The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  I was roused by some one coughing just behind me, and I tried to straighten my face before I turned. It was Flannigan, his double row of brass buttons gleaming in the twilight.

  "Excuse me, miss," he said affably, "but the boy from the hotel has left the dinner on the doorstep and run, the cowardly little divil! What'll I do with it? I went to Mrs. Wilson, but she says it's no concern of hers." Flannigan was evidently bewildered.

  "You'd better keep it warm, Flannigan," I replied. "You needn't wait; I'm coming." But he did not go.

  "If—if you'll excuse me, miss," he said, "don't you think ye'd betther tell them?"

  "Tell them what?"

  "The whole thing—the joke," he said confidentially, coming closer. "It's been great sport, now, hasn't it? But I'm afraid they will get on to it soon, and—some of them might not be agreeable. A pearl necklace is a pearl necklace, miss, and the lady's wild."

  "What do you mean?" I gasped. "You don't think—why, Flannigan—"

  He merely grinned at me and thrust his hand down in his pocket. When he brought it up he had Bella's bracelet on his palm, glittering in the faint light.

  "Where did you get it?" Between relief and the absurdity of the thing, I was almost hysterical. But Flannigan did not give me the bracelet; instead, it struck me his tone was suddenly severe.

  "Now look here, miss," he said; "you've played your trick, and you've had your fun. The Lord knows it's only folks like you would play April fool jokes with a fortune! If you're the sinsible little woman you look to be, you'll put that pearl collar on the coal in the basement tonight, and let me find it."

  "I haven't got the pearl collar," I protested. "I think you are crazy. Where did you get that bracelet?"

  He edged away from me, as if he expected me to snatch it from him and run, but he was still trying in an elephantine way to treat the matter as a joke.

  "I found it in a drawer in the pantry," he said, "among the dirty linen. And if you're as smart as I think you are, I'll find the pearl collar there in the morning—and nothing said, miss."

  So there I was, suspected of being responsible for Anne's pearl collar, as if I had not enough to worry me before. Of course I could have called them all together and told them, and made them explain to Flannigan what I had really meant by my delirious speech in the kitchen. But that would have meant telling the whole ridiculous story to Mr. Harbison, and having him think us all mad, and me a fool.

  In all that overcrowded house there was only one place where I could be miserable with comfort. So I stayed on the roof, and cried a little and then became angry and walked up and down, and clenched my hands and babbled helplessly. The boats on the river were yellow, horizontal streaks through my tears, and an early searchlight sent its shaft like a tangible thing in the darkness, just over my head. Then, finally, I curled down in a corner with my arms on the parapet, and the lights became more and more prismatic and finally formed themselves into a circle that was Bella's bracelet, and that kept whirling around and around on something flat and not over-clean, that was Flannigan's palm.

  Chapter X. ON THE STAIRS

  I was roused by someone walking across the roof, the cracking of tin under feet, and a comfortable and companionable odor of tobacco. I moved a very little, and then I saw that it was a man—the height and erectness told me which man. And just at that instant he saw me.

  "Good Lord!" he ejaculated, and throwing his cigar away he came across quickly. "Why, Mrs. Wilson, what in the world are you doing here? I thought—they said—"

  "That I was sulking again?" I finished disagreeably. "Perhaps I am. In fact, I'm quite sure of it."

  "You are not," he said severely. "You have been asleep in a February night, in the open air, with less clothing on than I wear in the tropics."

  I had got up by this time, refusing his help, and because my feet were numb, I sat down on the parapet for a moment. Oh, I knew what I looked like—one of those "Valley-of-the-Nile-After-a-Flood" pictures.

  "There is one thing about you that is comforting," I sniffed. "You said precisely the same thing to me at three o'clock this morning. You never startle me by saying anything unexpected."

  He took a step toward me, and even in the dusk I could see that he was looking down at me oddly. All my bravado faded away and there was a queerish ringing in my ears.

  "I would like to!" he said tensely. "I would like, this minute—I'm a fool, Mrs. Wilson," he finished miserably. "I ought to be drawn and quartered, but when I see you like this I—I get crazy. If you say the word, I'll—I'll go down and—" He clenched his fist.

