Gloria, at his side, was a ravishing vision in a gleaming white formal that transformed her slender body into a flowing picture of perfection. Suspended from her slender throat was a magnificent diamond.
But while she smiled and chatted readily with the stream of guests that passed, there was sadness in the haunting depths of her eyes.
Larry noticed all this from the top of the stairs.
He was standing there in the semidarkness trying to work up enough courage to go down and face the crowd and Gloria and the colonel. Particularly the colonel.
The puppets were still missing; Buggy Rafferty had not yet disclosed what his plans were for the evening; and the colonel would most likely shoot on sight. But Larry had almost reached the saturation point as far as worry was concerned. He had been through too much. With a fatalistic shrug he decided to let the future take care of itself.
He descended the stairs slowly.
Gloria looked up at him and for an instant there was a strange light in her eyes. Then she composed her features in a polite mask and smiled coldly.
“Nice of you to come down,” she murmured. “The entertainment is scheduled to start at nine o’clock, you know.”
“I can hardly wait,” Larry said drily.
The colonel turned to him with a smile and extended his hand.
“Nice to have you with us tonight, sir. Please make yourself at home and feel free—”
He recognized Larry then and his hand fell to his side. The smile hardened on his craggy face. His mustaches bristled alarmingly.
“Will you be good enough to remove yourself from my presence,” he snarled. “I refuse to be responsible for the consequences if I am forced to endure more of your company, sir!”
LARRY regarded the colonel for an instant with level eyes. He was getting thoroughly fed up with this pompous old goat’s domineering bluster.
“I suggest, sir,” he said courteously, “that you take a running jump in the lake for yourself.”
He turned and strode away, deriving some consolation from the startled, incredulous expression that had registered on the colonel’s seamy features.
He avoided the groups of drinking guests in the drawing room and went on through the library into the sun room. There he stared gloomily at his puppet booth. Tim was seated on the stage looking rather blue, but of Pat and Mike there was no sign.
A door opened and Buggy Rafferty appeared.
“Hiya, chum?” he said affably.
Larry looked at the man and winced. He was wearing a camel’s, hair sport coat and green slacks. A yellow tie stood out gruesomely against a red shirt. He was smoking his inevitable cigar and packing his inevitable pistol.
“Nice to see you again,” Larry said.
“Tonight’s the night,” Buggy said, cheerily. “I got everything set. Did you notice that diamond pendant the filly is wearing?”
“You mean Miss Manners, I presume?”
“Don’t get hoity-toity. It ain’t becoming. That rock is what I got my eyes on. And everything is set perfectly.”
“Fine,” Larry said despairingly. He left the sunroom moodily.
He wandered into the drawingroom and observed the antics of the guests with a gloomy eye. In a corner of the room, Dereck, sleek and immaculate in tails, was spellbinding an awed group of young girls with tales of his exploits on far-flung and perilous battle fronts.
They were listening in thrilled fascination.
Larry sauntered past and Dereck’s smooth effective words reached him.
“. . . the Messerschmidt, I dare say, thought I was a goner. And at that particular moment I would have agreed with him. But . . .”
Larry drifted on and Dereck’s voice faded out. He felt no curiosity as to how Dereck had escaped the Nazi trap. The fact that he obviously had, destroyed his interest in the story.
He was standing in a deserted corner of the room, wondering how his personal and professional problems would eventually work out when he saw Gloria walk to the center of the room and raise her hands for attention.
Her announcement was brief.
“We have an interesting surprise for you,” she smiled at the guests. “From Broadway, we have been fortunate enough to secure the services of a very talented young man and he is now going to amuse us as only he can.”
She waved her hand toward the sunroom and two servants appeared shoving the puppet booth into the center of the room. With a graceful gesture she pointed to Larry, who was standing miserably against the wall.
“I think the young man deserves a hand,” she said brightly. “After all, he’s had nothing to do all day but walk around in the rain and that can’t have been very interesting.”
LARRY moved out from the wall and bowed as the guests clapped politely. Walking past Gloria he murmured, “Keep your punches legal, chum.”
He proceeded to the puppet booth like a man marching the Last Mile. There was no way in the world he could put on an act with only Tim and he had no idea of where the other puppets, Pat and Mike were. They hadn’t put in an appearance since escaping from the drawer in his room that morning.
Delaying the inevitable moment when he must confess to these people that there wasn’t going to be any performance, he inspected carefully the strings that led to Tim. They were all in order. He fiddled around a little longer and he was conscious of a murmur of faint impatience from the guests.
He felt the back of his neck getting warm.
Dereck’s smooth voice drifted to him. “Our puppeteer seems to be having trouble. Out of puppies, I presume.”
This didn’t help any.
Finally he quit stalling. There was nothing to do but tell them the truth and then get the hell out of here. He turned and faced the roomful of expectant guests.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but—”
He got no farther for at that instant the lights suddenly went out and the room was plunged into darkness. There was a startled scream from a girl and a babble of men’s voices, over which the commanding tones of the colonel rode easily.
