Outrageous Fortune

by Patricia Wentworth

  She looked up at him—a sideways glance, anger in it, and something else.

  “Come along then.”

  He said, “How much money have I got?”

  “You know what was in your pockets, don’t you?”

  He said, “No.” And then, “But I could easily find out.”

  He felt her shoulder jerk.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I could ring up the hospital.”

  A scalding rage swept over Nesta. If she had had anything to strike him with, she would have struck with all her might. She had nothing. She stiffened against the rage, and it went by.

  “It would be quite easy to find out,” he said; and then, “Do you want me to ring up in the morning?” He laughed a little. “I don’t think you do. How much was it? Fifty pounds?” He was watching her eyes. “Forty? Thirty? Twenty?”

  All the lines showed in her face.

  “Five—if you must know.”

  “Five? To take me abroad?”

  She laughed harshly.

  “You were going to Glasgow—that’s as much as you told me. You’d money to splash about as long as I knew you, but you never told me where it came from. If you want to know, you gave me ten pounds when you went away, and said you’d send me some more. And five pounds was what was in your wallet. That’s straight. And I’m keeping what I’ve got. You can ring up the hospital if you like.”

  He thought she was speaking the truth. He said,

  “I’ll take the wallet.”

  Nesta hesitated, made a step towards the door, and turned again.

  “What do you want it for?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “I’m going to bed.”

  As she passed the threshold, she was aware that he was following her. She swung round angrily.

  “What d’you want?”

  “That wallet.”

  “What—now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  “If I say no?”

  “I shall come and take it. You’d better hand it over—you haven’t got a leg to stand on.”

  He thought she was going to strike him, but she governed herself. After a moment she spoke.

  “You think a lot of yourself—don’t you? Suppose I go to the police.”

  “Suppose you do.”

  She turned with a jerk and went along the passage and up the stairs. He heard her go into her room, and a minute later he heard her come out again.

  He was at the foot of the stairs to meet her. She snapped on the passage light as she came out, and when she saw him she stood still about half way down.

  “There’s your case!” she said, and threw it at him.

  XI

  Ledlington has quite a good public library. At a quarter past nine in the morning Jim sat at a solid wooden table and turned over the leaves of a fat pile of newspapers. He had asked for the file of The Daily Surprise, because it could be trusted to leave nothing out. Every available detail of the assault of Mr Van Berg and the theft of the Van Berg emeralds would certainly be found in its columns.

  Jim turned the pages. He wasn’t quite sure when it had happened. Nesta had been rather vague, perhaps purposely..… Ah! Here was a piece about the Alice Arden! He had better read it. But it didn’t get him anywhere; there was nothing he hadn’t gathered from Nesta. He must go back a bit.… He came on a headline:

  SERIOUS CONDITION OF MR VAN BERG

  He frowned, hesitated, and went on turning the leaves backwards. Better begin at the beginning.

  He found it at last—great sprawling capitals:

  AMERICAN MILLIONAIRE SHOT—AMAZING GUN-MAN CRIME—INCA’S EMERALDS STOLEN.

  He leaned forward and read, his face hard and expressionless.

  “The charmingly rural village of Packham, twenty miles from Ledlington, has been the scene of a most amazing crime. Has Elmer K. Van Berg, the American millionaire gem collector, been the object of an attack by a transatlantic crime-king, or are the methods of Chicago spreading to this country? Mr Van Berg, an acknowledged connoisseur of precious stones, was discovered shortly after midnight in his library at Packham Hall in unconscious condition. He had been shot at close range, and it is doubtful whether he will recover. The room was in perfect order, but the safe in which Mr Van Berg kept his valuables was unlocked, and a unique chain of emeralds, said to have belonged to the Emperor Atahualpa, last of the ill-fated Inca chiefs, was missing. These emeralds, which had been recently inherited by Mr Van Berg, are eight in number, perfectly matched, flawless, and of immense value. Mrs Van Berg has fortunately been able to furnish the police with a detailed description of the missing jewels.”

