by Grant Allen
The man leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “Oh, don’t say that!” he cried, from his heart. “I couldn’t bear to offend you. But I couldn’t bear, either, to let you go away — well — without having ever told you. In that case you might have thought I didn’t care at all for you, and was only flirting with you. But, Persis, I’ve cared a great deal for you — a great, great deal — and had hard work many times to prevent myself from asking you. And I’ll tell you the plain reason why I haven’t asked you. I’m a man about town, not much good, I’m afraid, for anybody or anything; and everybody says I’m on the look-out for an heiress — which happens not to be true; and if I married you, everybody’d say, ‘Ah, there! I told you so!’ Now, I wouldn’t mind that for myself; I’m a man, and I could snap my fingers at them; but I’d mind it for you, Persis, for I’m enough in love with you to be very, very jealous, indeed, for your honour. I couldn’t bear to think people should say, ‘There’s that pretty American girl, Persis Remanet that was, you know; she’s thrown herself away upon that good-for-nothing Irishman, Justin O’Byrne, a regular fortune-hunter, who’s married her for her money.’ So for your sake, Persis, I’d rather not ask you; I’d rather leave you for some better man to marry.”
“But I wouldn’t,” Persis cried aloud. “Oh, Sir Justin, you must believe me. You must remember — —”
At that precise point, Mrs. Harrison put her head out of the carriage window and called out rather loudly —
“Why, Justin, what’s keeping you? The horses’ll catch their deaths of cold; and they were clipped this morning. Come back at once, my dear boy. Besides, you know, les convenances!”
“All right, Nora,” her brother answered; “I won’t be a minute. We can’t get them to answer this precious bell. I believe it don’t ring! But I’ll try again, anyhow.” And half forgetting that his own words weren’t strictly true, for he hadn’t yet tried, he pressed the knob with a vengeance.
“Is that your room with the light burning, Miss Remanet?” he went on, in a fairly loud official voice, as the servant came to answer. “The one with the balcony, I mean? Quite Venetian, isn’t it? Reminds one of Romeo and Juliet. But most convenient for a burglary, too! Such nice low rails! Mind you take good care of the Remanet rubies!”
“I don’t want to take care of them,” Persis answered, wiping her dim eyes hastily with her lace pocket-handkerchief, “if they make you feel as you say, Sir Justin. I don’t mind if they go. Let the burglar take them!”
And even as she spoke, the Maclure footman, immutable, sphinx-like, opened the door for her.
II.
Persis sat long in her own room that night before she began undressing. Her head was full of Sir Justin and those mysterious hints of his. At last, however, she took her rubies off, and her pretty silk bodice. “I don’t care for them at all,” she thought, with a gulp, “if they keep from me the love of the man I’d like to marry.”
It was late before she fell asleep; and when she did, her rest was troubled. She dreamt a great deal; in her dreams, Sir Justin, and dance music, and the rubies, and burglars were incongruously mingled. To make up for it, she slept late next morning; and Lady Maclure let her sleep on, thinking she was probably wearied out with much dancing the previous evening — as though any amount of excitement could ever weary a pretty American! About ten o’clock she woke with a start. A vague feeling oppressed her that somebody had come in during the night and stolen her rubies. She rose hastily and went to her dressing-table to look for them. The case was there all right; she opened it and looked at it. Oh, prophetic soul! the rubies were gone, and the box was empty!
Now, Persis had honestly said the night before the burglar might take her rubies if he chose, and she wouldn’t mind the loss of them. But that was last night, and the rubies hadn’t then as yet been taken. This morning, somehow, things seemed quite different. It would be rough on us all (especially on politicians) if we must always be bound by what we said yesterday. Persis was an American, and no American is insensible to the charms of precious stones; ’tis a savage taste which the European immigrants seem to have inherited obliquely from their Red Indian predecessors. She rushed over to the bell and rang it with feminine violence. Lady Maclure’s maid answered the summons, as usual. She was a clever, demure-looking girl, this maid of Lady Maclure’s; and when Persis cried to her wildly, “Send for the police at once, and tell Sir Everard my jewels are stolen!” she answered, “Yes, miss,” with such sober acquiescence that Persis, who was American, and therefore a bundle of nerves, turned round and stared at her as an incomprehensible mystery. No Mahatma could have been more unmoved. She seemed quite to expect those rubies would be stolen, and to take no more notice of the incident than if Persis had told her she wanted hot water.
