CHAPTER XV

BLACK LOOKS

We made up for lost time once we got started. It wasn’t much after half past seven when we got to The Oaks. Alec was waiting to let us in, and he was flabbergasted at the sight of Judy. Evidently Victoria hadn’t been giving out any more information than she considered necessary. He started two or three exclamatory interrogations, but left them all in the air. He probably realized that a thorough answer to any question would take longer than he had time for just then.

Judy asked him, “Where’s Bruce?”

“He’s with your mother up in her sitting-room,” Alec told her.

At that Judy went straight into the house, leaving him to accompany my slower progress on my crutches.

“I think Victoria is mad,” he told me confidentially. “The necklace is gone, and she won’t let me make any move toward finding it. Applebury seems to believe that his cousin has levanted with it, and if that’s so, it’s perhaps a case for negotiation rather than for ordinary police methods. But to me that theory seems fantastic. Don’t you agree with me?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’d be willing to bet all I’ve got that Bill Grant hasn’t stolen the necklace.”

“Then, in heaven’s name,” he implored me, “convince Victoria if you can that the thing to do is to commence a search--discover if any of the servants have disappeared. If this were my house I’d put a cordon of the farm laborers around it and not let any one get out until we’d had time to satisfy ourselves that the necklace wasn’t inside.”

By that time he had run me up in the elevator and piloted me to Victoria’s door.

“No, I’m not going in,” he said. “I’m going to stay outside and keep my eyes open, anyhow.”

I thought when I first went in that Victoria was alone in the room. Certainly Judy was nowhere about. I didn’t know what had become of her. Just as Victoria spoke I saw Applebury standing in the big bay window gazing moodily out.

“Well, what have you got to tell us?”

Victoria’s voice was jerky with frayed nerves and I didn’t really hold her to account for her bad manners. But they produced a certain responsive stiffness in my own.

“I don’t know anything about the robbery,” I answered, “beyond the bare fact that Alec gave me over the telephone.”

“Where’s Judy?” she asked. “Do you know that?”

“Yes,” I said. “She’s here. She brought me up to the house. I expected to find her in this room.”

“Is she married?” Victoria asked.

“Not yet,” I said.

It wasn’t until then that Applebury turned around and looked at me. I got the impression that my answer had startled him.

“I take it my cousin didn’t come back with her,” he said. “You don’t know where he is, too, do you?”

“Not precisely,” I said. “I believe he’s out hunting an early rising parson to marry him to Judy.”

“Why hasn’t he got Judy with him then?” Victoria asked. “And why did she come back here with you?”

“I think I’d rather let Judy answer those questions,” I told her. “I’ve come to see if I can be of any help about recovering the necklace.”

“Your best assistance in that respect,” said Applebury, “would lie in telling us, if you can, where and how we can get in communication with our departed guest.”

“I don’t think there’ll be any difficulty about that,” I said. “But I’d like to be told first what happened last night.”

I realized that he was so angry that he could scarcely speak. He turned away from me now with a gesture of hardly repressed fury and left the answer I asked for to Victoria. She took it up.

“Bruce went to bed last night with the necklace under his pillow. We thought it would be safest in his care provided nobody knew he had it. No one was supposed to know it but Judy and me.

“Apparently she told Bruce’s cousin, because Bruce was waked up some time in the middle of the night, by a little noise, probably, and saw there was a man in his room standing in front of his bureau by the head of his bed. A man in pajamas. Bruce spoke to him, and it turned out to be William Grant.

“He said he couldn’t sleep and was out of cigarettes and had come in to get some. Bruce said there were some on the bureau, and told him to make a light so that he could see. His cousin said, ‘No, I’ve found them, thanks,’ and went back to his own room.

“That was all there was to it. Bruce went back to sleep and waked up before half past six. He felt under his pillow and found the necklace was gone. He looked in his cousin’s room and found that he was gone too. He went out into the billiard room and saw that Alec’s door was open, so he went in and told him about it. Alec came straight to me and I had him telephone to you.”

