VIII
THE WRONG BOX
When the janitor and the taxicab operator between them had worried allhis luggage upstairs, Staff paid and tipped them and thankfully saw thehall-door close on their backs. He was tired, over-heated and glad to bealone.
Shaking off his coat, he made a round of his rooms, opening windows.Those in the front of the apartment looked out from the second-storyelevation upon East Thirtieth Street, between Fourth and LexingtonAvenues. Those in the rear (he discovered to his consummate disgust)commanded an excellent view of a very deep hole in the ground swarmingwith Italian labourers and dotted with steam drills, mounds of brokenrock and carters with their teams; also a section of East Twenty-ninthStreet was visible through the space that had been occupied no longerago than last spring by a dignified row of brownstone houses withwell-tended backyards.
Staff cursed soulfully the noise and dirt caused by the work ofexcavation, shut the back windows to keep out the dust and returned tothe front room--his study, library and reception-room in one. With theaddition of the bath off the bedroom in the rear, and a largehall-closet opening from the study, these two rooms comprised his home.The hall was public, giving access to two upper floors which, like thatbeneath him, were given up to bachelor apartments. The house was inreality an old-fashioned residence, remodelled and let out by the floorto young men mainly of Staff's ilk: there was an artist on the upperstory, a writer of ephemeral fiction on the third, an architect on thefirst. The janitor infested the basement, chiefly when bored by themonotony of holding up an imitation mahogany bar over on Third Avenue.His wife cooked abominably and served the results under the name ofbreakfast to the tenants, who foraged where they would for their othermeals. Otherwise she was chiefly distinguished by a mad, exasperatingpassion for keeping the rooms immaculately clean and in order. Staffnoted approvingly that, although Mrs. Shultz had not been warned of hisreturn, there was no trace of dust in the rooms, not a single stick offurniture nor a book out of place.
There wasn't really any reason why he should stick in such un-modern andinconveniently situated lodgings--that is, aside from his ingrainedinclination to make as little trouble for himself as possible. To hunta new place to live would be quite as much of a nuisance as to move toit, when found. And he was comfortable enough where he was. He had takenthe place some eight years previously, at a time when it was ratherbeyond his means; today when he could well afford to live where he wouldin New York, he found that his rooms had become a habit with him. He hadno intention whatever of leaving them until the house should bedismantled to make way for some more modern structure--like that goingup in the rear--or until he married.
He poked round, renewing acquaintance with old, familiar things,unearthed an ancient pipe which had lain in one of his desk-drawers likea buried bone, fondled it lovingly, filled and lighted it, and felt allthe time more and more content and at ease.
Then Shultz knocked at the door and delivered to him a bundle ofafternoon papers for which he had filed a requisition immediately on hisarrival.
He sat down, enjoying his pipe to the utmost and wondering how under thesun he had managed to worry along without it all the time he had beenaway, and began to read what the reporters had to say about the arrivalof the Autocratic and the case of the Cadogan collar.
In the main they afforded him little but amusement; the stories weremostly a hash of misinformation strongly flavoured with haphazardguesswork. The salient facts of the almost simultaneous disappearance ofthe necklace and Mr. Iff stood up out of the welter of surmise likemountain peaks above cloud-rack. There were no other facts. And boththese remained inexplicable. No trace had been found of Mr. Iff; hisluggage remained upon the pier, unclaimed. With him the Cadogan collarhad apparently vanished as mysteriously: thus the consensus. Therepresentative of the Secret Service bent on exposing an impostor, thePinkerton men employed by the steamship company, and a gratuitous corpsof city detectives were verbally depicted as so many determinedbloodhounds nosing as many different scents--otherwise known as clues.
Jules Max, moreover, after a conference with his star, had published anoffer of a reward of $10,000 for the return of the necklace or forinformation leading to its recovery whether or not involving theapprehension of the thief.
Several of the papers "ran" unusually long stories descriptive of thescenes on the pier. Staff chuckled over them. The necklace had, in fact,made no end of trouble for several hundred putatively innocent andguileless passengers. The customs examination had been thorough beyondparallel. Not even the steerage and second-cabin passengers had escaped;everybody's belongings had been combed fine by a corps of inspectorswhose dutiful curiosity had been abnormally stimulated by the prospectof a ten-thousand-dollar reward. Not a few passengers had been obligedto submit to the indignity of personal search--Staff and Alison in theirnumber; the latter for no reason that Staff could imagine; the formerpresumably because he had roomed with the elusive Mr. Iff on the wayover. He had also been mulcted a neat little sum as duty on thatmiserable hat, which he had been obliged to declare as a present for afriend.