  Jim ran his eye rapidly down the column..… An interview with the housekeeper at Packham Hall, Miss Caroline Bussell. Bricks without straw. Miss Bussell had retired early, and had not known that anything out of the usual was happening until Mrs Van Berg ran into her room between one and two in the morning and said something dreadful had happened. She then woke the other servants, and when she got downstairs, Mrs Van Berg had telephoned to the doctor and was ringing up the police.

  He turned to the next day’s issue:

  WILL MR VAN BERG RECOVER CONSCIOUSNESS?

  This is an all important question, since it is probable that he, and he alone, saw his assailant, though it appears that Mrs Van Berg was within an ace of doing so.

  “Elmer always sat up late,” Mrs Van Berg told our representative, “I would go upstairs, and sometimes I would hear him come up, and sometimes I wouldn’t hear a thing. Last night I came up as usual at about eleven o’clock, but I couldn’t sleep. At twelve I went downstairs to get a book. As I passed the library door, I could hear voices. Elmer was talking to someone.”

  “You didn’t go in, Mrs Van Berg?”

  Mrs Van Berg shook her head. She is a platinum blonde with grey eyes and the slimmest of modern figures.

  “No, I didn’t go in. Oh, how I wish I had! It might have saved my husband’s life.”

  “Were the voices raised? Did it sound as if they were quarrelling?”

  Mrs Van Berg shook her head again.

  “Oh no—they sounded just ordinary.”

  “Could you distinguish anything that was said?”

  Mrs Van Berg appeared to hesitate for a moment.

  “Oh no—I wasn’t listening of course. I just got my book and went upstairs again.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know—I guess I was drowsy—but all at once I thought I heard a shot.”

  “Was that long after you came upstairs?”

  Mrs Van Berg hesitated again.

  “I don’t know. It seemed to rouse me up.”

  “And then?”

  “I ran downstairs, and as soon as I opened the library door I saw Elmer lying there.”

  Here Mrs Van Berg was overcome.

  “Oh, it was dreadful!” she said when she could speak again. “I was afraid to touch him. I ran up and called Miss Bussell, and telephoned to the doctor and the police.”

  “And when did you miss the emeralds?”

  Mrs Van Berg’s eyes flashed.

  “I wasn’t thinking about the emeralds—I was thinking about my husband!”

  “But you must have missed them some time.”

  “Yes—when the police came and began to ask questions.”

  “And was anything missing besides the emeralds?”

  “There was nothing else there—nothing else of value. My other jewels were up in my room. I was going to wear the emeralds that week, so my husband had got them out of the bank. He always kept them in his own safe when I was going to wear them, because they were so valuable.”

  “Then it looks as if the thief was acquainted with his habits?”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”

  That was all that really signified, though there was a lot about the emeralds, and the Incas, and the Mr Van Berg uncle who had started the famous gem collection.

  Jim sat staring at the page. One thing
hit him between the eyes. Elmer Van Berg had sat talking in his library with the man who had robbed him. Why had he done that? He had the odd feeling that he knew Elmer Van Berg, and that what he knew of him made it difficult to believe that he would have engaged in talk at that hour with any chance-come stranger. And if he knew Elmer Van Berg, and if it was he who had talked to him in that library at midnight, then there was no question of its being a stranger. And he did know Elmer Van Berg. He knew the way the straight iron-grey thatch of hair stood up above his forehead, the way the shrewd, pleasant eyes looked out under the iron-grey brows, the way the gold filling showed in that left-hand tooth when he laughed. He had only to shut his eyes to see these things, and the hand and the scar, and the emerald chain dangling from it under the light.

  All of a sudden his temples were wet. It was true! He had sat and talked to a man as a friend and shot him down!

  It was a damned lie.

  He got out a handkerchief of Tom Williams’ and wiped his forehead. If it was a lie, why could he see that hand with the scar, and the emeralds hanging from it?

