The Corbin necklace
of moving over to the switch and turning on the light in the tin-shaded
chandelier over the table. The room was empty. The mystery remained
unsolved.
Well, he had done all he could anyhow, and he turned off the light
again and stole down-stairs.
He now went into Judy’s room and glanced around. No, she hadn’t come
back yet. She must have gone on that bicycle ride after all. It must be
horribly late. He carried her watch from the night-table to the window.
After three. He stole back to his uneasy bed on the davenport.
He wasn’t yet quite at the end of his night’s adventures. He sprang up
again almost before he’d had time to lie down. His grandmother’s door
was opening. Somebody with an electric torch was coming out.
“Who’s that?” he asked sharply.
The figure gave a violent start. It was Miss Digby in her old
plum-colored bathrobe.
“Punch!” she cried, “what are you doing here?”
“Trying to get a night’s sleep,” he said. “What’s happened? Is anything
wrong with grandmother?”
“No,” Miss Digby said. “I was waked up a few minutes ago by hearing
this door shut. I’ve been frightened pretty near out of my wits. I wish
you wouldn’t go poking around the house in the middle of the night.”
He didn’t tell her he hadn’t shut a door. The only thing on his mind
was Judy’s door standing open. Old Digs mustn’t go in there and find
that she was gone. So he told her he wouldn’t poke around any more,
and, glad to be rid of her so easily, went back to the davenport.
CHAPTER VI
REWARD OF MERIT
Punch told me he didn’t know when it happened; whether he dreamed it,
or whether it broke over him as he was falling asleep or just in the
moment of his waking up.
He lay awake for ever so long after promising Miss Digby he wouldn’t
go poking around any more, worrying because Judy didn’t come back;
wondering what could be in the letter she was willing to risk so much
to get; speculating over the mysterious errand of the man in the gray
pajamas. But all these thoughts got him nowhere. His mind, so he
described it, was just playing leap frog with itself. He saw the sky
turn gray, and then pink.
Finally, when it was broad day, he fell asleep. And the next thing he
knew, Miss Digby was shaking him by the shoulder, telling him it was
half past eight and he’d really better go up to his room and dress.
His first thought was of Judy’s door, and his first glance showed
him that it was shut. But this, he instantly perceived, didn’t mean
anything. The servants must have been up for at least an hour. The
chambermaid, seeing Judy’s room empty, would have assumed she’d gone
for an early ride, made up her room and closed the door after her.
However, it was good as far as it went. Judy might be in there, sound
asleep in bed. Probably was.
Miss Digby gave his shoulder another shake. “Punch, you’re still half
asleep,” she insisted. “Get up.”
Then he sat up, blinking at her, and realized all in an instant, or
thought he did, that he knew the whole thing. The puzzle had worked.
“Have you found them yet?” he asked.
“Found what?” she demanded impatiently.
He must still have looked to her like a sleepy little boy, for she
added, “Wake up!”
“I’m awake now, all right,” he told her. “Have you found the
pearls--the necklace--in grandmother’s room?”
“If you aren’t half asleep, you’re out of your head!” she told
him sharply. “How should I find them? They were stolen. Have you
forgotten? Last night before dinner.”
“Sure, they were stolen,” he agreed. “They’ve been brought back. A man
brought them back last night. That’s what you heard. Him shutting the
door just as he was going out.”
She went rather white at that and stood staring at him. It must have
been, of course, to that respectable spinster, a perfectly horrifying
idea that any man had invaded the room where she was sleeping, let
alone a thief.
“If you’re joking,” she went on, gathering herself together, “all I can
say is that it’s extremely bad taste.”
“I’m not joking,” he told her. “Listen. Don’t you remember coming out
last night and telling me you’d heard a door shut. I hadn’t shut any
door--but I’d seen the man.”
“You’d seen a _man_! Going into that room?”
“No, of course not. If I’d have seen him going into that room, I’d have
done something about it. I saw him going along the hall in pajamas. I
thought he was going to the bathroom, there at the foot of the stairs.
“Instead of doing that he went up the stairs, and I thought it was
funny, because why should a man on this floor go up-stairs in the
middle of the night? So I followed him up to see who he was and where
he went. I didn’t see him at all, after he’d turned the corner at the
landing. So I came down again. And then you came out and said you had
heard a door shut.
“I didn’t figure it out at the time, but it’s plain enough now. He’s
the man who stole the necklace. But he’d made up his mind that he
wasn’t going to get away with it, so he brought it back. You’ll find
it’s in there.”
She was shaken all right, but still a long way from being convinced.
“I think you’re talking perfectly crazy nonsense,” she declared.
“Punch, aren’t you making it up--about the man in pajamas?”
“Do you think I’d joke about a thing like that?” he demanded hotly.
“The necklace is there, I tell you. I’ll bet anything it is. Is
grandmother awake yet?”
“No, she’s still sleeping I think.”
“That must have been some hypodermic you gave her last night,” Punch
commented. “Come along then; let’s look.”
Still with a strong air of protest, she followed him to the old woman’s
sitting-room. Punch darted across to the safe.
“That’s locked,” Miss Digby commented. “Mr. Alexander Corbin locked it
last night.”
Punch tried the handle and found she was right.
