Like this! Aline drew a deep breath. It would be like this--forever and ever and ever--until she died. She bent forward and stared at him.
"Freddie," she said, "do you love me?" There was no reply. "Freddie, do you love me? Am I a part of you? If you hadn't me would it be like trying to go on living without breathing?"
The Honorable Freddie raised a flushed face and gazed at her with an absent eye.
"Eh? What?" he said. "Do I--Oh; yes. rather! I say, one of the blighters has just loosed a rattlesnake into Gridley Quayle's bedroom through the transom!"
Aline rose from her seat and left the room softly. The Honorable Freddie read on, unheeding.
...
Ashe Marson had not fallen far short of the truth in his estimate of the probable effect on Mr. Peters of the information that his precious scarab had once more been removed by alien hands and was now farther from his grasp than ever. A drawback to success in life is that failure, when it does come, acquires an exaggerated importance. Success had made Mr. Peters, in certain aspects of his character, a spoiled child.
At the moment when Ashe broke the news he would have parted with half his fortune to recover the scarab. Its recovery had become a point of honor. He saw it as the prize of a contest between his will and that of whatever malignant powers there might be ranged against him in the effort to show him that there were limits to what he could achieve. He felt as he had felt in the old days when people sneaked up on him in Wall Street and tried to loosen his grip on a railroad or a pet stock. He was suffering from that form of paranoia which makes men multimillionaires. Nobody would be foolish enough to become a multimillionaire if it were not for the desire to prove himself irresistible.
Mr. Peters obtained a small relief for his feelings by doubling the existing reward, and Ashe went off in search of Joan, hoping that this new stimulus, acting on their joint brains, might develop inspiration.
"Have any fresh ideas been vouchsafed to you?" he asked. "You may look on me as baffled."
Joan shook her head.
"Don't give up," she urged. "Think again. Try to realize what this means, Mr. Marson. Between us we have lost ten thousand dollars in a single night. I can't afford it. It is like losing a legacy. I absolutely refuse to give in without an effort and go back to writing duke-and-earl stories for Home Gossip."
"The prospect of tackling Gridley Quayle again--"
"Why, I was forgetting that you were a writer of detective stories. You ought to be able to solve this mystery in a moment. Ask yourself, 'What would Gridley Quayle have done?'"
"I can answer that. Gridley Quayle would have waited helplessly for some coincidence to happen to help him out."
"Had he no methods?"
"He was full of methods; but they never led him anywhere without the coincidence. However, we might try to figure it out. What time did you get to the museum?"
"One o'clock."
"And you found the scarab gone. What does that suggest to you?"
"Nothing. What does it suggest to you?"
"Absolutely nothing. Let us try again. Whoever took the scarab must have had special information that Peters was offering the reward."
"Then why hasn't he been to Mr. Peters and claimed it?"
"True! That would seem to be a flaw in the reasoning. Once again: Whoever took it must have been in urgent and immediate need of money."
"And how are we to find out who was in urgent and immediate need of money?"
"Exactly! How indeed?"
There was a pause.
"I should think your Mr. Quayle must have been a great comfort to his clients, wasn't he?" said Joan.
"Inductive reasoning, I admit, seems to have fallen down to a certain extent," said Ashe. "We must wait for the coincidence. I have a feeling that it will come." He paused. "I am very fortunate in the way of coincidences."
"Are you?"
Ashe looked about him and was relieved to find that they appeared to be out of earshot of their species. It was not easy to achieve this position at the castle if you happened to be there as a domestic servant. The space provided for the ladies and gentlemen attached to the guests was limited, and it was rarely that you could enjoy a stroll without bumping into a maid, a valet or a footman; but now they appeared to be alone. The drive leading to the back regions of the castle was empty. As far as the eye could reach there were no signs of servants--upper or lower. Nevertheless, Ashe lowered his voice.
"Was it not a strange coincidence," he said, "that you should have come into my life at all?"
