Part 6

I bowed again, mutely registering a resolve to ask him a thumping figure if he ever did require my services.

Meanwhile I had the reporters to deal with. I have a strong fellow-feeling for the boys. As a class they are the most human lot of fellows I know. They do not make the rotten conditions of their business. But they certainly are the devil to deal with when they get you on the defensive. They seemed to spread through that hotel like quicksilver, bribing the bell-boys, the maids, even the waiter who brought up my dinner. If we had not been on the eleventh story I should have expected to find them peeping in the windows.

I did not dare see them myself. In my anomalous position they would have made a monkey of me. In my mind's eye I could see the story of the mysterious stranger who claimed to represent Miss Hamerton, etc., etc. I had to take every precaution, too, to keep them from that fool of a Mrs. Bleecker. I carefully drilled the doctors in what they should say, and then sent them down to their fate. They came off better than I expected. Of course the lurid tales did appear next day, but they were away beside the mark. Nothing approaching the truth was ever published.

A little before five everybody had gone, and I was alone in the sitting-room gazing out of the window and indulging in gloomy enough thoughts, when I heard the door behind me open. I turned with a sigh, expecting fresh complaints and demands from the old harridan. But there was Irma trying to smile at me. She was wearing a white negligée affair that made her look like a fragile lily. She walked with a firm step, but her face shocked me. It looked dead. The eyes open, were infinitely more ghastly than when I had laid her down with them closed. Mrs. Bleecker and the maid followed, buzzing around her. She seemed to have reached the limits of her patience with them.

"Let me be!" she said as sharply as I ever heard her speak. "I am perfectly well able to walk and to speak. Please go back to the bedroom. I have business to discuss with Mr. Enderby."

They retired, bearing me no love in their hearts.

"I must go away, quite by myself," she said, speaking at random. "Can you help me find a place, some place where nobody knows me? If I do not get away from these people they will drive me mad!"

"I will find you a place," I said.

"Perhaps I'd better not go alone," she said. "If I could only find the right kind of person. I'm so terribly alone. That nice girl you brought into the company, Miss Farrell, do you think she would go with me?"

There was something in this more painful than I can convey. "She'd jump at the chance," I said brusquely.

"You have been so good to me," she said.

"You can say that!" I said, astonished.

"Oh, I've not quite taken leave of my senses," she said bitterly. "If I had not known the truth, it would have been much worse."

This struck me as extraordinary generosity in a woman who loved.

"I--I have something else to ask of you," she said in the piteous beseeching way that made me want to cast myself at her feet.

"Anything," I murmured.

"Mr. Quarles is coming here at five. Please see him and tell him--Oh! tell him anything you like, anything that will keep him from ever trying to see me again."

I nodded. "You had better lose no time in getting out of this," I suggested. "Can you be ready by to-morrow morning?"

"I will start packing now," she said. "It will give me something to do."

How well I understood the hideous blankness that faced her.

"Don't let those women bother you," I said. "Refer them to me."

"They mean well," she said.

"I will answer for Miss Farrell," I said. "She'll be here at nine to-morrow."

She started to thank me again, but I would not let her go on. I really could not stand it.

"Very well, you will see," she said with a smile, and left me.

Shortly afterwards Roland Quarles came striding down the hall. I opened the door to him. He was astonished to find a strange man in the room. He did not recognise me without my Faxon makeup.

"Enderby," I said in response to his enquiring glance. "You met me here once before."

"What's this I hear downstairs about Miss Hamerton being sick?" he demanded anxiously.

"She has had a nervous breakdown," I said.

He was not deceived. "What does that mean?" he demanded. "She was quite well yesterday."

I shrugged.

"Can I see her?"

I shook my head.

"I will speak to Mrs. Bleecker, then."

"You can't see her, either."

"Who are you?" he demanded, as so many others had done.

I gave him my card, hoping that he would take the hint, and save me further explanations.

Not a bit of it. "Investigator? What does that mean? Detective?"

"Precisely."

"What's it all about?" he cried irritably. "Why are you looking at me like a policeman?"

"Look at me close," I said.

He stared at me angry and puzzled. "I have seen you before--more than once----" Then his face changed. "Faxon!" he cried. "Is it Faxon?"

"The same," I said.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

This parade of innocence began to exasperate me. "Do you need to ask?" I said.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake don't play with words," he burst out. "Tell me what's the matter and be done with it."

"Miss Hamerton's pearl necklace was stolen from the theatre two months ago. She engaged me to recover it."

