CHAPTER XVI

THE GENTLE ART

It was a big, dim, carpeted room, with long windows hung with heavy curtains and lambrequins. Excessive light and noise were carefully guarded against. There was a brown marble mantle, and all the tables, big and little, had brown marble tops.

The old lady, in her wheel chair, sat at the far end of the room, facing us as we came in. Judy--my first glance around had been to make sure she was there--sat drooping a little, but in an unusually formal attitude for her, on the couch in the corner. Bruce was in another corner sitting--evidently by command, and not liking it; one could see he’d rather have been on his feet--bolt upright on a hard little chair. Victoria, trying to look at ease and not succeeding very well at it, had seated herself near one of the windows.

The old lady greeted me with ceremonious courtesy, thanked me for having come, and directed Miss Digby to place a chair for me. Her greeting to old Mr. Smith was less formal.

“I thought I might need you as an expert, Ethelbert,” she said. “But I doubt now if I shall.”

Then she told Miss Digby she could go and waited in dead silence until the door was closed behind her.

Sad and humiliating as old Mrs. Corbin’s bad periods must be--those times when, as Judy said, she was not presentable--it was already evident to me that at this particular early morning hour of this particular day she was as good as ever. I felt my spirits rising a little as this realization came home. Somehow I was counting another addition to Judy’s phalanx. I don’t know why I felt that the old matriarch would be on her side. There was nothing in Judy’s forlorn appearance to warrant such a conclusion.

She opened with heavy artillery upon her daughter-in-law.

“It seems to me, Victoria,”--her voice crackled like sparks out of a coil--“that I have allowed you to make a mess of this business about long enough. I’m going to see what I can do with it myself.”

“I haven’t regarded the mess as of my making,” Victoria retorted coolly enough--a little too coolly not to betray the fact that she was frightened. She’s always been afraid of old Mrs. Corbin. “However, I’ll be glad to see what you make of it.”

“Punch tells me ...” the old woman began again, and looked around as if in search of him. “I wanted him in here,” she threw in, “but it doesn’t matter.--Punch tells me that the necklace has been stolen again.”

Victoria nodded.

“It was taken last night, from Bruce ...” she began.

The old woman interrupted her. “I asked if it had been stolen, and you say it was. That’s enough for the present. If it was stolen last night, I’d like to know what this is.”

She stretched out a hand which had been lying in her lap and opened it. I jumped, and I think most of us did, for there dangled the necklace. Well, wait a minute;--a necklace, anyhow.

“I found it,” she went on, “in Judy’s room this morning. Judy herself wasn’t there. She was running away, I understand, with her new young man. But she’d left this behind her, lying among the litter on her dressing-table like a string of glass beads. I assume it’s not the necklace that was stolen, but Ethelbert here will tell us, no doubt, whether it is or not, if you care to refer it to him.”

“No,” Victoria said dully. “It’s an imitation I had made a little more than a year ago.” She added with a spurt of anger, “You knew that all right, didn’t you? I suppose Judy’s been telling you all about it.”

“Let Judy alone!” the old woman rapped out. “She’s told me no secrets that weren’t her own.”

She turned from Victoria and addressed herself to Bruce Applebury, abandoning as she did so a good deal of her harshness of manner. Indeed for her she spoke almost gently. I scented danger for him, but apparently he did not.

“Judy tells me,” Mrs. Corbin said, “that when she ran away with your cousin last night she meant to marry him. She says she’ll marry him now if the necklace can be recovered, but that if it can not be recovered, she stands ready to marry you. A wedding is a bargain, and it takes two to make it. Are you still willing to marry her?”

“Yes,” Bruce said. “Certainly. That’s all I ask; to go on as if nothing had happened.”

He glanced toward Judy, but she gave no sign of having heard him or of even knowing that he was in the room.

“She understands that, I think,” he went on a little less confidently. “We talked it out pretty thoroughly yesterday afternoon.”

“The necklace hadn’t been stolen then,” the old lady remarked. “Where was it?”

“It happened to be in my pocket,” Bruce said. “I’d gone into town to get it and she met me at the train.”

“Whose was it then?” Mrs. Corbin asked him.

The question obviously took him aback and he repeated it stupidly. She flung it back at him. “Yes, to whom did the necklace belong then?”

“I understood,” he said, “that it belonged to you.”

“You’re perfectly right,” she assured him grimly. “It did. And last night at dinner I gave it to Judy. It was my intention, at least, to give it to her, and give it I did, although it wasn’t the thing she put around her neck. The real necklace was hers last night. But whose was it when it was stolen, Mr. Applebury?”

He perceived the pitfall now, but too late to keep from plunging into it. He was neither a naturally endowed nor a practised liar.

“Why--it was hers, I suppose,” he said.

“Hadn’t she given it to you?”

He flushed deeply. “I hadn’t accepted it,” he said.

“Do you believe your cousin stole it?” she asked.

“That’s not a pleasant conclusion to come to,” he told her. “But it’s hard to see how one can believe anything else.”

“Don’t palaver,” the old woman snapped at him. “Do you believe he stole it?”

Bruce hesitated, looking acutely unhappy, but at last he said, “Yes, I do.”

“Judy doesn’t,” Mrs. Corbin returned. “She says she’d marry him now if the necklace could be recovered. She wouldn’t marry any one she believed to be a thief. But she seems to feel that you have a right either to her or to the necklace. If she can’t produce the necklace, she’s bound to marry you. Is that the way you look at it yourself?”