  It was reprehensible, of course; he saw that in an instant, for he shut his teeth over something that sounded very fierce, and strode away from me, to stand looking out over the river, with his hands thrust in his pockets. Of course the thing I should have done was to ignore what he had said altogether, but he was so uncomfortable, so chastened, that, feline, feminine, whatever the instinct is, I could not let him go. I had been so wretched myself.

  "What is it you would like to say?" I called over to him. He did not speak. "Would you tell me that I am a silly child for pouting?" No reply; he struck a match. "Or would you preach a nice little sermon about people—about women—loving their husbands?"

  He grunted savagely under his breath.

  "Be quite honest," I pursued relentlessly. "Say that we are a lot of barbarians, say that because my—because Jimmy treats me outrageously—oh, he does; any one can see that—and because I loathe him—and any one can tell that—why don't you say you are shocked to the depths?" I was a little shocked myself by that time, but I couldn't stop, having started.

  He came over to me, white-faced and towering, and he had the audacity to grip my arm and stand me on my feet, like a bad child—which I was, I dare say.

  "Don't!" he said in a husky, very pained voice. "You are only talking; you don't mean it. It isn't YOU. You know you care, or else why are you crying up here? And don't do it again, DON'T DO IT AGAIN—or I will—"

  "You will—what?"

  "Make a fool of myself, as I have now," he finished grimly. And then he stalked away and left me there alone, completely bewildered, to find my way down in the dark.

  I groped along, holding to the rail, for the staircase to the roof was very steep, and I went slowly. Half-way down the stairs there was a tiny landing, and I stopped. I could have sworn I heard Mr. Harbison's footsteps far below, growing fainter. I even smiled a little, there in the dark, although I had been rather profoundly shaken. The next instant I knew I had been wrong; some one was on the landing with me. I could hear short, sharp breathing, and then—

  I am not sure that I struggled; in fact, I don't believe I did—I was too limp with amazement. The creature, to have lain in wait for me like that! And he was brutally strong; he caught me to him fiercely, and held me there, close, and he kissed me—not once or twice, but half a dozen times, long kisses that filled me with hot shame for him, for myself, that I had—liked him. The roughness of his coat bruised my cheek; I loathed him. And then someone came whistling along the hall below, and he pushed me from him and stood listening, breathing in long, gasping breaths.

  I ran; when my shaky knees would hold me, I ran. I wanted to hide my hot face, my disgust, my disillusion; I wanted to put my head in mother's lap and cry; I wanted to die, or be ill, so I need never see him again. Perversely enough, I did none of those things. With my face still flaming, with burning eyes and hands that shook, I made a belated evening toilet and went slowly, haughtily, down the stairs. My hands were like ice, but I was consumed with rage. Oh, I would show him—that this was New York, not Iquique; that the roof was not his Andean tableland.

  Every one elaborately ignored my absence from dinner. The Dallas Browns, Max and Lollie were at bridge; Jim was alone in the den, walking the floor and biting at an unlighted cigar; Betty had returned to Aunt Selina and was hysterical, they said, and Flannigan was in deep dejection because I had missed my dinner.

  "Betty
is making no end of a row," Max said, looking up from his game, "because the old lady upstairs insists on chloroform liniment. Betty says the smell makes her ill."

  "And she can inhale Russian cigarettes," Anne said enviously, "and gasolene fumes, without turning a hair. I call a revoke, Dal; you trumped spades on the second round."

  Dal flung over three tricks with very bad grace, and Anne counted them with maddening deliberation.

  "Game and rubber," she said. "Watch Dal, Max; he will cheat in the score if he can. Kit, don't have another clam while I am in this house. I have eaten so many lately my waist rises and falls with the tide."

  "You have a stunning color, Kit," Lollie said. "You are really quite superb. Who made that gown?"

  "Where have you been hiding, du kleine?" Max whispered, under cover of showing me the evening paper, with a photograph of the house and a cross at the cellar window where we had tried to escape. "If one day in the house with you, Kit, puts me in this condition, what will a month do?"

  From beyond the curtain of a sort of alcove, lighted with a red-shaded lamp, came a hum of conversation, Bella's cool, even tones, and a heavy masculine voice. They were laughing; I could feel my chin go up. He was not even hiding his shame.

