The Corbin necklace
Even old Mr. Smith betrayed, as he listened, the nearest approach to
excitement he was capable of. His manner was calm enough, but his eye
had the old irrepressible eagle gleam in it. It seemed to me that Bruce
had gone as fully as possible into details, but there hadn’t been
enough of these to satisfy the old gentleman. He took Applebury back
over the story from the beginning.
“You’d gone to bed somewhere about two o’clock, wasn’t it, with the
necklace under your pillow, and fallen asleep? Did that happen at once
or did you have any trouble getting off?”
“I lay awake a while,” Bruce said. “I don’t know how long.”
“Everything was quiet then, was it? Bill hadn’t kept you awake by
moving about?”
“No, it was quiet. I think he got to bed before I did.”
“And there was no light in his room?”
“I didn’t see any.”
“So you had no reason to think that he wasn’t out of the way until
morning,” Mr. Smith commented.
Bruce didn’t dissent to that.
“Well, then,” the old man went on, “you fell asleep. Deeply?”
“I’m a fairly sound sleeper,” said Bruce.
“And you didn’t waken till Bill came into the room?”
“I think not. No, I’m sure I didn’t.”
“Do you know what waked you up?”
“I haven’t an idea--some noise, I suppose. I don’t know that it was
that. It may have been some movement about my bed.”
“Such as a hand under your pillow?” suggested Mr. Smith.
“It may have been that,” Bruce agreed grimly. “As I say, I don’t know.
I found myself awake.”
“You don’t think Bill had spoken to you from his room before he came
in?”
“I’m very sure,” said Bruce, “that he did not. He was standing there,
in his pajamas, close by the head of my bed, rummaging over the top of
my bureau.”
“He’d left a light on in his room, I suppose,” Mr. Smith suggested,
“and the door was open behind him?”
“I don’t know about the door,” said Bruce. “There was no light coming
in from his room. There was no light at all except what came in from
outdoors.”
“You didn’t instantly recognize him, then?”
“Naturally not. I asked who it was.”
“And he replied that it was Bill and that he’d come in for some
cigarettes?”
Bruce nodded. He seemed to be getting bored with all these repetitions.
“And you suggested that he turn on the light?”
“We’ve been over all that,” Bruce said impatiently. “Yes.”
“His voice sounded perfectly natural and matter-of-fact?”
“I suppose so,” Bruce admitted. “Yes, I can’t say that it didn’t.”
“So you had no impression whatever of anything furtive or stealthy
about his way of coming in?”
“I don’t think I’d say that,” Bruce objected. “I think it _was_ rather
stealthy. I know that it struck me at the time as rather queer that I
hadn’t heard him coming in.”
“You are sure you were perfectly broad awake when you did see him
there?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Yes, I’m sure of that. I think my asking him why he didn’t turn on the
light shows it.”
The old man nodded gravely. “Yes,” he said. “I think we may regard that
as conclusive.”
I got a sort of thrill out of that, and looking over at Judy I saw
she’d got it too. But I didn’t, even then, know what he was driving at.
He went on in a somewhat thoughtful tone.
“So he took his cigarettes and went away, closing his door after him, I
think you said. And you once more dropped off to sleep. And that’s the
story.”
He sat in thoughtful silence over it for a moment.
Then he looked straight at Bruce and asked, “Mr. Applebury, was the
necklace under your pillow at that time?”
Bruce returned his gaze with a frightened stare.
“In the light of what I’ve found out since,” he said, when he could
make his voice come, “I think it’s natural to assume that it was not.”
“I asked,” said Mr. Smith, and now his voice was like a shining sword,
“I asked for your personal knowledge. Was the necklace under your
pillow when your cousin went back to his room?”
“I don’t know,” Bruce said. “It was gone in the morning anyhow.”
“We’ll come to the morning presently. Mr. Applebury, let me ask you to
consider what you’ve told us.
“You’d gone to bed guarding a priceless thing which was in some danger
of being stolen. You had chosen to guard it by putting it under your
pillow, where by a touch, by the smallest movement of your hand,
you could assure yourself from time to time of its safety. You were
startled out of a deep sleep by the presence of an unknown man in your
room, a man whose entrance, by your own statement, had seemed stealthy
and unexplained. You didn’t know who he was until he spoke in answer to
your question.
“Do you pretend to assert seriously that your hand never moved under
the pillow to discover whether the necklace was still there?”
Bruce sprang to his feet.
“Look here,” he said, through colorless lips, “I’ve been insulted far
enough.”
“Sit down,” commanded old Eagle-Eye. “I’m going to insult you a little
further. You’ve made a statement which the mind of a child would reject
as preposterous. I make the counter-statement that you did feel under
the pillow; that you knew that the necklace was there before your
cousin had had time to tell you who he was; that unless it had been
there you would have raised an outcry upon the spot. You dropped asleep
contentedly after he had gone back to his room because you knew it was
still there.”
There was a moment of dead silence. Bruce didn’t even try to speak.
I felt, after the first flush of crude triumph, something painfully
humiliating in the spectacle of as complete a demolition as that, even
of one I’d been regarding as an enemy.
Judy felt it too. She sprang up and ran to the window where she stood
looking out. I could see the tears running down her face--partly from
relief, of course, over the clearing of her lover, but partly, I think,
from pity. She had no disposition to gloat over him, anyhow.