In memory of this he now rose, marched over to the bandbox, innocentlyreposing in the middle of the floor, and dispassionately lifted it thekick he had been promising it ever since the first day of theiracquaintance.
It sailed up prettily, banged the wall with a hollow noise and droppedto the floor with a grievous dent in one side.
There--out of his way--Staff left it. Immeasurably mollified, heproceeded to unpack and put his house in order. By the time this wasdone to his satisfaction and Shultz had dragged the empty trunks intothe hall, to be carried down-stairs and stored in the cellar, it wasevening and time to dress. So Staff made himself clean with much waterand beautiful with cold steel and resplendent with evening clothes, andtucked the manuscript of _A Single Woman_ into the pocket of a lighttopcoat and sallied forth to dine with Jules Max and Alison Landis.
It was late, something after midnight, when he returned, driving up tohis house in a taxicab and a decidedly disgruntled frame of mind. Alisonhad been especially trying with regard to the play; and Max, whileprivately letting the author see that he thought him in the right inrefusing to make changes until rehearsals had demonstrated theiradvisability, and in spite of his voluble appreciation of the play'smerits, had given Alison the support she demanded. The inference wasplain: the star was to be humoured even at the cost of a crippled play.Between love for the woman and respect for his work, desire to pleaseher and determination not to misrepresent himself to the public, Staff,torn this way and that, felt that he had at length learned the truemeaning of "the horns of dilemma." But this reflection availed nothingto soothe his temper.
When he got out of the cab a short but sharp argument ensued with theoperator; it seemed that "the clock" was out of order and notregistering--had struck in conformance to the time-honoured custom ofthe midnight taximeter union. But the driver's habitual demand for twoand one-half times the proper fare by distance proved in this instancequite fruitless. Staff calmly counted out the right amount, put it inthe man's hand, listened with critical appreciation to the resultantflow of profanity until it verged upon personality, then deliberatelydragged the man by the scruff of his neck, choking and cursing, from hisseat to the sidewalk.
"Now, listen," said he in a level tone: "you've got either to put up orshut up. I've been sort of aching to beat the tar out of one of youhighwaymen for some time, and I feel just ripe for it tonight. Youeither put up your fists or crawl--another yap out of you and I won'twait for you to do either."
The man bristled and then, analysing the gleam in Staff's eyes, crawled:that is to say, he climbed back into his seat and swung the machine tothe far side of the street before again resorting to vituperation.
To this Staff paid no more attention. He was opening the front door. Thepassage had comforted him considerably, but he was presently to regretit. But for that delay he might have been spared a deal of trouble.
As he let himself into t
he house, a man in evening dress came runningdown the stairs, brushed past rudely and without apology, and slammedthe door behind him. Staff wondered and frowned slightly. Presumably thefellow had been calling on one of the tenants of the upper floors. Therehad been something familiar in his manner--something reminiscent, buttoo indefinite for recognition. And certainly he'd been in the devil ofa hurry!
In the meantime he had mounted the first flight of stairs and turnedthrough the hall to his study door. To his surprise it wasn't locked. Heseemed distinctly to remember locking it when he had left for dinner.Still, memory does play us odd tricks.
He pushed the door open and entered the room. At the same moment heheard the trilling of the telephone bell. The instrument stood upon hisdesk between the two front windows. Without pausing to switch on one ofthe lights in the combination gas- and electrolier in the centre of theroom, he groped his way through blinding darkness to the desk and,finding the telephone instrument with the certainty of old acquaintance,lifted the receiver to his ear.
"Hello?" he called.
A thin and business-like voice detailed his number.
"Yes," he said. "What is it?"
"Just a moment," came out of the night. "Hold the wire."
There was a pause in which it occurred to him that a little light wouldbe a grateful thing. He groped for his desk-lamp, found it and scorchedhis fingers slightly on its metal reflector. He had switched on thelight and said "Damn!" mechanically before he reflected that the saidmetal reflector had no right to be hot unless the light had been burningvery recently.
As this thought penetrated his consciousness, the telephone waxedeloquent.