  "Max," I asked, while the others clamored for him and the game, "has any one been up through the house since dinner? Any of the men?"

  He looked at me curiously.

  "Only Harbison," he replied promptly. "Jim has been eating his heart out in the den every since dinner; Dal played the Sonata Appasionata backward on the pianola—he wanted to put through one of Anne's lingerie waists, on a wager that it would play a tune; I played craps with Lollie, and Flannigan has been washing dishes. Why?"

  Well, that was conclusive, anyhow. I had had a faint hope that it might have been a joke, although it had borne all the evidences of sincerity, certainly. But it was past doubting now; he had lain in wait for me at the landing, and had kissed me, ME, when he thought I was Jimmy's wife. Oh, I must have been very light, very contemptible, if that was what he thought of me!

  I went into the library and got a book, but it was impossible to read, with Jimmy lying on the couch giving vent to something between a sigh and a groan every few minutes. About eleven the cards stopped, and Bella said she would read palms. She began with Mr. Harbison, because she declared he had a wonderful hand, full of possibilities; she said he should have been a great inventor or a playwright, and that his attitude to women was one of homage, respect, almost reverence. He had the courage to look at me, and if a glance could have killed he would have withered away.

  When Jimmy proffered his hand, she looked at it icily. Of course she could not refuse, with Mr. Harbison looking on.

  "Rather negative," she said coldly. "The lines are obscured by cushions of flesh; no heart line at all, mentality small, self-indulgence and irritability very marked."

  Jim held his palm up to the light and stared at it.

  "Gad!" he said. "Hardly safe for me to go around without gloves, is it?"

  It was all well enough for Jim to laugh, but he was horribly hurt. He stood around for a few minutes, talking to Anne, but as soon as he could he slid away and went to bed. He looked very badly the next morning, as though he had not slept, and his clothes quite hung on him. He was actually thinner. But that is ahead of the story.

  Max came to me while the others were sitting around drinking nightcaps, and asked me in a low tone if he could see me in the den; he wanted to ask me something. Dal overheard.

  "Ask her here," he said. "We all know what it is, Max. Go ahead and we'll coach you."

  "Will you coach ME?" I asked, for Mr. Harbison was listening.

  "The woman does not need it," Dal retorted. And then, because Max looked angry enough really to propose to me right there, I got up hastily and went into the den. Max followed, and closing the door, stood with his back against it.

  "Contrary to the general belief, Kit," he began, "I did NOT intend to ask you to marry me."

  I breathed easier. He took a couple of steps toward me and stood with his arms folded, looking down at me. "I'm not at all sure, in fact, that I shall ever propose to you," he went on unpleasantly.

  "You have already done it twice. You are not going to take those back, are you, Max?" I asked, looking up at him.

  But Max was not to be cajoled. He came close and stood with his hand on the back of my chair. "What happened on the roof tonight?" He demanded hoarsely.

  "I do not think it would interest you," I retorted, coloring in spite of myself.

  "Not interest me! I am shut in this blasted house; I have to see the only woman I ever loved—REALLY loved," he supplemented, as he caught my eye, "pretend she is another man's wife. Then I sit back and watch her using every art—all her beauty—to make still another man love her, a man who thinks she is a married woman. If Harbison were worth the trouble, I would tell him the whole story, Aunt Selina be—obliterated!"

  I sat up suddenly.

  "If Harbison were worth the trouble!" I repeated. What did he mean? Had he seen—

  "I mean just this," Max said slowly. "There is only one unaccredited member of this household; only one person, save Flannigan, who was locked in the furnace room, one person who was awake and around the house when Anne's jewels went, only one person in the house, also, who would have any motive for the theft."

  "Motive?" I asked dully.

  "Poverty," Max threw at me. "Oh, I mean comparative poverty, of course. Who is this fellow, anyhow? Dal knew him at school, traveled with him through India. On the strength of that he brings him here, quarters him with decent people, and wonders when they are systematically robbed!"

  "You are unjust!" I said, rising and facing him. "I do not like Mr. Harbison—I—I hate him, if you want to know. But as to his being a thief, I—think it is quite as likely that you took the necklace."

  Max threw his cigarette into the fire angrily.

  "So that is how it is!" he mocked. "If either of us is the thief, it is I! You DO hate him, don't you?"

