Kate plus 10
The door opened and a footman announced,
“Inspector Pretherston, m’lord.”
“Inspector Michael Pretherston, you silly ass,” corrected the annoyed
young man in the doorway.
It was Michael, then!
A little older, a little better-looking, a little more decisive--but
Michael, as impetuous and irresponsible as ever.
“He spoilt my entrance, Moya,” he laughed, as he came with rapid
strides toward the girl; “how are you after all these years--as pretty
as ever, confound you. Ah, Lord Flanborough, you’re wearing well--I
read your speech in the House of Lords on the Shipping Bill--a fine
speech; did you make it up yourself?”
Moya laughed softly and saved what might have been a most embarrassing
situation--for his lordship was framing a dignified protest against
the suggestion that he had shared the honours of authorship.
“You are not changed, Michael,” she said, looking at him with
undisguised, but none the less, detached admiration; “but what on
earth are you doing in the police force?”
“Extraordinary,” murmured Lord Flanborough, and added humorously, “and
an anarchist, too.”
“It is a long story,” said Michael. “I really received my promotion in
the Special Branch--the Foreign Office Branch--and was transferred to
the C.I.D. after we caught the Callam crowd, the Continental
confidence tricksters. It is disgraceful that I should be an
inspector, isn’t it? But merit tells!” He chuckled again, then of a
sudden grew serious. “I’m forgetting I’ve a job to do--what’s the
trouble?”
Lord Flanborough explained the object of his urgent call, and a look
of disappointment appeared upon Michael Pretherston’s face.
“A miserable little larceny,” he said reproachfully. “I thought at
least Moya had been kidnapped. Now, tell me all that happened on the
night you lost the pearls.”
Step by step the girl related her movements and the periods at which
she had evidence that the pearls were still with her.
“And then you reached your bedroom,” said Michael, “and what happened
there? First of all, you took your fur wrap off.”
“Yes,” nodded the girl.
“Were you in a cheerful frame of mind or were you rather cross?”
“Does that matter?” she asked in surprise.
“Everything matters to the patient and systematic officer of the law.
Temperamental clues are as interesting and material as any other.”
“Well, if the truth were told,” she confessed, “I was rather cross and
very tired.”
“Did you take your cloak off, or did your woman?”
“I took it off myself,” she said after a pause, “and hung it up.”
He asked her a few more questions.
“Now, we will see the sorrowful Martin,” he said, “and let me tell you
this, Moya, that if this girl is innocent she has grounds for action
against you for false imprisonment.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Lord Flanborough with asperity. “I have a
perfect right to detain anybody I think is guilty of theft.”
“You have no more right to lock a woman in a room,” said the other
calmly, “than I have to stand you on your head. But that is beside the
point. Lead me to the prisoner.”
The prisoner was very pale and very tearful; a middle-aged woman who
felt her position acutely and between sobs and wails made an
incoherent protest of her innocence.
“I suppose you have searched everywhere?” asked Michael, turning to
the girl.
“Everywhere,” she replied emphatically. “I have had every box and
every corner of the room examined.”
“Suppose the string of the pearls broke, would they all fall off?”
“No, they would still remain on, because each pearl was secured.
Father gave them to me as a birthday present and he was very
particular on that point.”
“I would like to bet,” said Michael suddenly, “that those pearls are
not out of this room. Show me your wardrobe.”
The girl’s wardrobe occupied the whole of one wall of her
dressing-room, and the tearful Martin opened the rosewood doors for
his inspection.
“This is your fur cloak, I presume? Did you examine this after the
loss?”
“Examine the cloak,” said Lady Moya in surprise, “of course not. What
has the cloak to do with the loss? There are no pockets in it.”
“But if I know anything about the fur cloaks that are fashionable this
season,” said Michael, wisely, “I should say that there is a
possibility that this luxurious garment had a great deal to do with
the loss. In fact, my dear Moya,” he said, “your mysterious loss has
been duplicated and triplicated this year. In two cases the police
were called in, and in the other case the owner had the intelligence
to find her lost trinket without assistance.”
He lifted the cloak down very carefully and opened it to show the silk
lining and there, caught in one of the long flat hooks, dangled the
pearls. The girl uttered an exclamation of delight and slipped them
from its fastening.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” said Michael dryly. “That is what has happened,
not three times but half-a-dozen times since these flat hooks have
been introduced. You take the cloak off in a bad temper, the hook
catches the chain, breaks it, you bundle the cloak in your wardrobe
and there you have the beginning of a great jewel mystery.”
“I can’t tell you how delighted I am,” said the girl. “Michael, you’re
wonderful!”
Michael did not reply. He turned to the frightened waiting-woman with
a kindly smile.
“I am so sorry you have been worried about this, Mrs. Martin,” he
said, “but when people lose very valuable property they are also
inclined to lose their very valuable heads. I am sure Lady Moya is
sorry and will make you due compensation for any inconvenience you
have been put to.”
The girl stared at him resentfully.
“Of course, I am awfully sorry, Martin,” she said, coldly.
“Oh, my lady,” said the woman eagerly, “I am only too pleased that you
have recovered your chain. The worry of it has made me quite ill.”
“You can have a week’s holiday,” said Lord Flanborough, magnificently.
