Peter looked up quickly.
“Off?” he said.
“Yes. It’s partly because I’m bored, but partly because of Henders. I shouldn’t really enjoy standing my trial in New York, where Henders could get out a warrant against me if he chose. And I’ve a hankering to go back to China. I’ve sold Sunnings, and I’m off.”
“Soon?” said Peter.
“Today, or tomorrow, or the next day,” said Coverdale with a wave of the hand.
Peter was silent for a moment, then he leaned forward and said:
“What about Sylvia, sir?”
Coverdale’s look became intent.
“You have a faculty for getting right there,” he said. “It’s quite a good faculty in its way. My own habit of mind is rather discursive, I’m afraid; but I was about to put that very question to you. Shall we consider it put?”
Peter got up. He looked very large.
“I don’t quite know what you mean by that,” he said.
Coverdale smiled his charming smile.
“It was a little crude, eh? Let me put it into a rather more civilized shape. You’re pretty good friends with Sylvia, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Peter. Then, after a pause, “But why did you think so?”
Coverdale laughed.
“Oh, my dear Waring, you don’t do me justice, you really don’t. Sylvia gives you the Jewel, and you ask me my reason for supposing that you are friends.”
“She was frightened,” said Peter.
Coverdale broke in upon his rather measured speech.
“Yes, she was frightened, and therefore acted on instinct. Without thinking she turned to you, gave you the Jewel. The question is, what do you mean by being friends? Are you fond of her?”
“Yes, I’m very fond of Sylvia,” said Peter. “And I’m very sorry for her, too. She’s most frightfully unhappy; and that brute Henders—”
Coverdale regarded him with a slightly whimsical expression.
“Yes, yes, just so,” he said. “Well, that being the case, I have something more to say. It’s about the Jewel. If I keep it, Henders will rake the East for me until he finds me; and, as I desire a little peaceful seclusion for study, I do not propose to take the Jewel to China. On the other hand, I certainly do not propose to let Henders have it. There remains—yourself. Quite seriously, I have been thinking of making you a present of the Jewel with my blessing, and—you say you’re fond of Sylvia and frightfully sorry for her …” He broke off, with that easy gesture of the hand. “In point of fact, my dear Waring, I am suggesting that the Jewel might be Sylvia’s dowry. I might almost be a mid-Victorian father asking your intentions, and before you answer you may just as well have a look at what you’re being offered.”
He unbuckled his wrist watch as he spoke, opened the back, and shook the Annam Jewel out upon the table. It lay just under the lamp and burned there like a flame. Coverdale touched it with his finger, and said, speaking only just above his breath:
“Ten years ago I couldn’t have left it to you or to anyone else. I never wanted to sell it, you know. I believe I’d rather have starved. I wanted to keep it, to know that I had it—the rarest thing in the world, the only one. I don’t really know that I can leave it now.” His voice went away to a whisper.
Peter found himself speaking in gruff, decided tones.
“It’s most frightfully good of you, sir, but I’m afraid you misunderstood about Sylvia and myself. We’re just friends, and I’d be frightfully glad to be of any use to her, or to look after her, or anything of that sort, but—”
“No wedding bells?” said Coverdale. He touched the Jewel again. “Not even for this?”
Peter frowned and squared his shoulders.
“Of course you don’t mean that seriously,” he said. “I’m afraid I didn’t make myself clear just now. Sylvia and I are great friends, and I hope we always shall be. I’m quite sure she has never thought of me as anything but a friend. She knows very well that I think no end of her, and all that; but I’ve always been more or less engaged to somebody else.”
“Well, well,” said Coverdale regretfully. “You’ve always been engaged, have you? That’s very persevering of you.”
He put the Annam Jewel back in the empty watch case, and strapped the watch upon his wrist.
The telephone bell rang sharply from the far corner of the room.
CHAPTER XXIV
Coverdale was across the room in a minute. He stood with his back to Peter, listening. Once he said, “You’re sure?” and a little later, “All right, I’ll make a push for it.” He rang off, and came back with a queer look on his face; it suggested exhilaration, sarcasm, excitement—just a shade of each.