"Hello!" called a voice. "Is that you, Staff?"
"Why!" he exclaimed in surprise--"yes, Alison!"
"Are you alone?"
"Yes," he said. "What is it?"
"I just wanted to know," returned the girl at the other end of the wire."I'm coming to see you."
"What--now?"
"Of course, silly."
"But why--this time of night--it doesn't seem--"
"Oh, I've got something most important to say to you--very importantindeed. It won't keep. I'll be there in five minutes. Listen for thetaxi--will you, like a dear boy?--and come down and open the door forme. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," he returned automatically, and hung up the receiver.
What on earth could _she_ be wanting, that could have turned up sounexpectedly in the half-hour since he had left her and that wouldn'tkeep till morning?
Abruptly he became aware that the air in the room was stiflingly close.And he had left the windows open when he went out; he knew that hewasn't mistaken about that; and now they were closed, the shades drawntight!
This considered in connection with the open door that had been locked,and the heated desk-lamp that should have been cold, he couldn't avoidthe conclusion that somebody had been in his rooms, an unlawfultrespasser, just a few minutes before he came in--possibly the very manwho had rushed past him in such violent haste at the front door.
He jumped up and turned on all the lights in the room. A first, hastyglance about showed him nothing as it had not been when he had left sixhours or so ago--aside from the front windows, of course. Mechanically,thinking hard and fast, he went to these latter and opened them wide.
The possibility that the intruder might still be in the rooms--in hisbedroom, for instance--popped into his head, and he went hurriedly toinvestigate. But there wasn't anybody in the back-room or thebath-room.
Perplexed, he examined the rear windows. They were closed and locked, aswhen he had left. Opening them, he peered out and down the fire-escape;he had always had a notion that anybody foolish enough to want to burglehis rooms would find it easy to effect an entrance via the fire-escape,whose bottom rung was only eight feet or so above the level of thebackyard. And now, since the Twenty-ninth Street houses had been torndown, lending access easy via the excavation, such an attempt would bedoubly easy.
But he had every evidence that his rooms hadn't been broken into by anysuch route; although--of course!--an astute burglar might have thoughtto cover up his tracks by relocking the windows after he had entered. Onthe other hand, the really wise marauder would have almost certainlyleft them open to provide a way of escape in emergency.
Baffled and wondering, Staff returned to his study. An examination ofthe hall-closet yielded nothing illuminating. Everything wasundisturbed, and there wasn't room enough therein for anybody to hide.
He shut the closet door and reviewed the study more carefully. Not athing out of place; even that wretched bandbox lay where he had kickedit, with a helpless, abused look, the dented side turned pitifully tothe light--much like a street beggar exposing a maimed limb to excitepublic sympathy.
He struggled to think: what did he possess worth stealing? Nothing ofany great value: a modest collection of masculine jewelry--stick-pinsand the like; a quantity of clothing; a few fairly good pictures; a fewrare books. But the merest cursory examination showed that these wereintact, one and all. What cash he had was all upon his person. His desk,where the lamp had been lighted, held nothing valuable to anybody otherthan himself: manuscripts, account books, some personal papers strictlynon-negotiable. And these too proved undisturbed.
Swinging round from the desk, he rested his elbows on his knees, claspedhis hands, and lapsed into the most profound of meditations; throughwhich he arrived at the most amazing discovery of all.
Very gradually his eyes, at first seeing not what they saw, focussedupon an object on the floor. Quite excusably he was reluctant to believetheir evidence. Eventually, however, he bent forward and picked up thething.
It lay in his hand, eloquently absurd--in his study!--a bow ofviolet-coloured velvet ribbon, cunningly knotted, complete in itself.From its reverse, a few broken threads of silk hung, suggesting that ithad been originally sewn upon a gown, or some other article of dress,from which it had been violently torn away.
The thing was so impossible--preposterous!--that he sat as if stunned,eyes a-stare, jaw dropping, wits bemused; until abruptly roused by thesharp barking of a taxicab horn as it swung round the corner of FourthAvenue and the subsequent grumble of its motor in the street below.
Thrusting the velvet knot into his pocket he ran down and opened thefront door just as Alison gained the top of the brownstone steps.
He noticed that her taxicab was waiting.
Still in her shimmering, silken, summery dinner-gown of the earlierevening, a light chiffon wrap draped round her shoulders, she enteredthe vestibule, paused and stood smiling mischievously into his grave,enquiring eyes.
