The Corbin necklace
good, safely deserted place where we could do it.--And this isn’t
Bruce, you know. Bruce has gone to town on an errand. This is his
cousin, Bill Grant.”
She must have felt me give the start she’d been expecting. “Shake
hands, you two,” she commanded curtly.
I felt she meant it, somehow, as a guarantee, and held out my hand
again, and this time he came forward and took it, but still without a
word. Then he sat down heavily on the circular seat that ran around the
place. His face was shining with sweat, and he got out his handkerchief
and mopped it.
“You’re out of condition, Bill,” Judy remarked. “This life of crime is
too much for you.”
She sat down herself in a big hickory chair, straightened out her legs
in front of her and looked thoughtfully at her feet. I take no blame
for the ensuing silence. I can’t think yet of anything I could have
said.
Judy finally broke it. “After all,” she said, looking up at Bill, “I
don’t know why not. Since he’s here, maybe it’s providential.”
She turned to me. “You like to hear long stories, don’t you? Stories of
people’s lives, their terrible pasts and all that? Do you want me to
tell you one?”
She had startled her companion, I could see, but it wasn’t, I thought,
as if he meant to try to dissuade her.
“Go ahead and tell it,” I said.
But before she had time to say another word, there were some more
footsteps; jaunty footsteps, if that’s a fair way to describe them.
Judy’s eyes widened as she listened. Bill Grant had sprung erect.
“It’s Mr. Ethelbert Smith,” I said swiftly. “He’s staying with me, you
know.”
“Oh, damn!” whispered Judy. Then with a swoop she flew to meet him.
“Why, Judy!” I heard him cry. “This is delightful!”
“Isn’t it?” she agreed. “But,” she went on, reaching around for Bill
Grant and hauling him out to be introduced, “this is not the blushing
bridegroom; he’s the next best man. Mr. Smith, Mr. Grant. Bruce’s
cousin, you know. Bruce had to go to town on an errand, so we’re”--she
waved a hand toward the grassy slope--“making hay.”
“I can’t blame either of you,” he said gallantly, with a look of frank
admiration from one to the other. “A much more respectable occupation
than mine has been. I’ve been up there in the woods”--he patted my
field-glasses--“spying upon the innocent domesticities of little
birds.”
There were no more silences after that. We all talked volubly and
nobody really said anything. There wasn’t a word about the necklace.
I wondered uneasily whether old Mr. Smith wasn’t noticing something
unnaturally vacuous about our talk. Certainly for an old family friend
he was showing very little curiosity. He wasn’t asking a question. Had
he seen anything queer through those damned field-glasses of mine?
I kicked that question out of my mind with the contempt it deserved.
Judy wasn’t like that, anyhow. The great wonder, what the story was
which she’d seemed to be on the point of telling me, I simply didn’t
dare let my mind dwell upon. That would have to wait.
It was mainly a relief, though my feelings were somewhat mixed, when
Judy said, with a queer flicker of a smile at me, “Well, we must be
going along. This is going to be a busy day,” and took her “next best
man” away with her.
They went, not down the path toward my cottage, but back by the way
they had come.
CHAPTER VIII
EXPERT CONSIDERATION
I was afraid after they’d gone that old Mr. Smith would begin asking
embarrassing questions, but his curiosity, if he had any, was under
perfect control.
He launched as a topic of conversation the modern young person, and at
just that moment I was grateful to him, although it is a subject which,
as far as I am concerned, has been thoroughly talked out. Ordinarily
I find myself desperately bored with the solemn and terrified
generalities one hears. I like the young people of to-day, but as for
the modern young person, considered as something essentially new, a
product of post-war conditions or a judgment upon our sins, I simply
don’t believe the little monster exists.
I didn’t, however, express myself in this destructive manner to Mr.
Smith. I coddled the topic along. Anything was welcome that would keep
us away from the tangled skein of fact that Judy seemed involved in.
“Manners change, I admit,” I said, “but manners are by definition
conventional conduct, conduct which has no significance one way or
the other. Think of this wedding. Judy’s going to be married in the
garden, and her bridesmaids, from what I hear of the costumes, are
going to look more or less like a chorus in a light opera. It will be
an amazingly pretty picture, no doubt. But Victoria in her day would
as soon have thought of being married in a bathing suit. Victoria
would have been horrified at the idea of sleeping the night before
her wedding under the same roof with the man she was going to marry.
Victoria was supposed to be shy, so she acted as if she were. But that
doesn’t mean that she was any finer or cleaner-minded than Judy is. No,
the younger generation....”
My argument was interrupted.
“Here comes a sample of it now,” said Mr. Smith, who was gazing down
the path. “Heavens, that’s not Punch, is it?”
It was though, and he was a good sight; hatless as always, and clad in
khaki shirt and trousers which went well with his brown skin. He was
carrying his little target rifle.
There was no doubt that he was coming to make me a visit, for he waved
gaily toward the summer-house as he came along. He and I both got a
surprise, though, out of his meeting with Mr. Smith; Punch because
he hadn’t had the least idea he’d find him with me, and I over the
discovery that they were old friends. They greeted each other with
enthusiasm.
“I hadn’t realized you were so well acquainted,” said I.
“Oh, yes,” Punch told me; “we’re very old friends. Mr. Smith was the
nicest man in Paris that winter we lived there. He used to take me
around and show me things.