Lady Maclure, indeed, greatly prided herself on this cultivated imperturbability of Bertha’s; she regarded it as the fine flower of English domestic service. But Persis was American, and saw things otherwise; to her, the calm repose with which Bertha answered, “Yes, miss; certainly, miss; I’ll go and tell Sir Everard,” seemed nothing short of exasperating.
Bertha went off with the news, closing the door quite softly; and a few minutes later Lady Maclure herself appeared in the Californian’s room, to console her visitor under this severe domestic affliction. She found Persis sitting up in bed, in her pretty French dressing-jacket (pale blue with revers of fawn colour), reading a book of verses. “Why, my dear!” Lady Maclure exclaimed, “then you’ve found them again, I suppose? Bertha told us you’d lost your lovely rubies!”
“So I have, dear Lady Maclure,” Persis answered, wiping her eyes; “they’re gone. They’ve been stolen. I forgot to lock my door when I came home last night, and the window was open; somebody must have come in, this way or that, and taken them. But whenever I’m in trouble, I try a dose of Browning. He’s splendid for the nerves. He’s so consoling, you know; he brings one to anchor.”
She breakfasted in bed; she wouldn’t leave the room, she declared, till the police arrived. After breakfast she rose and put on her dainty Parisian morning wrap — Americans have always such pretty bedroom things for these informal receptions — and sat up in state to await the police officer. Sir Everard himself, much disturbed that such a mishap should have happened in his house, went round in person to fetch the official. While he was gone, Lady Maclure made a thorough search of the room, but couldn’t find a trace of the missing rubies.
“Are you sure you put them in the case, dear?” she asked, for the honour of the household.
And Persis answered: “Quite confident, Lady Maclure; I always put them there the moment I take them off; and when I came to look for them this morning, the case was empty.”
“They were very valuable, I believe?” Lady Maclure said, inquiringly.
“Six thousand pounds was the figure in your money, I guess,” Persis answered, ruefully. “I don’t know if you call that a lot of money in England, but we do in America.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then Persis spoke again —
“Lady Maclure,” she said abruptly, “do you consider that maid of yours a Christian woman?”
Lady Maclure was startled. That was hardly the light in which she was accustomed to regard the lower classes.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said slowly; “that’s a great deal, you know, dear, to assert about anybody, especially one’s maid. But I should think she was honest, quite decidedly honest.”
“Well, that’s the same thing, about, isn’t it?” Persis answered, much relieved. “I’m glad you think that’s so; for I was almost half afraid of her. She’s too quiet for my taste, somehow; so silent, you know, and inscrutable.”
“Oh, my dear,” her hostess cried, “don’t blame her for silence; that’s just what I like about her. It’s exactly what I chose her for. Such a nice, noiseless girl; moves about the room like a cat on tiptoe; knows her proper place, and never dreams of speaking unless she’s spoken to.”
“Well, you may like them that way in Europe,” Persis responded frankly; “but in America, we prefer them a little bit human.”
Twenty minutes later the police officer arrived. He wasn’t in uniform. The inspector, feeling at once the gravity of the case, and recognizing that this was a Big Thing, in which there was glory to be won, and perhaps promotion, sent a detective at once, and advised that if possible nothing should be said to the household on the subject for the present, till the detective had taken a good look round the premises. That was useless, Sir Everard feared, for the lady’s-maid knew; and the lady’s-maid would be sure to go down, all agog with the news, to the servants’ hall immediately. However, they might try; no harm in trying; and the sooner the detective got round to the house, of course, the better.
