The Bandbox

by Louis Joseph Vance

  X

  DEAD O' NIGHT

  Beneath a nature so superficially shallow that it shone only with thereflected lustre of the more brilliant personalities to which it wasattracted, Mrs. Ilkington had a heart--sentiment and a capacity forsympathetic affection. She had met Eleanor Searle in Paris, and knew alittle more than something of the struggle the girl had been making toprepare herself for the operatic stage. She managed to discover that shehad no close friends in New York, and shrewdly surmised that she wasn'tany too well provided with munitions of war--in the shape of money--forher contemplated campaign against the army of professional people,marshalled by indifferent-minded managers, which stood between her andthe place she coveted.

  Considering all this, Mrs. Ilkington had suggested, with an accent ofinsistence, that Eleanor should go to the hotel which she intended topatronise--wording her suggestion so cunningly that it would be an easymatter for her, when the time came, to demonstrate that she had invitedthe girl to be her guest. And with this she was thoughtful enough toselect an unpretentious if thoroughly well-managed house on the WestSide, in the late Seventies, in order that Eleanor might feel at easeand not worry about the size of the bill which she wasn't to bepermitted to pay.

  Accordingly the two ladies (with Mr. Bangs tagging) went from the pierdirectly to the St. Simon, the elder woman to stay until her town-housecould be opened and put in order, the girl while she looked round for aspinster's studio or a small apartment within her limited means.

  Promptly on their arrival at the hotel, Mrs. Ilkington began to run up atelephone bill, notifying friends of her whereabouts; with the result(typical of the New York idea) that within an hour she had engagedherself for a dinner with theatre and supper to follow--and, of course,had managed to have Eleanor included in the invitation. She was one ofthose women who live on their nerves and apparently thrive onexcitement, ignorant of the meaning of rest save in association withthose rest-cure sanatoriums to which they repair for a fortnightsemi-annually--or oftener.

  Against her protests, then, Eleanor was dragged out in full dress whenwhat she really wanted to do was to eat a light and simple meal and goearly to bed. In not unnatural consequence she found herself, when theygot home after one in the morning, in a state of nervous disquiet causedby the strain of keeping herself keyed up to the pitch of an animatedparty.

  Insomnia stared her in the face with its blind, blank eyes. In theprivacy of her own room, she expressed a free opinion of her countrymen,conceiving them all in the guise of fevered, unquiet souls cast in themould of Mrs. Ilkington.

  Divesting herself of her dinner-gown, she slipped into a negligee andlooked round for a book, meaning to read herself sleepy. In the courseof her search she happened to recognise her bandbox and conceive adesire to reassure herself as to the becomingness of its contents.

  The hat she found therein was becoming enough, even if it wasn't hers.The mistake was easily apparent and excusable, considering the confusionthat had obtained on the pier at the time of their departure.

  She wondered when Staff would learn the secret of his besetting mystery,and wondered too why Alison had wished to make a mystery of it. The jokewas hardly apparent--though one's sense of American humour might wellhave become dulled in several years of residence abroad.

  Meanwhile, instinctively, Eleanor was trying on the hat before the longmirror set in the door of the closet. She admitted to herself that shelooked astonishingly well in it. She was a sane and sensible youngwoman, who knew that she was exceedingly good looking and was glad of itin the same wholesome way that she was glad she had a good singingvoice. Very probably the hat was more of a piece with the somewhatflamboyant if unimpeachable loveliness of Alison Landis; but it wouldseem hard to find a hat better suited to set off the handsome, tall andslightly pale girl that confronted Eleanor in the mirror.

  It seemed surprisingly heavy, even for a hat of its tremendous size. Shewas of the opinion that it would make her head ache to wear it for manyhours at a time. She was puzzled by its weight and speculated vaguelyabout it until, lifting it carefully off, her fingers encounteredsomething hard, heavy and unyielding between the lining and the crown.After that it didn't take her long to discover that the lining had beenripped open and resewn with every indication of careless haste. Humancuriosity did the rest. Within a very few minutes the Cadogan collar layin her hands and she was marvelling over it--and hazily surmising thetruth: Staff had been used as a blind agent to get the pearls into thecountry duty-free.

  Quick thoughts ran riot in Eleanor's mind. Alison Landis wouldcertainly not delay longer than a few hours before demanding her hat ofMr. Staff. The substitution would then be discovered and she, EleanorSearle, would fall under suspicion--at least, unless she took immediatesteps to restore the jewels.