“Well, Waring,” he said, “I suppose you’re sure about that answer of yours? You won’t have time to reconsider it, because I’m off. Now’s your chance, or never. The Annam Jewel, going—going—gone.” He tapped the face of his watch as he spoke.
“Well, it isn’t everyone who can say they’ve had such a chance and refused it. Anyhow, I’ve just had word to hurry up. A friend’s giving me a lift on his yacht, and he thinks we’d better hurry; he says Henders is moving. I’ve been ready for a day or two, so it makes no difference to me. I just take my little two-seater and disappear. You must make yourself at home and accept my apologies. I really should have liked to have had a little more talk with you; but there it is.”
“You’re going now?” said Peter. “Now—at once?”
“I expect to be clear in fifteen minutes or so. I’m not anxious to meet Henders. To tell you the honest truth, Waring, I’m afraid I might lose my temper.”
He smiled, and began to walk towards the door. With his hand upon it, he turned.
“Oh, by the way, there’s just one thing. I told you Henders could get me extradited on an old warrant. I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I’d like to make a statement. I went to the States to find a man, and I found him, but I didn’t lay a finger on him. I dare say you can guess who he was. He was killed in suspicious circumstances, but I didn’t kill him. I cleared out because circumstances made the case look pretty black for me; and what I couldn’t face then and won’t face now is having all my private affairs made public and served up in the gutter press. That’s why I’m running away from Henders. Well, so long.”
He nodded to Peter, smiled again with that sudden charm, and went quickly out of the room.
Peter was left alone with his mind in a very bewildered condition. That Coverdale was gone, really gone, seemed difficult to believe; and yet, as the minutes passed, he began to believe it. He looked at his watch. It was something short of ten o’clock. He wondered if Coverdale had left the house. He picked up his father’s notebook, crammed it into a pocket, and on the impulse went to the glass doors which opened upon the terrace, undid the bolts, and went out.
It was a May night, soft, windless, moonless, and dead dark. He went to the edge of the terrace, listened, and through the silence caught the hum of a car. The drive lay before him, winding to the left. A car coming from the garage would pass him here. He waited, but the hum died away in the opposite direction. Peter walked to the end of the terrace, and listened again. There was nothing to hear but the faint, indefinite sounds of the night. The strangeness of the whole thing came upon him strongly. Coverdale’s story; Coverdale’s personality; Coverdale’s flight; Sylvia and the Jewel—these impressions ran into one another, mixed, blended, fused, and again dissolved even as the colours met, and fused, and dissolved in the Jewel.
Peter felt a desire to get away from the house, from all these trees, into an open place where he could walk on for miles unhindered. Whenever he was disturbed in mind he had this urgent need to walk, to get away from things, to go fast and far. He turned down the drive, and found it as black as pitch. It irked him to have to grope, to find his feet on grass, or to plunge into bushy undergrowth.
He had just extracted himself from a holly thicket when a sound came to him. He could
not have told what sort of sound it was, or from what direction it came, so misleading was the darkness. He took a vigorous stride forward and tripped over a wire-rope which had been stretched across the drive knee-high. He exclaimed, tried too late to jump it, and came down with a crash. In an instant there fell upon him the enveloping folds of a heavy rug. There was a knee in the small of his back. He shouted, and got his head up; and then the rug was in his mouth, hairy and horrible, and his face was being pressed down into its folds until he could hardly breathe. He tried to roll over, to kick, but there was a weight on his legs—a weight and the pressure of a rope. The blighters were roping him up! Peter jerked, strained, got an arm free of the rug, and hit out into empty darkness. Then his wrist was caught, his arm wrenched backwards and roped against his body. He tried to shout again, felt himself turned over and dragged across grass and amongst bushes, where one man proceeded to sit upon his head and another upon his knees. Muffled by the rug, there came to Peter’s ears the voice of Virgil P. Hendebakker speaking urbanely.
