Miss Million's Maid: A Romance of Love and Fortune

by Berta Ruck

  CHAPTER XXIX

  LOCKED UP!

  WHO could ever have anticipated this?

  Who would have dreamt, a night or two ago, of where Miss Million, theAmerican Sausage-King's heiress, and her aristocratically connectedlady's-maid would have had to spend last night?

  I can hardly believe it myself, even yet.

  I sit on this perfectly ghastly little bed, narrow and hard as any stonetomb in a church. I gaze round at the stone walls, and at the tinysquare window high up; at the tin basin, chained as if they were afraidit might take flight somehow; at the door with the sliding panel; theominous-looking door that is locked upon me!

  And I say to myself, "Vine Street police-station!"

  That's where I am. I, Beatrice Lovelace, poor father's only daughter,and Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter! I've been taken up, arrested!

  I'm a prisoner. I've slept--that is, I've not been able to sleep--in acell! I've been put in prison like a pickpocket, or a man who's beendrunk and disorderly, or a window-smashing suffragette!

  Only, of course, the suffragette does her best to get into prison. Shedoesn't mind. It's a glory to her. She comes out and "swanks" about in apeculiarly hideous brooch that's been specially designed to show thatshe's been sentenced to "one month," or whatever it was.

  She's proud of it. Oh, how can she be? Proud of having spent so muchtime in a revolting place like this! "I think," gazing round hopelesslyonce more--"oh, I don't believe I shall ever be able to get thedisgusting, bleak, sordid look of it out of my mind, or the equallysordid, bleak, disgusting smell of it out of my skirts and my hair!"

  And I clasp my hands in my lap and close my eyes to shut out the look ofthose awful walls and that fearful door.

  I go over again the scene yesterday down at the "Refuge," when we werearrested by that Scotland Yard man, and when I had just enough presenceof mind to ask him to allow us, before we went off with him, to leaveword with our friends.

  A group of our friends were already gathered on the gravel path outsidethe house under the lilacs. And there came running out at my call MissVi Vassity, half a dozen of her Refugette girls, Miss Million's Americancousin, and--though I thought he must have taken his departure!--thedisgraced Mr. Burke.

  In the kind of nightmare of explanations that ensued I remember mostclearly the high-pitched laugh of "London's Love" as she exclaimed,"Charging them, are you, officer? I suppose that means I've got to comeround and bail them out in the morning, eh? Not the first time that Vihas had that to do for a pal of hers? But, mind you, it's about thefirst time that there's been all this smoke without any fire. Pinchingrubies? Go on. Go on home! Who says it? Rubies! Who's got it?" sherattled on, while everybody stared at us.

  The group looked like a big poster for some melodrama on at the Lyceum,with three central figures and every other person in the play gaping inthe background.

  "Oh, of course it's Miss Smith that collared Rats's old ruby," went onMiss Vi Vassity encouragingly. "Sort of thing she would do. Brought itdown here to the other little gal, my friend, Miss Nellie Million, Ipresume? And what am I cast for in this grand finale? Receiver of stolengoods, eh? Bring out some more glasses, Emmie, will you?"--this to theAcrobat Lady.

  "What's yours, Sherlock Holmes?" to the detective. Then to Miss Million,who was deathly pale and trembling: "A little drop of something shortwill do you no harm, my girl. You shall have the car to 'go quietly' in,in a minute or two----"

  Here the American accent of Mr. Hiram P. Jessop broke in emphatically.

  "There'll be no 'going' at all, Miss Vassity. I don't intend to have anynonsense of this kind regarding a young lady who's my relative, andanother young lady who is a friend of hers--and mine. See here, officer.The very idea of charging 'em--why, it's all poppycock! Miss Million ismy cousin.

  "Steal rubies--why on earth should she steal rubies? Couldn't she buy upall the rubies in little old London if she fancied 'em? Hasn't she themeans to wear a ruby as big as that of Mr. Rattenheimer's on everyfinger of her little hands if she chose? See here, officer----"

  Here the young American caught the Scotland Yard man by the upper arm,and sought to draw him gently but firmly out of that Lyceum postergroup.

  "See here. As you must have noticed at the Cecil, Mr. JuliusRattenheimer's a friend of mine. I know him. I know him pretty well, Iguess. I'll go to him right now, and explain to him that it's absolutelypreposterous, the mere idea of sending down to arrest a pair ofdelicately nurtured, sensitive, perfectly lovely young girls who'd assoon think of thieving jewels as they would of--well, I can't say what.Here's where words fail me. But I guess I'll have fixed up how to put itwhen I get to Rats himself. I'll come along right now to him with you.I've got my car here. I'll fix it up.

  "Don't you worry----"

  Here I seemed to detect a movement of Mr. Hiram P. Jessop's hand towardshis breast-pocket.

  Was it? Yes! He drew out a pigskin leather pocketbook. Swiftly, butquietly, he took out notes.... "Heavens!" This sincere and well-meaningcitizen of no mean country was making an unapologised-for attempt tobribe Scotland Yard!

