MRS3 The Velvet Hand

by Hulbert Footner

  I was on hand at one o'clock next day, in accordance with my instructions. Mme Storey, armed with a letter of introduction to the postmaster, had made a dash over to Newark in a final effort to establish, if possible, who had hired a post-office box in which to receive the communication from Cadnam's. In case she were delayed, I was to receive the guests with suitable apologies. It was not a job I looked forward to. I spent a miserable half hour. I was all dressed up in one of my Paris dresses in order to look as much like a lady as possible.

  I waited in the living room, which had been hastily divested of its summer covers and put in order for the occasion. I wish I could convey something of the especial character of that room. It had nothing of the stately splendour of Mme Storey's office. At home she left off splendour. It was above all inviting in the manner of the best English rooms—the rarest thing to find in the houses of rich Americans. Mme Storey, who could have had anything she wanted, had in her whimsical way chosen to suggest the period of 1850 in the decoration. But with a difference. Taste may make even 1850 beautiful. The carved walnut chairs and sofas were not covered with horsehair but with bits of mellow antique tapestries. There was a thick-piled "Turkey" rug on the floor, and the fireplace was surrounded by gleaming brass appurtenances. There was but the one door, so that you had the feeling you could not be taken by surprise. But as I write the features down the essence still escapes me. You will have to take my word for it that it was the most satisfying room I ever entered.

  Immediately on the stroke of one thirty I heard the distant bell ring, and my heart went down. Mme Storey would not have rung, but knocked with her knuckles on the wicket in a particular way. In a moment or two Grace opened the door, and the little Princesse strutted in with her red-cheeked Hélie at her heels. To-day she was wearing a dress of rich leaf green, one of Craqui's artfully simple effects. I marked the famous three wrinkles across her tummy. On her head was a little hat of leaf-brown with a graceful hedge of aigrette all round, that wonderfully softened her rather hard little face. In step and glance she was still the Princesse. Hélie was his usual highly finished self. He made no secret of his curiosity to behold the place where the beautiful Mme Storey was at home.

  I proceeded with my apologies. "Mme Storey regretted so much that she was called away. She hoped to be back before you came. But she asked me to say that she would not in any case be more than a few minutes late."

  The Princesse merely said, "Oh!" and turned away rather rudely. She had already made up her mind I was a person she could afford to disregard. Not that I cared. Since Paris she had subtly changed in manner. Having achieved her prince I suppose she felt she could afford to give over the awful inscrutability which must have been a strain on her and let the natural woman show. It was not an agreeable disclosure. Poor Hélie! I thought.

  He tried to fill up the hiatus. "We hope we have not discommoded her in coming to-day," he said.

  Poor Hélie! It was only too clear that he was being put through a course of sprouts. His smile was strained, and the redness of his cheeks suggested an underneath haggardness.

  "Not at all," said I. "Mme Storey expressed the greatest pleasure at the prospect."

  "What a comfortable room!" said the Princesse with a half sneer. "So—so homelike! One would hardly have supposed after seeing Mme Storey in Paris..." She finished with a shrug.

  "Oh, she was on parade then," I said.

  The Princesse stared at me. I suddenly perceived that she was a stupid woman, just as Mme Storey had said. A clever stupid woman, if you get me; fiendishly clear in the pursuit of her own ends, and utterly obtuse in regard to everything else. Well, that is the sort that gets on, I suppose.

  "Mme Storey is fortunate in being able to follow her impulses," said the Princesse. "Has she no husband?"

  "She has no husband," said I.

  "She is a widow, then?"

  The cheek of the woman! the little no-account typist from Weddinsboro! I was boiling inside, but I managed to keep a smooth face, I hope. "I don't know," I said bluntly.

  Again the stare.

  "Perhaps Prince Rochechouart can tell us," I said wickedly. "He has known her longer than I have."

  Hélie, thus appealed to, seemed to turn on the tap of his sprightliness. "Ah, Madame Storey is not the sort of person one asks questions of!" he cried. "So beautiful, so exquisite, so clever, one thankfully receives what she chooses to give! All Paris took her to its heart!"

