Part 8

From his seat at the farther end of the table he looked at the jewels as they gleamed on their wearer’s neck. They were almost too ostentatious for what was, after all, an informal dinner. It was not a rope of diamonds—it was a collar. There was something Oriental and barbaric in the overwhelming display of jewellery. It was a prize for which a thief would risk much.

The conversation becoming general with the fish, was not of a kind to remove from his mind the impression made by the sight of the gems. It turned on burglary. Lord Dreever began it.

“Oh, I say,” he said. “I forgot to tell you, Aunt Julia; No. 6 was burgled the other night.”

No. 6A Eaton Square was the family’s London house.

“Burgled!” said Sir Thomas.

“Well, broken into,” said his lordship, gratified to find that he had got the ear of his entire audience. Even Lady Julia was silent and attentive. “Chap got through the scullery window about one o’clock in the morning.”

“And what did you do?” inquired Sir Thomas.

“Oh, I—er— I was out at the time,” said Lord Dreever. “But something frightened the feller,” he went on hurriedly, “and he made a bolt for it without taking anything.”

“Burglary,” said a young man whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, “is the hobby of the sportsman and the life-work of the avaricious.”

He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket and made a rapid note on his cuff.

Everybody seemed to have something to say on the subject. One young lady gave it as her opinion that she would not like to find a burglar under her bed. Somebody also had heard of a fellow whose father had fired at the butler under the impression that he was a house-breaker, and had broken a valuable bust of Socrates. Lord Dreever had known a man at college whose brother wrote lyrics for musical comedy, and had done one about a burglar’s best friend being his mother.

“Life,” said Charteris, who had had time for reflection, “is a house which we all burgle. We enter it uninvited, take all that we can lay hands on, and go out again.”

He scribbled “Life—house—burgle” on his cuff and replaced the pencil.

“This man’s brother I was telling you about,” said Lord Dreever, “says there’s only one rhyme in the English language to ‘burglar,’ and that’s ‘gurgler’—unless you count ‘pergola.’ He says——”

“Personally,” said Jimmy, with a glance at McEachern, “I have rather a sympathy for burglars. After all, they are one of the hardest-working classes in existence. They toil while everybody else is asleep. Besides, a burglar is only a practical Socialist. People talk a lot about the redistribution of wealth. The burglar goes out and does it. I have found burglars some of the decentest criminals I have ever met.”

“I despise burglars!” ejaculated Lady Julia, with a suddenness which stopped Jimmy’s eloquence as if a tap had been turned off. “If I found one coming after my jewels and I had a pistol I’d shoot him.”

Jimmy met McEachern’s eye, and smiled kindly at him. The ex-policeman was looking at him with the gaze of a baffled but malignant basilisk.

“I take very good care no one gets a chance at your diamonds, my dear,” said Sir Thomas, without a blush. “I have had a steel box made for me,” he added to the company in general, “with a special lock—a very ingenious arrangement, quite unbreakable, I imagine.”

Jimmy, with Molly’s story fresh in his mind, could not check a rapid smile. Mr. McEachern, watching him intently, saw it. To him it was fresh evidence, if any had been wanted, of Jimmy’s intentions, and of his confidence of success. McEachern’s brow darkened. During the rest of the meal tense thought rendered him more silent even than was his wont at the dinner-table. The difficulty of his position was, he saw, great. Jimmy, to be foiled, must be watched, and how could he watch him?

It was not until the coffee arrived that he found an answer to the question. With his first cigarette came the idea. That night, in his room, before going to bed, he wrote a letter. It was an unusual letter, but singularly enough, almost identical with one Sir Thomas Blunt had written that very morning.

It was addressed to the Manager of Dodson’s Private Inquiry Agency, of Bishopsgate Street, E.C., and ran as follows:

“Sir,— On receipt of this, kindly send down one of your smartest men. Instruct him to stay at the village inn in the character of American seeing sights of England and anxious to inspect Dreever Castle. I will meet him in the village and recognise him as old New York friend, and will then give him further instructions.— Yours faithfully, J. McEachern.

“P.S.— Kindly not send a rube, but a really smart man.”

This brief but pregnant letter cost him some pains in its composition. He was not a ready writer, but he completed it at last to his satisfaction. There was a crisp purity in the style which pleased him. He sealed up the envelope and slipped it into his pocket. He felt more at ease now. Such was the friendship that had sprung up between Sir Thomas Blunt and himself as the result of the jewel episode in Paris that he could count with certainty on the successful working of his scheme. The grateful knight would not be likely to allow any old New York friend of his preserver to languish at the village inn. The sleuth-hound would at once be installed at the castle, where, unsuspected by Jimmy, he would keep an eye on the course of events. Any looking after that Mr. James Pitt might require might safely be left in the hands of this expert.

With considerable fervour Mr. McEachern congratulated himself on his astuteness. With Jimmy above stairs and Spike below, the sleuth-hound would have his hands full.