So that was the way they meant to tell the story, was it, with Judy’s note left out? Well, if they meant to fence with me, I’d fence with them.

“Have you any idea,” I asked Applebury, “that Bill came into your room for any other purpose than to get the cigarettes?”

He turned upon me with an angry grin.

“It seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it,” he retorted, “that he came to get the necklace?”

“It doesn’t seem obvious to me,” I said. “Indeed, I find it hard to believe that you’re making a charge like that seriously.”

“He’ll find that it’s serious,” Bruce predicted. “And I think you’ll find that most people regard the inference as obvious.”

“Not if we succeed in finding the real thief.”

“Since you’re so sure young Grant is innocent,” Victoria put in, “I should think you’d be willing to tell us your version of his performance last night.”

“I’m perfectly willing to do that,” I answered.

It was declared war now between Victoria and me plainly enough. I couldn’t have been neutral if I’d wanted to. So I went the whole hog.

“He eloped with Judy, and they came straight to my house. They told me they meant to be married as early this morning as possible. I agreed, after I’d heard the circumstances, that it was the thing for them to do, and offered my house for them to be married in. Bill went off to get his license and his parson, and Judy waited with me for him to come back with them. It was while we were waiting that Alec telephoned.” I stopped for a long breath and then went on.

“My proposal to her was that she wait at my house and marry Bill, according to plan, when he came back. She refused to do that for reasons which I won’t undertake to explain, left a note for Bill, and came back with me.

“I promise you there will be no difficulty about finding him. He’ll come back to my house and then he’ll follow on here. When he appears here is only a question of how long it takes him to get his license and to find his parson. In the meantime I suggest that we set about trying to find the person who stole the necklace.”

Victoria’s only comment was, “You’ve always hated me, haven’t you?”

The barest possible denial was the only answer that I had to make to that.

Bruce had more to say.

“Of course,” he remarked, “if Mrs. Corbin wishes to go through the motions of searching for the necklace, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t. But it won’t be found till my cousin, at some time that suits his convenience, produces it.”

“Apparently,” I observed, “you’re not one of his friends.”

His dark face flushed a little darker.

“I’ve never pretended to like him,” he said. “But he’s the nearest relation I’ve got, and I wanted to be on terms with him if possible. It has seemed more possible lately. I had the idea that he was settling down. That was my mistake. He’s always been an anarchist; done what he liked, had what he wanted. He’s never been under any decent discipline. This performance of his is like him enough, though it goes far beyond, of course, anything I’ve known him to do before.”

“Which performance do you refer to?” I asked. “His eloping with Judy or his supposed theft of the necklace?”

“Both,” he said.

“Let me be sure that I understand you. Do you think he pretended he wanted to marry Judy in order to steal the necklace? Or that he had meant to marry her and on the spur of the moment took the necklace instead? In either case I assume that you’re not expecting him to come back.”

He hesitated, then said, “I don’t see why he shouldn’t come back. In fact, I dare say he will. He’d see no reason why he shouldn’t have Judy and the necklace as well. He’s had plenty of time to hide it somewhere. He can come back now and submit to a search with all the innocence in the world. He can marry Judy and be safe. Don’t you see the beauty of it? Once he’s married to Judy, he’s committed no crime at all. It’s her necklace, and he’s her husband. He figured that out, no doubt, before he came into my room.”

“I take your point,” I said, “but I shouldn’t call it beautiful.”

I was almost too angry to speak. Later I was to experience a certain feeling of sympathy for Bruce Applebury, but I wasn’t aware of it then.

“Victoria,” I said, “you certainly know Judy better than to accept any such monstrous theory as this. Judy and I know that Bill Grant isn’t a thief. She’s come back here because she wants the thief found. It’s a point of honor with her that he shall be found. Won’t you put matters in Alec’s hands and start a search?”

I don’t know what she’d have answered, for there was a knock on the door just then, and Punch came in. He was a desolate, pitiful little figure, white-faced, big-eyed, desperately serious.

“Grandmother sent me,” he said. “She wants you to come into her room.”

