CONSPIRATORS
Carsdale was not often surprised, but he was so much surprised by Mrs.
Walsingham’s frank admission that he dropped his cigar. And when he had
picked it up and again confronted her, his eyes were still wide with
astonishment.
“You’ve got it?” he exclaimed. “You?”
“I!” answered Mrs. Walsingham, calmly. “I!”
Carsdale took a few pulls at his cigar, regained his composure, and lay
back in his chair.
“Oh!” he said at last. “Very well. Now, as we’re quite free from
interruption, you’d better tell me all about it. Of course, Sylvie,
you--stole it?”
“I took it from Mr. Leverton’s safe--certainly,” she answered. “It
wasn’t difficult to do that. What wasn’t easy was to get a duplicate
made--a duplicate of such good workmanship as to the setting, and such
fine paste as to the stones, as to be a perfect facsimile.”
Carsdale slapped his knee.
“A facsimile--a duplicate?” he said. “I see--I see! Then--it is the
duplicate which Burgoyne carried away from Winch’s?”
“Precisely,” she answered.
“You substituted the imitation for the original in Leverton’s safe,
then?” said Carsdale, with a nod at the wall. “That was clever. Ah! And
the duplicate----”
“Was so good that nobody could have seen any difference between it and
the real thing,” said Mrs. Walsingham. “But you know, Jack, all these
things come to light in the end, and the first time Burgoyne has that
duplicate examined by an expert, or even by a good jeweller, he’ll find
out he’s been cheated.”
“Well?” said Carsdale. “Well? I knew that, of course.”
“And he won’t suspect Leverton,” continued Mrs. Walsingham, “and he
won’t suspect Frances, nor Winch, and, of course, he won’t suspect the
bankers. He’ll suspect--you and me!”
“Good God!” exclaimed Carsdale. “Why us?”
“Because we had free access to Leverton’s room, there, during his
illness--and at other times,” replied Mrs. Walsingham.
Carsdale nodded his agreement of this view.
“Yes,” he said, after due deliberation. “Yes, I suppose he will. And
then----”
“And then he’ll begin inquiring and investigating, and no doubt setting
private agents to work,” continued Mrs. Walsingham, “and a good deal
might, or, rather, would be found out that----”
“Yes, yes!” interrupted Carsdale, impatiently. “Cut all that out--I
know it by heart. Well, Sylvie?” Mrs. Walsingham looked at him fixedly.
“Well?” she said. “Well, then it wouldn’t be well! It would be all up
with my engagement to the boy, and he’d take all his business out of
your hands, and----”
“And it seems to me you’ve gone a good way to land both of us in a nice
mess!” he broke in, half-angrily. “Why did you do it? It was--theft!”
Mrs. Walsingham’s lip curled.
“Oh, don’t let’s get to fine distinctions,” she said scornfully. “There
are all sorts of ways of thieving--you know the delicately polite
ones. I took it because--I wanted it.”
Carsdale growled inarticulately and began to look sullen.
“Where is the damned thing?” he asked. “Sold, I suppose?”
“Pawned,” answered Mrs. Walsingham.
“How much?” he asked.
“A thousand,” she said. “It’s a private arrangement, and the thing’s
safe. Never mind that--I want us to use our brains.”
“In what way?” asked Carsdale, gazing at her sulkily. “The thing’s
done.”
“No!” she said. “It’s beginning. The great thing is to prevent any
scandal arising. Now, listen, Jack. It’s evident that Burgoyne believes
himself to be in possession of the real thing. He isn’t. How would
it be to put him in possession of it--I mean the absolutely, real
thing--before his suspicions are aroused?”
Carsdale’s ears pricked at the suggestion of intrigue and craft. He sat
up in his chair and threw away his cigar.
“How?” he asked, with newly-awakened interest.
Mrs. Walsingham picked up a sheet of paper from her desk and began to
tear it into strips--a sure sign in her, as Carsdale knew, that she
was devising plans. He let her take her time, and meanwhile made some
mental reflections of his own on her revelations, which had taken him
not a little aback.
“Well,” she said, at last, having torn two or three sheets of
note-paper into ribbons. “There are ways. I could, for instance, redeem
the necklace----”
“Naturally, if you’ve got the money,” said Carsdale. “That’s an
important detail, Sylvie.”
Mrs. Walsingham gave him a glance which was intended to warn him not
to interpolate irrelevant remarks, and went on.
“I could, I say, redeem the thing and send it to him in such a fashion
that he would never know where it came from,” she continued. “But that
would never do, because we’re not concerned with making restitution,
and, so far, he doesn’t know that he hasn’t got the real necklace. What
I want to do is put the real necklace back into his possession before
he even finds out that it’s ever been--stolen. Do you see that--do you
understand it?”
“Perfectly,” answered Carsdale. “This is the position. The
gentleman--we’ll call him B--doesn’t know that he has been robbed. C,
who has robbed him, doesn’t want him to know. Therefore C designs to
restore to him that of which he has been robbed before he discovers his
loss. That’s it, eh?”
“You’ve got it,” said Mrs. Walsingham.
Carsdale lighted another cigar.
“Unfortunately,” he said, dryly, “unfortunately, there’s a serious
feature of the case. The gentleman believes himself to be in actual,
material, bodily possession of the very article which has been
abstracted. In plain English, Sylvie, Burgoyne thinks he’s got the
necklace. How’re you going to get over that, eh?”
Mrs. Walsingham laughed gently.
“That’s my great plan, Jack,” she said. “By--substitution.”
“Substitution?” he said. “You mean----”
“I mean by substituting the necklace which I have for the one he has,”
replied Mrs. Walsingham. “Giving him the real in exchange for the
false, don’t you see?”
Mr. Carsdale did see, and he nodded his head admiringly.