★ 15 ★ _Mr. McEachern Intervenes_

Life at the castle during the first few days of his visit filled Jimmy with a curious blend of emotions, mainly unpleasant. Fate, in its pro-Jimmy capacity, seemed to be taking a rest. In the first place, the part allotted to him was not that of Lord Herbert, the character who talked to Molly most of the time. The instant Charteris learned from Lord Dreever that Jimmy had at one time actually been on the stage professionally, he decided that Lord Herbert offered too little scope for the new man’s talents.

“Absolutely no good to you, my dear chap,” he said. “It’s just a small dude part. He’s simply got to be a silly ass.”

Jimmy pleaded that he could be a sillier ass than anybody living; but Charteris was firm.

“No,” he said. “You must be Captain Browne—true acting part, the biggest in the piece, full of fat lines. Spennie was to have played it, and we were in for the worst frost in the history of the stage. Now you’ve come it’s all right. Spennie’s the ideal of Lord Herbert. He’s simply got to be himself. We’ve got a success now, my boy. Rehearsal after lunch. Don’t be late.”

And he had gone off to beat up the rest of the company.

From that moment Jimmy’s troubles began. Charteris was a young man in whom a passion for the stage was ineradicably implanted. It mattered nothing to him during these days that the sun shone, that it was pleasant on the lake, and that Jimmy would have given five pounds a minute to be allowed to get Molly to himself for half an hour every afternoon. All he knew or cared about was that the local nobility and gentry were due to arrive at the castle a week from that day, and that very few of the company even knew their lines. Having hustled Jimmy into the part of Captain Browne, he gave his energy free play. He conducted rehearsals with a vigour which occasionally almost welded the rabble he was coaching into something approaching coherency. He painted scenery and left it about—wet—and people sat on it; he nailed up horseshoes for luck, and they fell on people. But nothing daunted him; he never rested.

“Mr. Charteris,” said Lady Julia rather frigidly, after one energetic rehearsal, “is indefatigable. He whirled me about!”

It was, perhaps, his greatest triumph, properly considered, that he had induced Lady Julia to take a part in his piece; but to the born organiser of amateur theatricals no miracle of this kind is impossible, and Charteris was one of the most inveterate organisers in the country. There had been some talk—late at night in the billiard-room—of his being about to write in a comic footman _role_ for Sir Thomas, but it had fallen through; not, it was felt, because Charteris could not have hypnotised him into undertaking it, but rather because Sir Thomas was histrionically unfit.

Mainly as a result of the producer’s energy Jimmy found himself one of a crowd, and disliked the sensation. He had not experienced much difficulty in mastering the scenes in which he appeared; but unfortunately those who appeared with him had. It occurred to Jimmy daily, after he had finished “running through the lines” with a series of agitated amateurs, male and female, that for all practical purposes he might just as well have gone to Japan. In this confused welter of rehearsers his opportunities of talking with Molly were infinitesimal. And worse, she did not appear to mind. She was cheerful, and apparently quite content to be engulfed in a crowd. Probably, he thought with some melancholy, if she met his eye, and noted in it a distracted gleam, she put it down to the same cause which made other eyes in the company gleam distractedly during that week.

Jimmy began to take a thoroughly jaundiced view of amateur theatricals, and of these amateur theatricals in particular. He felt that in the electric flame department of the infernal regions there should be a special gridiron, reserved exclusively for the man who invented these performances, so diametrically opposed to the true spirit of civilisation. At the close of each day he cursed Charteris with unfailing regularity.

There was another thing that disturbed him. That he should be unable to talk with Molly was an evil, but a negative evil. It was supplemented by one that was positive. Even in the midst of the chaos of rehearsals he could not help noticing that Molly and Lord Dreever were very much together. Also—and this was even more sinister—he observed that both Sir Thomas Blunt and Mr. McEachern were making determined efforts to foster this state of affairs.

Of this he had sufficient proof one evening when, after scheming and plotting in a way that had made the great efforts of Machiavelli and Richelieu seem like the work of raw novices, he had cut Molly out from the throng and carried her off for the alleged purpose of helping him feed the chickens. There were, as he had suspected, chickens attached to the castle. They lived in a little world of noise and smells at the back of the stables. Bearing an iron pot full of a poisonous-looking mash, and accompanied by Molly, he had felt, for perhaps a minute and a half, like a successful general. It is difficult to be romantic when you are laden with chicken-feed in an unwieldy iron pot, but he had resolved that that portion of the proceedings should be brief—the birds should dine that evening on the quick-lunch principle—then to the more fitting surroundings of the rose-garden. There was plenty of time before the hour of the sounding of the dressing-gong. Perhaps even a row on the lake——

“What-ho!” said a voice.

Behind them, with a propitiatory smile on his face, stood his lordship of Dreever.