"Her pearls! Stolen!" he ejaculated, amazed. I could not have asked to see it better done.

"Do you still want me to go on?" I asked.

"Oh, drop the mystery!" he cried. "You fellows fatten on mystery!"

"As Faxon in the theatre I was perfectly sincere in my friendship for you," I went on. "I liked you. But little by little against my will I was forced to believe that you were the thief."

This touched him, but not quite in the way I expected. "Me? The _thief_?" he gasped--and suddenly burst into harsh laughter. "How did you arrive at that?"

I was no longer inclined to spare him. "In the first place you provoked a bet with Miss Hamerton which induced her to wear the real pearls on the night they were stolen."

His face turned grave. "True," he said. "I forgot that. What else?"

"On April sixth you deposited forty thousand dollars in cash in the Second National Bank."

He paled. "Anything more?"

"Do you care to explain where you got it?" I asked.

"Not to you," he said proudly. "Go on with your story."

"My first clue was in the cryptic letter found on the stage."

"I remember. You couldn't translate it."

"But I did."

"What's it got to do with me?"

"Nothing. But I found a second letter written in the same cryptogram and about the same matters in your pocket."

"That's a lie!" he said.

"If you want to see it it's at my office."

"If you did find such a paper in my pocket it was planted there."

"I should be glad to believe you were not the man," I said mildly.

"Spare me your assurances," he said scornfully.

He was silent for a while, thinking over what I had told him. Slowly horror grew in his face. "But--but this is only a devilish combination of circumstances," he stammered. "You haven't proved anything."

"The pearls have been recovered," I said.

"Where?" he shot at me.

"In your safe."

His legs failed him suddenly. He half fell in a chair, staring at me witlessly. "Oh, my God!" he muttered huskily. "Those, _hers_!"

I believe I smiled.

"And you--you have told her this story?" he faltered.

"That's what I was engaged for."

"Oh, my God!" he reiterated blankly. "What shall I do!"

His agony was genuine enough. In spite of myself I was moved by it. "Better go," I said. "The matter will be hushed up, of course."

"Hushed up!" he cried. "Never!"

This theatrical pretence of innocence provoked me afresh. "Oh, get out!" I said. "And be thankful you're getting off so easily!"

He paid no attention to me. "I must see her," he muttered.

"What do you expect to gain by bluffing now?" I said impatiently. "You must see that the game is up."

"I will not leave here without seeing her," he said with a kind of dull obstinacy.

"You have me at a disadvantage," I said bitterly. "You know I can't have you thrown out without causing a scandal."

He scarcely seemed to hear me. "I will go when she sends me," he muttered.

"All right, my patience is equal to yours," I said.

So there we sat, he with his ghastly white face turned towards the door into the inner rooms, moistening his lips from time to time, I looking out of the window.

To make matters worse, Mrs. Bleecker came clucking in. She, knowing nothing, fell on Quarles' neck, so to speak, and told him all her troubles with sidelong shots at me.

He paid little attention to her vapouring, only repeating in his ghastly, blank way: "I must see Irma."

"Of course!" said Mrs. Bleecker. "I'll tell her you're here."

"Mrs. Bleecker, as a friend, I advise you not to interfere," I said sternly.

She went out, flouncing her skirts at me.

To my surprise, Miss Hamerton presently came in. I cannot say what led her to do it, perhaps she was hoping against hope that he could defend himself. There was no sign of weakness in her now. Her face was as composed as marble. Mrs. Bleecker did not return.

"Irma," he cried, "send this fellow away."

I made haste to go, but she kept me. "Mr. Enderby must stay," she said. "He is your friend," she added.

He made a gesture of despair. A hideous silence descended on the three of us.

"You asked to see me," she said at last.

"Irma, do you believe this of me?" he cried like a soul out of Hell.

"I am willing to hear anything you have to say," she murmured.

"What does evidence matter?" he cried. "Do you believe me capable of such a thing?"

"Am I not forced to?" she said very low.

His head dropped. I never saw such hopeless wretchedness in a man's face. I felt like an executioner.

"Speak up!" I said sharply. "We are anxious to believe in you."

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he said in a stifled voice. "I doubt if I could clear myself. Anyway I shan't try. It--it is killed!"

He bent a look of fathomless reproach on her. "Good-bye, Irma," he said quietly. "I'm glad I was the means of your getting your jewels back. I never knew they had been stolen."