  His wife cast a thoughtful glance on him, which scarcely concealed the deepest malevolence. "We're in New York now," she said drily. ".... She's an American, isn't she?" she went on. "Why does she call herself 'Madame' Storey?"

  "You'll have to ask her," I said blandly.

  "Whom does she know in New York?" was her next insolent question. Hélie bit his lip. After all, he was bred a gentleman.

  "That depends," I said. "If you mean who are her acquaintances, well, everybody who is in the know. But her friends she picks rather carefully. They may be stenographers, charwomen, or the wives of millionaires."

  "Really!" said the Princesse, staring. "There is a New York woman of whom I have heard, a Mrs. Dent Lysaght. Does Mme Storey know her?"

  "Her most intimate friend," I said carelessly. "She lives upstairs."

  "Really!" said the Princesse, looking around. "In a place like this?"

  "Not so nice as this," I said.

  I was so angry at the woman I no longer dreaded the scene that lay ahead. Indeed, at that moment I gloated over the prospect. "Aha, my lady, you're riding for a horrid fall!" I said to myself. I could not have kept up the pretence of politeness much longer. I was relieved to hear the elevator come up and the door into the front room close. Mme Storey had gone in to dress.

  Mme Storey always dresses instinctively to suit the part she expects to play. She came in wearing a straight, clinging black dress without any touch of colour whatever. Her face was paler than its wont, and behind the conventional friendliness a relentlessness showed in her eyes. The whole effect of her was magnificent, and I saw a touch of awe appear in Hélie's regard. But the little Princesse was too besotted by her recent successes to be aware of anything ominous in the air.

  Mme Storey repeated the apologies. "It was a professional matter that called me away," she said. "Something I could not ignore."

  I was struck by her use of this word. Mme Storey does nothing carelessly. Evidently the dénouement was not long to be delayed. My heart began to beat. The Princesse marked that word too, and her eyes darted a little glance of inquiry, but she said nothing.

  Hard on Mme Storey's heels came Grace to announce luncheon. In the general movement I had one second apart with my mistress and eagerly looked my question. She shook her head.

  "Nothing," she murmured.

  From that I knew that her design to make the Princesse convict herself held good. I shivered out of pure nervousness.

  The Princesse walked with Mme Storey, and Hélie took me. We used the stairs, since all four of us could not crowd into the elevator at once without suffering a loss of dignity.

  "I say, she's a crackerjack!" Hélie whispered to me in good American.

  I heartily agreed. I had a sneaking regard for Hélie, scoundrel though he was. I found it in my heart to be sorry for what was saving for him.

  The little dining room was perfect in its unostentatiousness: simple, straight mahogany, a bowl of roses on the table; sunlight streaming under the awnings; golden arbor vitas and oleanders outside. The little Princesse's lip curled in an envy that she tried to make appear disdainful; there was something about it all that was beyond her; that rendered her royal airs a little ridiculous.

  When we seated ourselves at the little round table, Mme Storey had her back to the windows with the Princesse facing her; Hélie was at her right hand and I at her left. The service was under the direction of the invaluable Grace, who can do everything. She had been to Paris with us. I shall have more to say of her on another occasion. She is as pretty as she
is accomplished. Assisting her was one of Mrs. Lysaght's maids, borrowed from upstairs. The food would not have suffered by comparison with Meurice's, and every bit of it had been prepared by Matilda in her tiny kitchen.

  The word used by Mme Storey upstairs stuck in the Princesse's mind like a burr. After we had been seated for some moments, and the conversation had ranged all over, she said: "You said you had been called away by professional matters. Surely you do not mean your own matters. Is it possible that you ...?"

  "Yes, I'm a professional woman," said Mme Storey.

  "How interesting!" said the Princesse with curling lip. "Hélie, why did you not tell me that Mme Storey..."

  "I didn't know it," said Hélie.

  "Is it something you are obliged to conceal, Mme Storey?" asked the Princesse with her little desiccated laugh.