“Very sorry indeed to incommode you, Mr. Waring, but business is business. Now this little business talk of ours can be quite pleasant and friendly if you’re willing to have it so. I’m considerable of a judge of men, and if you’ll give your word of honour not to call out, I’ll have my men take that rug off your face and sit you up. If you’re willing, just kick with your feet.”
Peter kicked out at once. He was boiling with fury, and the rug tasted perfectly filthy—long, stringy hairs on it, and a flavour like goat and tobacco. The men who were sitting on him got up, the rug came off, and Peter felt himself sat up with a tree at his back.
“That’s better,” said Hendebakker. “Now, Waring, you know what I want. Have you got it?”
“No, I haven’t!” said Peter fiercely.
“You’re sure of that? Word of honour, now?”
“I haven’t got it.”
“Well, now, I think I’ll just make sure of that.”
He switched on an electric torch, handed it to the man who stood nearest him, and proceeded to search Peter with scientific thoroughness. When he had finished he said:
“Well, I’ve sized you up all right. That’s a consolation for not getting what I came for. Now, if you’ll give me your word not to get violent, my men shall untie you. I don’t ask you not to go to the police, because I guess you’re intelligent enough to have thought out all the reasons against letting the police in on this job—ladies should be kept out of police courts. Well, now, your word of honour.”
“For what?”
“What I said—no violence. You finish your walk, and all past friends.”
“You’re a damned swine, Henders,” said Peter.
Hendebakker laughed good-temperedly.
“Never lose your temper in business,” he said. “It’s always a handicap. You give your word?”
“Yes,” said Peter.
A minute later he was free. Hendebakker and his men were gone. Peter listened, and heard the faint sound of their going. He judged them to be making for the house. Yes, of course, that’s what they’d do. Well, Coverdale must be well away by now; but just as well to make sure. If he were anywhere about, he must be found and warned.
Peter stretched himself, and began to grope among the bushes. He had rather lost his sense of direction. A few steps brought him to a bank, and as he stood with his shoulder against it, someone laughed in the darkness just above him. There was a rustle in the bushes, and the sound of a man scrambling down the bank a yard away.
“Well, Waring, we meet again,” said Roden Coverdale.
“You nearly met Henders too,” said Peter grimly.
Coverdale laughed again, the gay, irresponsible laugh of a man on holiday.
“Not so nearly as you think. I ran my car out by the back way and down the lane over there. Then I climbed the bank. I had just a fancy to see if Henders was going to pay me a visit—I’d had information, you know. Your little show was rather unexpected. I’m afraid I congratulate myself on not having come down the drive. I’d have taken a hand, only I knew Henders wouldn’t be fool enough to hurt you—it was the Jewel he was after, naturally, and as soon as he found you hadn’t got it he’d be off after me. I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed. Well, I’m really off this time.”
“Yes, I think you’d better hurry,” said Peter. “Henders doesn’t seem to waste much time over his jobs.”
“No, he doesn’t, and that’s a fact. He’s pretty efficient.…” Coverdale paused, and then said in a tone touched with hesitation, “I suppose you won’t take my hand; there’s no blood of your kin on it—I told you the truth there, and—well, I’ve liked you a good deal, and I’m sorry you won’t come into the family.”
A curious emotion rose in Peter. He could see nothing but the darkness and black shapes of trees. He put out his hand and grasped the “thin hand, very strong”, which Henry Waring had described. It lay cool and slim in his grip for a moment, then withdrew, leaving something behind it, something like a round pebble, hard and very cold. Peter made a movement, heard the rustling of the bushes, the snapping of a twig, and a half-laugh that came from the bank above him. A voice in the dark said:
“No conditions this time,” and then: “Good-bye, Peter. Good luck to you.”
He leaned against the bank and called cautiously:
“Coverdale, wait!”
For answer he heard the sound of retreating footsteps. A minute later a car slid past on the other side of the bank. Roden Coverdale was gone.