  She acted hastily, on impulse. One minute she was at the telephone,ordering a taxicab, the next she was hurriedly dressing herself in atailor-made suit. The hour was late, but not too late--although (thisgave her pause) it might be too late before she could reach Staff'srooms. She had much better telephone him she was coming. Of course hewould have a telephone--everybody has, in New York.

  Consultation of the directory confirmed this assumption, giving her bothhis address and his telephone number. But before she could call up, hercab was announced. Nevertheless she delayed long enough to warn himhastily of her coming. Then she snatched up the necklace, dropped itinto her handbag, replaced the hat in its bandbox and ran for theelevator.

  It was almost half-past one by the clock behind the desk, when shepassed through the office. She had really not thought it so late. Shewas conscious of the surprised looks of the clerks and pages. The porterat the door, too, had a stare for her so long and frank as to approachimpertinence. None the less he was quick enough to take her bandboxfrom the bellboy who carried it and place it in the waiting taxi, andhanded her in after it with civil care. Having repeated to the operatorthe address she gave him, the porter shut the door and went back to hispost as the vehicle darted out from the curb.

  Eleanor knew little of New York geography. Her previous visits to thecity had been very few and of short duration. With the shopping districtshe was tolerably familiar, and she knew something of the districtroundabout the old Fifth Avenue Hotel and the vanished Everett House.But with these exceptions she was entirely ignorant of the lay of theland: just as she was too inexperienced to realise that it isn'tconsidered wholly well-advised for a young woman alone to take, in themiddle of the night, a taxicab whose chauffeur carries a companion onthe front seat. If she had stopped to consider this circumstance at all,she would have felt comforted by the presence of the superfluous man, onthe general principle that two protectors are better then one: but theplain truth is that she didn't stop to consider it, her thoughts beingfully engaged with what seemed more important matters.

  The cab bounced across Amsterdam Avenue, slid smoothly over to Columbus,ran for a block or so beneath the elevated structure and swung intoSeventy-seventh Street, through which it pelted eastward and intoCentral Park. Then for some moments it turned and twisted through thedevious driveways, in a fashion so erratic that the passenger lost allgrasp of her whereabouts, retaining no more than a confused impressionof serpentine, tree-lined ways, chequered with lamplight and the soft,dense shadows of foliage, and regularly spaced with staring electricarcs.

  The night had fallen black beneath an overcast sky; the air that fannedher face was warm and heavy with humidity; what little breeze there was,aside from that created by the motion of the cab, bore on its leadenwings the scent of rain.

  A vague uneasiness began to colour the girl's consciousness. She grewincreasingly sensitive to the ominous quiet of the hour and place: thestark, dark stillness of the shrouded coppices and thickets, theemptiness of the paths. Once only she caught sight of a civilian,strolling in his shirt-sleeves, coat over his arm, hat in hand; and onceonly she detected, at a distance, the grey of a policeman's tunic, halfblotted out by the shadow in which its wearer lounged
at ease.

  And that was far behind when, abruptly, with a grinding crash of brakes,the cab came from full headlong tilt to a dead halt within twice itslength. She pitched forward from the seat with a cry of alarm, onlysaving herself a serious bruising through the instinct that led her tothrust out her hands and catch the frame of the forward windows.

  Before she could recover, the chauffeur's companion had jumped out andrun ahead, pausing in front of the hood to stoop and stare. In anothermoment he was back with a report couched in a technical jargonunintelligible to her understanding. She caught the words "stripped thegears" and from them inferred the irremediable.

  "What is the matter?" she asked anxiously, bending forward.

  The chauffeur turned his head and replied in a surly tone: "We've brokendown, ma'm. You can't go no farther in this cab. I'll have to getanother to tow us back to the garage."

  "Oh," she cried in dismay, "how unfortunate! What am I to do?"

  "Guess you'll have to get out 'n' walk back to Central Park West," wasthe answer. "You c'n get a car there to C'lumbus Circle. You'll finda-plenty taxis down there."

  "You're quite sure--" she began to protest.

  "Ah, they ain't no chanst of this car going another foot under its ownpower--not until it's been a week 'r two in hospital. The only thingfor you to do 's to hoof it, like I said."

  "That's dead right," averred the other man. He was standing beside thebody of the cab and now unlatched the door and held it open for her."You might as well get down, if you're in any great hurry, ma'm."

  Eleanor rose, eyeing the man distrustfully. His accent wasn't that ofthe kind of man who is accustomed to saying "ma'm." His back was towardthe nearest lamp post, his face in shadow. She gained no more than a dimimpression of a short, slender figure masked in a grey duster buttonedto the throat, and, above it, a face rendered indefinite by a short,pointed beard and a grey motor-cap pulled well down over the eyes....