This to me was the purest exhibition of cheek I had ever met with. I was hard put to it to keep my hands off the man. If she had not been there! He went. And when I turned around Irma had gone back into the next room. I was angry through and through, and yet--and yet----! A nagging little doubt teased me.

So ended, as I thought, the case of the blue pearls. Little did I suspect what was on the way.

10

The following day was a blue one for me. Deprived of all the exciting

## activities of the past few weeks I was at a loss what to do with

myself. Moreover, I was dissatisfied with the result of those

## activities. I had won out, so to speak, but my client had not. For

her only tragic unhappiness had come of it. Meanwhile that little inner voice continued to whisper that I had _not_ got to the bottom of the case. I could not put that young fellow's amazed and despairing face out of my mind. It did not fit into the theory of his guilt. On top of it all I had had a quarrel with Sadie the night before.

About noon my uncomfortable thoughts were broken into by the entrance of Sadie herself with storm signals flying, to wit: a pair of flashing blue eyes and a red flag hoisted in either cheek. I had supposed that she was already on the way to Amityville with Miss Hamerton, where they were to stay at a sanatorium conducted by a doctor friend of mine.

Before I could speak she exploded like a bomb in my office. "Ben, you've been a fool!"

"Eh?" I said, blinking and looking precious like one, I expect.

She repeated it with amplifications.

"So you said last night," I remarked.

"But I hadn't seen her then."

"Aren't you going to the country?" I asked, hoping to create a diversion.

"Yes, at two o'clock. But I had to see you first."

"To tell me what you thought of me?"

"To beg you to do something."

"What is there to do?"

"You have made a hideous mistake! Ruined both their lives!"

I may have had my own doubts, but it wouldn't have been human to confess them in the face of an attack like this. "Easy, there!" I said sulkily. "Have you discovered any new evidence?"

"Oh, evidence!" she cried scornfully. "I know he _couldn't_ have stolen her pearls, and in your heart you know it, too."

"Sorry," I said sarcastically, "but in conducting my business I have to consult my head before my heart."

"I know it!" she said bitterly. "That's why you've been a fool!"

"Well, next time I'll consult a clairvoyant."

"Oh, don't try to be clever! It's too dreadful! If you had seen her! She will never act again. And he!--he will likely kill himself, if he has not already done it."

This struck a chill to my breast. Sadie had an intuitive sense that I could not afford to despise. At the same time having been called a fool, I couldn't back down.

"I don't see what better he can do," I said hardily.

"You can say that!" she said aghast. "You don't mean it!"

A very real jealousy made me hot. That handsome young blackguard had all the women with him. "Are you in love with him, too?" I asked sarcastically.

It was a mistake. She had me there. "You're doing your best to make me," she retorted.

"What are you abusing _me_ for?" I complained. "I did no more than what I was engaged to do."

"She was distracted!" said Sadie. "She couldn't think for herself. She depended on you."

"Well, I did the best I could for her," I said doggedly. "You seem to think that I enjoyed doing it. There is a perfect case against him."

"There is not!" she said quickly. "Your own evidence that you set such a store by is full of holes!"

I invited her to point them out.

"One of your points against him is that he lately came into possession of a lot of money, presumably the proceeds of the theft. Yet you found the pearls on him, too. One fact contradicts the other."

"How do I know what other activities he's been engaged in?"

"You do not believe that."

"I beg your pardon," I said stiffly. "Permit me to know my own beliefs."

"If it wasn't true it wouldn't anger you."

"I am not angry." I smiled to prove it.

"How can I talk to you if you act like such a child!" cried Sadie.

"Never mind my actions. Stick to his."

"You know very well that he could not have carried out several successful robberies without a lot of experience. His whole open life gives the lie to that. Have we not gone into every part of it?"

"I know I found the pearls on him," I said doggedly. "They could not very well have been planted in a locked drawer in his own safe. He did not even claim that they were."

She ignored this. "And that cryptogram," she went on, "I mean the first one. It didn't say so in so many words, but the inference was unmistakable that Miss Hamerton's pearls had been disposed of, and that part of the proceeds was waiting for the thief. How do you account for that?"

I did not try to account for it. I pooh-poohed it. "He convicted himself," I insisted. "We invited him, we begged him to explain. He could not."

"Would not, you mean."

"What's the difference?"

She favoured me with an extraordinary glance of scorn. "And you set up to understand human nature!"

"Well, let me have your understanding of it," I said sarcastically.

"He was in love with her," said Sadie. "I suppose you don't question that."

"No, strange as it seems, I believe he was in love with her."

"That makes goose eggs of all your fine reasoning! Reason all night and it wouldn't make sense. He might have stolen anybody else's pearls but never hers. It was she who wronged love in believing that he could. To find out that she suspected him killed his love dead. Losing that, what did he care about his reputation? If he does away with himself it will be not because he was accused of a theft, but because she killed his trust in her, and he doesn't care to live without it."

I listened to all this with an affected smile of superiority, but it reached me. Every word that the unhappy Quarles had uttered fitted in with Sadie's theory.

"Suppose some one accused you of stealing Miss Hamerton's purse to buy me a present," she went on, artfully changing her tone. "I would make a tremendous virtuous fuss, of course, but in my heart I couldn't love you any less, though you might not have the sense to know it. But if they said you had stolen my purse to buy me something, how I would laugh! It's too silly for words."

I was rapidly weakening, but it was damnably hard to own up.

"The same with this case. You think I'm in love with Quarles because I defend him. That's just like a man! The truth is, what hurts me is to see you deceive yourself, and then look fatuous about it."

She was now wielding a double-edged sword. "But if the woman who loves him was deceived, surely I have some excuse," I said meekly.

"That's the weakness of her character--or the penalty of her position, whichever you like. She is so surrounded by flattery and meanness, it has taught her to suspect even her lover."

"But how did the pearls get in his safe?" I cried, begging for mercy.

"I don't know. It's a mystery. I'm only trying to show you that you haven't solved the mystery yet." Once more she changed her tone, the witch! "I'm so keen to have you make a great success of the case, Ben. And to help a little."

That completed the rout of my forces. "Sadie, darling," I cried. "In my heart I feel the same as you. I would have given in at once if you hadn't begun by slapping my face!"

There was a little private interlude here. Boss and operative were lost sight of.

"Now let's get to work!" I said.

"I hope it's not too late!" she said sadly.

11

I hastened down to Quarles' rooms near Gramercy Square. I found his old housekeeper in tears. My glimpse beyond her showed me that the place was partly dismantled. I found that she was half-heartedly packing. She did not know me without my Faxon makeup, and refused any information. I suspected that she had been forbidden to speak. However, by adroit and sympathetic questioning, and because the poor old soul was bursting with her troubles, it finally came out with a rush. She thought her master had lost his mind, he had acted so strangely, but such was her awe of him, she had not dared question his commands.

All night long he had paced his bedroom and sitting-room, pausing only to burn papers and cherished mementos in the grate. When she had risen from her bed and timidly enquired if he were ill, he had harshly ordered her back to her room. There she had lain trembling until morning, grieving because she thought she had offended him.

He had left his breakfast untasted. Afterwards he had called her to him, and in a voice and manner totally unlike his own, had announced that he was going away, and had given her instructions that terrified her. His furniture was to be sent to an auctioneer's under an assumed name, and was to be put up on the first sale day. She was to keep what it brought in lieu of wages. His clothes were to be sent to the Salvation Army. His jewelry and knick-knacks she might sell or keep as she chose. On second thoughts he had written out his instructions in the form of a letter to her in case any of her acts should be questioned. He had then called a taxi from the stable he usually patronised, and had departed without any baggage. This last fact alarmed her more than all the rest.

All this read fatally clear. I was careful, however, to make light of it to the grief-stricken old woman. I assumed an authority which she willingly deferred to. I ordered her to put the rooms in order, and not to make any other move until she heard from me again. She was vastly cheered. What she dwelt on most tragically was the necessity of sending all his beautiful suits to the ragged crew who profited by the Salvation Army's benefactions.

I found out from the taxi stable that Quarles had been driven to the Pennsylvania station. I got hold of his driver, a man frequently employed by him. He had remarked his strange appearance this morning. On reaching the station Quarles had asked the porter who opened the cab door what time the next train left for Baltimore. On learning that he had but three minutes to catch it, he had thrust a bill in the chauffeur's hand, and rushed away. This had been at ten o'clock; it was now nearly one. I had the same driver carry me to the station, where I telephoned Sadie, snatched a bite to eat, and caught the next express South.

It was not the most cheerful journey I have taken. I had four hours to think over the tragic possibilities of my mistake, and it was small comfort to reflect that it was a natural mistake. Quarles, with his three hours' start had only too much time to put his purpose into effect. My only hope was that he might instinctively be led to wait until night. Darkness has an invincible attraction for desperate souls.