“Good place for a safe-what?” he said, and Corinna clapped her hands. A square piece of the paneling opened like a door and showed a steel-lined cavity with three deep shelves.
It pleased Mr. Carthew enormously to have such an appreciative audience. He beckoned to Corinna to come nearer.
“And now for the Queen Anne bow! Why, bless my soul-the case ought to be just here-just on the left of the bottom shelf! And I’ll take my oath that’s where I put it. Now what the deuce-I beg your pardon, my dear.” His voice sharpened. “Anna, come here! Where’s that case! You saw me put it away. It’s always in that left-hand bottom corner.”
Corinna’s round eyes turned gravely from Cousin John, all flushed and stammering, to Anna. Anna was most extraordinarily pale. A moment ago she had had rather a bright color. It was all gone.
The ladder Mr. Carthew was using had three steps on either side. Anna mounted until she stood level with him. Corinna stared up at them both.
Anna said, “It must be there.” Her voice sounded as if she had been running.
“I tell you it’s not there! And I tell you I put it there myself-what-you saw me!”
“It must be there,” said Anna again. She leaned across him, looking into the safe. “Uncle John-oh, what a fright you gave me! There it is!”
“Where? I don’t see it.”
“There-on the right, by your hand-under the big, square case. Look!”
“And who put it there?” said Mr. Carthew angrily. “I’ll swear it wasn’t me. Who’s been messing the things about? Who-”
He pulled out the case with a jerk. It was very rubbed and shabby and old; the leather, which had once been scarlet, was now a dim pinkish brown; the gold crown on the lid could only just be distinguished, a mere tarnished hint of royalty.
Mr. Carthew turned round, still grumbling.
“I suppose you’ll say I’m losing my memory-but I never put it there, and that I’ll swear to.”
Anna stepped down. She did not say a word. She kept her eyes on the table.
“Oh, do show it to us!” said Corinna.
Mr. Carthew came down too. He opened the case, and the case was empty.
The library seemed to fill with silence. It was like water rushing into an empty place.
Mr. Carthew and Corinna both looked at what he had in his hand. The case had a satin lining, the white of which had turned to a yellowish brown. The outline of a loosely shaped bow was marked upon it, both by the dinting of the satin and by a deeper discoloration. Two brownish hollows marked the places of those emeralds which Mr. Carthew had described as worth a lot of money. From their size, he did not seem to have been guilty of overstatement.
Anna looked too, and then looked away.
Corinna spoke first. She said in a whisper,
“It’s gone!”
And then, to her own surprise, her legs began to tremble so much that she looked round for a chair and sat down abruptly.
“What’s it mean?” said Mr. Carthew in an odd, troubled voice.
Then, with sudden passion, “What’s it mean? Anna!” The word came out with explosive force. Then, checking himself, he advanced to the table and put down the empty case.
As if his voice, speaking her name in that sharp peremptory way, had called her from the wings where like many another actress she had been standing dumb with stage-fright, Anna started, drew on that sense of drama which never left her for very long, and took up her part. It was the first step, the first plunge, that stopped one’s breath and set one’s heart thudding. She heard herself say, “It must be there,” and approved the low shocked tone that contradicted the assertion.
It was she who rummaged in the safe, handing things down to Corinna until nothing more remained, whilst John Carthew stood half turned away, looking, still looking, at the empty case.
When the safe had been cleared, he roused himself and displayed a sudden energy. Everything was to be put back, the safe re-locked, the picture hung, the blinds drawn up.
When the sun was slanting in again, he slipped the case into his pocket. He looked older. His sudden energy had failed. He leaned with one hand on the table.
“What are you going to do?” said Corinna, and Anna blessed her for the question. In another moment she would have had to ask it herself.