The detective accompanied him back — a keen-faced, close-shaven, irreproachable-looking man, like a vulgarized copy of Mr. John Morley. He was curt and business-like. His first question was, “Have the servants been told of this?”
Lady Maclure looked inquiringly across at Bertha. She herself had been sitting all the time with the bereaved Persis, to console her (with Browning) under this heavy affliction.
“No, my lady,” Bertha answered, ever calm (invaluable servant, Bertha!), “I didn’t mention it to anybody downstairs on purpose, thinking perhaps it might be decided to search the servants’ boxes.”
The detective pricked up his ears. He was engaged already in glancing casually round the room. He moved about it now, like a conjurer, with quiet steps and slow. “He doesn’t get on one’s nerves,” Persis remarked approvingly, in an undertone to her friend; then she added, aloud: “What’s your name, please, Mr. Officer?”
The detective was lifting a lace handkerchief on the dressing-table at the side. He turned round softly. “Gregory, madam,” he answered, hardly glancing at the girl, and going on with his occupation.
“The same as the powders!” Persis interposed, with a shudder. “I used to take them when I was a child. I never could bear them.”
“We’re useful, as remedies,” the detective replied, with a quiet smile; “but nobody likes us.” And he relapsed contentedly into his work once more, searching round the apartment.
“The first thing we have to do,” he said, with a calm air of superiority, standing now by the window, with one hand in his pocket, “is to satisfy ourselves whether or not there has really, at all, been a robbery. We must look through the room well, and see you haven’t left the rubies lying about loose somewhere. Such things often happen. We’re constantly called in to investigate a case, when it’s only a matter of a lady’s carelessness.”
At that Persis flared up. A daughter of the great republic isn’t accustomed to be doubted like a mere European woman. “I’m quite sure I took them off,” she said, “and put them back in the jewel case. Of that I’m just confident. There isn’t a doubt possible.”
Mr. Gregory redoubled his search in all likely and unlikely places. “I should say that settles the matter,” he answered blandly. “Our experience is that whenever a lady’s perfectly certain, beyond the possibility of doubt, she put a thing away safely, it’s absolutely sure to turn up where she says she didn’t put it.”
Persis answered him never a word. Her manners had not that repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere; so, to prevent an outbreak, she took refuge in Browning.
Mr. Gregory, nothing abashed, searched the room thoroughly, up and down, without the faintest regard to Persis’s feelings; he was a detective, he said, and his business was first of all to unmask crime, irrespective of circumstances. Lady Maclure stood by, meanwhile, with the imperturbable Bertha. Mr. Gregory investigated every hole and cranny, like a man who wishes to let the world see for itself he performs a disagreeable duty with unflinching thoroughness. When he had finished, he turned to Lady Maclure. “And now, if you please,” he said blandly, “we’ll proceed to investigate the servants’ boxes.”
Lady Maclure looked at her maid. “Bertha,” she said, “go downstairs, and see that none of the other servants come up, meanwhile, to their bedrooms.” Lady Maclure was not quite to the manner born, and had never acquired the hateful aristocratic habit of calling women-servants by their surnames only.
But the detective interposed. “No, no,” he said sharply. “This young woman had better stop here with Miss Remanet — strictly under her eye — till I’ve searched the boxes. For if I find nothing there, it may perhaps be my disagreeable duty, by-and-by, to call in a female detective to search her.”
It was Lady Maclure’s turn to flare up now. “Why, this is my own maid,” she said, in a chilly tone, “and I’ve every confidence in her.”
“Very sorry for that, my lady,” Mr. Gregory responded, in a most official voice; “but our experience teaches us that if there’s a person in the case whom nobody ever dreams of suspecting, that person’s the one who has committed the robbery.”
“Why, you’ll be suspecting myself next!” Lady Maclure cried, with some disgust.
“Your ladyship’s just the last person in the world I should think of suspecting,” the detective answered, with a deferential bow — which, after his previous speech, was to say the least of it equivocal.
