The Corbin necklace
I’m sorry for Victoria. I wouldn’t blame her much for anything she
might resort to, short of poison, as an escape.”
“Did you find out anything about the necklace?” I asked. “From the
old lady herself, I mean? Whether she knows of the existence of the
imitation one?”
“I was disappointed there,” Mr. Smith said. “I thought that when
Victoria had gone, Mrs. Corbin would unburden her mind. She has
something weighing upon it, I should say. But the emotion she’d wasted
over the matter of where I was to sleep had completely exhausted her.
She had to ring for her nurse, and tell me we’d have our visit later.
She wasn’t visible again all the afternoon. So I was told, at least,
and of course I couldn’t question it.”
Then, “Do you know anything about that nurse?” he asked.
“She’s been with Mrs. Corbin two or three years,” I told him. “Punch
regards her humorously, I think, but considers her above suspicion.
Why? Did you notice anything queer about her?”
“When I left Mrs. Corbin’s room,” he said, “she was parting from
Victoria in the hall. Evidently they’d been talking somewhere. It
struck me that the woman was frightfully upset--frightened or shocked,
I couldn’t tell which. She might have been found out in something,
or she might have been given some order she didn’t want to carry
out.--They aren’t drugging that old lady, are they?”
“She drugs herself, I understand--morphine. Naturally enough, after
years of pain.”
He looked like a very old man when I told him that, and he sat musing
over it for a long time. Finally he roused himself.
“Well, I didn’t find what I went for,” he said. “I made a point of
strolling about the house. I managed to see several of the servants;
not all of them, of course. But in a talk I had with Punch, I asked
him whether any new house servants had been taken on during the last
two weeks, and he said there had not. Somehow I don’t believe it’s the
servants we have to reckon with anyhow.
“I saw all the guests in the house eventually. There was quite a wait
for the principal performers. The others were all gathered for the
rehearsal of the ceremony, impatient as school children for it to be
over with, too, so that they could run away and play. But Judy and the
bridegroom, by failing for a long time to put in an appearance, kept
them waiting.”
“Was Bill Grant there?” I asked.
“He was. And his manner toward me excited my admiration. His weakness
is evidently that he mustn’t be surprised. Do you remember him this
morning, completely disconcerted, unable to contribute more than a
disjointed word here and there to the talk, floundering in the presence
of the unexpected? But evidently he’d foreseen the probability of an
encounter with me this afternoon, and he sustained it with complete
_sang froid_. Everybody else was discussing Judy’s trip to town
with her bridegroom. Nobody questioned but that was where she was
spending the day. He knew that I knew that she hadn’t gone to town,
that she’d spent the day, or a good part of it, surreptitiously with
him. Yet he confronted me without batting an eye, without attempting
a private explanation, or even a private signal entreating me not to
give them away. He was, I felt, in the circumstances almost formidably
self-possessed.
“His self-possession didn’t last him through the afternoon, however.
Fate had another surprise in store for him.”
“What was the surprise?” I asked.
“That’s the point of my story,” he said. “But let me tell it in order.
The fact that it doesn’t make sense makes it more important to approach
it methodically.
“Before Judy arrived with her bridegroom, I had seen every one of the
guests in that house, including Mr. Alexander Corbin and excepting only
the bridegroom himself. There was no one among them whom I recognized
as a professional jewel thief. Mr. Bruce Applebury then arrived with
Judy and I didn’t recognize him either. I had drawn blank as far as my
particular errand to the house was concerned. But I was diverted from
thoughts of my failure by something I saw happening under my eyes.
“I saw enacted a scene of perfectly tragic intensity, and I haven’t the
remotest idea now what it meant. I can tell it all in a very few words,
because the scene itself had no accompanying words at all.
“Judy, as I say, arrived in the car with Mr. Bruce Applebury. They
were surrounded at once by a group of young people who had been waiting
for them on the lawn, clamoring for the rehearsal to begin. I looked at
Mr. Applebury, realized that I didn’t know him and realized, further,
that I didn’t like him. He is self-important and oppressively correct.
He looked not sulky, exactly--mulish, that’s better. And victorious.
Like a bad-tempered parent who has just beaten one of his children and
has succeeded in persuading himself of his own righteousness.
“As for Judy, she was like an automaton; an amazingly life-like,
well-made automaton, capable of going where she should, answering
questions, even of responding in an appropriate manner to jokes.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have perceived how perfectly galvanic all this was
if I hadn’t happened to be standing where I intercepted the one look
she turned upon her mother.
“It was a look--it’s a strong word, but I mean it--of horror, the look
of one still incredulous over a betrayal. Something had happened to her
that had never entered into her calculations as a possibility when we
saw her in the summer-house this morning, although I thought she was
facing some rather queer possibilities then.”
I couldn’t bear to have it spun out any longer. “What happened?” I
demanded. “Get to the point, man, and tell me.”
“Nothing happened,” he said. “Nothing, at least, until after the scene
was over. They went ahead and had their rehearsal. I watched. I watched
all of them, even Alexander Corbin. Particularly I watched our young
friend Bill Grant.