"Surprised you--eh, Staff?" she laughed.
"Rather," said he, bending over her hand and wondering at her highspirit of gaiety so sharply in contrast with her determined anddomineering humour of a few hours since. "Why?" he asked, shutting theoutside door.
"Just wanted to see you alone for a few moments; I've something to sayto you--something very important and surprising.... But not down here."
"I beg your pardon," he said contritely. He motioned toward the stairs:"There's no elevator, but it's only one flight up ..."
"No elevator! Heavens!" she cried in mock horror. "And this is how theother half lives!"
She caught up her skirts and ran up the stairs with footsteps so lightthat he could hear nothing but the soft, continuous murmuring of hersilken gown.
"Genius," he said, ironic, as he followed her--"Genius frequently needsa lift but is more often to be found in an apartment without one. Permitme"--he flung wide the door to his study--"to introduce you to thegarret."
"So this is where you starve and write!"
Alison paused near the centre of the room, shrugging her wrap from hershoulders and dropping it carelessly on the table. He saw her shootswift glances round her with bright, prying eyes.
"I'm afraid I'm not enough of a genius to starve," he said; "but anyway,here's where I write."
"How interesting!" she drawled in a to
ne that conveyed to him theimpression she found it anything but that. And then, a trace sharply:"Please shut the door."
He lifted his brows in surprise, said "Oh?" and turning back did asbid. At the same time Alison disposed herself negligently in a capaciouswing-chair.
"Yes," she took up his monosyllable; "it's quite as important as allthat. I don't wish to be overheard. Besides," she added with nonchalantirrelevance, "I do want a cigarette."
Silently Staff found his metal cigarette-safe and offered it, put amatch to the paper roll held so daintily between his lady's lips, andthen helped himself.
Through a thin veil of smoke she looked up into his serious face andsmiled bewitchingly.
"Are you thrilled, my dear?" she asked lightly.
"Thrilled?" he questioned. "How?"
She lifted her white, gleaming shoulders with an air of half-tolerantimpatience. "To have a beautiful woman alone with you in your rooms, atthis hour o' night ... Don't you find it romantic, dear boy? Or aren'tyou in a romantic mood tonight? Or perhaps I'm not sufficientlybeautiful ...?" She ended with a charming little petulant moue.
"You know perfectly well you're one of the most beautiful women in theworld," he began gravely; but she caught him up.
"One of--?"
"To me, of course--you know the rest: the usual thing," he said. "Butyou didn't come here to discuss your charms--now did you?"
She shook her head slightly, smiling with light-hearted malice. "By nomeans. But, at the same time, if I've a whim to be complimented, I dothink you might be gallant enough to humour me."
But he was in anything but a gallant temper. Mystery hedged his thoughtsabout and possessed them; he couldn't rid his imagination of theinexplicable circumstances of the man who had broken into his rooms tosteal nothing, and the knot of velvet ribbon that had dropped fromnowhere to his study floor. And when he forced his thoughts back toAlison, it was only to feel again the smart of some of the stingingthings she had chosen to say to him that night during their discussionof his play, and to be conscious of a certain amount of irritationbecause of the effrontery of her present pose, assuming as it did thathe would eventually bend to her will, endure all manner of insolence andindignity, because he hoped she would marry him.
Something of what was passing through his mind as he stood mute beforeher, she read in his look--or intuitively divined.
"Heavens!" she cried, "you're as temperamental as a leading-man. Can'tyou accept a word or two of criticism of your precious play withoutsulking like--like Max does when I make up my mind to take a week'srest in the middle of the season?"
"Criticise as much as you like," he said; "and I'll listen and take itto heart. But I don't mind telling you I'm not going to twist this playout of all dramatic semblance at your dictation--or Max's either."
For a moment their glances crossed like swords; he was conscious fromthe flicker in her eyes that her temper was straining at the leash; andhis jaw assumed a certain look of grim solidity. But the outbreak heexpected did not come; Alison was an artiste too consummate not to beable to control and mask her emotions--even as she did now with a quickcurtaining of her eyes behind long lashes.
"Don't let's talk about that now," she said in a soft, placating voice."That's a matter for hours of business. We're getting farther andfarther away from my errand."
"By all means," he returned pleasantly, "let us go to that at once."