“That’s a clever notion, Sylvie,” he said, “and you’re a clever woman
for hitting on it. And--a mere detail--how are you going to put it into
execution?”
Mrs. Walsingham again began to tear up sheets of paper. And, when she
next spoke, she bent her eyes over her task instead of looking at her
companion. “Haven’t you got some hold over that man, Kedgin, Richard’s
valet?” she asked, a little diffidently.
Carsdale laughed--and there was something in his laugh, which she did
not like. “Well?” he asked.
“Burgoyne is taking up his quarters with Richard for a few weeks,” she
went on, still busied with her task. “Kedgin will valet him.”
“According to what Richard says, Burgoyne always carries that necklace
in his pocket,” Mrs. Walsingham continued, “so that I thought that
if----”
Carsdale laughed again.
“Let me finish your sentence for you,” he said. “You thought that as I
have a hold on Kedgin I could get him to substitute the true necklace
for the false one. Good, Sylvie--but it won’t do. And for a very simple
reason--it is quite true that I have a hold on Mr. William Kedgin, as
you say. But I don’t propose to give Mr. Kedgin a hold on me.”
Mrs. Walsingham looked up and threw away her scraps of paper.
“Very well,” she said. “Then I must do it myself.”
Carsdale nodded approvingly.
“Better, much better, Sylvie!” he said. “But--how?”
“I haven’t quite thought that out yet,” she answered. “But I shall. It
can be done. It’s got to be done--and done soon.”
Carsdale got slowly out of his chair and began to stride about the
room, puffing out clouds of cigar-smoke.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, after a period of thought. “An idea
occurs to me. Didn’t Shrewsbury say something about giving a dinner to
Burgoyne, and asking you and me to meet him? Yes--well, get him to give
it at his rooms--you can persuade him to anything--tell him we shall
be more comfortable--no, tell him you’ve taken a fancy to dine there.
He’s floods of wine, and he can have the dinner sent in. That’s point
one--d’you see?”
“I see,” she answered.
“Very well. Point two,” continued Carsdale. “We dine. Over the wine
and walnuts, or their modern equivalents, we lead the conversation to
diamonds, and you express a wish to see the famous necklace which once
encircled the throat of--never mind who she was--Marie Antoinette?--oh,
Maria Louisa. Very good--Burgoyne cannot refuse a lady. The necklace is
produced and handed round--eventually it comes into my hands, Sylvie.
Do you remember that I used to amuse myself with conjuring tricks?”
Mrs. Walsingham’s eyes suddenly brightened. She nodded eagerly.
“Yes--yes!” she answered. “I do!”
“Well--I’m still good enough to do a few good tricks at children’s
parties,” said Carsdale, laughing. “Now, listen. The imitation
necklace, I say, comes into my hands. You have already provided me with
the real one. Hey presto!--the thing is done! I change one for the
other.”
Mrs. Walsingham rose.
“That seems the plan of campaign, Jack,” she said. “Very good. I’m
going to redeem the real thing now, and then I’ll set to work on the
dinner business--there’ll be no difficulty about that.”
“You’ve got the money?” asked Carsdale. “If not--”
“Thanks, but I have,” she said, tapping her handbag. “And it’s my own,
too. I only pawned it for a thousand--to keep it safe.”
“I’m not yet quite sure why you--annexed it!” said Carsdale.
“For a reserve fund--in case anything ever happened,” she answered,
looking steadily at him. “I figured the whole thing out, and I saw that
I stood to win. Burgoyne might never have come back, you see.”
“Yes,” said Carsdale. “Yes, of course. It was a good, sporting
chance.” He leaned his arms over the top of the desk and smiled at her
whimsically. “I’ve a notion,” he said. “If Burgoyne would have sold,
why not have let Shrewsbury buy the imitation necklace as the real one?
Then you have ’em both in your possession, and you destroy the false
and keep the genuine--and diamonds don’t lose much value, you know.”
“Yes, but Burgoyne won’t sell,” she answered. “I’d had some idea like
that. At first he thought he would sell, and then, yesterday afternoon,
he said definitely, in my presence, that he wouldn’t. But that would
have been a good plan. The great thing is to so arrange matters that he
never knows--the truth.”
“Ye-es,” agreed Carsdale. “Ye-es, that’s so. I should say, from the
looks of him, that if that chap were set on a trail he’d keep his nose
to earth until he’d run something down. Better get on with everything
as quickly as possible, Sylvie--especially the dinner. And--leave the
conjuring to me.”
So Mrs. Walsingham went out, and it being lunch time, she ate and
drank with a relieved mind. She had been seriously concerned when she
thought of what might--nay, would!--happen if Ralph Burgoyne discovered
the truth; now, knowing Carsdale’s powers, resource and coolness in
emergencies, she felt that the gods were fighting for her. It would
be no difficult matter for a sharp man like Carsdale to substitute one
necklace for the other: he would do it easily. And that done, no one
would ever know of what she had done, and she would marry Richard and
his money--and be safe.
She went off after she had lunched, and redeemed the precious necklace,
and she carried it back to Abbotsbury House in her handbag, and
there--Carsdale being out--locked it up in a secret drawer until she
went home. After which, she condescended to business for the rest of
the afternoon.
But at five o’clock Richard came in, and she saw at once, from a mere
look at his face, that he had something to tell her.
“I say, Sylvie!” he exclaimed. “I lunched with Burgoyne--he came for
me to the club. And, I say, he says that he’ll sell me that necklace,
after all--it’s a white elephant to him. And he swears that he won’t
take more than ten thousand for it. I told him I wouldn’t do anything
without consulting you, so he gave it to me to show you. Here it
is!--and you must let me give it to you, Sylvie--you must!” And he
placed on the blotter-pad before her the counterfeit of the real thing
which lay in security only a few feet away.