  With a dogged determination he went on reading.… Irrelevant interviews with servants.… Statements from the lodge-keeper, who had been in bed and asleep all night.… Interview with Susie Van Berg’s maid, who described her mistress’ state of prostration.… How did he know her name was Susie? He did know it..… Description of the library and the terrace by which its French windows could be approached..… He went on turning pages..…

  In the end he knew very little more. The police were said to have a clue. Elmer Van Berg had not recovered consciousness. His condition was extremely grave. There was no trace of the emeralds.

  He sat back in the hard upright chair and stared straight in front of him. What next? He had left Happicot, and no power on earth would take him back there. He would have to make that quite clear.

  He had bought some sheets of paper, a pencil, and a couple of stamped envelopes as he came along. He wrote a few lines of thanks to Min. A nice little thing—kind, pretty, timid. He hopes for her sake that Nesta wasn’t stopping there long. It was quite easy to write to Min.

  It wasn’t at all easy to write to Nesta. How did you write to an unpleasant stranger who happened to be your wife, and make it perfectly clear that you never intended to see her again? It had got to be made perfectly clear. He hadn’t the slightest intention of pursuing any path mapped out for him by Nesta. He couldn’t imagine how he had ever come to be mixed up with her. Or with this Van Berg affair. According to all the available evidence, he had shot Elmer Van Berg and taken the Inca’s emeralds. Unless or until he got his memory back he could neither rebut nor explain this evidence. All he could do was to try and get away from it.

  He might remember why he had gone to see Elmer Van Berg. He had gone to see him, and they had talked and had drinks..… That was a funny thing—there was nothing in the paper about those drinks. But he remembered drinking with Elmer. That is to say, he had remembered it. It had come and gone like a flash. Elmer standing up, with his hand on the syphon. If he could remember that, he ought to be able to remember the whole thing. He might remember it at any time. Remember? What? Shooting Elmer Van Berg and taking the emeralds? That was what he might remember. It was utterly damnable. He’d got to get away out of Ledlington—out of the country if possible.

  It came to him that there had been no mention of those drinks, because they were a police clue. His finger-marks would be on the glass that he had used. The incident hadn’t been given to the press on purpose.

  He leaned forward with determination and wrote:

  “I am going away. When I am in a position to do so, I will come to some arrangement with you.”

  He signed, J.R., and fastened the envelope and addressed it to Nesta.

  Five pounds is not a very large sum. Carefully husbanded, of course, it will go quite a long way. If you tramp the roads, sleep out, and live on bread and cheese, your lodging costs you nothing, and your food not very much. On the other hand, a toothbrush, a cake of soap, and a razor are necessaries, and so is a change of linen. Money melts as soon as you begin to buy clothes. How long would his suit last if he slept out on it? It was none too grand now.

  He pushed all these things away. He had got to get out of Ledlington, and he was lucky to have five pounds to take the road with.

  As he passed a newspaper shop at the corner of the Station Road, a poster stared at him from a yard away:

  VAN BERG CASE—IMPORTANT CLUE—MAN WANTED BY POLICE.

  A mile out of Ledlington he left the high road for a footpath across fields. It took him into a lane which climbed to an open heath.

  He sat down to rest on the stump of a tree and looked about him. The day was fine, but not clear. The blue of the sky was misted over, and the sun came palely through. There was a purple bloom of heather as far as the eye could see. He stared across it at the veiled horizon. A hill like a cloud stood up against its northern edge—a hill with a double top. He sat looking at it for a long time, and for as long as he looked at it there were pictures in his mind—broken pictures that came and went, forming, dissolving, and reforming. When he tried to think about them they were gone. He was left with a sense of things most deeply familiar.

  He walked on towards the hill.