  But there was nothing to do but accept the situation. An accident was anaccident--unpleasant but irreparable. There was no alternative; shecould do nothing but adopt the chauffeur's suggestion. She stepped out,turning back to get her bandbox.

  "Beg pardon, ma'm. I'll get that for you."

  The man by the door interposed an arm between Eleanor and the bandbox.

  She said, "Oh no!" and attempted to push past his arm.

  Immediately he caught her by the shoulder and thrust her away withstaggering violence. She reeled back half a dozen feet. Simultaneouslyshe heard the fellow say, sharply: "All right--go ahead!" and saw himjump upon the step. On the instant, the cab shot away through theshadows, the door swinging wide while Eleanor's assailant scrambled intothe body.

  Before she could collect herself the car had disappeared round a curvein the roadway.

  Her natural impulse was to scream, to start a hue-and-cry: "Stop thief!"But the strong element of common-sense in her make-up counselled her tohold her tongue. In a trice she comprehended precisely the meaning ofthe passage. Somebody else--somebody aside from herself, Staff andAlison Landis--knew the secret of the bandbox and the smuggled necklace,and with astonishing intuition had planned this trap to gain possessionof it. She was amazed to contemplate the penetrating powers of inferenceand deduction, the cunning and resource which had not only in so short atime fathomed the mystery of the vanished necklace, but had discoveredthe exchange of bandboxes, had traced the right one to her hotel andpossession, had divined and taken advantage of her impulse to return theproperty to its rightful owner without an instant's loss of time. Andwith this thought came another, more alarming: in a brace of minutesthe thieves would discover that the necklace had been abstracted fromthe hat and--men of such boldness wouldn't hesitate about turning backto run her down and take their booty by force.

  It was this consideration that bade her refrain from crying out.Conceivably, if she did raise an alarm, help might be longer in comingthan the taxicab in returning. They had the hat and bandbox, and werewelcome to them, for all of her, as long as she retained the realvaluables. Her only chance lay in instant and secret flight, in hidingherself away in the gloomy fastnesses of these unknown pleasure-grounds,so securely that they might not find her.

  She stood alone in the middle of a broad road. There was nobody insight, whichever way she looked. On one hand a wide asphalt path ranparallel with the drive; on the other lay a darksome hedge of trees andshrubbery. She hesitated not two seconds over her choice, and in a thirdwas struggling and forcing a way through the undergrowth and beneath thelow and spreading branches whose shadows cloaked her with a friendlycurtain of blackness.

  Beyond--she was not long in winning through--lay a broad meadow,glimmering faintly in the glow of light reflected from the bosoms oflow, slow-moving clouds. A line of trees bordered it at a considerabledistance; beneath them were visible patches of asphalt walk, shiningcoldly under electric arcs.

  Having absolutely no notion whatever of where she was in the Park, aftersome little hesitation she decided against attempting to cross the lawnand turned instead, at random, to her right, stumbling away in thekindly penumbra of trees.

  She thanked her stars that she had chosen to wear this dark,short-skirted suit that gave her so much freedom of action and at thesame time blended so well with the shadows wherein she must skulk....

  Before many minutes she received confirmation of her fears in the droneof a distant motor humming in the stillness and gaining volume withevery beat of her heart. Presently it was strident and near at hand; andthen, standing like a frozen thing, not daring to stir (indeed, halfpetrified with fear) she saw the marauding taxicab wheel slowly past,the chauffeur scrutinising one side of the way, the man in the greyduster standing up in the body and holding the door half open, while heraked with sweeping glances the coppice wherein she stood hiding.

  But it did not stop. Incredible though it seemed, she was not detected.Obviously the men were at a loss, unable to surmise which one she hadchosen of a dozen ways of escape. The taxicab drilled on at a snail'space for some distance up the drive, then swung round and came back at agood speed. As it passed her for the second time she could hear one ofits crew swearing angrily.

  Again the song of the motor died in the distance, and again she foundcourage to move. But which way? How soonest to win out of this strange,bewildering maze of drives and paths, crossing and recrossing, meltingtogether and diverging without apparent motive or design?

  She advanced to the edge of the drive, paused, listening with everyfaculty alert. There was no sound but the muted soughing of the nightwind in the trees--not a footfall, not the clap of a hoof or the echo ofa motor's whine. She moved on a yard or two, and found herself suddenlyin the harsh glare of an arc-lamp. This decided her; she might as wellgo forward as retreat, now that she had shown herself. She darted at arun across the road and gained the paved path, paused an instant, heardnothing, and ran on until forced to stop for breath.