"You can't guess?" She unmasked again the battery of her laughing eyes.He shook his head. "I'll give you three guesses."
He found the courage to say: "You didn't come to confess that I'm in theright about the play?"
She pouted prettily. "Can't you let that be? No, of course not."
"Nor to bicker about it?"
She laughed a denial.
"Nor yet to conduct a guessing contest?"
"No."
"Then I've exhausted my allowance.... Well?"
"I came," she drawled, "for my hat."
"Your hat?" His eyes opened wide.
She nodded. "My pretty hat. You remember you promised to give it to meif nobody else claimed it."
"Yes, but ..."
"And nobody has claimed it?"
"No, but ..."
"Then I want my hat."
"But--hold on--give somebody a chance--"
"Stupid?" she laughed. "Isn't it enough that I claim it? Am I nobody?"
"Wait half a minute. You've got me going." He paused, frowningthoughtfully, recollecting his wits; then by degrees the light began todawn upon him. "Do you mean you really did send me that confoundedbandbox?"
Coolly she inclined her head: "I did just that, my dear."
"But when I asked you the same question on the Autocratic--"
"Quite so: I denied it."
"And you were in London that Friday, after all?"
"I was. Had to be, hadn't I, in order to buy the hat and have it sentyou?"
"But--how did you know I was sailing Saturday?"
"I happened to go to the steamship office just after you had booked--sawa clerk adding your name to the passenger-list on the bulletin-board.That gave me the inspiration. I had already bought the hat, but I droveback to the shop and instructed them to send it to you."
"But, Alison! to what end?"
"Well," she said languidly, smiling with amusement at his bewilderment,"I thought it might be fun to hoodwink you."
"But--I fail to see the joke."
"And will, until I tell you All."
Her tone supplied the capital letter.
He shrugged helplessly. "Proceed ..."
"Well," she began with sublime insouciance, "you see, I'd been figuringall the while on getting the necklace home duty-free. And I finally hitupon what seemed a rather neat little plot. The hat was part of it; Ibought it for the express purpose of smuggling the necklace in,concealed in its lining. Up to that point you weren't involved. Then byhappy accident I saw your name on the list. Instantly it flashed uponme, how I could make you useful. It was just possible, you see, thatthose hateful customs men might be shrewd enough to search the hat, too.How much better, then, to make you bring in the hat, all unsuspecting!They'd never think of searching it in your hands! You see?"
His face had been hardening during this amazing speech. When she stoppedhe shot in a crisp question:
"The necklace wasn't in the hat when delivered to me? You didn't trustit to the shop people over night?"
"Of course not. I merely sent you the hat; then--as I knew youwould--you mentioned it to me aboard ship. I got you to bring it to myroom, and then sent you out--you remember? While you waited I sewed thenecklace in the lining; it took only an instant. Then Jane carried thehat back to your steward."
"So," he commented stupidly, "it wasn't stolen!"
"Naturally not."
"But you threw suspicion on Iff--"
"I daresay he was guilty enough in intent, if not in deed. There's notthe slightest doubt in my mind that he's that man Ismay, really, andthat he shipped with us for the especial purpose of stealing thenecklace if he got half a chance."
"You may be right; I don't know--and neither do you. But do you realisethat you came near causing an innocent man to be jailed for the theft?"
"But I didn't. He got away."
"But not Iff alone--there's myself. Have you paused to consider whatwould have happened to me if the inspector had happened to find thatnecklace in the hat? Heavens knows how he missed it! He was persistentenough!... But if he had found it, I'd have been jailed for theft."
"Oh, no," she said sweetly; "I'd never have let it go that far."
"Not even if to confess would mean that you'd be sent to jail forsmuggling?"
"They'd never do that to a woman...."
But her eyes shifted from his uneasily, and he saw her colour change atrifle.
"You know better than that. You read the papers--keep informed. You knowwhat happened to the last woman who tried to smuggle. I forgot how longthey sent her up for--five months, or some
thing like that."
She was silent, her gaze evasive.
"You remember that, don't you?"
"Perhaps I do," she admitted unwillingly.
"And you don't pretend you'd 've faced such a prospect in order toclear me?"
Again she had no answer for him. He turned up the room to the windowsand back again.
"I didn't think," he said slowly, stopping before her--"I couldn't havethought you could be so heartless, so self-centred ...!"