“He had already had his surprise. But I swear I don’t know how he got
it. He hadn’t had a significant look or word, let alone an intelligible
message, either from his cousin or from Judy. And yet he looked like a
man in a daze. When it came time for him to produce the ring and hand
it to the bridegroom, a good stiff nudge was not enough to bring him
to. He had to be spoken to, and then he responded like a somnambulist.
“I simply can’t describe the intensity of the feeling that was shared,
in some inexplicable way, by Judy and those two young men. And what
made a nightmare of it was that no one seemed to perceive it but
myself.--Oh, Victoria may have been a little unnaturally alert. She’d
taken that look from Judy square in the face; though without flinching,
so that I wonder now whether she knew what it meant. To the others it
was simply the rehearsal of a wedding, to the usual accompaniment of
jokes and giggles.”
“How about Punch? Didn’t he see anything?”
“No, I don’t think he did. He was entirely serious, of course;
scrupulous about doing his part exactly as he was told. One of his
hands showed a tendency to stray into his pocket, but he corrected that
when his mother spoke to him about it. No, Punch had something else on
his mind and I don’t think he saw a thing.
“Yet I can swear that if those three people had been Italians, there’d
have been a flash of a stiletto. But who would have wielded it and
who’d have got it, I don’t know.
“Something did happen at last, just when the rehearsal was over. Some
one, perhaps two or three of them at once, said to Applebury, ‘Now’s
when you kiss her.’
“Judy turned to him and said, without any expression in her face at
all, ‘Are you going to? You can if you like, of course.’
“He went rather red and stood looking at her like a fool. Angry I
should say, rather than embarrassed. I don’t think he’d embarrass
easily. He has no misgivings about himself.
“She didn’t give him more than a second to make up his mind. Then she
reached out a hand for the other man. Some fool laughed and said, ‘Are
you going to kiss him instead?’, but nobody else made that mistake.
Something about her gesture silenced the lot of them.
“She said right out so that everybody could hear, ‘I’m going to talk to
Bill for five minutes, over on that bench.’ She nodded toward a stone
seat at the bottom of the lawn in plain sight, but out of earshot.
‘After that we’ll decide what we’re going to do next.’ She led young
Grant off to the bench and they sat down on it with their backs to us.
“There was some electricity in the air by then. I think that for a
moment Applebury considered following her, but he changed his mind
about it, and turned to Victoria. The others stayed together in a
group, as if they didn’t know what to do nor where to look.
“I looked frankly at the pair on the bench. They sat side by side, not
very close together though, and talked without looking at each other.
It didn’t last very long; less, I’m sure, than the five minutes Judy
stipulated. Then she got up, turned away from him, still without a
look, and came back toward us, he following.
“She looked to me then a perfectly live girl. The second act of _The
Tales of Hoffman_ was over. ‘It’s too late and too hot for tennis,’ she
said. ‘Let’s all go for a swim in the pool.’
“I heard Grant speak to her just before they got within the hearing of
the others. ‘I’ll think of something, yet,’ he said. She answered him
over her shoulder for anybody to hear that might. ‘All right, if you
can.’ He’d got over his surprise at all events and seemed to be coming
to life again, himself.
“He went into the pool with the others. So did Judy. So did everybody
except Punch and Bruce Applebury. One of the bridesmaids made quite a
point of it that Punch should go in; a personal appeal. But he refused
regretfully, and I knew why. His bathing suit hadn’t any pocket in it.
“I don’t know why Applebury didn’t go in. He looked hot and stuffy
enough after his day in town. Unless....”
Old Eagle-Eye’s face suddenly brightened and he slapped his lean old
leg. “Unless, by George, he had the same reason that Punch had, only a
better one. Do you suppose he had the real necklace in his pocket?”
“Damn the necklace!” I cried.
“Damn it by all means,” he agreed seriously. “But in the meantime we’d
better be dressing for dinner. You’re going, aren’t you?”
I told him dully that I didn’t think I would.
But after he’d gone up-stairs to change his clothes and pack, a servant
from The Oaks brought me a note from Judy that changed my mind.
“You must come to-night,” it said. “Not that you can do anything, but I
want you here.”
CHAPTER X
TRANSFORMATION SCENE
What Judy thought she wanted of me at dinner that night I don’t know.
Probably she didn’t know herself. She regarded me as an ally and may
have reasoned that some unforeseen change in the pattern of things
might make me useful. Or, more likely, she didn’t reason at all; just
felt that she wanted me there, and sent for me.
As things turned out, the part I played at the dinner was merely that
of a wholly unimportant spectator. The cue that called me upon the
stage wasn’t given me until several hours later. Neither during the
dinner nor after it did I have a moment alone with her.
I had a little talk with Punch, though, and got one curious piece of
information from him. That this happened was due to our somewhat too
prompt arrival at The Oaks. Belden had taken old Mr. Smith up-stairs
to show him his room, and the boy, who was the first one of The Oaks
party to appear in the drawing-room, seated himself on the arm of the
easy chair where the butler had deposited me, and brought his report
down to date.
“Have you still got it?” I asked.
He patted his trousers pocket confidentially.
“I didn’t forget to change it when I changed my clothes,” he told me,