IN Mr. Roberts’s dressing-room, that gentleman is discovered tragically
confronting Mr. Willis Campbell, with a watch uplifted in either hand.
WILLIS: ‘Well?’
ROBERTS, gasping: ‘My—my watch!’
WILLIS: ‘Yes. How comes there to be two of it?’
ROBERTS: ‘Don’t you understand? When I went out I—didn’t take my
watch—with me. I left it here on my bureau.’
WILLIS: ‘Well?’
ROBERTS: ‘Oh, merciful heavens! don’t you see? Then I couldn’t have been
robbed!’
WILLIS: ‘Well, but whose watch did you take from the fellow that didn’t
rob you, then?’
ROBERTS: ‘His own!’ He abandons himself powerlessly upon a chair. ‘Yes;
I left my own watch here, and when that person brushed against me in the
Common, I missed it for the first time. I supposed he had robbed me, and
ran after him, and—’
WILLIS: ‘Robbed _him_!’
ROBERTS: ‘Yes.’
WILLIS: ‘Ah, ha, ha, ha! I, hi, hi, hi! O, ho, ho, ho!’ He yields to a
series of these gusts and paroxysms, bowing up and down, and stamping to
and fro, and finally sits down exhausted, and wipes the tears from his
cheeks. ‘Really, this thing will kill me. What are you going to do
about it, Roberts?’
ROBERTS, with profound dejection and abysmal solemnity: ‘I don’t know,
Willis. Don’t you see that it must have been—that I must have robbed—Mr.
Bemis?’
WILLIS: ‘Bemis!’ After a moment for tasting the fact. ‘Why, so it was!
Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! And was poor old Bemis that burly ruffian? that
bloodthirsty gang of giants? that—that—oh, Lord! oh, Lord!’ He bows his
head upon his chair-back in complete exhaustion, demanding, feebly, as he
gets breath for the successive questions, ‘What are you going to d-o-o-o?
What shall you s-a-a-a-y? How can you expla-a-ain it?’
ROBERTS: ‘I can do nothing. I can say nothing. I can never explain it.
I must go to Mr. Bemis and make a clean breast of it; but think of the
absurdity—the ridicule!’
WILLIS, after a thoughtful silence: ‘Oh, it isn’t _that_ you’ve got to
think of. You’ve got to think of the old gentleman’s sense of injury and
outrage. Didn’t you hear what he said—that he would have handed over his
dearest friend, his own brother, to the police?’
ROBERTS: ‘But that was in the supposition that his dearest friend, his
own brother, had intentionally robbed him. You can’t imagine, Willis—’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, I can imagine a great many things. It’s all well enough for
you to say that the robbery was a mistake; but it was a genuine case of
garotting as far as the assault and taking the watch go. He’s a very
pudgicky old gentleman.’
ROBERTS: ‘He is.’
WILLIS: ‘And I don’t see how you’re going to satisfy him that it was all
a joke. Joke? It _wasn’t_ a joke! It was a real assault and a _bona
fide_ robbery, and Bemis can prove it.’
ROBERTS: ‘But he would never insist—’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. He’s pretty queer, Bemis is. You
can’t say what an old gentleman like that will or won’t do. If he should
choose to carry it into court—’
ROBERTS: ‘Court!’
WILLIS: ‘It might be embarrassing. And anyway, it would have a very
strange look in the papers.’
ROBERTS: ‘The papers! Good gracious!’
WILLIS: ‘Ten years from now a man that heard you mentioned would forget
all about the acquittal, and say: “Roberts? Oh yes! Wasn’t he the one
they sent to the House of Correction for garotting an old friend of his
on the Common!” You see, it wouldn’t do to go and make a clean breast of
it to Bemis.’
ROBERTS: ‘I see.’
WILLIS: ‘What will you do?’
ROBERTS: ‘I must never say anything to him about it. Just let it go.’
WILLIS: ‘And keep his watch? I don’t see how you could manage that.
What would you do with the watch? You might sell it, of course—’
ROBERTS: ‘Oh no, I _couldn’t_ do that.’
WILLIS: ‘You might give it away to some deserving person; but if it got
him into trouble—’
ROBERTS: ‘No, no; that wouldn’t do, either.’
WILLIS: ‘And you can’t have it lying around; Agnes would be sure to find
it, sooner or later.’
ROBERTS: ‘Yes.’
WILLIS: ‘Besides, there’s your conscience. Your conscience wouldn’t
_let_ you keep Bemis’s watch away from him. And if it would, what do you
suppose Agnes’s conscience would do when she came to find it out? Agnes
hasn’t got much of a head—the want of it seems to grow upon her; but
she’s got a conscience as big as the side of a house.’
ROBERTS: ‘Oh, I see; I see.’
WILLIS, coming up and standing over him, with his hands in his pockets:
‘I tell you what, Roberts, you’re in a box.’
ROBERTS, abjectly: ‘I know it, Willis; I know it. What do you suggest?
You _must_ know some way out of it.’
WILLIS: ‘It isn’t a simple matter like telling them to start the elevator
down when they couldn’t start her up. I’ve got to think it over.’ He
walks to and fro, Roberts’s eyes helplessly following his movements.
‘How would it do to—No, that wouldn’t do, either.’
ROBERTS: ‘What wouldn’t?’