  And still no sign of pursuit! She began to feel a little reassured, andafter a brief rest went on aimlessly, with the single intention ofsticking to one walk as far as it might lead her, in the hope that itmight lead her to the outskirts of the Park.

  Vain hope! Within a short time she found herself scrambling over barerocks, with shrubbery on either hand and a looming mass of masonrystencilled against the sky ahead. This surely could not be the way. Sheturned back, lost herself, half stumbled and half fell down a sharpslope, plodded across another lawn and found another path, which led hernorthwards (though she had no means of knowing this). In time it crossedone of the main drives, then recrossed. She followed it with patientpersistence, hoping, but desperately weary.

  Now and again she passed benches upon which men sprawled in crude,uneasy attitudes, as a rule snoring noisily. She dared not ask her wayof these. Once one roused to the sharp tapping of her heels, staredinsolently and, as she passed, spoke to her in a thick, rough voice. Shedid not understand what he said, but quickened her pace and held onbravely, with her head high a
nd her heart in her mouth. Mercifully, shewas not followed.

  Again--and not once but a number of times--the sound of a motor droveher from the path to the safe obscurity of the trees and undergrowth.But in every such instance her apprehensions were without foundation;the machines were mostly touring-cars or limousines beating homewardfrom some late festivity.

  And twice she thought to descry at a distance the grey-coated figure ofa policeman; but each time, when she had gained the spot, the man hadvanished--or else some phenomenon of light and shadow had misled her.

  Minutes, in themselves seemingly endless, ran into hours while shewandered (so heavy with fatigue that she found herself wondering how itwas that she didn't collapse from sheer exhaustion on any one of theinterminable array of benches that she passed) dragging her leaden feetand aching limbs and struggling to hold up her hot and throbbing head.

  It was long after three when finally she emerged atOne-hundred-and-tenth Street and Lenox Avenue. And here fortune provedmore kind: she blundered blindly almost into the arms of a policeman,stumbled through her brief story and dragged wearily on his arm over toCentral Park West. Here he put her aboard a southbound Eighth Avenuesurface-car, instructing the conductor where she was to get off and thenpresumably used the telephone on his beat to such effect that she wasmet on alighting by another man in uniform who escorted her to the St.Simon. She was too tired, too thoroughly worn out, to ask him how ithappened that he was waiting for her, or even to do more than give him abare word of thanks. As for complaining of her adventure to thenight-clerk (who stared as she passed through to the elevator) noimaginable consideration could have induced her to stop for any suchpurpose.

  But one thing was clear to her intelligence, to be attended to beforeshe toppled over on her bed: Staff must be warned by telephone of theattempt to steal the necklace and the reason why she had not been ableto reach his residence. And if this were to be accomplished, she must doit before she dared sit down.

  In conformance with this fixed idea, she turned directly to thetelephone after closing the door of her room--pausing neither to stripoff her gloves and remove her hat nor even to relieve her aching wristof the handbag which, with its precious contents, dangled on its silkenthong.

  She had to refresh her memory with a consultation of the directorybefore she could ask for Staff's number.

  The switchboard operator was slow to answer; and when he did, therefollowed one of those exasperating delays, apparently so inexcusable....

  She experienced a sensation of faintness and dizziness; her limbs weretrembling; she felt as though sleep were overcoming her as she stood;but a little more and she had strained endurance to thebreaking-point....

  Fascinated, dumb with terror, she watched

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  At length the connection was made. Staff's agitated voice seemed drawnthin by an immense distance. By a supreme effort she managed to spur herflagging faculties and began to falter her incredible story, but hadbarely swung into the second sentence when her voice died in her throatand her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth.

  The telephone instrument was fixed to the wall near the clothes-closet,the door of which framed a long mirror. This door, standing slightlyajar, reflected to her vision the hall door.

  She had detected a movement in the mirror. The hall door wasopening--slowly, gently, noiselessly, inch by inch. Fascinated, dumbwith terror, she watched. She saw the hand that held the knob--a smallhand, thin and fragile; then the wrist, then part of the arm.... A headappeared in the opening, curiously suggesting the head of a bird, thinlythatched with hair of a faded yellow; out of its face, small eyeswatched her, steadfastly inquisitive.

  Almost mechanically she replaced the receiver on the hook and turnedaway from the wall, stretching forth her hands in a gesture of pitifulsupplication....