Miles pulled himself up with a jerk, because Flossie’s eyes were fixed on him in a firm, determined look. Freddy had been quite wrong about her bursting into tears. If there was going to be any nonsense about her character, she would fight. And Ernie would back her up; she made no doubt about that. She stuck her chin in the air and said,
“What’s it all about? That’s what I want to know.”
“Well,” said Miles, “Mrs Gilmore—”
Flossie shifted a defiant blue gaze to Lila, and Lila said,
“Oh, Flossie—they’re pearls—they really are.”
Miles caught Freddy’s eye. If Lila was wrong, what fools they were all going to look.
Flossie did not actually say “Coo!” but her lips formed the shape of that expressive word. Then she took a quick half breath and said,
“Pearls?” And then, “Not much! They’re my mother’s old beads!”
“They’re pearls,” said Lila—“they’re black pearls. They’re too marvellous!”
“How do you know?” said Flossie bluntly.
Freddy Gilmore came forward and put a hand on Lila’s shoulder.
“Well, there it is, Flossie,” he said—“we don’t know. Mrs Gilmore thinks they’re pearls, but she’s not an expert. It seems to me that we ought to have an expert’s opinion. If you’ve really got a string of black pearls, it’s very valuable.”
Flossie’s colour faded. She went up to Miles and took hold of his arm with both hands.
“Do you think they’re pearls, Mr Miles?”
“I don’t know, Flossie.”
“You were looking for a string of black pearls—you talked about it at dinner. You said there was three hundred pearls in the string, and I took and counted my beads to see how long that would be, and there was three hundred of mine.”
He patted her shoulder.
“It’s all right, Flossie—don’t worry.”
Her hands tightened on his arm.
“Mr Miles—do you think my beads are what you was looking for? Is that what you think?” She released him suddenly and backed away. “Ooh, it’s not true! My mother never!”
CHAPTER XXIII
It was Lila who produced Mr Montague. She summoned him imperiously on the telephone, and he came. Ordinarily of course Mr Montague, who is the senior partner, is only to be seen in that inner sanctum of his Bond Street shop to which Royalties, millionaires, and customers of more than ten years’ standing are admitted. You do not send for Mr Montague unless you are a crowned head—or Lila Gilmore. Lila was quite aware that he was her slave, and treated him accordingly. He had known her since she was ten years old and considered her the most beautiful woman in the world.
He came into her gold drawing-room—a thin, ugly man with Jewish features and a pleasant cultured manner. Lila poured out her story.
“And they don’t think I know. But, darling Mr Montague, I tried the bead with my tongue like you told me, and it was rough, so I must be right, and you will tell them so at once—won’t you?”
Mr Montague looked at her indulgently. He was extremely sensitive to beauty, and Lila in her gold room rejoiced the artist in him, and the oriental. He looked from her to the others, the two young men—and the maid-servant. What a pretty girl! Not frightened; angry. What a skin when she flushed.
Lila put the knotted string into his hand, and all at once his expression changed.
“So—so—so—” he said, and ran it through his fingers. Then he looked up sharply. “How many?”
It was Flossie who said “Three hundred” in her defiant voice and then, “They’re not pearls—they’re my mother’s old beads.”
Mr Montague looked at her, then back at what he was holding, and then at Miles Clayton.
“Oh, Mr Montague!” said Lila.
He gave her a fleeting smile, but spoke to Miles.
“They are pearls, of course. Mrs Gilmore is perfectly right—as always. I think, Mr Clayton, that I have a memorandum about these pearls. Everyone in the trade has a memorandum about them. I suppose you are the Mr Clayton who is mentioned in the memorandum?”
Miles nodded.
“Very well, Mr Clayton, then I will tell you that this is not the first memorandum I have had about these pearls, nor is it the first time that I have handled them. They came through my hands in—let me see—yes, two years before the war. I had an inquiry from Tiffany’s, and I sent them out to America. They were bought by a Mr Knox Macintyre. Then three years afterwards—yes, it was in the first year of the war—Mr Macintyre wrote to me to say that the pearls had disappeared over here in England at the time of his wife’s death. There were other jewels too. He asked my advice as to what steps he should take, and he offered a reward. Well, the usual things were done, but nothing came to light. Then, twenty years afterwards, I am told that you are coming over to look for the pearls. I must congratulate you.”