“That’s a perfectly unfair way of putting it,” he protested.

She gave a short grim laugh.

“It’ll serve well enough I think,” she said.

In the next breath she pounced upon him again.

“Victoria had pawned the necklace, of course. Did you redeem it for her?”

“Yes,” he admitted sulkily, “I did.”

“How much did it cost you?” she asked.

He told her, “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“That was very handsome of you,” she observed, not satirically, but quite as if she meant it.

He started to tell her he’d been glad to do it, but before the words were half uttered, she’d turned to Victoria.

“Did you tell Judy,” she asked, “that you had come down on her fiancé for the money?”

“No,” Victoria answered, “of course not.”

The gathering cloud of the old woman’s anger was a positively appalling thing to watch.

“Then,” she said at last, turning back to Bruce, “you must have told her yourself.”

You couldn’t deny the possession of a certain stiff sort of courage to that young man. He stood up to her.

“Yes,” he said, “I told her. She’d met me at the train with the information that she’d planned to jilt me for that worthless cousin of mine. I’d engaged myself in good faith to marry her. I’d come out here with my friends and my family to do it. And then, here on the day before the wedding, she wanted to cry off.

“I’d advanced a substantial sum of money to her mother on the supposition that the wedding was to take place. I thought it was only fair she should know it. She took the same view of it that I did, and agreed to marry me. I didn’t suggest--it would have been unthinkable, of course--that I take the necklace as an alternative.”

“The necklace wasn’t hers at that time to offer as an alternative,” Mrs. Corbin pointed out. “I hadn’t given it to her then. When I did, she gave it to you--by word of mouth, or did she put it in writing?”

“She left a note last night,” Bruce told her, “in which she said that I might keep the pearls. But apparently my cousin didn’t agree to that disposal of them.”

“And, that being the case, you’re willing to marry my granddaughter?”

The biting irony in her voice could not be ignored, but he answered stiffly, “Yes, I am. But I think your insinuation is outrageously unfair. You seem to be trying to make it appear that I’m to blame for all this. I’ve come out here to keep my part of a bargain, and all I’m asking, as a matter of simple justice, is that your granddaughter shall keep hers. I haven’t deceived anybody nor lied to anybody, nor tried to take unfair advantage of anybody. It seems to me that the shoe is on the other foot.”

“You needn’t worry about simple justice,” said the old woman grimly. “You’re going to get it. When you told that child that you’d redeemed the necklace for her mother you practically told her you’d bought her. But I’m not willing to let her go at that price. She’s worth more than you paid, just as the necklace is. You shall have your money back as soon as I can write you a check.”

There’s no doubt at all that Bruce felt himself abominably ill used. He hadn’t transgressed his own code in telling Judy the obligation her mother had saddled her with. He considered, no doubt, that he was acting magnanimously in forgetting, so to speak, Judy’s adventure with Bill. He must, of course, have been passionately desirous of her or he wouldn’t have done that. But there was a hotter fuel for his anger than all this came to, I think.

This was the knowledge that in another particular he had transgressed his code. It was his hatred of his cousin that had betrayed him into it. One can imagine that this hatred must have been latent for years. He’d spoken of him to me that morning as an undisciplined anarchist who had done what he liked, had what he wanted. The care-free grasshopper--don’t you see?--viewed by the laborious ant and never overtaken by the winter.

His discovery, early that morning, that Bill had taken Judy away from him had driven him to an act that demolished his own self-righteousness. As I said before, I really pitied him when I understood. That wasn’t my feeling at the present moment, though.

His face had gone livid with anger under the lash of the old woman’s last words. He sprang to his feet.

“Very well,” he said. “I can’t dispute your right to discharge the obligation in that way. But that’s not going to be the end of it. If your granddaughter wants to marry my cousin, she’ll have to marry a proclaimed thief. He may never be sent to jail for what he’s done. That decision’s in your hands too, I suppose. But the story of it shall follow him as long as he lives.”

There was a furious retort on the old woman’s lips, but it was checked by the quiet tones of old Mr. Smith.

“Augusta,” he said (I’d never heard her addressed by that name before, and it made me jump), “have I your permission to take a hand?”

She nodded without a word, and sank back with a sigh into her chair.

Old Eagle-Eye turned to Bruce.

“Please sit down again,” he said persuasively. “I don’t think we need be violent about this. The suggestion I wish to make is that you make a beginning at once and tell us the story now. I’ve heard no account of the robbery myself, and I don’t think Mrs. Corbin has. If there really is a clear case against your cousin, we’d like to hear it.”

Disarming as his voice was, I don’t know that Applebury would have yielded if the old man hadn’t added, “Of course you’d want to tell it, at least for once, in the presence of any of us who might have contributory testimony of our own to offer.”

“I’m not afraid of any contributory testimony,” Bruce said. “Yes, I’ll be glad to tell it.”

I felt, as he went ahead and detailed in a painstakingly literal manner, without comment and without betrayal of passion, the incident which Victoria had related to me a little earlier, that it made at best a terribly damaging story. It seemed to me just as it seemed to Judy that it was refutable only by the discovery of the actual thief. Not even Bill’s return--lord, how I wished he would come, though--could clear him of the shabby crime Bruce was charging him with.

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.”