Peter stood alone in the dark, with the Annam Jewel in his hand. From the first moment he touched it he knew it for what it was. He remembered Coverdale’s assertion that he had recognized the fake Jewel as a fake when he touched it. Peter knew why. The real Jewel felt quite different to anything that he had ever handled before; it was hard, and it was cold; it was very cold.
Peter took out his handkerchief, knotted the Jewel into one corner, and rammed it down into his pocket again. Then he climbed the bank, pushed through some bushes which grew upon it, and dropped into the lane below. His one concern was to get as far from Sunnings as possible. He had no fancy for meeting Henders again that night. It would be frightfully inconvenient if he were to kill Henders—and he felt a good deal like killing him if he got the chance. He swallowed his rage with difficulty every time he thought about the wire rope, and the man who sat on his head, and the taste of that beastly rug.
He crossed the lane, climbed a fence into a field, and made for a footpath which he remembered. It ran across three fields and came out upon a wide common. Peter pounded along, and the anger began to go out of him. Once clear of the trees, he could see his way. There was a soft, even darkness everywhere which gave things a vague look; but one could see where the hedges ran, and where the skyline ended. There were no stars.
Peter walked on and on—five miles from Sunnings—eight—ten—twelve. He was quite out of his reckoning, and simply took the ways that lay before him. He thought of a great many things as he walked; of James Waring, who had wanted money and had cheated, and lied, and gambled away his life for the Jewel; of Henders and his ambitions which the Jewel was to serve; of Coverdale and his passion for the beauty of the Jewel. What had the Jewel done for any of them?
It was two in the morning when he stopped walking and realized how far he had come. He had no idea of where he was, and, had he wished to return to Sunnings, he could certainly not have retraced his steps. He was in evening clothes, and one of his thin Oxford shoes was nearly through in the sole.
He made his way into a wood that ran back from the road, and found a sheltered place where dry leaves rustled underfoot. He lay down, and went instantly to sleep.
CHAPTER XXV
The sun woke him. The slope of the wood was towards the east, and, as he sat up and stretched himself, he saw the sun lying like a round ball of yellow fire on the crest of a rising line of low hills. The sky was faintly, mistily blue. Three little wreaths of clou
d showed like puffs of smoke on the horizon, as the sun rose they began to glow; the sun turned rose-colour, and the rose-colour changed to gold; the blue brightened.
Peter got up, walked about, and began to wonder what he should do next. He barred going back to Sunnings; anyhow, a dozen miles across country in broad daylight and in these clothes couldn’t be thought of. There must be a village somewhere about, and in a village, doubtless, some sort of cap and overcoat could be procured. If he could get his evening clothes covered up, he could go back to town and telephone to Sunnings for his bag.
It was the Annam Jewel that bothered him. Most definitely he did not wish to take it back to town with him. He hadn’t particularly wanted to have it; but, having got it, he meant to keep it out of Hendebakker’s clutches. To take it back to town seemed a good deal like asking for trouble.
He came out into the sun on the edge of the wood, undid the knotted corner of his handkerchief, and set the Jewel in the light. No, he’d be hanged if he’d let Henders have it. It was his.
Then and there the idea came to him. He would send it to Rose Ellen for safe keeping; and Rose Ellen who always understood—could she fail to understand that Peter and the Jewel were both hers for the taking? The idea pleased Peter very much. He couldn’t go to rose Ellen yet. He couldn’t say, “Rose Ellen, I love you most frightfully—I’ve always loved you though I didn’t know it—and I shan’t ever stop loving you again for a moment.” But he could send her the Jewel. You didn’t need to say things to Rose Ellen; she always understood.
He sat there with the Jewel on the palm of his hand, and turned it this way and that while he made a plan. After a little while he got up and went back into the wood. There was plenty of moss between the gnarled roots of the trees. It was fern moss, brilliantly green. He spread out his handkerchief, and piled the moss upon it. Then he picked wood violets and primroses, a little bunch of each, and stuck them in the moss to keep them fresh. He put the Jewel in an old envelope which he folded into a small square. Then he hid the little package under the moss, knotted the handkerchief at the four corners, and took the road. It was about six o’clock, and a very fine morning.
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