  He had bought food in Ledlington. At mid-day he sat on a sunny slope and ate. Afterwards he fell asleep and dreamed about the emeralds. It was the same dream every time he slept, but it was getting clearer. At first it was just as if all the things which he knew about the emeralds had been smashed into splinters and mixed together like the pieces of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope. There was a sense of colour, and light, a rapid movement; there was a sense of confusion. In the dream he always knew where the emeralds were, but as soon as he woke up the knowledge faded. Sometimes he could hold it for a moment by shutting his eyes and keeping his mind empty; but as soon as he tried to keep it, it was gone.

  The dream always began the same way. He could remember the beginning—Elmer’s hand with the scar, and the emeralds dangling from it under the light—eight square green stones with pearls between them. They were as green as fire—sea logs split on a stone hearth and burning green—green fire spitting salt. The emeralds were as green as the green flame. Then the dream broke up into a rush of coloured fragments. There was a voice in a fog. There was the sound of a shot a long way off. There was the voice, and there was a picture in his mind of tall stone pillars with pineapple tops, and a drive that wound between them out of sight. The voice said, “Like a kid’s green beads,” and, “Nobody knows where they are.” But in the dream he knew. A round room with five little windows like slits—a place where you might look for a year and never find them.

  He woke up, the sun hot on his face. The dream was gone, but the hill still broke the horizon. In some strange way he associated the hill and the dream. He made a pillow of bracken for his head and lay on the slope watching the hill. Presently he would get to it—presently..…

  He slept again.

  XII

  “It’s eleven o’clock,” said Caroline.

  Pansy Arbuthnot ran a pencil through her hair and turned a page. The gate-leg table at which she sat was strewn with sheets of manuscript. Ernest Hughes Mottson’s last poem lay on her left, Alicia Spence-Lely’s last short story on her right. Verses and essays by other members of the Vicious Circle occupied the rest of the space. In her hand she held a single sheet of what looked rather like packing-paper.

  Caroline was curled up by the fire. It had been a very pleasant fire. One can almost bear a cold August for the sake of old apple-wood burning on a low brick hearth. This particular log came from the crabby Worcester Pearmain which had blown down in the gale a week ago. Its logs were a great deal better than its apples had ever been. Caroline’s grandmother used to say that,

  An applewood fire

  Will show you your heart’s desire.

  The log had broken into red embers, and the embers were turn
ing grey. No one likes to see their heart’s desire turn grey.

  Caroline twisted round.

  “It’s ever so late, Pansy Ann.”

  “Caro—”

  “Are you going to read those things all night?”

  “Some of them,” said Miss Arbuthnot, “are very striking.” She sounded a little vague and she ran her pencil through her hair again.

  “You look struck.”

  “Very striking indeed! I would like to read you this one.”

  Caroline sat back against the warm brick of the chimney arch and clasped her hands about her knees.

  “Why?”

  “It’s so very striking.”

  Caroline’s eyes danced.

  “All right—get it over!”

  “It’s by a new man who’s just joined the Circle. He signs himself ‘Abaddon.’”

  “How bad is it?” said Caroline.

  “It’s very striking,” said Pansy in rather a dazed voice. She held the sheet of brown paper farther off and said, “Query.” Then she stopped. “That’s the title—only he hasn’t written it like that, which is rather puzzling. He has just put an enormous question mark, so I don’t quite know how to read it. Would you say Query, or would you say Question-mark?”

  “Question-mark,” said Caroline.

  Pansy brought the paper a little nearer and read:

  ?

  Illimitable maximum

  Star glutinous space cataract

  Crushed platinum

  Inevitably wracked

  A tortuous torment of lamenting gloom

  Till lightning cracked

  The whole steep firmament

  Tilts shrieking blindly its impermanent

  Resistless unresisted blast of doom.

  “Golly!” said Caroline.

  Pansy looked a little awed.

  “There are no stops!” she said.

  “There wouldn’t be—not in a star glutinous space cataract. You don’t have time—you’re too busy tilting and shrieking.”

  “I like this one better,” said Pansy. She paused, and then added—“really. It’s quite different.”

  She picked up a neatly written sheet and read: