr. Hurley.
I found him, even in that short interval, changed for the worse; so
much changed, that, in face of his condition, a certain sense of novel
vigour, an overweening confidence in my own importance which had grown
up, and lusty, in me during my return journey, seemed nothing less
than an indecency. However, curiously enough, this mood began to ebb
and sober from the very moment of my handing over the _pièce de
conviction_ to its purloiner. He “palmed” it professionally, cleared
his throat, and took instant command of the occasion. “Now,” he said,
“tell ’em I’ve confessed to you, and let ’em all come.”
His confidence mastered the depression which had overtaken me. I
returned, with fair assurance, to Miss Belmont, who received my news
with a perfect rapture of relief. What she had suffered, poor good
woman, none but herself might know.
“Did he own to you where he had hidden it?” she asked. And “Yes,” I
could answer, perfectly truthfully.
By my advice, she prepared at once to go and fetch her sister-in-law
to the hospital—with a friend, if she desired it—that all might
witness to the details of the restitution.
In the meanwhile I myself paid a visit to the police station, and
thence returned to my post to await the arrival of my company.
It came in about an hour: Miss Belmont, tearfully expectant; Mrs. John
Belmont, shrill and incredulous; an immaculate tall gentleman, Captain
Naylor by name, whose chin was propped on a very high collar, that he
might perpetually sniff the incense of his own superiority; and,
lastly, and officially to the occasion, B 90.
I lost no time in conducting them to the bedside of the patient. He
had rallied wonderfully since our last encounter. He was sitting up
against his pillow, his red hair fluffed out like the aureole of a
dissipated angel, an expression on his face of a quite sanctimonious
relish. I fancy he even winked at me.
“Now, Hurley,” I said gravely, “as one on the threshold of the grave”
(which, nevertheless, I had my doubts about), “speak out and tell the
truth.”
He cleared his throat, and started at once in a loud voice, as if
repeating a lesson he had set himself—
“’Earing as ’ow my rash hact ’ave brought suspicion on a innercent
lady, I ’ereby makes affirmation of the fac’s. I stole the button, and
’id it in my boot, where it is now.”
“No, it ain’t,” said B 90 suddenly. “Stow that.”
Mr. Hurley smiled pityingly.
“O, ain’t it, sir?” he said. “’Ow do you know?”
“Because I searched you myself,” said B 90 shortly.
“The patient, infinitely tolerant, waved his hand.
“’E searched me, ladies and gentlemen! Ho, lor! Look at ’im; I only
arsks that—look at ’im! Why, he doesn’t even know as there’s a smut
on his nose at this moment.” (B 90 hastily rubbed that organ, and
remembering himself, lapsed into stolidity once more.) Mr. Hurley
addressed him with exaggerated politeness—“_Would_ you be so good,
sir, as to go and fetch my boots?”
B 90 thought profoundly, and officially, a minute; wheeled suddenly,
withdrew, and returned shortly with the articles, very massive and
muddy, which he laid on the counterpane before the prisoner. The
latter, cherishing the ineffable _dénouement_, deliberately took and
examined the left one, paused a moment, smilingly canvassing his
company, and then quickly, with an almost imperceptible wrench and
twirl, had unscrewed the heel bodily from its place and held it out.
“’Ere!” he said; and, with his arm extended, sank back in an
invertebrate ecstasy upon his pillow.
The heel was pierced with a tiny compartment on its inner side, and
within the aperture lay the button.
They all saw it, but not as I, who, standing as I did at the bed-head,
and being something of an amateur conjurer myself, was conscious in a
flash of the rascal “passing” the trinket into its receptacle even as
he exposed it.
There followed an exclamation or two, and silence. Then Captain Naylor
said “Haw!” and Miss Belmont, with a gasp, turned a mild reproachful
gaze upon her sister-in-law. But Mrs. John had not the grace to accept
it. She gave a little vexed, covetous laugh, and stepped forward.
“Well,” she said to Miss Emma, “you must go without it still, dear, it
seems.” Then, coldly, to Hurley: “Give it me, please.”
Now, so far so good; and, though I was enraged with, I could not
combat the decision. But truly I was not prepared for the upshot.
Jim, at Mrs. John’s first movement, had recovered possession of the
button.
“No, you don’t!” he said quite savagely. “I know all about it, and
’tain’t yourn by rights.”
“Jim, Jim,” cried Miss Belmont in great agitation; “it is hers,
indeed; please give it up. You don’t think what you make me suffer!”
But the man was black with a lowering determination.
“’Tain’t,” he said. “Keep off, you! I’ve not thrown agen the devil for
nothing. It’s goin’ to be Miss Emma’s or nobody’s.”
“Not mine,” cried the poor lady again. “I don’t want it. Not for
worlds. I wouldn’t take it now!”
And then Mrs. John Belmont, in one discordant explosion of fury, gave
away her case for ever.
“Insolent! Beyond endurance!” she shrieked, and whirled, with a
flaming face, upon her cavalier.
“Archibald! why do you stand grinning there? Why don’t you take it
from him?”
Thus prompted, Archibald, in great confusion, uttered an inarticulate
“Haw!” explained himself in a second and clearer one, and strode
threateningly towards the bed. Watching, with glittering eyes, the
advance, Jim, at the last moment, _whipped the button into his mouth
and swallowed it!_
* * * * *
The case, as a pathological no less than as a criminological
curiosity, was unique. I will state a few particulars. The button
lodged in the pancreas, in which it was presently detected,
comfortably ensconced, by means of the Röntgen rays. And it is a fact
that, from the moment it settled there—_never_ apparently (I use the
emphasis with a full sense of my responsibility) to be evicted—Mr.
Hurley began to recover, and from recovering to thrive—on anything.
Croton-oil—I give only one instance—was a very cream of nourishment
to him. Galvanic batteries but shook him into the laughter which makes
fat, but without stirring the button. It was ridiculous to suggest an
operation, though the point was long considered. But in the meanwhile
the button had continued piling up over itself such impenetrable
defences of adipose tissue that its very locality had become
conjectural. The question was dropped, only to give rise to another.
How could one any longer detain this luxuriant man in hospital as an
invalid? He was removed, therefore, beaming, to the police court;
received, for some inexplicable reason, a nominal sentence, dating
from the time of his arrest (everything, in fact, was henceforward to
prosper with him), and trundled himself out into the world, where he
disappeared. I have seen him occasionally since at years-long
intervals. He grows ever more sleek and portly, till the shadows of
the three dead Belmonts together would not suffice to make him a pair
of breeches. He has a colossal fortune; he is respectable, and, of
course, respected—a genial monster of benevolence; and he never fails
to remind me, when we meet, of the time when I could pronounce his
life not worth a button.
I have, can only have, one theory. The button, after many cross
adventures, “got home” at last—fatally for Mrs. John Belmont, who
fell into a vicious decline upon its loss, and, tenderly nursed by her
sister-in-law, departed this sphere in an uncertain year of her life.
And, unless the button itself comes to dissolve, Jim, I fear, is
immortal.