“Do?” said Mr. Carthew. “Do? The thing’s an heirloom. It’s got to be found.” He straightened himself up as if his own loud voice had encouraged him. “What do we have police for? If we have got a Socialist government, we haven’t got to the point where a burglar can break into my safe and take a family heirloom and get away with it-no, by jingo, we haven’t, though that’s where we’re heading for! Thank God, I shan’t be here to see it! Law and order’ll last my time, and an heirloom’s an heirloom. It don’t belong to me-it belongs to all the Carthews-it belongs-” His voice had been dropping; now it ceased.
Corinna thrilled to the broken sentence. Was it Car’s name that had broken it? Anna knew that it was, and a rising passion swept away her last qualm.
“You can’t call in the police,” she said in a hard, dogmatic tone.
Mr. Carthew stiffened at once.
“I can’t-what? And why not?”
Corinna saw his angry flash, and remembered Car saying, “He’s all right as long as you don’t cross him. He likes his own way.” Funny that Anna shouldn’t have known better than to lay down the law to him like that, and to keep on doing it in the face of his rising anger.
“It will make such a talk.”-Anna, pale and shrinking.
“And why the deuce should I care about that?”-Cousin John, the very image of the old squire who is just going to turn an erring daughter out into the snow.
“But, Uncle John, you can’t!”
“And why can’t I? And whose business is it except my own?”
“You mustn’t!”
“Mustn’t I-what?”-and a snort of wrath and the click of the telephone.
Corinna, standing back against the mantelpiece, a little abashed at this frank lapse into family manners, turned a pitying glance on Anna. Cousin John had just sworn-yes, really sworn at her. She received a shock, because, just for an instant as the angry man shouted into the telephone, a fleeting look changed Anna’s shocked pallor into something else and Corinna thought that the something else was triumph.
XXXII
Miss Willy Tarrant lived in a dumpy brick house exactly half-way down the village street. The original small casements of the two front rooms having been replaced by generous bow windows Miss Willy commanded a view of practically every front door in Linwood. She knew at once when Dr. Monk had been sent for to a case, or when the Vicar, to whom time meant nothing, was going to be late for church. She could follow him from a few feet within his own hall door all the way to the vestry, and if the vestry door had been left open, she would have been able to watch him robing. This from the dining-room.
The drawing-room afforded her a perfect view of the interior of the local grocery, a partial one of old Mrs. Hoylake’s parlor, and, if she leaned out, an opportunity of seeing Linwood buy its Saturday joints from Mr. Brown the butcher.
Very little went on in Linwood about which Miss Willy did not know at least as much as the people immediately concerned. Sometimes it might be said that she knew a good deal more. She could certainly tell the Vicar just what was wrong with his sermons, and how to improve them; whilst she never met Dr. Monk without contending for the superior efficacy of some specific of her own. She had a finger in every pie, and a better way of baking it than the one which you had always thought quite good enough.
On the morning after Mr. Carthew’s wedding-day anniversary Miss Willy was in her dining-room cleaning the cages inhabited respectively by a pink and gray parrot called Archibald, a pair of small, green parakeets, a very large and highly colored macaw, an invisible dormouse, and an elderly and partially bald, white rat. Whilst the cages were being cleaned, their tenants disported themselves about the room, with the exception
of the dormouse, who remained obstinately in seclusion, although he should not have begun to think about hibernating for an least another month.
Miss Willy was so busy for once in a way that she did not observe the approach of Mrs. Hoylake’s son Bert with the post. She heard the rat-tat too late to get to the door and detain him for news of his wife’s sister Ellen, who had married a cousin of Mr. Carthew’s second gardener and had just had twins. Miss Willy had the greatest possible contempt for Ellen’s mother’s views on the upbringing of babies, and she wanted to tell Bert Hoylake so, and to urge him on no account to allow his mother-in-law to give Ellen any advice about the twins. She might have caught him if Rollo, the raven, had not been immediately in front of the door. Rollo required careful handling and had to be coaxed away, by which time the only sign of Bert was the small parcel which he had pushed into the letter-box.