She rose suddenly and put a pleading hand upon his arm, standing verynear him in all her loveliness.
"Say thoughtless, Staff," she said quietly; "I didn't mean it."
"That's hard to credit," he replied steadily, "when I'm haunted by thememory of the lies you told me--to save yourself a few dollars honestlydue the country that has made you a rich woman--to gain for yourself afew paltry columns of cheap, sensational newspaper advertising. For thatyou lied to me and put me in jeopardy of Sing-Sing ... me, the man youpretend to care for--"
"Hold on, Staff!" the woman interrupted harshly.
He moved away. Her arm dropped back to her side. She eyed him a momentwith eyes hard and unfriendly.
"You've said about enough," she continued.
"You're not prepared to deny that you had these possibilities in mindwhen you lied to me and made me your dupe and cat's-paw?"
"I'm not prepared to argue the matter with you," she flung back at him,"nor to hold myself answerable to you for any thing I may choose to sayor do."
He bowed ceremoniously.
"I think that's all," he said pleasantly.
"It is," she agreed curtly; then in a lighter tone she added: "Thereremains for me only to take my blue dishes and go home."
As she spoke she moved over to the corner where the bandbox layingloriously on its undamaged side. As she bent over it, Staffabstractedly took and lighted another cigarette.
"What made you undo it?" he heard the woman ask.
He swung round in surprise. "I? I haven't touched the thing since it wasbrought in--beyond kicking it out of the way."
"The string's off--it's been opened!" Alison's voice was trembling withexcitement. She straightened up, holding the box in both hands, and camehastily over to the table beside which he was standing. "You see?" shesaid breathlessly, putting it down.
"The string was on it when I saw it last," he told her blankly....
Then the memory recurred of the man who had passed him at the door--theman who, he suspected, had forced an entrance to his rooms....
Alison was plucking nervously at the cover without lifting it.
"Why don't you look?" he demanded, irritated.
"I--I'm afraid," she said in a broken voice.
Nevertheless, she removed the cover.
For a solid, silent minute both stared, stupefied. The hat they knew sowell--the big black hat with its willow plume and buckle ofbrilliants--had vanished. In its place they saw the tumbled wreckage ofwhat had once been another hat distinctly: wisps of straw dyed purple,fragments of feathers, bits of violet-coloured ribbon and silk which,mixed with wads and shreds of white tissue-paper, filled the box tobrimming.
Staff thrust a hand in his pocket and produced the knot of violetribbon. It matched exactly the torn ribbon in the box.
"So that," he murmured--"that's where this came from!"
Alison paid no attention. Of a sudden she began digging furiously in thedebris in the box, throwing out its contents by handfuls until she haduncovered the bottom without finding any sign of what she had thought tofind. Then she paused, meeting his gaze with one half-wrathful,half-hysterical.
"What does this mean?" she demanded, as if ready to hold him to account.
"I think," he said slowly--"I'm strongly inclined to believe it meansthat you're an uncommonly lucky woman."
"How do you make that out?" she demanded in a breath.
"I'll tell you," he said, formulating his theory as he spoke: "When Icame home tonight, a man passed me at the door, fairly running out--Ifancy, to escape recognition; there was something about him that seemedfamiliar. Then I came up here, found my door ajar, when I distinctlyremembered locking it, found my windows shut and the shades drawn, whenI distinctly remembered leaving them up, and finally found this knot ofribbon on the floor. I was trying to account for it when you drove up.Now it seems plain enough that this fellow knew or suspected you ofhiding the necklace in the hat, knew that I had it, and came here in myabsence to steal it. He found instead this hat, and knowing no bettertore it to pieces trying to find what he was after."
"But where--where's _my_ hat?"
"I'll tell you." Staff crossed the room and picked up the string andlabel which had been on the box. Returning, he examined the tag andread aloud: "Miss Eleanor Searle." He handed the tag to Alison. "FindMiss Searle and you'll find your hat. It happens that she had a bandboxthe exact duplicate of yours. I remember telling you about it, on thesteamer. As a matter of fact, she was in the shop the afternoon youordered your hat sent to me, though she steadily refused to tell me whowas responsible for that imposition. Now, on the pier today, our luggagewas placed side by side, hers with mine--both in the S section, youunderstand. My examination was finished first and I was taken back to mystateroom to be searched, as you know. While I was gone, her examinationwas evidently finished, for when I came back she had left the pier withall her things. Quite plainly she must have taken your box by mistakefor her own; this, of course, is her hat. As I said at first, find MissSearle and you'll find your hat and necklace. Also, find the person towhom you confided this gay young swindling scheme of yours, and you'llfind the man who was intimate enough with the affair to come to my roomsin my absence and go direct to the bandbox for the necklace."