"Not very," said Joan prosaically. "It was quite likely that we should meet sooner or later, as we lived on different floors of the same house."
"It was a coincidence that you should have taken that room."
"Why?"
Ashe felt damped. Logically, no doubt, she was right; but surely she might have helped him out a little in this difficult situation. Surely her woman's intuition should have told her that a man who has been speaking in a loud and cheerful voice does not, lower it to a husky whisper without some reason. The hopelessness of his task began to weigh on him.
Ever since that evening at Market Blandings Station, when he realized that he loved her, he had been trying to find an opportunity to tell her so; and every time they had met, the talk had seemed to be drawn irresistibly into practical and unsentimental channels. And now, when he was doing his best to reason it out that they were twin souls who had been brought together by a destiny it would be foolish to struggle against; when he was trying to convey the impression that fate had designed them for each other--she said, "Why?" It was hard.
He was about to go deeper into the matter when, from the direction of the castle, he perceived the Honorable Freddie's valet--Mr. Judson--approaching. That it was this repellent young man's object to break in on them and rob him of his one small chance of inducing Joan to appreciate, as he did, the mysterious workings of Providence as they affected herself and him, was obvious. There was no mistaking the valet's desire for conversation. He had the air of one brimming over with speech. His wonted indolence was cast aside; and as he drew nearer he positively ran. He was talking before he reached them.
"Miss Simpson, Mr. Marson, it's true--what I said that night. It's a fact!"
Ashe regarded the intruder with a malevolent eye. Never fond of Mr. Judson, he looked on him now with positive loathing. It had not been easy for him to work himself up to the point where he could discuss with Joan the mysterious ways of Providence, for there was that about her which made it hard to achieve sentiment, That indefinable something in Joan Valentine which made for nocturnal raids on other people's museums also rendered her a somewhat difficult person to talk to about twin souls and destiny. The qualities that Ashe loved in her--her strength, her capability, her valiant self-sufficingness--were the very qualities which seemed to check him when he tried to tell her that he loved them.
Mr. Judson was still babbling.
"It's true. There ain't a doubt of it now. It's been and happened just as I said that night."
"What did you say? Which night?" inquired Ashe.
"That night at dinner--the first night you two came here. Don't you remember me talking about Freddie and the girl he used to write letters to in London--the girl I said was so like you, Miss Simpson? What was her name again? Joan Valentine. That was it. The girl at the theater that Freddie used to send me with letters to pretty nearly every evening. Well, she's been and done it, same as I told you all that night she was jolly likely to go and do. She's sticking young Freddie up for his letters, just as he ought to have known she would do if he hadn't been a young fathead. They're all alike, these girls--every one of them."
Mr. Judson paused, subjected the surrounding scenery to a cautious scrutiny and resumed.
"I took a suit of Freddie's clothes away to brush just now; and happening"--Mr. Judson paused and gave a little cough--"happening to glance at the contents of his pockets I come across a letter. I took a sort of look at it befor
e setting it aside, that it was from a fellow named Jones; and it said that this girl, Valentine, was sticking onto young Freddie's letters what he'd written her, and would see him blowed if she parted with them under another thousand. And, as I made it out, Freddie had already given her five hundred.
"Where he got it is more than I can understand; but that's what the letter said. This fellow Jones said he had passed it to her with his own hands; but she wasn't satisfied, and if she didn't get the other thousand she was going to bring an action for breach. And now Freddie has given me a note to take to this Jones, who is stopping in Market Blandings."
Joan had listened to this remarkable speech with a stunned amazement. At this point she made her first comment:
"But that can't be true."
"Saw the letter with my own eyes, Miss Simpson."
"But----"
She looked at Ashe helplessly. Their eyes met--hers wide with perplexity, his bright with the light of comprehension.
"It shows," said Ashe slowly, "that he was in immediate and urgent need of money."