  Their backs were towards me now; I do wish I had seen the detective'sface! "See here, officer----Ah, you're proud? Well, that's all right.I've got my car here, I say. You and I'll buzz up to Mr. Rattenheimer's,I guess. We'll leave these young ladies here with Miss Vassity----"

  "Very sorry, sir, but that's quite impossible," declared the even,expressionless voice of the Scotland Yard man. "These ladies have toreturn to London at once with me."

  "But I tell you it's prepos----"

  "Those are my orders, sir. Very sorry. If the car is ready"--turning toMiss Vi Vassity--"I'll drive her, I'll take these ladies now."

  "All alone, with you? Faith, and that you won't," declared theHonourable Jim Burke, stepping forward from where he had been standing,hastily finishing the drink that had been poured out for him by thehandsome white hands of Marmora, the Breathing Statue. "I'll go up withyou, and see where you're taking the ladies----"

  "And I'll accompany you, if you'll permit me," from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.

  "Room in the car for six. Pity I can't leave Maudie, or I'd come. Butyoung Olive must get her night's rest to-night, so I'm doing nurse andattending to the midget ventriloquist myself," declared the cheerfulvoice of England's Premier Comedienne.

  "See you to-morrow in court, girls. Don't look like that, Nellie! You'vegot a face on you like a blessed bridegroom; there's nothing to getscared about. Lor'! No need to fret like that if you'd just been giventen years!... Got plenty o' rugs, Miss Smith? I'd lend one of you mybest air-cushion to sleep on, full of the sighs of me first love. But ifI did they'd only pinch it at the station. I know their tricks at thathole. So long, Ah-Sayn Lupang!" Again to the detective: "You ought tobe at the top of your profession, you ought; got such an eye forcharacter. Cheery-Ho!"

  And we were off; the detective, the two arrested criminals (ourselves),the cousin of one of the "criminals" and the Honourable Jim Burke. Inwhat character this young man was supposed to be travelling with us I'msure I don't know.

  I only know that but for him that motor drive through Sussex up to theLondon police court would have been a nightmare. It was the HonourableJim who managed to turn it into something of a joke.

  For all the way along the gleaming white roads, with our headlightscasting brilliant moving moons upon the hedges, the persuasive, mockingIrish voice of the Honourable Jim laughed and talked to the detectivewho was driving us to our fate. And the conversation of the HonourableJim ran incessantly upon just one theme. The mistakes that have beenmade by the police in tracking down those suspected of some breach ofthe law!

  As thus. "Were you in that celebrated case, officer, of the Downshirediamonds? Another jewel robbery, Miss Smith! Curious how history repeatsitself. They'd got every bit of circumstantial evidence to show that thetiara had been stolen and broken up by a young maid-servant in thehouse. The 'tecs were hangin
g themselves all over with whatever's theirequivalent for the D.S.O., for having got her, when the butler owned upand showed where he'd put the thing, untouched and wrapped up in aworkman's red handkerchief, in an old dhry well in the grounds. Mustn'tit make a man feel he ought to sing very small when he's been caughtout in a little thing like that?"

  "That's so," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, with a tone in his voice ofpositive gratitude. Gratitude, to the man whom he'd been blackening andshowing up, this very afternoon! Together they seemed to be makingcommon cause against the detective, who was rushing Miss Million up totown and to durance vile!

  The detective said less than any man with whom I've ever spent the samelength of time.

  But I believe he took it all in!

  "Then there were the Ballycool murders, when they were as near as dashit to hanging the wrong man," pursued Mr. James Burke. "Of course, thatwas when my grandfather was a boy. So that particular show-up would bebefore your time, officer, possibly."

  "Eighteen Sixty-Two, sir," said the detective briefly.

  "Ah, yes, I remember," mused the Honourable Jim, who, I suppose, musthave been born about Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-Seven himself. "Ah,yes; but then, some aspects of life, and love, and law don't seem toalter much, do they?"

  "That's correct, Mr. Burke," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop again in his mostempresse American.

  "Then," pursued the ineffable Irish voice as we whizzed along, "there'sthat case of the Indian tray that was missing from that wealthybachelor's rooms--but I misremember the exact end of that story.

  "Plenty of them on record in this country as well as America. I daresayyou agree with me, Jessop?"

  Mr. Jessop, sitting there in the hurrying car, seemed to be agreeingwith everything that Mr. Burke chose to say.

  The young American, from what glimpses I caught of his firm, short,Dana-Gibson-like profile against the blue night sky, was full of thetenderest and most rueful concern for the little cousin who was involvedin this pretty kettle of fish.

  His broad, though padded, form was sitting very close to the minute,dejected figure of Miss Million, who had gradually ceased to shudder andto whimper "Oh, lor'! Oh, my! Oh, whatever is going to happen to usnow!" as she had done at the beginning of the journey.

  She was, I realised, a little cheered and encouraged now. From amovement that I had noticed under Miss Vi Vassity's sable motor-rug Iguessed that Mr. Jessop had taken his cousin's hand, and that he washolding it as we drove.

  Well, after all, why shouldn't he? They are cousins.

  Also it's quite on the cards that she may accept him yet (if we ever getout of this atrocious muddle about the stolen ruby) as her husband!