  "No," said Mme Storey. "In Paris I am what I appear to be, an extravagant idler. But in New York I have to work like the devil to collect the wherewithal."

  "What is your profession, if one may ask?"

  "I call myself practical psychologist—specializing in the feminine."

  "Ah! I am afraid I do not quite understand. What do other people call you?"

  "All sorts of names," said Mme Storey, laughing. "I have even been called detective, though I scarcely deserve that."

  This word had the effect of the first big gun of an engagement. One might suppose that it would strike terror to the little woman's breast. I had scarcely the heart to look at her. But I need not have concerned myself. The spoon that was on its way to her mouth completed the journey without spilling a drop. She broke a piece of bread with steady fingers.

  "Fancy!" she said with her insulting intonation.

  Oh, a marvellous woman!

  Hélie had opened his blue eyes to the widest possible. "A detectif!" he murmured. "It is impossible!"

  "Oh, I lay no claim to that," said Mme Storey. "But psychological problems of all kinds interest me. It is a curious thing that you may have noticed: as the study of psychology is extended we seem to know less and less about each other. And a professor of psychology is the blindest of all. I suppose that is because his maxims are of no avail in particular instances. Intuition is everything, or nearly everything."

  "Mon Dieu! I'm glad I didn't know it in Paris!" said Hélie. "The way I have chattered to you!"

  "The people who talk the most are not necessarily the easiest to read," said Mme Storey, smiling.

  "You console me," said Hélie. "Do you solve crimes?" he asked, slightly awestruck.

  "Sometimes."

  "Fancy!" said the Princesse, staring.

  "But I think it is a fine thing!" said Hélie with spirit. "There's no such thing as infra dig any more. That's one encumbrance we got rid of in the war, thank God! One is lucky to have an exciting job these dull days. One doesn't need to apologize for it."

  Mme Storey smiled broadly. She was not thinking of apologizing.

  The Princesse was filled with a cold fury against Hélie. One was forced to the conclusion that she was not pretending; she was really not frightened at all. She had got so completely within the skin of her part that it did not occur to her a detective could threaten La Princesse de Rochechouart.

  "Tell us about a crime," begged Hélie. "I adore crime!"

  Mme Storey expressed a decent reluctance. "I don't want to monopolize the conversation."

  "Please!" said Hélie. "We have no interesting conversation."

  The Princesse looked down her nose.

  "Well, I have a strange case on hand," said Mme Storey. "The strangest, in fact, that ever I had."

  "Good!" cried Hélie.

  "But it will take a long time to tell. If I bore you, you must interrupt me."

  "But if you are a psychologist surely you will know without our speaking of it," said the Princesse with a polite and sleety smile.

  "I specialize in feminine psychology," said Mme Storey, "because women are so much more interesting to study than men."

  "Oh, I say!" objected Hélie. "I might say that."

  "Not intrinsically more interesting," she explained, "but greater realists. Men are conventionalized; much more likely to act by the book. This case concerns a woman."

  "Better and better!" cried Hélie.

  "Instead of propounding the problem to you and then proceeding to solve it, I think it will be more dramatic if I relate the whole story from the beginning as I have pieced it together.... But I am holding up everything! Let me finish my soup."

  There was some general conversation while the plates were changed. I did not take part in it. I was wretchedly nervous. I do not enjoy suspense. "If they would only hurry and get over with it!" I thought.

  When the next course was before us, Mme Storey resumed: "Let us call her Clara for purposes of identification. We find her first as a child in a country village, a backward sort of little place. Her parents lived in the most abject poverty; the father was a drunkard, the mother a hopeless invalid. Poverty, of course, is doubly hard to bear in a village where everybody knows you. The child was an object of pity to the crude, kindly village women, but they complained they could do nothing for her, she was so 'techy.' One can imagine the fierce pride that consumed the little breast. Remember that it is rather a great soul that I am describing to you, which received a fatal twist thus early. She was a sickly little thing and not well-favoured. She would have nothing to do with the other children nor they with her. She revenged herself on them by being easily first in school."