"You bet it does," said Mr. Judson with relish. "It looks to me as though young Freddie had about reached the end of his tether this time. My word! There won't half be a kick-up if she does sue him for breach! I'm off to tell Mr. Beach and the rest. They'll jump out of their skins." His face fell. "Oh, Lord, I was forgetting this note. He told me to take it at once."
"I'll take it for you," said Ashe. "I'm not doing anything."
Mr. Judson's gratitude was effusive.
"You're a good fellow, Marson," he said. "I'll do as much for you another time. I couldn't hardly bear not to tell a bit of news like this right away. I should burst or something."
And Mr. Judson, with shining face, hurried off to the housekeeper's room.
"I simply can't understand it," said Joan at length. "My head is going round."
"Can't understand it? Why, it's perfectly clear. This is the coincidence for which, in my capacity of Gridley Quayle, I was waiting. I can now resume inductive reasoning. Weighing the evidence, what do we find? That young sweep, Freddie, is the man. He has the scarab."
"But it's all such a muddle. I'm not holding his letters."
"For Jones' purposes you are. Let's get this Jones element in the affair straightened out. What do you know of him?"
"He was an enormously fat man who came to see me one night and said he had been sent to get back some letters. I told him I had destroyed them ages ago and he went away."
"Well, that part of it is clear, then. He is working a simple but ingenious game on Freddie. It wouldn't succeed with everybody, I suppose; but from what I have seen and heard of him Freddie isn't strong on intellect. He seems to have accepted the story without a murmur. What does he do? He has to raise a thousand pounds immediately, and the raising of the first five hundred has exhausted his credit. He gets the idea of stealing the scarab!"
"But why? Why should he have thought of the scarab at all? That is what I can't understand. He couldn't have meant to give it to Mr. Peters and claim the reward. He couldn't have known that Mr. Peters was offering a reward. He couldn't have known that Lord Emsworth had not got the scarab quite properly. He couldn't have known--he couldn't have known anything!"
Ashe's enthusiasm was a trifle damped.
"There's something in that. But--I have it! Jones must have known about the scarab and told him."
"But how could he have known?"
"Yes; there's something in that, too. How could Jones have known?"
"He couldn't. He had gone by the time Aline came that night."
"I don't quite understand. Which night?"
"It was the night of the day I first met you. I was wondering for a moment whether he could by any chance have overheard Aline telling me about the scarab and the reward Mr. Peters was offering for it."
"Overheard! That word is like a bugle blast to me. Nine out of ten of Gridley Quayle's triumphs were due to his having overheard something. I think we are now on the right track."
"I don't. How could he have overheard us? The door was closed and he was in the street by that time."
"How do you know he was in the street? Did you see him out?"
"No; but he went."
"He might have waited on the stairs--you remember how dark they are at Number Seven-and listened."
"Why?"
Ashe reflected.
"Why? Why? What a beast of a word that is--the detective's bugbear. I thought I had it, until you said--Great Scott! I'll tell you why. I see it all. I have him with the goods. His object in coming to see you about the letters was because Freddie wanted them back owing to his approaching marriage with Miss Peters--wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"You tell him you have destroyed the letters. He goes off. Am I right?"
"Yes."
"Before he is out of the house Miss Peters is giving her name at the front door. Put yourself in Jones' place. What does he think? He is suspicious. He thinks there is some game on. He skips upstairs again, waits until Miss Peters has gone into your room, then stands outside and listens. How about that?"
"I do believe you are right. He might quite easily have done that."
"He did do exactly that. I know it as though I had been there; in fact, it is highly probable I was there. You say all this happened on the night we first met? I remember coming downstairs that night--I was going out to a vaudeville show--and hearing voices in your room. I remember it distinctly. In all probability I nearly ran into Jones."
"It does all seem to fit in, doesn't it?"
"It's a clear case. There isn't a flaw in it. The only question is, can I, on the evidence, go to young Freddie and choke the scarab out of him? On the whole, I think I had better take this note to Jones, as I promised Judson, and see whether I can't work something through him. Yes; that's the best plan. I'll be starting at once."