Mr. Smith was the only one of us who remained unmoved. He hadn’t
completely finished.
“Now we’ll come to the events of this morning. I don’t know, Mr.
Applebury, where the necklace was when you wakened. It may have been
taken by a thief after you had dropped asleep again. Or it may have
still been under your pillow.”
Bruce had found his voice again. “Do you mean to insinuate ...” he
began.
“Not at this moment,” interrupted Mr. Smith. “I’ll do my insinuating a
little later.
“As I said, we don’t know where the necklace was when you waked up
this morning. But we do know that upon your bureau, left there by your
cousin, Bill Grant, was a note from Judy telling you that you might
keep the necklace, and that at that price she was quit of you.
“We know that his actual errand to your room was to leave that note;
that it was for this purpose that he had undressed and gone to bed and
waited for you to fall asleep.
“We know with what feelings you regard your cousin. It doesn’t want
much imagination to picture you as furiously angry, as anxious to
avenge the humiliation you felt he had put upon you. The fact that your
cousin had been in the room during the night and that he had now left
his room and the house, offered you an apparently easy revenge.
“Now I’ll make my insinuation, if you like. We have nothing but your
unsupported assertion that any robbery whatever has taken place. You
lied in accusing your cousin of the theft, and I find it easy to
believe that you have lied in declaring that any theft occurred.”
CHAPTER XVII
SOME MUST WATCH
I looked at Bruce in astonishment. In everything but the bare form of
the words he had been accused of having, himself, stolen the necklace,
and it was amazing the way the accusation had brought him back to life
again. His moment of collapse was past. His face was afire with anger.
He turned upon me.
“I decline to rest under this infamous charge,” he said. “I insist upon
being searched at once; that my room and my effects be searched. That
necklace was gone when I waked up this morning.”
He turned upon Mr. Smith. “You can’t accuse an honest man of theft and
get away with it.”
“I’m glad you’ve made that discovery,” the old gentleman replied
quietly. “However, I haven’t made a charge. Nothing but the same sort
of insinuation which you made against your cousin. The necklace may
have been stolen after he and Judy left the house last night. I’m
inclined to think it was.”
“Have we got to go on _talking_?” Bruce demanded of me. “Can’t we go in
my room and begin the search?”
It was rather pathetic, his turning to me like that. Relatively, I
suppose, I seemed like a friend. It’s a fact that I was sorry for him
and that I believed he knew no more of the present whereabouts of the
necklace than I did.
Old Eagle-Eye was in charge, however, and I referred to him for his
consent. He gave it by rising, with a bow to old Mrs. Corbin.
“I think we’d better adjourn up-stairs,” he said. “That’s the real
field of battle anyhow.”
“You’ll come too, sir, won’t you?” Bruce asked me. And when I agreed,
he handed me my crutches and helped me to my feet.
“I’ve never been searched before,” he remarked gloomily as we rode up
in the elevator together. “I’ve never even seen a man searched.”
“I never have either,” I confessed nervously. I think I dreaded the
ordeal almost as much as he. There is something rather horrifying about
the idea.
But we might have spared our apprehensions, for the search, as it
happened, never came off.
The elevator shaft on the top floor opens directly into the billiard
room. Bruce opened the door when the car stopped and stepped out,
but since there was a slight inequality between levels, he turned
back instantly to caution me about it. I swung myself out without
difficulty, but I all but lost my balance and fell back into the car
from sheer astonishment at what I saw.
“Good lord!” I gasped. “Punch, what in the world are you doing?”
Mr. Smith was at my side in an instant, and his right hand went under
his coat, even before he saw what I was looking at.
The little boy never turned his head. He was standing beside the
billiard table, covering with his trusty rifle one of the closed doors
down at the end of the room. He was still very pale, but his eyes were
shining now, and his hands were steady.
“Look out,” he said quietly. “He’s in the trunk closet.”
“Who is?” Bruce demanded. “What do you mean?”
But Mr. Smith asked no questions. He whipped out the automatic pistol
from under his coat.
“It’s all right if you’re sure he’s there,” he said. “I’ve got the door
covered too.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure,” said Punch. “I saw a drop of oil on the hinge.
That’s how I know.”
“Any other way out of it than through that door?” Mr. Smith asked
briskly, but speaking low as the boy had done.
“No,” said Punch. “It’s an awfully big place. It goes clear around the
corner. But that’s the only way out, unless he’s made a hole in the
roof.”
“They’re slate shingles,” Mr. Smith observed. “He’s still in there,
then.”
“What are they talking about?” Bruce demanded of me.
“The thief’s in there,” Mr. Smith told him. “Punch’s ghost, the man in
pajamas. Look here, can you shoot quick and straight if you have to? If
you can I’ll give you this pistol. I’m going to open the door.”
He held the weapon out to Bruce. “With my apologies,” he added.
“Thanks very much, sir,” said Bruce. “But I’ll open the door myself.”
Mr. Smith nodded.
“Stand to one side when you do,” he cautioned him. “Don’t get in our
line of fire.”
“If he’s the man who stole the necklace,” Bruce remarked, “you won’t
have to shoot. Not if I can get my hands on him.”
I don’t very much mind admitting that my own emotions combined a
lively curiosity about that door whose oiled hinges had indicated it
as the robber’s hiding-place, with an intense desire to get back into