The Corbin necklace
“Don’t tell any secrets,” Mr. Smith warned him quickly.
“Well, it isn’t a secret from you--from either of you,” Punch
explained. “And Donovan isn’t around, is he, nor any one else who’d
hear?”
“No,” I said, “you won’t be overheard. But how do you know we’re not to
be kept out of the secret?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said, “and then you’ll see. It’s a secret from
mother, all right, and Judy and Uncle Alec, but not from you.
“It was when I was going around on the second floor, looking at the
pajamas, that grandmother heard me and called me into her room. She
said I’d been right about the safe not being a safe place for the
necklace, so she was going to give it to me to hide. Only I was to
promise not to tell any one in the house that she’d done it, nor where
the necklace was, of course. But you see, you aren’t in the house, so
the secret doesn’t include you.”
I won’t pretend to have been satisfied that this bit of casuistry was
strong enough to bear, but my curiosity was much wider awake, just
then, than my conscience. I made no protest, and neither did Mr. Smith.
The boy went on:
“Mother came in just after Gran had given it to me and asked her where
it was, and Gran told her it was in the safe. She’d had me put the box
back in the safe and lock the safe up, but of course the box was empty.
Mother asked her when she was going to give the necklace to Judy, and
Gran said she would when she got ready. She always gets kind of cross
when you ask her a lot of questions. So mother saw it was no good
asking more and went away. And there I had it all the time.”
“Where did you hide it?” Mr. Smith asked.
Punch was thoroughly enjoying himself now, there could be no doubt of
that. The unjust accusations of his mother and Uncle Alec and old Digs
he could afford to ignore in the face of this magnificent compensation.
“Why, I thought of lots of places,” he said, “that would probably have
been all right, but I didn’t like them somehow, and then I thought
about _The Purloined Letter_--you know, that story of Poe’s. How the
safest hiding-place for anything is the last place where any one
would think of looking for it. So I just wrapped the necklace up in a
handkerchief and stuck it in my pocket.”
“Good lord!” I cried. “Is that where it is now?”
“Surely it is,” old Mr. Smith remarked calmly. “Hence the rifle.”
Punch flushed a little. “Of course it’s only a twenty-two,” he said,
“but it’s got a long cartridge in it.”
At first blush the idea of entrusting a famous jewel like the Corbin
necklace to the trousers pocket of a thirteen-year-old boy armed with
a little target rifle seemed wild enough, and when one added that
an inexplicable attempt had just been made to steal it, an attempt
that might be repeated at any hour, day or night, it became perfectly
frantic. I didn’t care much about the necklace, but I cared immensely
about the boy.
He was looking eagerly into my face, and must have read the
consternation that was printed plain upon it. “Can you think of a safer
place?” he asked. “Of course I suppose I could give it to you to keep
for me.”
“Heaven forbid!” I cried. “But there must be some other....”
I let the sentence fade out unfinished, and lapsed into a thoughtful
silence. I couldn’t think of anything better, and that was the truth.
“It’s years since I’ve seen that string of pearls,” Mr. Smith said
presently. “Let’s have a look at them, Punch.”
The boy plunged a hand deep into his pocket and pulled out a wadded and
rather grimy handkerchief which he spread open on the table. There the
thing was, all right. I stared at it fascinated.
It was beautiful, of course, that perfectly graded series of shining
globes, but I was moved by the sight of it to reflect how ridiculously
artificial our values are. That thing would buy leisure for a man’s
lifetime. Comparatively few men from the cradle to the grave are
able by their labors to earn as much as would be needed to buy it.
Numberless men alive in the world to-day would commit any crime up to
murder to possess it. It seemed absurd when one thought of it like that.
Possibly to carry out the illusion the thing wanted a better
background. Perhaps it suffered from the indignity of contact with a
small boy’s pocket handkerchief.
Old Mr. Smith took the thing in his fingers--unusually intelligent-looking
old fingers they were, as if habituated to handling pearls. Then I
glanced up at his face, and was struck by a conviction which for the
moment put the necklace clean out of my mind.
He had stuck a monocle into one eye. The gleam may have come merely
from the lens, but from wherever it came, there was so piercing a
brilliancy in his gaze that I almost shouted, “Old Eagle-Eye!” aloud.
I didn’t, of course. He went on studying the necklace, and Punch sat
gazing from his face to mine. Of course--of course! Why hadn’t I
identified him at once? He was the man Judy was to prevent, at all
costs, from getting a chance at something--the necklace, beyond a
doubt. That was why Victoria hadn’t wanted to keep him in the house.
Well, the best laid plans go wrong sometimes. Victoria had overdone it.
There sat old Eagle-Eye with the necklace in his hands.
What was he going to do with it? I’ll admit that in my confounded state
of mind I’d hardly have been surprised at anything. I didn’t really
expect him to perpetrate a robbery with violence then and there, but
I was vividly conscious, for a fleeting instant, that Punch’s little
rifle was leaning up in the corner of the room, far out of reach. It
only shows what an atmosphere of persistent mystery will do to the
ordinarily well-behaved mind.
Mr. Smith, however, remained calm, and when he had done examining
the necklace, folded it up again in Punch’s handkerchief, rather
negligently I thought, and handed it over to the boy.