“My, but I’m glad you’re here,” he went on, turning back to the old
gentleman. “It comes out just right. But why aren’t you over at our
house?”
“Your mother asked me to take him in,” I explained. “She thought you’d
be too wild for him over there; too much row, late hours and so on.”
“Ho!” said Punch derisively to his very old friend, “there couldn’t be
too much row for you, could there?”
I thought I saw a troubled look coming into the boy’s eyes, so I
changed the subject.
“You out shooting rabbits?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t shot anything yet.”
“After bigger game perhaps,” Mr. Smith suggested. “Lions, or
hippopotamuses.”
“No,” said Punch, “I’m not hunting _anything_, really.”
“You aren’t _being_ hunted, are you?” Mr. Smith wanted to know.
I thought the boy flushed a little.
“No, I guess not,” he said.
“I suppose,” the old man suggested, “if they’re keeping such late hours
over at The Oaks, the mornings must be pretty slow.”
“Yes,” Punch admitted, “they are, rather. Oh, everybody’s up but
nobody’s doing anything. Nobody but Bruce Applebury. He went off to
town on the morning train, with Judy.”
I don’t know what happened to my face at that, but I can answer for Mr.
Smith’s. There wasn’t a flicker of an eyelid to betray anything.
Punch was looking at him just as I was, and he went on, “He’s the man
who’s going to marry Judy, you know. He was afraid he wouldn’t get
the sort of wedding ring she liked, so he took her in to-day to pick
it out.” He sighed and added, “I’ll be glad when this business is all
over.”
“How’s your grandmother?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Oh, she’s better this morning, now that she knows the necklace has
come back,” the boy said. “Of course it was an awful shock to her last
night when she found it had been stolen.”
I’d been holding my breath waiting for this to happen, from the moment
I had seen how friendly was the relation between the old gentleman and
the boy, but I hadn’t expected it to come out with a plop like that.
I felt rather embarrassed over my own reticence, but Mr. Smith didn’t
even indirectly reproach me with it.
“I didn’t know the necklace had been stolen,” he said. “I’ve only just
got here, you see. Tell me about it.”
“There’s Donovan,” I pointed out. “He’s coming up to tell us lunch
is ready, I expect. You’ll stay, won’t you, Punch? And then you can
tell Mr. Smith the whole story of how the necklace was stolen.--And
perhaps,” I added, “you’ll tell me, too, the details of how it came
back.”
For I didn’t see any point, now that the cat had got out, in trying to
make a mystery of the empty bag.
I was relieved, though, that Punch’s story, which he told with
admirable lucidity at lunch time, was considerably abridged where it
touched Judy. Of course at that time I knew nothing of the letter that
had been pushed through the narrow neck of the Chinese vase, nor of her
nocturnal excursion for its recovery. Punch’s account of his adventures
that night left this episode out.
He told us how, when he couldn’t sleep in his room on the top floor,
he’d come down to the davenport in the hall below; how he’d seen a man
in pajamas going up-stairs; how the mystery had completely baffled him
at the time; how Miss Digby had told him of the fright she’d had, and
how, between sleep and waking he’d figured out what had happened.
“Good work, Punch,” Mr. Smith said, when the tale was told. “I’m proud
of you.” His tone, though, wasn’t as enthusiastic as his words. He’d
spoken with only half his mind, as if out of some deep preoccupation.
“Well, that’s more than anybody else is,” the boy answered. “You see
they all think--mother and Miss Digby and Uncle Alec--that I took the
necklace myself, for a joke or something, and then brought it back in
the middle of the night. It’s what anybody would think if they didn’t
believe the story of the man in the pajamas. And it _is_ sort of a
funny story. Only, you see, I _saw_ him.”
“Yes,” Mr. Smith said thoughtfully, “it is a funny story, sure enough.”
The boy looked from one of us to the other, possibly to satisfy himself
that we ourselves believed it. He must have done so, for presently he
went on.
“It gets even funnier than that. Because, you see, as long as they
thought I’d done it, I wanted to know whose pajamas I’d seen, and
who it probably was who wore them. So after they’d all gone down to
breakfast, I went around and saw all the pajamas there were--all that
had been slept in, I mean--and I couldn’t find the pair I’d seen last
night. They weren’t on the top floor, so I went down to the second
floor, and they weren’t there either.”
“Are you sure you saw them all?” Mr. Smith asked.
“I counted,” said Punch. “I found a pair for everybody.”
“Servants too?” Mr. Smith asked.
“No,” said Punch. “But you see there isn’t any third floor to the
servants’ wing. The door to it opens into the second-floor hall where
the davenport is. If it had been one of the servants he wouldn’t have
gone up-stairs.”
“How well did you see the pajamas when the man was wearing them?” I
asked.
“Pretty well,” Punch said. “I saw the legs of them awfully well,
because they walked right through the moonlight and it was about as
bright as day. They were plain pajamas, gray, or some color like that,
and one of the legs was torn, a little square tear as if it had been
caught on a nail. Well, the only person in the house whose pajamas are
plain gray is Uncle Alec, and they weren’t torn. Besides he’s about
twice as big as the man I saw. Everybody else’s pajamas are fancy;
because of the wedding, I suppose. Anyhow, it’s a puzzle.”
“Well, the pearls are brought back, that’s one thing,” Mr. Smith
observed. “To your grandmother’s room, you say? Where are they now?”
Punch’s eye gleamed with a sudden pleasure. “That’s supposed to be a
great secret,” he said.