“Don’t be alarmed!” he bellowed, in a voice which would have terrified the stoutest heart. “The lights will be on in a moment.”
There was an uneasy rustle of movement in the crowd of guests and excited whispers flitted through the darkness.
Then from the center of the room there was a frightened gasp and a voice cried, “Someone’s stolen my necklace!”
Larry recognized the voice as Gloria’s.
“Somebody turn those damn lights on,” he shouted. He moved as quickly as he could through the darkness toward the sound of her voice. Someone collided with him, but before Larry could recognize the dim shape, the fellow had slipped past and was gone.
Then the lights went on again, as suddenly as they had gone out, and the roomful of guests stared at one another, blinking in the bright illumination.
LARRY was standing directly in front of Gloria and he saw that her hands pressed against her throat and that the diamond pendant was gone. She was staring at him with wide eyes, dark and troubled against the whiteness of her face.
The colonel charged into the scene at that moment and with him was a dapper little man in a tuxedo.
“Are you all right, child?” the colonel demanded.
“Y-yes, I’m all right,” Gloria said slowly. She was still staring at Larry. “The moment the lights went out someone stepped up to me. I felt his hand at my throat for a second—and then my diamond pendant was gone.”
The dapper little man stepped forward. His eyes were sharp and hard.
“I’m representing the Allied Insurance Company, Miss Manners. I was sent here when the company learned that you were intending to wear your diamond tonight.” He looked at her keenly. “Why did you say you felt ‘his’ hand at your throat. Did you recognize the thief as a man?”
Gloria nodded slowly. She turned her eyes away from Larry.
“I know it was a man,” she said.
“Did you recognize
him?” the insurance detective asked.
Gloria shook her head. “No.” She said the one word in a low voice.
Larry happened to glance through the arched doors that led to the hallway and he noticed a glaringly conspicuous figure moving toward the front door.
The conspicuous figure was Buggy Rafferty and he was tiptoeing toward the door as if he were walking on eggs. No one else had seen him.
“Just a minute, Buggy,” Larry said in a loud, clear voice.
Buggy halted in mid-step, his hand on the doorknob.
Larry nudged the insurance detective. “There’s your man,” he said.
Buggy turned slowly and faced the roomful of guests. His red, wrinkled face wore a look of faint surprise.
“Did someone call me?” he asked innocently.
The insurance detective looked uncertainly from Larry to Buggy.
“You’d better come in here,” he said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Buggy came slowly into the room twisting his hat in his hands.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked. His little eyes were wide with innocent surprise. Larry began to feel slightly uneasy.
“Miss Manners’ necklace has been stolen,” the detective said.
“You don’t say so!” Buggy said indignantly. He shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s too bad.”
Larry said, “You can stop acting innocent, Buggy. Hand over the necklace.”
Buggy looked at him as if he hadn’t heard aright.
“What an awful thing to say, Mr. Temple,” he said sadly. “I—”
“Search him!” Larry said. But he was beginning to feel that something was radically wrong. And a few minutes later when the detective had gone through Buggy’s pockets and found nothing—he knew that something was wrong.
The detective looked at Larry with unconcealed irritation.
“You had better be more careful with your accusations,” he said sharply.
DERECK moved into the picture then, shoving Larry slightly as he stepped into the circle surrounding Gloria.
“Our puppeteer must be forgiven,” he said ironically. “The exciting nature of his work keeps him in a rather unbalanced state. I have a suggestion to make that should straighten this mess out without any more delay. No one has left the room since the lights went on. Therefore I propose that we search those present. I, for one, am willing.”
There was a general murmur of assent from the guests.
“A capital idea,” the colonel said. He cleared his throat importantly. “And I insist that I be searched first.”
No one cared to dispute this honor with him, and the detective searched him quickly and deftly. Nothing was found.
“You’re okay,” the detective said.
“I thank you, sir,” the colonel said, with the air of a man who had been exonerated in a dramatic jury trial.
The detective then began searching the others, and the colonel moved along the line with him, ready to pounce on the thief if he should be revealed.
Buggy was standing next to Larry.
“Nice little double-cross, chum,” he said from the corner of his mouth.
“I would rather not discuss the matter,” Larry said. His thoughts were on the missing diamond. If Buggy didn’t have it on his person, he must have hidden it somewhere. But where? He would have to find out before Buggy disappeared with a clean bill of health—and the diamond.
The colonel and the detective would be searching them in a few moments now. They were only two guests away from Buggy and Larry.
Larry was in a hurry to get the thing over with. Impatiently he shoved his hands into his coat pocket. There was a round hard object in his right pocket. His fingers closed around it slowly.
His face began to get hot. There was suddenly a cold vacuum where his stomach should have been. Cautiously he removed his hand from the pocket and peeked at the object nestling in his fingers.
And he almost fainted on the spot.
For the object in his hand was Gloria’s pendant necklace!
How the diamond had gotten there, he couldn’t imagine; but he knew that this was not the time to speculate on such academic questions. The colonel and the detective were searching Buggy now and in an instant they would be going through his pockets.