...
Perhaps the greatest hardship in being an invalid is the fact that people come and see you and keep your spirits up. The Honorable Freddie Threepwood suffered extremely from this. His was not a gregarious nature and it fatigued his limited brain powers to have to find conversation for his numerous visitors. All he wanted was to be left alone to read the adventures of Gridley Quayle, and when tired of doing that to lie on his back and look at the ceiling and think of nothing.
It is your dynamic person, your energetic world's worker, who chafes at being laid up with a sprained ankle. The Honorable Freddie enjoyed it. From boyhood up he had loved lying in bed; and now that fate had allowed him to do this without incurring rebuke he objected to having his reveries broken up by officious relations.
He spent his rare intervals of solitude in trying to decide in his mind which of his cousins, uncles and aunts was, all things considered, the greatest nuisance. Sometimes he would give the palm to Colonel Horace Mant, who struck the soldierly note--"I recollect in a hill campaign in the winter of the year '93 giving my ankle the deuce of a twist." Anon the more spiritual attitude of the Bishop of Godalming seemed to annoy him more keenly.
Sometimes he would head the list with the name of his Cousin Percy--Lord Stockheath--who refused to talk of anything except his late breach-of-promise case and the effect the verdict had had on his old governor. Freddie was in no mood just now to be sympathetic with others on their breach-of-promise cases.
As he lay in bed reading on Monday morning, the only flaw in his enjoyment of this unaccustomed solitude was the thought that presently the door was bound to open and some kind inquirer insinuate himself into the room.
His apprehensions proved well founded. Scarcely had he got well into the details of an ingenious plot on the part of a secret society to eliminate Gridley Quayle by bribing his cook--a bad lot--to sprinkle chopped-up horsehair in his chicken fricassee, when the door-knob turned and Ashe Marson came in.
Freddie was not the only person who had found the influx of visitors into the sick room a source of irritation. The fact that the invalid seemed unab
le to get a moment to himself had annoyed Ashe considerably. For some little time he had hung about the passage in which Freddie's room was situated, full of enterprise, but unable to make a forward move owing to the throng of sympathizers. What he had to say to the sufferer could not be said in the presence of a third party.
Freddie's sensation, on perceiving him, was one of relief. He had been half afraid it was the bishop. He recognized Ashe as the valet chappie who had helped him to bed on the occasion of his accident. It might be that he had come in a respectful way to make inquiries, but he was not likely to stop long. He nodded and went on reading. And then, glancing up, he perceived Ashe standing beside the bed, fixing him with a piercing stare.
The Honorable Freddie hated piercing stares. One of the reasons why he objected to being left alone with his future father-in-law, Mr. J. Preston Peters, was that Nature had given the millionaire a penetrating pair of eyes, and the stress of business life in New York had developed in him a habit of boring holes in people with them. A young man had to have a stronger nerve and a clearer conscience than the Honorable Freddie to enjoy a tete-a-tete with Mr. Peters.
Though he accepted Aline's father as a necessary evil and recognized that his position entitled him to look at people as sharply as he liked, whatever their feelings, he would be hanged if he was going to extend this privilege to Mr. Peters' valet. This man standing beside him was giving him a look that seemed to his sensitive imagination to have been fired red-hot from a gun; and this annoyed and exasperated Freddie.
"What do you want?" he said querulously. "What are you staring at me like that for?"
Ashe sat down, leaned his elbows on the bed, and applied the look again from a lower elevation.
"Ah!" he said.
Whatever may have been Ashe's defects, so far as the handling of the inductive-reasoning side of Gridley Quayle's character was concerned, there was one scene in each of his stories in which he never failed. That was the scene in the last chapter where Quayle, confronting his quarry, unmasked him. Quayle might have floundered in the earlier part of the story, but in his big scene he was exactly right. He was curt, crisp and mercilessly compelling.
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