Miss Willy picked the parcel up and went back into the dining-room, where she was greeted by loud squawks of welcome from Archibald, who was climbing methodically up the left-hand curtain, and from the macaw, who was perched on the back of one of the dining-room chairs. She looked round anxiously for the rat, Augustus, because he was not very good at getting out of the way, and, if trodden on, was apt to retaliate. His teeth were still quite good.
When she had located him under the table, she opened the parcel. It was small, about five inches by two, and it excited her curiosity very much. She had cut the string and was unfolding the brown paper, when the front door knocker fell twice with a sharp, clear rap.
Miss Willy looked out of the window, which commanded almost as good view of her own front door as of her neighbor’s, and to her great delight saw Anna Lang standing on the step with her hand just raised to knock again.
Miss Willy tapped the window-pane sharply and screamed through the glass,
“Come in! Come in! Mabel’s busy, and so am I-and Isobel’s out.”
Anna nodded and opened the door. Everything was going very nicely. She had watched Bert Hoylake deliver the parcel, and within the next half-hour the telegram should arrive. Isobel would certainly not leave Linwood House for at least an hour, since, after she and Corinna had stopped talking, Uncle John could be trusted to keep her for at least another half-hour. He liked Isobel. He liked her so much that nothing but the particular lie which Anna had told him would have prevented him from welcoming her as Car’s wife with a good deal of pleasure. As a rule, Anna took care that his opportunities of talking to Isobel were strictly limited, but to-day he might make the most of them.
Anna opened the dining-room door, and was greeted by a chorus of shrieks and squawks through which Miss Willy could be heard screaming, first at her and then at the noisy parrot.
“Come in! Shut the door! Shut the door! Be quiet, Archibald!-Archibald! Will you be quiet! Shut that door, or Rollo will get out! Where is he? Rollo, where are you? Oh, come in-come in! And mind don’t step on Augustus-he’s somewhere about, but I don’t know where.”
Anna’s color became noticeably less decorative. She had no affection for creatures, and on any other occasion she would have fled. She cast an anxious look about the room. Archibald always bit her if he could; but he had reached the curtain pole, where he stood clapping his wings and improvising a very fair imitation of a whining dog. The macaw really terrified her; but he appeared to be engaged in a careful toilet with one wing stretched out to its fullest extent and all his brilliant blue and yellow and crimson a-dazzle in the sun which shone straight into the room. Augustus made her feel sick, but as she looked about for him, she saw him run up Miss Willy’s dress and come to rest upon her shoulder. Miss Willy said, “Did’ums, the bad boy?” and Anna hastily pulled the nearest chair to a safe distance and sat down. Rollo had gone under the table, and the parakeets were climbing ceaselessly over the outside of their cage.
“I hope you don’t mind my coming when you’re so busy,” Anna began in a deprecating tone. “I know you are always busy in the morning, and so am I, but I thought I might just slip down for a minute whilst Isobel was talking to Corinna. I do so want to ask you about Lydia Pratt.”
“Don’t talk of her!” said Miss Willy with a snort. “A bad, ungrateful girl if there ever was one! We got her a good place between us, and she’s leaving at the month because she’s only allowed out once a week. I can’t think what girls are coming to!”
On almost any other day Lydia Pratt’s enormities would have taken at least half an hour to discuss, but on this particular morning Miss Willy had no intention of wasting time on Lydia. If Anna had not come to see her, she would within the hour have been on her way to see Anna, armed as likely as not with the same excuse. However that might be, Lydia Pratt had now definitely served her turn.
With Augustus sitting up on her shoulder industriously washing his whiskers, Miss Willy turned and faced her caller.
“Never mind Lydia,” she said, “I’ve heard a most extraordinary rumor, and I want to know if it’s true.”
“What have you heard?” asked Anna quickly.
“That you’ve had a burglary. Anna-you don’t say it’s true-not really? I couldn’t believe it!”
“But how did you hear? We haven’t told any one. Uncle John-”
“You haven’t told the police?”
“Not the local police. Uncle John rang up Scotland Yard.”
“Who of course communicated with the local people- now didn’t they?”
