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 so awfully much anyway.”

“That’s all you know!” Victoria declared, furiously. “It will ruin everything. Unless I can think of some way....”

She broke off and went to the window, where she stood with her back to them.

“How did the necklace come back, Punch? Do you know?” Judy asked.

Half-heartedly, hardly believing it himself now, he told his story of the man in pajamas whom he’d seen going up the stairs, of Miss Digby’s telling him she’d heard a door shut, and how he himself had figured the thing out.

It was then that Victoria turned upon him. He didn’t tell me what she said, but Judy did later.

“Punch, you little fiend!” Victoria cried. “If you took it, why couldn’t you keep it?”

Judy cried out at that in horrified protest, “Punch didn’t take the necklace, unless he took it in his sleep. You _know_ that, mother.”

“Yes,” she said, “of course I do. I’m sorry.”

Then she said to Judy, “There is a way, just one way, and I’m going to take it.”

With that she went back to her own room, and left the two children staring at each other.

“Deep water, Punch,” Judy said. “But don’t you care. It’s all going to come out in the wash before to-morrow afternoon.”