“Put it back in your pocket, Punch,” he said. “I can’t think of a safer
place for it.--But now that you’ve gratified our curiosity,” he went
on, “I think you’d better stretch the promise you gave your grandmother
to include everybody, out of the house as well as in it. Who are in the
house, anyway? Do you know them all?”
“Oh, hardly any of them, if you mean do I _really_ know, not just
who they’re supposed to be. I don’t think mother does, even; not the
Applebury crowd.”
“And the Appleburys,” commented Mr. Smith, “don’t know Judy’s crowd any
better. It’s a perfect situation, in a way.”
We weren’t very talkative during the rest of the lunch. The thoughts of
old Eagle-Eye seemed to be running mostly on the man in pajamas.
“You said he wasn’t near as big as your Uncle Alec. Was he noticeably
small; smaller, say, than any of the men in the party?”
“No,” Punch said, “I don’t think he was. He just looked about ordinary.
Of course, I didn’t see him very well, except his legs, and I didn’t
look at him very hard. I just thought he was somebody going to the
bathroom, until he started up-stairs. I think he looked sort of stout
and clumsy, as if he filled his pajamas rather full.”
“Are you sure it _was_ a man. I know you didn’t think of it at the
time, but mayn’t it have been a woman? I believe they wear pajamas
sometimes. And in any sort of men’s clothes they’re likely to look
heavy.”
I could see that the idea attracted Punch. It seemed to offer a
loophole of escape from his mystery. But he was too honest a witness to
avail himself of it.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think it was. I don’t think a woman would have
walked along like that.”
“You’re probably right,” the old man agreed. “Most women would look
like women even if they had on a man’s pajamas. We’ll stick to the men
for the present. Stout and stocky, medium height; does that describe
anybody in the party?”
Punch laughed. “The only one it describes is Bruce Applebury himself,”
he said.
Mr. Smith didn’t laugh. “What are _his_ pajamas like?” he asked.
“Sort of tan color,” said Punch, “with red stripes.”
I spoke up in the interests of common sense. “Surely you couldn’t
suspect....”
“I’d suspect anybody,” the old man asserted, “when we’re concerned
with a thing like that necklace. Oh, not suspect if you dislike the
word--but consider as possibly involved. I admit my point of view is
rather specialized.”
“He played tennis and swam practically from the time he came to the
house until he dressed for dinner,” I pointed out, “and the loss of the
necklace was discovered before he’d finished dressing.”
“Probably, then, he didn’t take it,” Mr. Smith conceded. “But he may
have brought it back, and that’s just as important a part of the
mystery.”
Without waiting to allow time for that to sink in, he turned to Punch.
“When is he--when are he and Judy expected back from town?” he asked.
“There’s a train about three. I think they’ll surely come on that,
because they’re going to rehearse the wedding this afternoon. You’ll
come over for that, won’t you?”
Eagle-Eye took this invitation with a twinkle. “Old men are supposed
to take naps after lunch,” he said. “Still, I may turn up. If I do,
suppose, since we’re already in mystery up to the neck, that you greet
me as if we were meeting for the first time since Paris. Can we get
away with it? Did anybody know you were coming here to lunch?”
“No,” said Punch. “I just sort of disappeared. I suppose I’d better
be going back now, though, or they may begin wondering where I am. I
_could_ eat another lunch, of course.”
We both laughed over that as we bade him farewell. But we turned
pretty serious as we watched him walk away with his little rifle.
“Do you think he’s safe going around with a hundred-thousand-dollar
necklace in his pocket?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Mr. Smith answered reflectively. “For one thing, he
hasn’t got it in his pocket.”
I must have gaped at him like a goggle-eyed fish. My mind once more had
gone to pieces. Had the old gentleman done a sleight of hand trick when
he returned that handkerchief?
“Oh, he’s got just what he brought over here with him,” he added.
“Undoubtedly the same thing his grandmother gave him this morning to
hide for her. It’s not the necklace. It’s a very fair imitation of it,
however.”
“You’re perfectly sure of that, I suppose?” I asked weakly.
He nodded.
“You’d better go back to your couch where you’ll be comfortable,” he
suggested. “We’ve got some thinking to do.”
I agreed, and rang for Donovan. When he’d made me comfortable and gone
away, Mr. Smith pulled up an easy chair for himself and lighted a cigar.
“I know that necklace intimately,” he began. “I sold it to Punch’s
grandfather in Paris, ’way back in the days of the Second Empire. Lord,
what a while ago! A man shouldn’t be allowed to live as long as that.
Eighteen hundred seventy it must have been, or thereabouts.
“I’m a jeweler by profession, and I was managing director over there
for Paulding and Revere. I’ve seen the necklace a number of times
since. Mrs. Corbin always gave me a look at it whenever she came to
Paris. So I can say with certainty that the thing Punch has in his
pocket is not merely a necklace of imitation pearls; it’s an imitation,
pearl for pearl, of that necklace. In fact, we can go a little further
than that, if you don’t mind my prosing a bit.”
“I don’t,” I assured him.
“Both the French and the Japanese make imitation pearls,” he went on.
“Serious imitations, I mean. Merely for purposes of wear, the French
pearls are better. Their luster’s more like the real thing. On a
pretty woman’s neck in a ballroom they wouldn’t be detected as not
the real thing. But the moment you pick them up, they give themselves
away. They’re much too light and much too translucent. Japanese pearls,
on the other hand, are the right weight, or very near it, and they
don’t betray themselves when you hold them against the light. But they