“Well-you won’t repeat this, Miss Willy-we have had an inspector from Southerley to see us. Uncle John wasn’t very pleased about it. I think he wishes now that he had waited-employed a private detective or-oh, don’t take any notice of what I’m saying! It’s all very, very distressing. Uncle John is quite ill. We don’t want it talked about.”
“Now what’s the good of saying that? You want the widest possible publicity-then every one in the community is on the look out and can help you to catch your thief. You ought to have a description of whatever has been stolen circulated to all police stations, and pawnbrokers, and-and- people of that sort.” She made a wide gesture with her hand which startled Augustus a good deal and made Cyril the macaw interrupt his toilet and fix her with a bright glassy stare.
“I believe that has been done,” said Anna. “I wish-oh, I wish it hadn’t!”
“Nonsense!” said Miss Willy. “The more publicity the better-you can’t have too much.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“Joskins brought the first rumor with the afternoon milk. I suppose he’d just been up to Linwood House.”
“But the servants didn’t know-we didn’t tell them.”
Miss Willy sniffed.
“Joskins knew. He said it was the Queen Anne bow that had gone. It is? Then he was right! Just that and nothing more. I’d have come up yesterday myself, only I had an old engagement to go out to tea at Wood End with Lady Silver, and she kept me and kept me to see her sister who was coming down by train, and in the end she never came, and I didn’t get home till half-past seven, and the telephone has been out of order for two days-they’d only just got it right when Corinna rang Isobel up. It was most tantalizing, because of course I was simply dying to hear all about it. Was the house broken into? Joskins said not, but Mrs. Hoylake told me that Annie’s young man-not Brent, but the new one-his name is Mullins and he drives one of the vans of those big grocery people in Southerley-what’s their name-Downings-well, he told Annie that his cousin, Ernest Mullins, who’s in the police, told him that the Inspector told him in confidence that he shouldn’t wonder if it was an inside job.”
Anna leaned back in her chair. The room swam for a moment. Suppose they thought-suppose they guessed. No- no! She dug her nails into the palm of her hand. It was Car who was going to be suspected-Car who must be suspected, now that things had gone so far. She was quite safe really. The jewel would be found on Car, and then Dr. Monk would remember that he had seen him in Linwood at midnight. What a blessing she had thought of Dr. Monk! He would remember qui
te a lot of useful things-Uncle John’s sudden illness; her own agitation; the disturbed bureau; the keys lying where some one had flung them down. She recovered her self-possession.
“What’s the matter?” said Miss Willy.
“It’s been-such a shock,” she faltered. “I-I can’t bear to talk about it. Dear Miss Willy-you’re so kind-you’ll understand there are-reasons why I can’t talk about it.”
“Not one of the servants?” said Miss Willy breathlessly. “Why, they’ve all been with you at least five years, except Gladys Brown, and her people are so respectable that I couldn’t believe-though of course where young men are concerned you never can tell-only she’s walking out with that particularly nice George Alton. Don’t say it’s Gladys!”
“Oh, no.”
“Though of course having been with you for years doesn’t really prove anything, because my cousin Wilfred Earl’s mother-in-law had a butler for sixteen years and never knew that she only got half the cigars that were down in her bill-but Wilfred assured me it was a fact. But of course cigars are one thing, and an heirloom is quite another pair of shoes. Was there anything else taken?”
Anna shook her head. The telegram ought to arrive soon-Bobby was to have sent it off half an hour ago. She looked at the half-opened parcel lying on the table against the parakeet’s cage.
“Has any one been sending you a present?” she asked with the forced lightness of some one who must at any cost change the subject.
“No-I don’t know-I haven’t opened it-I don’t know what it is.” Miss Willy picked up the wrapping and turned it this way and that. “I can’t make head or tail of the postmark, and I don’t know the writing-though of course that’s nothing to go by, because one’s pen always sticks so on brown paper, and it simply ruins the nib. No-I can’t think who it can be from.”
“Why don’t you open it?” suggested Anna.
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