He had to get rid of the diamond and he didn’t have a second to lose. While he was casting about feverishly in his mind for something more practical than popping the damned thing into his mouth, he felt a tug on his trouser leg.
GLANCING down, he saw the tiny figure of the puppet, Tim, standing next to his shoe peering up at him. Larry shoved him away impatiently. This was no time for irrelevancies. And anything not definitely relating to the speedy disposition of that incriminating diamond was damned irrelevant.
But he reckoned without Tim’s persistence. The tug was repeated, determinedly.
“I want to so something useful,” Tim’s tiny voice floated up to him. “I am tired of being idle. I want something to do.”
An idea born of desperation popped into Larry’s head. The detective was turning to him when, with a fervent prayer, he dropped the diamond pendant to Tim. He couldn’t risk a glance to see what Tim would do with it.
All that was left to him was hope.
He met the detective’s sharp gaze with what blandness he could muster.
The colonel breathed noisily as he regarded Larry.
“Search this man carefully,” he ordered the detective. “He looks like the criminal type to me.”
“Teeth comfortable?” Larry inquired pleasantly of the old man. The remark scored a direct hit. The colonel’s cheeks flushed a violent pink. His fists clenched spasmodically.
“I wish I had you in my company for one day, young man,” he fumed. “I’d teach you the meaning of respect to your elders.”
“A man who expects respect simply because of his age, is headed for the grazing grounds of senility,” Larry said pleasantly. “According to your theory, sir, an Egyptian mummy should be practically idolized.”
The detective completed his search and turned to the colonel.
“Nothing there,” he said.
The colonel controlled his disappointment manfully, but his attitude indicated clearly that if Larry were innocent it was only because someone else had beaten him to the diamond.
“Harrumph!” he growled and moved after the detective.
Larry looked up and saw Gloria watching him. She dropped her eyes quickly but not before he noticed the radiant light of relief that seemed to illuminate her face.
The detective was searching Dereck and Larry turned to watch the procedure. Dereck was smiling pleasantly.
“Look carefully,” he said. “I shouldn’t want you to overlook anything.”
“I won’t,” the detective said, and there was suddenly a grimmer note in his voice. He knelt quickly and fumbled at Dereck’s trouser cuff for an instant and then stood up. The smile was gone from his face.
In his hand he held Gloria’s pendant necklace.
“You weren’t so smart, after all,” he snapped.
There was an incredulous gasp from the assembled guests.
“There’s some mistake!” the colonel roared.
Dereck’s face was as pale as ivory.
“I agree with you, Colonel,” he said smoothly. “There has been a mistake made and our clever detective has made it. He should have drawn his gun.”
A SHORT, ugly revolver appeared magically in his own hand. He snatched the necklace from the detective’s hand, backed away a pace, swinging the gun about to cover the entire room.
“You stupid fools,” he said mockingly, “you fell for my charming line without hesitation, didn’t you?” His eyes were cool and dangerous as he backed toward the archway leading to the hall. “I shouldn’t advise any of you to attempt to follow me. It won’t be healthy.” He smiled ironically. “And you can spare yourself the effort of phoning the police. I took the precaution of cutting the wires bef
ore I turned the lights out.”
Larry listened in dazed disbelief. Dereck had stolen the diamond in the first place, not Buggy. Then he had planted it on him, when the search started, probably intending to recover it somehow. But Tim had deposited the pendant in Dereck’s trouser cuff, thus reversing the situation again.
And now Dereck was about to make his getaway. Larry tensed himself and moved forward instinctively, but Dereck’s gun swung around to cover him.
“Don’t try to be a hero,” Dereck said coldly. “Frankly I would enjoy shooting you.”
Larry stopped in his tracks and Dereck backed toward the hallway.
“Au revoir, my stupid friends,” he smiled.
A figure stepped out from the hall behind Dereck and rubbed his knuckles carefully. This figure was dressed like a rainbow and there was an expression of scientific detachment on his wrinkled face as he measured the distance to a spot just back of Dereck’s ear.
His arm came down in a swift chopping stroke and on the end of that arm there was a clenched fist, as hard as rock and twice as effective.
Dereck’s eyes spun crazily at the moment of impact. The gun slipped from his fingers and he toppled slowly to the floor.
“Neat, eh?” Buggy Rafferty smiled at the guests.
Larry stepped forward quickly and his hand closed over the diamond pendant a split second before Buggy’s. Buggy drew back and straightened up sheepishly.
“Too late again,” he said mournfully.
“You aren’t a crook at heart, I’m afraid,” Larry grinned.
“That hurts,” Buggy said, sighing heavily. “I guess I’ll go now. I was just making my exit when they found the diamond on this lug. I couldn’t let him get away with it.”
“Why not?” Larry asked.
Buggy shrugged. “I don’t know. Professional jealousy, I guess.”
LARRY turned and handed the necklace to the detective from the insurance Company and then he looked for Gloria, but she was nowhere in sight.
Excusing himself, he hurried through the library and into the sun-room. On the veranda that bordered this room he found her. She was leaning against one of the wooden columns, regarding the moon with a rather belligerent expression on her small face.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 159