Miles went over to Flossie.
“Look here, Flossie,” he said, “there really isn’t anything for you to worry about, I think we shall have to go and see your aunt and find out what she can tell us about all this.” He turned to Lila. “If you can spare her.”
They went off together in a taxi, Flossie pale and silent, Miles wondering whether his mission had come to an end. He liked Flossie enormously, but what would old Boss Macintyre think about her for an heiress? And what about Ernie? And what about Flossie herself? It looked as if a good many apple-carts were likely to be upset.
Mrs Palmer received them with a severe calm of manner. Even when Flossie said, “Ooh, Aunt!” and rushed into the story of the beads that were pearls—“And Mrs Gilmore said as how they were, and I didn’t credit her, but she fetched a gentleman that’s got a jeweller’s shop in Bond Street and he says so too”—even then Mrs Palmer’s composure was unshaken. She opened the parlour door, checked Flossie’s outpourings by bidding her put a match to the fire, and having advanced the gent’s easy chair six inches for Miles, she took an upright seat upon the lady’s ditto and said in a resolute voice,
“I’m glad to see you, Mr Clayton. It’s not three hours since I posted a letter asking you to come, but you won’t have got it yet. I’ve got something to say to you, and to Flossie too. And now what’s all this about her beads?”
Flossie turned round from the fire with the spent match in her hand.
“He says they’re not beads at all—he says they’re pearls. Ooh, Aunt! He says they’re Mrs Macintyre’s pearls! But they was my mother’s beads—Aunt, you know they was!”
“Were,” said Mrs Palmer with decision. “And I don’t know how often I’ve got to tell you not to talk so careless—a grown girl like you!”
“Mrs Palmer,” said Miles—“will you tell us anything you can about the beads?”
She did not answer for a moment. Sitting there in her black afternoon dress with her high colour and stern eyes, and her neatly brushed grey hair, she seemed the very embodiment of respectability. Her brows frowned a little and her lips were pressed together. Then she said,
“I’ve got things to tell you, Mr Clayton, but not about the beads. And you’ve got to hear them too, Flossie, so you’d better take a chair and sit down. As for the beads, they’re neither here nor there so far as I know. Flo’s sister, that was Ag Smith in those days, found them in the back of a drawer when she was clearing out her house. They’d got caught up between the drawer and the back, and the string was broken. Flo took a fancy to them, and she brought them along and strung them, and if they were pearls, there was no thought of it in her nor in anyone else so far as I can say. Just old beads was all we thought, but Flo fancied them.”
Miles drew a breath of relief. He had no doubt at all that Mrs Palmer was telling the truth. Chance had saved Mrs Macintyre’s pearls from the woman who had taken the baby and the other jewels. He knew the type of cheap drawer which does not quite meet the back of the chest. He said,
“Mrs Palmer, the beads are Mrs Macintyre’s black pearls. They have been identified
by Mr Montague who sold them to the American jeweller from whom Mr Macintyre bought them.”
Mrs Palmer took this with unbroken composure. She said,
“That’s neither here nor there, Mr Clayton. You’d better listen to what I’ve got to tell you.”
Flossie had seated herself on a small upright chair beside the centre table. She stared at whoever was speaking, her face brightly flushed and her eyes wary. How did she come out of this, and what was it all about? She didn’t mind about the beads, not anything to speak of, but what made Aunt look at her like that? She didn’t like it. It wasn’t natural.
And then Miles said, “Please go on,” and Mrs Palmer began to speak.
“You’ll think I ought to have told you yesterday, and I could say I wanted time to think it over, but that wouldn’t be true. I’m going to tell you the truth. I wasn’t going to, but I had a dream last night that I took for a sign, and I’m not going to fly in the face of it. Flossie, my girl, you’ve got to hear something you won’t like, but there isn’t any call for you to be upset about it neither. If Flo Palmer wasn’t your mother, she loved you just the same as if she was, and no one’s ever felt any different to you than if you’d been Palmer born as well as Palmer bred.”
Flossie gave a startled cry and dropped on her knees beside Mrs Palmer’s chair.
“Aunt!”
“Now, Flossie, there’s no need to take on, nor to forget your manners in front of Mr Clayton. Get up and sit properly in your chair. An adopted child’s just as good as a real one as far as I can see, provided it’s cared for the same.” Her tone was dry and bracing.