“I will get you a free railway ticket to Seahampton,” he added.
“So you see, Mrs. Martin,” said Michael with that bland air of his
which scarcely veiled the sarcasm so irritating to his lordship, “your
generous employers will leave no stone unturned to minister to your
comfort, regardless of expense. And when you are at Seahampton, Mrs.
Martin, (I trust you will not lose the return half of your free
ticket) you will be allowed to walk up and down the promenade on equal
terms with the aristocracy and breathe the ozone which, ordinarily, is
created for your betters. You may sit on the free seats and watch the
pageant of life step past you and, reflecting upon the generosity of
your betters, you may appreciate the good fortune which brought you
into hourly contact with the aristocracy of England. And on Sundays,
Mrs. Martin, you may go to church where quite a number of the seats
are also free and may even share a hymn-book with a Gracious Person
who is so vastly above you in social standing that he will never
recognize you again, and there, I trust, you will pray with a new
fervence that the deliberations of the House of Lords may receive
divine inspiration.”
“Oh, indeed I will, sir,” said Mrs. Martin almost stunned by his
eloquence.
He left the woman, overwhelmed, and returned with a very ruffled Lord
Flanborough and an indignant Moya to the library.
“What utter nonsense you talk, Michael,” said the girl angrily. “I
don’t think it was kind of you to attempt to set my servants against
me.”
“Beastly bad taste,” said Lord Flanborough, “and really, Pretherston,
you came here as an officer of the law and not as an old acquaintance
and I think that you exceed your duties, if you don’t mind my saying
so.”
“Old acquaintances,” said Michael, picking up his hat and his coat
from a chair where he had put them before the interview, “are
especially made to be forgotten, a peculiarity of which one is
reminded in that Bacchanalian anthem which is sung at all public
dinners where sobriety is bad form. I was merely endeavouring to
inculcate into the mind of your slave a few moral principles,
beneficial to you, and to society.”
“Don’t tell me that,” growled Lord Flanborough, “as though I didn’t
recognize your sarcasm.”
“Children and the lower orders never recognize sarcasm,” said Michael
with a broad smile.
He held out his hand and somewhat reluctantly his lordship extended
his own flabby paw.
“Before I go,” he said, “I suppose I had better take a full account of
this case. You haven’t a secretary or anybody to whom you can dictate
the circumstances? You see I have to make a report to my cold-blooded
superiors.”
Moya had reached the stage where whatever remains there was in her
friendship with Michael Pretherston had not only died but had been
cremated in the fires of her smothered anger and she was as anxious to
see the end of this interview as was her father.
“Perhaps you will ring for Miss Tenby,” she said after a pause.
Her father pressed the bell and the waiting Sibble answered it.
“Send Miss Tenby,” said his lordship.
“And I do hope, Michael,” said the girl severely, “that when Miss
Tenby is here you will not make such extravagant comments as you did
before Martin.”
“Miss Tenby,” interposed Lord Flanborough, “will not welcome such
talk. She is a young girl with--er--”
“I know, I know,” said Michael solemnly, “she is genteel. She does
forty words a minute on the typewriter and goes to church, filling in
her odd moments with needlework and accompanying you on the piano.”
“It must be a wonderful thing to be a detective,” said Moya,
sarcastically; “as a matter of fact Miss Tenby is one of the fastest
typists in the world.”
Michael swung round on her with an odd look on his face.
“Fastest typists in the world,” he repeated with all the humor gone
out of his tone; “does she sing?”
It was the girl’s turn to be astonished.
“Yes, she does, and very beautifully.”
“Does she prefer Italian opera?” he asked.
At this, the girl laughed aloud.
“Somebody has been telling you all about her and you are trying to be
mysterious,” she accused.
Further conversation was cut short by the arrival of the girl, who
walked in, closed the door and came straight to the desk. She stopped
dead at sight of Michael. Moya saw the meeting, saw the girl stiffen
and her sorrowful eyes fixed upon the detective’s face.
“Why, Kate!” said Michael Pretherston softly. “Well, well, well! and
to think that we meet again under such noble auspices.”
Miss Tenby said nothing.
“And what is the great game?” asked Michael, banteringly. “What
beautiful impulse brought you to this sheltered home and how is the
Colonel and friend Gregori and all those dear boys? By-the-way, the
Colonel must be out by now, Kate. What did he get, three years?”
Still Miss Tenby made no reply.
“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Lord Flanborough, feeling that
the moment had arrived to assert himself. “Do you know this lady?”
“Do I _know_ her,” said Michael, ecstatically; “why, I am one of her
greatest admirers, aren’t I, Kate?”
The girl’s sad face softened to a smile which showed the regular lines
of her white teeth. She spoke and her voice was gentle and appealing.
“It is perfectly true, Lord Flanborough,” she said quietly, “Mr.
Pretherston knows me. He also knows that my uncle, Colonel Westhanger,
has been mixed up in a very serious scandal which brought him within
the reach of the law. It is perfectly true that when I was a little
girl I was known as Kate. It is just as true that I am trying now to
live down my association with law-breakers and am trying to
rehabilitate myself in the world.”
“H’m,” murmured Lord Flanborough, a little taken back, “very
creditable.”
Moya turned to Michael indignantly.
“I suppose that you think you are rendering a great service to the