  I left him there, flushed with irritation, and joined the others. Just as I entered the room, Betty burst through the hall door like a cyclone, and collapsed into a chair. "She's a mean, cantankerous old woman!" she declared, feeling for her handkerchief. "You can take care of your own Aunt Selina, Jim Wilson. I will never go near her again."

  "What did you do? Poison her?" Dallas asked with interest.

  "G—got camphor in her eyes," snuffed Betty. "You never—heard such a noise. I wouldn't be a trained nurse for anything in the world. She—she called me a hussy!"

  "You're not going to give her up, are you, Betty?" Jim asked imploringly. But Betty was, and said so plainly.

  "Anyhow, she won't have me back," she finished, "and she has sent for—guess!"

  "Have mercy!" Dal cried, dropping to his knees. "Oh, fair ministering angel, she has not sent for me!"

  "No," Betty said maliciously. "She wants Bella—she's crazy about her."

  Chapter XI. I MAKE A DISCOVERY

  Really, I have left Aunt Selina rather out of it, but she was important as a cause, not as a result; at least at first. She came out strong later. I believe she was a very nice old woman, with strong likes and prejudices, which she was perfectly willing to pay for. At least, I only presume she had likes; I know she had prejudices.

  Nobody every understood why Bella consented to take Betty's place with Aunt Selina. As for me, I was too much engrossed with my own affairs to pay the invalid much attention. Once or twice during the day I had stopped in to see her, and had been received frigidly and with marked disapproval. I was in disgrace, of course, after the scene in the dining room the night before. I had stood like a naughty child, just inside the door, and replied meekly when she said the pillows were overstuffed, and why didn't I have the linen slips rinsed in starch water? She laid the blame of her illness on me, as I have said before, and she made Jim read to her in the afternoon from a book she carried with her, Coals of F
ire on the DOMESTIC Hearth, marking places for me to read.

  She sent for me that night, just as I had taken off my gown; so I threw on a dressing gown and went in. To my horror, Jim was already there. At a gesture from Aunt Selina, he closed the door into the hall and tiptoed back beside the bed, where he sat staring at the figures on the silk comfort.

  Aunt Selina's first words were:

  "Where's that flibberty-gibbet?"

  Jim looked at me.

  "She must mean Betty," I explained. "She has gone to bed, I think."

  "Don't—let—her—in—this—room—again," she said, with awful emphasis. "She is an infamous creature."

  "Oh, come now, Aunt Selina," Jim broke in; "she's foolish, perhaps, but she's a nice little thing."

  Aunt Selina's face was a curious study. Then she raised herself on her elbow, and, taking a flat chamois-skin bag from under her pillow, held it out.

  "My cameo breastpin," she said solemnly; "my cuff-buttons with gold rims and storks painted on china in the middle; my watch, that has put me to bed and got me up for forty years, and my money—five hundred and ten dollars and forty cents!—taken with the doors locked under my nose." Which was ambiguous, but forcible.

  "But, good gracious, Miss Car—Aunt Selina!" I exclaimed, "you don't think Betty Mercer took those things?"

  "No," she said grimly; "I think I probably got up in my sleep and lighted the fire with them, or sent em out for a walk." Then she stuffed the bag away and sat up resolutely in bed.

  "Have you made up?" she demanded, looking from one to the other of us. "Bella, don't tell me you still persist in that nonsense."

  "What nonsense?" I asked, getting ready to run.

  "That you do not love him."

  "Him?"

  "James," she snapped irritably. "Do you suppose I mean the policeman?"

  I looked over at Jimmy. She had got me by the hand, and Jimmy was making frantic gestures to tell her the whole thing and be done with it. But I had gone too far. The mill of the gods had crushed me already, and I didn't propose to be drawn out hideously mangled and held up as an example for the next two or three weeks, although it was clear enough that Aunt Selina disapproved of me thoroughly, and would have been glad enough to find that no tie save the board of health held us together. And then Bella came in, and you wouldn't have known her. She had put on a straight white woolen wrapper, and she had her hair in two long braids down her back. She looked like a nice, wide-eyed little girl in her teens, and she had some lobster salad and a glass of port on a tray. When she saw the situation, she put the things down and had the nastiness to stay and listen.