Flossie went back to her chair. She felt as if an earthquake had shaken all the accustomed foundations of her life. If she wasn’t Flossie Palmer, who was she? It was just as if she wasn’t anyone at all. Out of the confusion of her thought Ernie loomed up like a rock. Ernie wouldn’t care who she was—Ernie … Then Miles’ voice saying,
“Well, Mrs Palmer?”
Aunt went on speaking.
“What I told you yesterday was all of it quite true, Mr Clayton. I told you just exactly what poor Flo told me at the time, neither more nor less. Flo lost her husband and her child in July 1915 like I told you, and we were afraid she was going off her head. Then one day she came in to see me, and she told me she’d adopted a child. She said she’d got to have something. Well, I asked her where she’d got the child. She said from a Mrs Moore. Then she pulled herself together and asked me not to repeat the name, which she needn’t have done, seeing I’m not given to talking. Well, there it was—the child was a little girl about a year old, and Flo gave her her own name. That was all I knew about it for the best part of five years. And then when Flo was dying she told me some more.”
Mrs Palmer paused. It went very much against the grain to speak, but she’d got to speak. Flossie had slewed her chair round. She had her arms resting on the back of it, and she was staring at her very bright and hard as if she was trying not to cry.
Miles said, “Won’t you please go on? What did Flo tell you?”
“I was sitting up with her,” said Mrs Palmer in her measured voice, “and she called to me and said, ‘I want to tell you about Flossie. Someone ought to know.’ I said, ‘I’ll look after Flossie—don’t you fret.’ But that wasn’t what she wanted. She asked me if I remembered her sister Ag having a lodger that died when her baby was born, just before the war. And I did remember something about it, but not much. Flo was in Hampstead staying with her sister when it happened. Her husband was a sailor and he was at sea, and she was expecting a child, but she didn’t know it then. Well, it seems that she took such a fancy to this Mrs Macintyre’s baby that she couldn’t rest for thinking about it—it takes young women that way sometimes. But when the sister came and fetched the baby away and no address left nor anything, Flo said she didn’t feel to be able to bear it, and when the cab drove away she jumped on her bicycle and went down to the station after it. She said she felt as if it was her own child being taken away and she’d got to know where they took it. Well, they went to London, and Flo went too. She put her bicycle in the cloakroom and got into the last carriage of the train. When they got to London they took the Underground out to Ealing, and so did Flo. She found out where they went, and she waited and saw them come away without the baby. She went home with the address, but she didn’t tell her sister nor anyone.”
“What was the address?”
“Mrs Moore, The Laurels, Kempton Road,” said Mrs Palmer. “Flo used to go once a week and watch to see if she could see the baby. She got into talk with the tradespeople, and she found out Mrs Moore was a widow that took in children. There were two or three of them there, all babies. And then she heard Mrs Moore’s maid was leaving—she only kept the one—and she had the crazy idea that she would offer for the place, but just about then she found she was going to have a child herself—and if she hadn’t been in such a queer state of mind she’d have known it before. Well, her sister Ag Smith was breaking up her house and leaving Hampstead, and she’d a maid called Ada Mills that Flo was friendly with. What does she do but get this Ada to go after Mrs Moore’s place so that she could keep an eye on the baby for her. Well, it seems Ada took the place, and her and Flo used to meet and she’d tell her how the baby was getting along, and sometimes Flo would get a sight of it and sometimes she wouldn’t. But when Flo had her own baby she stopped going. It was just a craze, and it went off like they do. And then she told me that when her husband went and the baby too, her craze for the Macintyre baby came back stronger than ever. She went down and she saw Ada, but she didn’t see the baby. And she went again, and this time she saw Mrs Moore. And Mrs Moore told Flo she’d got the child left on her hands and no money being paid for it, and she as good as asked her would she take it away, because she couldn’t afford to go on keeping it with nothing coming in. So Flo took the baby, and I shall always say it saved her reason. And nothing for you to cry about, Flossie, that I can see, for if she wasn’t your mother by her flesh and blood, that’s not everything, and she loved you a sight more than a lot of flesh-and-blood mothers love their children.”
There was a silence, broken only by Flossie’s sobs.
“Oh, my hat!” said Miles to himself. “That’s torn it!”
