The Corbin necklace
haven’t the luster, not even the best of them.
“Well, these are Japanese pearls. Whoever had the string made of them,
it’s fair to assume, wanted them for some other purpose than wearing to
parties. The French pearls would have been better for that, and cheaper
too. But they wouldn’t serve if they had to deceive some one who had
opportunities to handle them.”
“In other words they were made to deceive old Mrs. Corbin,” I broke in.
“Her eyesight has been failing for years.”
“That’s very likely a good guess,” he said mildly. “But let’s not begin
guessing just yet.
“She may have ordered the imitation made herself. She’s as likely to
have wanted to deceive Victoria, let us say, as Victoria is to have
wanted to deceive her. And with her poor vision she may have deceived
herself. The real string may have been knocking about, unregarded for
months, in some drawer of her dressing-table, while the imitation was
lying in the safe.
“All we know is that there are two strings, and that a person who
couldn’t see very well, either because his eyes were bad, or because
he was working in the dark, might easily mistake one for the other. We
know that the imitation string is now in Punch’s pocket. But where the
real string is we don’t know.”
“It’s reasonably probable, isn’t it,” I asked, “that the necklace
in Punch’s pocket is the same one that his grandmother showed him
Wednesday afternoon, when she told him she meant to give it to Judy for
a wedding present? It was taken from the safe, it was brought back, and
it was handed by his grandmother straight to Punch.”
“That’s as good a possibility as any,” said the old man. “The thief
takes it in a hurry and more or less in the dark, discovers at his
first good look at it that it’s an imitation, and brings it back. But
there are other hypotheses just as good.
“He may have seen a chance to take the real one at a time when he
hadn’t the imitation at hand to replace it with, and then brought the
imitation back in the hope that the loss hadn’t yet been discovered.
It wasn’t made public, I understand. Or some one may have borrowed the
real one and returned the imitation by mistake. Or one person may have
stolen the real one, and some one else, who later discovered the theft
and wished to shield the thief, may have brought back the imitation,
thinking he was making restitution. You see, it’s endless. The most
serious mistake we can make will be to begin thinking we know too much.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “One could easily do a cruel injustice to an
innocent person by jumping at conclusions.”
“That’s not just what I mean,” he said gently. “Perhaps I should have
said dangerous instead of serious. I’m more concerned over what may
happen in the next twenty-four hours than I am over what may have
happened--oh, any time within the last five years.”
He gave me half a moment of silence to digest that in.
“I’ll run the risk of speaking with the utmost plainness,” he then
went on. “I think I can guess how this thing looks to you. You believe
Victoria had that imitation string made for the purpose of imposing
upon her mother-in-law and getting possession of the real one. You
think she took alarm over Mrs. Corbin’s decision to give it to Judy,
because she thought that such a gift would lead to the discovery of the
substitution and that she’d be charged with it. You think that’s why
she didn’t want me stopping in the house.
“That’s all plausible enough. It may all be true. It would account,
after a fashion, for the disappearance of the imitation necklace from
the safe. She might have taken it herself; she might have persuaded
Judy to take it.
“But into that picture you can not fit the return of the necklace. You
can’t fit the man in pajamas, whom Punch saw. I have no intelligible
picture, yet, into which that man will fit. But the return, I tell
you frankly, seems to me to be sinister. It suggests strongly the
presence somewhere, as an active possibility, of the real necklace--not
stolen yet, but waiting to be. And accompanying that theft we may have
anything, up to murder. That’s why I say it’s dangerous to feel too
sure.”
With great deliberation, he extinguished his cigar in the ash tray and
rose to his full height.
“Invited or not,” he said, “I’m going to that house this afternoon. I
want to see the people in it. There aren’t a great many first-class
jewel thieves in the world, and I know the faces of a pretty fair
proportion of them. Of course people who aren’t jewel thieves sometimes
attempt to steal jewels--a covetous girl, a boy desperately in debt,
might make a frantic clutch, with no forethought, no preparation, and
of course, no possibility of ultimate success.
“If that’s the case here, I’m as helpless as any of you, for I can’t
read thoughts or intentions from people’s faces.
“But somehow to me the thing hasn’t quite that look. So I’m going
over to see whether I know any of Victoria’s guests better than
she does.--How about you? Will you come along? Can you manage in a
comfortable motor, if you’ve lots of room?”
I could manage it, all right, and my first impulse was to say I’d go.
Then I thought of something and changed my mind.
“I think I’ll stay at home this afternoon,” I told him, “and rest up
for that dinner.”
CHAPTER IX
MYSTIFICATION OF EAGLE-EYE
It was the thought of Judy that made me change my mind about going to
The Oaks with old Mr. Smith. I thought that perhaps if I were alone at
the cottage all the afternoon, and if the fact that I was here alone
were advertised by the presence of my ancient guest at The Oaks, she
might come back and tell me the story which he had prevented my hearing
at the summer-house.
My concern for the child was fast deepening into an acute distress. I
was spared, to be sure, the misery of doubting her essential rectitude.
I’d known her from the time she was a baby, and the long intervals
when I’d seen nothing of her had neither interrupted the growth of our
friendship, nor changed the quality of it.
She’d never been expansively confidential; reticence was, indeed,
one of her outstanding qualities. Victoria complained of her as
a close-mouthed little thing who kept everything to herself. But
candor--perhaps I shouldn’t put it that way, for I believe the two
things naturally go together--candor was not a virtue with her, but
simply an irresistible compulsion. She couldn’t even acquiesce at all
graciously in a pretense. I consider myself a decently straightforward
person, but I’ve been self-convicted a dozen times by a straight look
from Judy’s eyes of cowardly flinchings from the plain truth. I don’t
think she regards them as cowardly. She isn’t a bit of a prig. She
simply doesn’t understand how it can be done.
The pungent quality of cynicism which sometimes flavors her speech has
always one source--sham. She is cynical of shams.
I recalled a remark she had made to me only a day or two before, to
the effect that the horridest thing in the world was whitewash. Then,
with a start, I remembered the prediction she’d made in the next breath
that she was going to be coated with it this week. How much had she
known about the necklace then? Anything more than was involved in the
newspaper announcement that her grandmother was going to give it to
her as a wedding present?
In the light of Mr. Smith’s revelations this afternoon, I thought it
likely that she had known more; known that the necklace then reposing
in the morocco covered box in her grandmother’s safe was an imitation,
and that the fact somehow involved her mother’s credit. Didn’t an
invincible determination on Judy’s part to save her mother’s credit
account for everything the girl was doing--including, even, her
agreement to marry a man whom she didn’t love?
It was all very well for old Mr. Smith, whose emotions were running
cool and thin, to warn me against jumping at conclusions. But I had to
jump. I had nowhere else to go. So I nailed my conviction like a flag
to this mast.
It wasn’t necessary to try to work out all the details. Victoria had
done something--probably, in some desperate money crisis, stolen the
necklace; she’d always believed it was going to be hers some day--and
Judy had agreed to see her through.
How had that involved a marriage with Bruce Applebury? Possibly
Victoria had sold the necklace to him. Or possibly she’d done
something besides steal the necklace. (I found it comparatively easy,
that afternoon, to impute anything to Victoria.) At all events the
necklace, the real one, had to be recovered, somehow.
Was this the errand Judy and Bruce had started upon, this morning
under the innocent pretense of buying the wedding ring? Had she really
started with him and been compelled, by some unforeseen occurrence, to
turn back? Or had she only pretended to go with him in order to be free
for some other meeting, under the protection of his cousin?
What sort of rendezvous had my unexpected visit to the summer-house
prevented? Had old Mr. Smith, through my field-glasses, caught a
glimpse of the other party to it?
I had an exciting feeling, about then, that I was within one idea of
the solution. But this idea, widely as I cast my net for it, refused to
be caught. And presently my little pattern, fragmentary as it was, fell
to pieces again.
How was I going to account for the theft of the imitation necklace
and for the return of it? Well, I didn’t care about that. That didn’t
necessarily concern Judy at all.
But how about the thing that had happened to her on the veranda
yesterday afternoon when the guests were arriving? The thing that had
set her world rocking like a boat, that had led her to cry out to
Punch, “Are you on my side, whatever happens--whatever I do?” No, I
couldn’t solve that. I wanted her to come and tell me about it. She
didn’t come, though, and I put in the longest, dreariest afternoon I
can remember, waiting for her.
When Mr. Ethelbert Smith returned about six o’clock I was in so
detestably unamiable a state of mind that a resolute summoning of all
the manners I had ever learned hardly availed to produce a decent
show of politeness. I didn’t want, I told myself, any more of his
cold-hearted observations. However, common civility required me to
ask for them, and before he had gone very far I was listening with
unfeigned interest.
He began with an apology. He had permitted himself this morning to be
saddled upon me as a guest, and now, after I’d hospitably made him
welcome, and most comfortable, he added, he was about to climb out of
the saddle again. In short, he was about to pack his bags and go to The
Oaks to stay.
It appeared that old Mrs. Corbin, who’d been, of course, the first
person he’d asked for on arriving at the house, had seen him at once
and made him welcome in the friendliest manner. Furthermore she’d been
furiously annoyed to learn that he was not stopping under her roof, and
had insisted that he change his plans at once in order to do so.
“She’s altered greatly--by illness, of course,” he remarked, “but
she’s no less imperious than she was in her best days. She settled the
matter of my entertainment then and there, and summoned Victoria as
tyrannically as she would have sent for her chambermaid. Victoria came,
too.”
“Was she startled at finding you there?” I asked.
“If she was, she didn’t show it. She may have been warned, of course;
probably was. A question or two of the servant who brought the message
would have let her know what she had to expect. No, she took my being
there as the most natural thing in the world. She didn’t show more than
a flicker or two of resentment over the manner in which the orders were
given. She must, of course, be in a state of suppressed rebellion all
the time, for I fancy that sort of thing is an every-day occurrence.