"I--but I told nobody," she stammered.
By the look in her eyes he disbelieved her.
"Not even Max, this morning, before he offered that reward?" he askedshrewdly.
"Well--yes; I told him."
"Max may have confided it to somebody else: these things spread. Orpossibly Jane may have blabbed."
"Oh, no," she protested, but without conviction in her accents; "neitherof them would be so foolish...."
"I'd find out, if I were you."
"I shall. Meanwhile--this Miss Searle--where's she stopping?"
"I can't tell you--some hotel. It'll be easy enough to find her in themorning."
"Will you try?"
"Assuredly--the first thing."
"Then--there appears to be nothing else to do but go home," said thewoman in a curiously subdued manner.
Without replying verbally, Staff took up her chiffon wrap and draped itover her shoulders.
"Thank you," said she, moving toward the door. "Good night."
"Oh," he protested politely, "I must see you out."
"It's not necessary--I can find my way."
"But only I know how to fix the front door."
At the foot of the stairs, while he fumbled with the latch, doubtinghim, she spoke with some little hesitation.
"I presume," she said stiffly--"I presume that this--ah--ends it."
Staff opened the door an inch and held it so. "If by 'it,'" he replied,"we mean the same thing--"
"We do."
"It does," he asseverated with his twisted smile.
She delayed an instant longer. "But all the same," she said hastily, atlength, "I want that play."
"_My_ play?" he enquired with significant emphasis.
"Yes, of course," she said sharply.
"Well, since I'm under contract with Max, I don't well see how I cantake it away from you. And besides, you're the only woman living who canplay it properly."
"So good of you." Her hand lay slim and cool in his for the fraction ofan instant. "Good night," she iterated, withdrawing it.
"Good night."
As he let her out, Staff, glancing down at the waiting taxicab, wasfaintly surprised by the discovery that she had not come alone. A manstood in waiting by the door-
-a man in evening clothes: not Max but ataller man, more slender, with a better carriage. Turning to help Alisoninto the cab, the street lights threw his face in sharp relief againstthe blackness of the window; and Staff knew him.
"Arkroyd!" he said beneath his breath.
He closed the door and set the latch, suffering from a species of mildastonishment. His psychological processes seemed to him rather unique;he felt that he was hardly playing the game according to Hoyle. A manwho has just broken with the woman with whom he has believed himselfdesperately in love naturally counts on feeling a bit down in the mouth.And seeing her drive off with one whom he has every right to consider inthe light of a hated rival, he ought in common decency to sufferpoignant pangs of jealousy. But Staff didn't; he couldn't honestly makehimself believe that he was suffering in any way whatever. Indeed, themost violent emotion to which he was sensible was one of chagrin overhis own infatuate myopia.
"Ass!" he called himself, slowly reascending the stairs. "You might 'veseen this coming long ago, if you hadn't wilfully chosen to be blind asa bat!"
Re-entering his study, he pulled up with a start and a cry of sincereamazement.
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Then why not lead a better life?" enquired Mr. Iff.
He was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, looking much like anexceptionally cruel caricature of himself. As he spoke, he slouchedwearily over to the wing-chair Alison had recently occupied, and droppedinto it like a dead weight.
He wore no hat. His clothing was in a shocking condition, damp,shapeless and shrunken to such an extent as to disclose exhibits of bonywrists and ankles almost immodestly generous. On his bird-like craniumthe pale, smooth scalp shone pink through scanty, matted, damp blondlocks. His face was drawn, pinched and pale. As if new to the light hisbaby-blue eyes blinked furiously. Round his thin lips hovered hishabitual smile, semi-sardonic, semi-sheepish.
"Do you mind telling me how in thunder you got in here?" asked Staffcourteously.
Iff waved a hand toward the bedroom.
"Fire-escape," he admitted wearily. "Happened to see your light andthought I'd call. Hope I don't intrude.... Got anything to drink? I'mabout all in."
The Bandbox Page 8