“How does _she_ happen to be in on this?” Victoria demanded wildly. “Punch, have you been telling her about it?”

He confronted her panicky anger very steadily. He was much more adult in that moment than she.

“She called me in and asked me what had happened,” he said. “She’d heard people moving about and Uncle Alec talking to me in the hall. I told her the necklace had been stolen again. From Bruce. She told me to go and send Judy to her, and I wouldn’t because I knew Judy wasn’t there and I didn’t want Gran to know that she’d gone. But she made Digs wheel her into Judy’s room. She saw Judy wasn’t there, and then she came back. Just after that I saw Judy coming in, so I told her to go in and see Gran. I waited outside the door, and after a while Judy came and said Gran wanted to see you and Bruce.”

“I’m glad she’s found out about it,” Bruce said. “Now perhaps we can get somewhere.”

Victoria gave him a baleful look. I think at that moment she hated everybody in the world. There was nothing to be said, though. That summons could not be disregarded.

From the door she threw back a look at me. “You may as well come along too,” she said.

It wasn’t a very cordial or even courteous invitation but I made it serve.

Punch hung back to help me.

“You were a true prophet, Punch,” I said. “You predicted big trouble, and here it is.”

“I didn’t think it would be as bad as this,” he admitted.

“You look as if you’d had a night of it,” I commented. “How did you know Judy had gone?”

“She had the necklace, you see,” he said, “so I was keeping watch on the davenport the way I did the night before. And I saw her go out, her and Bill. They didn’t know I saw them. So then I waited to see if they wouldn’t come back. I was afraid I might go to sleep, so I walked up and down the hall here most of the time after they went. I’m glad she has come back,” he added. “I knew she would.”

Alec was patrolling the hall now, and he joined us.

“Did you get anywhere with Victoria?” he asked.

I shook my head. Then we both turned to see who was coming down from the floor above.

It was old Mr. Smith. He was dressed as carefully as if it had been ten o’clock in the morning, and he looked as if he hadn’t a care in the world. I don’t suppose he had, really. He was too old, too detached. He could be intensely interested in our plight without experiencing any painful emotions whatever over it.

“I understand the necklace has been stolen,” he said as he came up. “How about it, Punch? Have you seen anything more of your man in pajamas?”

“No,” Punch told him mournfully.

“What’s that about a man in pajamas?” Alec demanded.

“It appears to be a private ghost of Punch’s,” old Eagle-Eye answered easily. “It walks when things are happening to the necklace.”

“Well, I saw a man in pajamas last night,” Alec said, a little embarrassed. He wasn’t quite sure whether old Mr. Smith was joking or not.

But the old man turned that penetrating beam of his upon him and asked him crisply:

“Where did you see him? And when, if you know?”

“I haven’t an idea when,” said Alec. “I saw him come out of the bathroom in the Club.”

“What sort of pajamas did he have on?”

“Oh, ordinary pajamas.”

“You didn’t notice whether there was a tear in them; one of those three-cornered tears, as if they’d been caught on a nail?”

“No,” said Alec. “I didn’t notice them at all. I didn’t notice him at all. Why should I? He was just one of the guests coming out of the bathroom in the middle of the night and going back to his own room. There wasn’t light enough to recognize him by and it didn’t occur to me to try to. I was in my room with the door open. Naturally I didn’t come out to see which door he turned into.”

We had come to a halt just outside Mrs. Corbin’s door.

“We mustn’t keep Madame waiting,” Mr. Smith said. And then he asked Alec, “Are you coming in to join the council of war?”

“No,” Alec told him impatiently, “I think not. There has been too much consulting about this business, and I shan’t be needed in there. I’d rather stay outside so that I can have some idea of what’s going on in the house.”

“I think you’re quite right,” said Mr. Smith, and he reached out and patted him approvingly--or so, at least, I interpreted the gesture at first--not quite on the chest, a little around to the left. Evidently his intelligent fingers found something, for he again expressed approval. “Good!” he said. “I’ve got one of them on, myself.”

Then he knocked on Mrs. Corbin’s door, and at her summons we both went in.