“He’d have put it in there if he could,” he said reflectively. “But
it wouldn’t have been worth the risk of stopping to unlock it, with
you right here. So he’s left it somewhere around the room.--It’s like
I-Spy,” he commented, with a little laugh.
He stood still looking about. Presently his eye fell on the long
morocco covered box lying disregarded and unvalued on the big table in
the middle of the room.
“That’s where it is, of course,” he said. “Look and see.”
Where she stood it was almost under her hand. With trembling fingers
she pressed the spring and the lid flew open. There the necklace was,
gleaming, creamy and wonderful, under the shadow of the box lid.
Miss Digby gasped and stood for a moment clinging to the edge of the
table for support. Then, to Punch’s utter consternation, she turned
upon him.
“Punch,” she cried, “how could you! How _could_ you! Do you hate me as
much as that?”
“How could I what?” he asked, from the depths of a profound
bewilderment.
She dropped into his grandmother’s big chair and broke into a
passionate fit of weeping.
“I knew they’d think I’d taken it. I’m the one who could. Your
grandmother leaves the safe open half the time, and sometimes, when she
can’t remember the combination, I have to unlock it for her. And then
you take it--for a joke, I suppose--and bring it back, after I’ve been
in torture for hours and hours, and make me find it.”
“Nobody suspected you, Digs,” he told her. “Nobody could have. But I
didn’t take it, and I didn’t bring it back.”
He stood there for a few miserable minutes, helplessly at a loss. Then
he said, “Well, I guess I’d better go and tell mother they’re back.”
With that he left the room.
He didn’t, however, go straight to his mother with the news. He
sat down for a while first, feeling rather weak in the legs, on the
davenport.
Old Digs’ accusation disturbed him, but not profoundly. Uncle Alec
would probably think as Miss Digby did, that he’d taken the necklace
for a joke, and it would be pretty hard to convince him to the
contrary. Really, no one could be blamed for regarding his story of the
man in the pajamas as fishy.
But his mother and Judy couldn’t think that, or wouldn’t be likely
to, because they thought they knew who the thief was. Otherwise they
wouldn’t so strongly have opposed calling in the police.
That letter Judy had got last evening on the veranda probably had
contained a full confession of what she’d suspected. She’d had to hide
it before she had time to read it because she’d seen Bruce coming out
of the drawing-room, and he might have asked her about it. Why she
hadn’t hidden it in her dress as she’d started to do, he couldn’t make
out. Probably for the minute she’d just lost her head. But having
shoved it down into that Chinese vase, she’d have some trouble getting
it out again, and she’d have to be by herself in order to do it. And of
course she had to get it back unless she wanted to run the risk that
some one else would find it.
This did pretty well, although it wasn’t a wholly satisfactory
explanation. It didn’t cover all the ground. It didn’t explain why Judy
hadn’t climbed back into her window again within ten minutes after the
time she’d climbed out of it.
He was under an almost overmastering impulse to go into her room now,
see if she was there, and if she was, tell her about the recovery of
the necklace before he told even his mother. He decided he mustn’t do
it. Suppose she weren’t there? Then he’d have to tell his mother that
she was gone. He’d be asked whether he knew anything about her flight
and he couldn’t be sure that loyalty to Judy would permit him to tell
what he knew.
He’d better go to his mother first. Then perhaps he wouldn’t be asked
any questions about his sister. After all, it was good news he was
bringing. The necklace had been restored, and it wouldn’t be necessary
to tell anybody, beyond those who already knew, that it had ever
disappeared.
He knocked on his mother’s door and she told him, rather quickly, to
come in. She was sitting up in bed, her breakfast tray on her lap, the
morning mail beside her.
“You oughtn’t to be wandering all over the house at this time of day in
your pajamas,” she told him--good-naturedly enough, though. “Why don’t
you go up and get dressed?”
“I’ve been having quite a night of it,” he said. “But it’s all right
now. Mother, the necklace is back!”
Then he stood staring at her, speechless, utterly appalled, for her
face, lips and all, had turned gray.
“Back!” she said. “What do you mean?” And then like the crack of a
whip, “Where is it? Who’s got it?”
“D--Digs,” he managed to say. “It’s--it’s in grandmother’s room. In the
box where she kept it. On her table.”
“Digs found it, did she?” Victoria asked.
“Yes,” Punch said, “she found it, but--but I told her that was where it
would be.”
“Oh God!” Victoria cried out.
She sprang out of bed, pulled her dressing-gown around her and, without
waiting for slippers, darted toward the door. Then she came back, and
rummaging furiously among her letters in the morning’s mail found one
which she took with her.
She went straight across the hall with it to Judy’s room, and Punch
followed right at her heels. He was afraid she’d send him back, but she
didn’t seem to know he was there.
Judy was in her room in bed, lying back comfortably in the pillows, her
hands clasped behind her head and Punch noted that before she had time
to read her mother’s face, she was looking a little excited, perhaps,
but happy. Of course her look changed to astonishment when she saw
her mother and Punch, and she cried out sharply, “Mother, what’s the
matter?”
“The necklace has been brought back. Miss Digby found it. Punch, here,
was in on it somehow. And Judy, he’s coming to the wedding. I knew
she’d ask him. He’s coming this morning. I got the letter on the early
mail. Look!”
Judy took the letter and glanced through it rather indifferently. She
made a rueful face, but she said, “Oh, well, I don’t believe it matters