WILLIS: ‘Nothing. I was just thinking—I say, you might—Or, no, you
couldn’t.’
ROBERTS: ‘Couldn’t what?’
WILLIS: ‘Nothing. But if you were to—No; up a stump that way too.’
ROBERTS: ‘Which way? For mercy’s sake, my dear fellow, don’t seem to get
a clew if you haven’t it. It’s more than I can bear.’ He rises, and
desperately confronts Willis in his promenade. ‘If you see any hope at
all—’
WILLIS, stopping: ‘Why, if you were a different sort of fellow, Roberts,
the thing would be perfectly easy.’
ROBERTS: ‘Very well, then. What sort of fellow do you want me to be?
I’ll be any sort of fellow you like.’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, but you couldn’t! With that face of yours, and that
confounded conscience of yours behind it, you would give away the whitest
lie that was ever told.’
ROBERTS: ‘Do you wish me to lie? Very well, then, I will lie. What is
the lie?’
WILLIS: ‘Ah, now you’re talking like a man! I can soon think up a lie if
you’re game for it. Suppose it wasn’t so very white—say a delicate
blonde!’
ROBERTS: ‘I shouldn’t care if it were as black as the ace of spades.’
WILLIS: ‘Roberts, I honour you! It isn’t everybody who could steal an
old gentleman’s watch, and then be so ready to lie out of it. Well, you
_have_ got courage—both kinds—moral and physical.’
ROBERTS: ‘Thank you, Willis. Of course I don’t pretend that I should be
willing to lie under ordinary circumstances; but for the sake of Agnes
and the children—I don’t want any awkwardness about the matter; it would
be the death of me. Well, what do you wish me to say? Be quick; I don’t
believe I could hold out for a great while. I don’t suppose but what Mr.
Bemis would be reasonable, even if I—’
WILLIS: ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t trust him. The only way is for you to
take the bull by the horns.’
ROBERTS: ‘Yes?’
WILLIS: ‘You will not only have to lie, Roberts, but you will have to
wear an air of innocent candour at the same time.’
ROBERTS: ‘I—I’m afraid I couldn’t manage that. What is your idea?’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, just come into the room with a laugh when we go back, and
say, in an offhand way, “By the way, Agnes, Willis and I made a
remarkable discovery in my dressing-room; we found my watch there on the
bureau. Ha, ha, ha!” Do you think you could do it?’
ROBERTS: ‘I—I don’t know.’
WILLIS: ‘Try the laugh now.’
ROBERTS: ‘I’d rather not—now.’
WILLIS: ‘Well, try it, anyway.’
ROBERTS: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’
WILLIS: ‘Once more.’
ROBERTS: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’
WILLIS: ‘Pretty ghastly; but I guess you can come it.’
ROBERTS: ‘I’ll try. And then what?’
WILLIS: ‘And then you say, “I hadn’t put it on when I went out, and when
I got after that fellow and took it back, I was simply getting somebody
else’s watch!” Then you hold out both watches to her, and laugh again.
Everybody laughs, and crowds round you to examine the watches, and you
make fun and crack jokes at your own expense all the time, and pretty
soon old Bemis says, “Why, this is _my_ watch, _now_!” and you laugh more
than ever—’
ROBERTS: ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t laugh when he said that. I don’t believe
I could laugh. It would make my blood run cold.’
WILLIS: ‘Oh no, it wouldn’t. You’d be in the spirit of it by that time.’
ROBERTS: ‘Do you think so? Well?’
WILLIS: ‘And then you say, “Well, this is the most remarkable coincidence
I ever heard of. I didn’t get my own watch from the fellow, but I got
yours, Mr. Bemis;” and then you hand it over to him and say, “Sorry I had
to break the chain in getting it from him,” and then everybody laughs
again, and—and that ends it.’
ROBERTS, with a profound sigh: ‘Do you think that would end it?’
WILLIS: ‘Why, certainly. It’ll put old Bemis in the wrong, don’t you
see? It’ll show that instead of letting the fellow escape to go and rob
_him_, you attacked him and took Bemis’s property back from him yourself.
Bemis wouldn’t have a word to say. All you’ve got to do is to keep up a
light, confident manner.’
ROBERTS: ‘But what if it shouldn’t put Bemis in the wrong? What if he
shouldn’t say or do anything that we’ve counted upon, but something
altogether different?’
WILLIS: ‘Well, then, you must trust to inspiration, and adapt yourself to
circumstances.’
ROBERTS: ‘Wouldn’t it be rather more of a joke to come out with the facts
at once?’
WILLIS: ‘On you it would; and a year from now—say next Christmas—you
could get the laugh on Bemis that way. But if you were to risk it now,
there’s no telling how he’d take it. He’s so indignant he might insist
upon leaving the house. But with this plan of mine—’
ROBERTS, in despair: ‘I couldn’t, Willis. I don’t feel light, and I
don’t feel confident, and I couldn’t act it. If it were a simple lie—’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, lies are never simple; they require the exercise of all your
ingenuity. If you want something simple, you must stick to the truth,
and throw yourself on Bemis’s mercy.’
ROBERTS, walking up and down in great distress: ‘I can’t do it; I can’t
do it. It’s very kind of you to think it all out for me, but’—struck by
a sudden idea—‘Willis, why shouldn’t _you_ do it?’