  These two facts make all the difference....

  And I should have said so to the Honourable Jim had we been alone.

  It didn't really surprise me that he, in his turn, attempted to hold agirl's hand under that rug.

  Men always seem to do what they notice some other man doing first. Thatmust have been it. Except, of course, that it wasn't Miss Million's handthat Mr. Burke tried to take. It was the hand of Miss Million's maid.

  I was determined that he shouldn't. Firmly I drew my hand out of hisclasp--it was a warm and strong and comforting clasp enough, verymagnetic; but what of that?

  Then I clasped my own hands tightly together, as I am doing now, andleft them on my lap, outside the rug.

  The Honourable Jim seemed to tire, at last, of "batting" the detectivewho was driving us. He leant back and began to sing, in a sort ofmusical whisper.... Really, it's unfair that a man who has the gift ofsuch a speaking voice should have been granted the gift of song into thebargain. They were just little snatches that he crooned, the sort ofscraps of verse with which he'd woken me up on the cliff that sameafternoon--bits of an Irish song called "The Snowy-breasted Pearl," thatbegins:

  "Oh, she is not like the rose That proud in beauty blows----"

  And goes on something about:

  "And if 'tis heaven's decree That mine she may not be----"

  So sweet, so tuneful, so utterly tender and touching that--well, I knowhow I should have felt about him had I been Miss Million, who three daysago considered herself truly in love with the owner of this calling,calling tenor voice!

  Had I been Miss Million, I could not have sat there with my hand firmlyand affectionately clasped in the hand of another man, ignoring my firstattraction. No; if I had been my mistress instead of just myself, Icould not have remained so stolidly pointing out to the Honourable Jimthat all was indeed over.

  I could not have refused him a glance, a turn of the head in thedirection of the voice that crooned so sweetly through the purring rushof the car.

  However, this was all--as Million herself would say--neither here northere. Apart from this Scotland Yard complication, she was Miss Million,the heiress, drifting slowly but surely in the direction of an eligiblelove affair with her American cousin.

  I had nothing whatever to do with her rejected admirer, or how he wastreated.

  I was merely Miss Million's maid, Beatrice Lovelace, alias Smith, withan eligible love affair of her own on hand. How I wished my Mr. ReginaldBrace could have been anywhere get-at-able! He would have been sosplendid, so reliable!

  He would have--well, I don't know what he could have done, exactly. Isuppose that even he could scarcely have interfered with the carryingout of the law! Still, I felt that it would have been a great comfort tohave had him there in that car.

  And, as I am going to be engaged to him, there would have been nothingincorrect in allowing him to hold my hand. In fact, I should have doneso. I hadn't got any gloves with me, and the night air was now chill.

  "Why, your little hands are as cold as ice, Miss Smith," murmured Mr.James Burke to me as the car stopped at last outside what are called thegrim portals of justice. (Plenty of grimness about the portals, anyway!)"You ought to have kept----"

  Even at that awful moment he made me wonder if he were really going tosay, boldly out before the detective and everybody: "You ought to havekept your hands in mine as I wanted you to!"

  But no. He had the grace to conclude smoothly and conventionally: "Youought to have kept the rug up about you!"

  Then came "Good-nights"--rather a mockery under the circumstances--andthe departure of the two young men, with a great many parting protestsfrom Mr. Hiram P. Jessop about the "prepassterousness" of the wholeprocedure. Then we arrested "prisoners" were taken down a loathsomestone corridor and handed over to a----

  Words fail me, as they failed Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. I can't think ofwords unpleasant enough to describe the odiousness of that particularwardress into whose charge we were given.

  The only excuse for her was that she imagined--why, I don't know, forsurely she could have seen that there was nothing of that type abouteither Miss Million or Miss Smith--she imagined that we were militantSuffragettes!

  And she certainly did make herself disagreeable to us.

  The one mercy about this was that it braced Miss Million up to abstainfrom shedding tears--which she seemed inclined to do when we wereseparated.

  Words didn't fail her! I heard the ex-maid-servant's clearest kitchenaccent announcing exactly what she thought of "that" wardress and "that"detective, and "that there old Rattenheimer" until stone walls and heavydoors shut her from earshot....

  I only hope that her rage has kept up all night, that it's prevented herfrom relapsing into the misery and terror in which she started away fromthe shelter of Vi Vassity's wing at the "Refuge"! For then, I know, shewas perfectly convinced that what we were setting out for was, at thevery least, ten years' penal servitude! Evidently Miss Million hasn'tthe slightest touch of faith in the ultimate triumph of all Innocence.

  To her, because that Rattenheimer ruby is stolen, and she and her maidare suspected of being the thieves, it means that it's impossible for usto be cleared!

  I don't feel that; but I do feel the humiliation and the
discomfort ofhaving been put in prison!

  How many nights like the last, I wonder dismally, am I to spend in thishorrible little cell?

  Well! I suppose this morning will show us.

  This morning, in about an hour's time, I suppose we are to go before themagistrate of this court, and to answer the "serious charge" that hasbeen brought against us by Mr. Julius Rattenheimer.