Persis began to get annoyed. She didn’t half like the look of that girl Bertha, herself; but still, she was there as Lady Maclure’s guest, and she couldn’t expose her hostess to discomfort on her account.
“The girl shall not be searched,” she put in, growing hot. “I don’t care a cent whether I lose the wretched stones or not. Compared to human dignity, what are they worth? Not five minutes’ consideration.”
“They’re worth just seven years,” Mr. Gregory answered, with professional definiteness. “And as to searching, why, that’s out of your hands now. This is a criminal case. I’m here to discharge a public duty.”
“I don’t in the least mind being searched,” Bertha put in obligingly, with an air of indifference. “You can search me if you like — when you’ve got a warrant for it.”
The detective looked up sharply; so also did Persis. This ready acquaintance with the liberty of the subject in criminal cases impressed her unfavourably. “Ah! we’ll see about that,” Mr. Gregory answered, with a cool smile. “Meanwhile, Lady Maclure, I’ll have a look at the boxes.”
III.
The search (strictly illegal) brought out nothing. Mr. Gregory returned to Persis’s bedroom, disconsolate. “You can leave the room,” he said to Bertha; and Bertha glided out. “I’ve set another man outside to keep a constant eye on her,” he added in explanation.
By this time Persis had almost made her mind up as to who was the culprit; but she said nothing overt, for Lady Maclure’s sake, to the detective. As for that immovable official, he began asking questions — some of them, Persis thought, almost bordering on the personal. Where had she been last night? Was she sure she had really worn the rubies? How did she come home? Was she certain she took them off? Did the maid help her undress? Who came back with her in the carriage?
To all these questions, rapidly fired off with cross-examining acuteness, Persis answered in the direct American fashion. She was sure she had the rubies on when she came home to Hampstead, because Sir Justin O’Byrne, who came back with her in his sister’s carriage, had noticed them the last thing, and had told her to take care of them.
At mention of that name the detective smiled meaningly. (A meaning smile is stock-in-trade to a detective.) “Oh, Sir Justin O’Byrne!” he repeated, with quiet self-constraint. “He came back with you in the carriage, then? And did he sit the same side with you?”
Lady Maclure grew indignant (that was Mr. Gregory’s cue). “Really, sir,” she said angrily, “if you’re going to suspect gentlemen in Sir Justin’s position, we shall none of us be safe from you.”
“The law,” Mr. Gregory replied, with an air of profound deference, “is no respecter of persons.”
“But it ought to be of characters,” Lady Maclure cried warmly. “What’s the
good of having a blameless character, I should like to know, if — if — —”
“If it doesn’t allow you to commit a robbery with impunity?” the detective interposed, finishing her sentence his own way. “Well, well, that’s true. That’s per-fectly true — but Sir Justin’s character, you see, can hardly be called blameless.”
“He’s a gentleman,” Persis cried, with flashing eyes, turning round upon the officer; “and he’s quite incapable of such a mean and despicable crime as you dare to suspect him of.”
“Oh, I see,” the officer answered, like one to whom a welcome ray of light breaks suddenly through a great darkness. “Sir Justin’s a friend of yours! Did he come into the porch with you?”
“He did,” Persis answered, flushing crimson; “and if you have the insolence to bring a charge against him — —”
“Calm yourself, madam,” the detective replied coolly. “I do nothing of the sort — at this stage of the proceedings. It’s possible there may have been no robbery in the case at all. We must keep our minds open for the present to every possible alternative. It’s — it’s a delicate matter to hint at; but before we go any further — do you think, perhaps, Sir Justin may have carried the rubies away by mistake, entangled in his clothes? — say, for example, his coat-sleeve?”
It was a loophole of escape; but Persis didn’t jump at it.
“He had never the opportunity,” she answered, with a flash. “And I know quite well they were there on my neck when he left me, for the last thing he said to me was, looking up at this very window: ‘That balcony’s awfully convenient for a burglary. Mind you take good care of the Remanet rubies.’ And I remembered what he’d said when I took them off last night; and that’s what makes me so sure I really had them.”