  The Princesse must know now, I thought, and I stole a glance at her through my lashes. Her face showed no change; she was eating calmly. Just the same, she knew! Her indifference to the story was too perfect. She said in her clear, precise accents:

  "May one ask the name of this delicious mixture we are eating?"

  "Coquille St. Jacques," answered Mme Storey pleasantly. "I got the recipe from Marguéry. Matilda does it rather well, doesn't she? Though one misses the pink scallops' roe one finds in it in Paris. One must suppose that our scallops are celibate."

  "She was easily first in school..." Hélie prompted impatiently.

  "As soon as she was old enough," Mme Storey resumed, "Clara left home and came to New York to find work. How she ever got the money together to buy her ticket, not to speak of sufficient clothes, I cannot tell you. It is a character of invincible determination I am showing you. None of the smaller cities nearer home were good enough for her; it had to be New York. Nor can I tell you what experiences she had upon reaching there: difficult enough, no doubt. She next turns up as the personal stenographer to a very rich man. That would be the sort of thing she would set her heart on. As soon as she felt she had obtained a toehold in New York, she went back to her village to rescue her mother from that appalling poverty. So she was not all bad, you see."

  "How about the father?" asked Hélie.

  "Oh, I expect mother and daughter were both pretty well fed up with him," said Mme Storey drily.

  Mme Storey did not appear to be watching the Princesse while she told her tale. As for me, I could not bear to watch her. I could only steal a glance now and then. She had drawn the mask of inscrutability over her face; the slight, insolent smile had become fixed there. Mme Storey's light words about her father caused her more nearly to betray herself than anything else. A flicker of emotion rippled the mask then.

  "This is very interesting!" cried Hélie, with a school-boy eagerness. "Isn't it, Marguerite?"

  "Fascinating!" she drawled.

  "Life in a cheap flat taking care of an invalid on meagre wages could have been scarcely less cramped than the village," Mme Storey went on. "It must have been her dreams that kept her going. She had set her heart on becoming a queen of fashion."

  "But you told us she was sickly, ill-favoured," objected Hélie.

  "Quite so. That's what makes it so remarkable a case."

  "In whom did she confide her dream?"

  "Confide! The woman I am picturing never confided
in any soul alive. She played a lone hand!"

  "Then, pardon me, how do you know of what she was dreaming?"

  "Well, for one thing I secured her library card, which gave me a list of the books she had read. Court memoirs; novels of the highest society. Her taste in reading was good. Henry James was her favourite novelist."

  "Marvellous!" cried Hélie.

  "No, obvious," said Mme Storey.

  "But she did not realize her dream, of course."

  "Ah, you are anticipating!"

  "Forgive me. Please go on."

  "Her first care was to make herself absolutely indispensable to her employer," said Mme Storey. "Just at what point she began to plot, I can't tell you. She showed a more than human patience. It must early have occurred to her that it was only through her employer she could hope to obtain the great sum of money she had set her heart on. No doubt she figured he was so rich he could spare what she needed without missing it. But seven years passed before she took the first steps. Within that time she had taught herself to imitate her employer's signature...."

  "Oh, simple forgery," said Hélie, a little disappointed.

  "Forgery, but not at all simple," said Mme Storey, smiling. "In the first place, the forgery was good enough to puzzle the greatest expert in the country. I doubt if we could convict her on the forged signatures alone. Fortunately, there is plenty of collateral evidence. Little by little she evolved the details of the most ingenious swindle I have ever come upon. Masterly in its completeness!"

  "Do give us the details!" begged Hélie.

  "All these years, remember, she was studying her employer. He was a man of rich personality; very downright in his likes and dislikes; full of quirks and oddities of character—all of which she traded upon. He was not a philanthropist in the ordinary sense: he left that to his wife; but he had a notion that he owed it to the community which had made him rich, to use his riches as far as he could in developing and marketing new ideas. To a new proposition he always lent a willing ear.