He hadn’t the very slightest doubt that he had arrived at the end of his search. Nobody could have listened to Mrs Palmer without being sure that her statements were statements of sober fact. Flo Palmer had adopted the Macintyre baby. Flossie was Flossie Macintyre. He wondered what old Boss Macintyre would think about it all.
Mrs Palmer had risen from her chair and was dealing firmly with Flossie’s tears.
“Here’s a clean handkerchief. Dry your eyes and take a hold of yourself or you’ll be having hysterics, which is a thing I don’t allow, and don’t you forget it. And then up you go and wash your face. There’s nothing to cry for that I can see. I’ll put on the kettle for a cup of tea, and while it’s hotting you can run around to the Hodges and see Ivy for five minutes. She came out of hospital last night, and the way Mrs Hodge goes on about her looks, and her appetite, and what a lot she’s changed is enough to send the poor girl melancholy. You go round and see her, and I’ll have a word with Mr Clayton when I’ve put the kettle on.”
It was Ivy’s name which arrested Flossie’s tears. She sniffed, gulped, and ran out of the room. Mrs Palmer followed her, and presently returned with a purposeful air. As she seated herself, the door banged and Flossie ran past the window.
“Now Mr Clayton,” said Mrs Palmer—“you’ve found what you were looking for. What I want to know while Flossie’s out of the way is just what it’s going to mean for her.”
“And that’s just what I can’t tell you,” said Miles. “Mr Macintyre sent me over here to find his niece, and it looks as if I’d found her. What happens after that depends on him. I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. As things stand, as far as the Macintyre side of the family is concerned, Flossie gets a name, and her m
other’s pearls—at least I should think she gets the pearls—but she doesn’t get anything else. Her father, Mr Knox Macintyre, left everything to his brother, and his brother can do anything he likes with it. He can play the markets, throw it into the sea, give it away in charity, or leave it to anyone he fancies.”
Mrs Palmer fixed him with her steel-grey eyes.
“You said, ‘as far as the Macintyre family is concerned.’ I’d like to know just what you meant by that.”
“I meant what I said.”
“I think you must have meant something more than you said, Mr Clayton.”
Miles laughed. After all there was no secret about it. Old Miss Basing’s will had been in the papers. They had all had headlines like “Is the Macintyre Baby Alive?” and “Where Is Miss Macintyre?”
He said, “Well, I did. You must understand that I’m only acting for Mr Macintyre. But as a matter of fact an aunt of Mrs Macintyre’s left a lot of money to her or to her children if she had any.”
Mrs Palmer continued to look at him.
“It’s getting on for twenty years since Mrs Macintyre died.”.
Miles nodded.
“This old Mrs Basing only died a few months ago. She made a will in Mrs Macintyre’s favour at the time of Mrs Macintyre’s marriage twenty-two years ago, and about a year later she went out of her mind. She was a certified lunatic until her death, so nothing could be done about getting her to make a new will after Mrs Macintyre died and the baby disappeared.”
“I see,” said Mrs Palmer. “And all that would come to Flossie?”
“If she’s Miss Macintyre.”
“Is it a lot of money?” said Mrs Palmer very composedly.
“Yes, it’s a lot of money,” said Miles.
“And the most of it’s vanity and vexation of spirit,” said Mrs Palmer.
Miles grinned suddenly. He couldn’t help it.
“Nobody worries very much about that,” he said.
Mrs Palmer’s glance reproved his levity.
“You can speak for yourself, Mr Clayton. Money’s not always a blessing. There was my own sister that was married to a man with a nice little cycle business, and he came in for five thousand pounds from an aunt that no one would have thought had a penny to leave to anyone. And what was the fruits of it? First thing, he bought a motor-car and went riding all over the country lunching at public houses and getting a taste for the drink. And the next thing, he took up with going to horse-racing and playing cards—and worse than that—and all my poor sister could do was to keep the business going as well as she could. And in the end he ran off with another woman and left her with four children to bring up, and I’m thankful to say they all turned out steady. But that’s all that five thousand pounds did for my brother-in-law—led him into drink and riotous living that he hadn’t got neither time nor thought for when he had to work. And if I hadn’t had what I took to be a sign, I’d have held my tongue about Flossie. If you’ll excuse me, Mr Clayton, I’ll go and have a look at that kettle.”
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