“My uncle told me I should find you out here. What have you got there, Pitt? Is this what you feed them on? I say, you know, queer coves, hens! I wouldn’t touch the stuff for a fortune. What? Looks to me poisonous.”

He met Jimmy’s eye and stopped. There was that in Jimmy’s eye that would have stopped an avalanche. His lordship twiddled his fingers in pink embarrassment.

“Oh, look!” said Molly. “There’s a poor little chicken out there in the cold. It hasn’t had a morsel. Give me the spoon, Mr. Pitt. Here, chick, chick! Don’t be silly, I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve brought you your dinner.”

She moved off in pursuit of the solitary fowl, which had edged nervously away. Lord Dreever bent towards Jimmy.

“Frightfully sorry, Pitt, old man,” he whispered feverishly. “Didn’t want to come. Couldn’t help it. He sent me out.” He half looked over his shoulder. “And,” he added rapidly, as Molly came back, “the old boy’s at his bedroom window now, watching us through his opera-glasses!”

The return journey to the house was performed in silence—on Jimmy’s part in thoughtful silence. He thought hard, and had been thinking ever since.

He had material for thought. That Lord Dreever was as clay in his uncle’s hands he was aware. He had not known his lordship long, but he had known him long enough to realise that a backbone had been carelessly omitted from his composition. What his uncle directed that would he do. The situation looked bad to Jimmy. The order, he knew, had gone out that Lord Dreever was to marry money, and Molly was an heiress. He did not know how much Mr. McEachern had amassed in his dealings with New York crime, but it could not but be something considerable. Things looked black.

Then he had a reaction. He was taking too much for granted. Lord Dreever might be hounded into proposing to Molly, but what earthly reason was there for supposing that Molly would accept him? He declined even for an instant to look upon Spennie’s title in the light of a lure. Molly was not the girl to marry for a title. He endeavoured to examine impartially his lordship’s other claims. He was a pleasant fellow, with—to judge on short acquaintanceship—an undeniably amiable disposition. That much must be conceded. But against this must be placed the equally undeniable fact that he was also, as he would have put it himself, a most frightful ass. He was weak. He had no character. Altogether, the examination made Jimmy more cheerful. He could not see the light-haired one, even with Sir Thomas Blunt shoving behind, as it were, accomplishing the knight’s ends. Shove he never so wisely, Sir Thomas could never make a Romeo out of Spennie Dreever.

It was while sitting in the billiard-room one night after dinner, watching his rival play a hundred up with the silent Hargate, that Jimmy came definitely to this conclusion. He had stopped to watch more because he wished to study his man at close range than because the game was anything out of the common as an exposition of billiards. As a matter of fact, it would have been hard to imagine a worse game. Lord Dreever, who was conceding twenty, was poor, and his opponent an obvious beginner. Again, as he looked on, Jimmy was possessed of an idea that he had met Hargate before. But once more he searched his memory and drew blank. He did not give the thing much thought, being intent on his diagnosis of Lord Dreever, who, by a fluky series of cannons, had wobbled into the forties, and was now a few points ahead of his opponent.

Presently, having summed his lordship up to his satisfaction, and grown bored with the game, Jimmy strolled out of the room. He paused outside the door for a moment, wondering what to do. There was bridge in the smoking-room, but he did not feel inclined for bridge. From the drawing-room there came sounds of music. He turned in that direction, then stopped again. He came to the conclusion that he did not feel sociable. He wanted to think. A cigar on the terrace would meet his needs.

He went up to his room for his cigar-case. The window was open. He leaned out. There was almost a full moon, and it was very light out of doors. His eye was caught by a movement at the farther end of the terrace, where the shadow was. A girl came out of the shadow, walking slowly....

Not since early boyhood had Jimmy descended stairs with such a rare burst of speed. He negotiated the nasty turn at the end of the first flight at quite a suicidal pace. Fate, however, had apparently wakened up again and resumed business, for he did not break his neck. A few moments later he was out on the terrace, bearing a cloak which he had snatched up _en route_ in the hall.

“I thought you might be cold,” he said, breathing quickly.

“Oh, thank you,” said Molly. “How kind of you!” He put it round her shoulders. “Have you been running?”

“I came downstairs rather fast.”

“Were you afraid the boogaboos would get you?” she laughed. “I was thinking of when I was a small child. I was always afraid of them. I used to race downstairs when I had to go to my room in the dark, unless I could persuade some one to hold my hand all the way there and back.”

Her spirits had risen with Jimmy’s arrival. Things had been happening that worried her. She had gone out onto the terrace to be alone. When she heard his footsteps she had dreaded the advent of some garrulous fellow-guest, full of small talk. Jimmy, somehow, was a comfort—he did not disturb the atmosphere. Little as they had seen of each other, something in him—she could not say what—had drawn her to him. He was a man, she felt instinctively, she could trust.

They walked on in silence. Words were pouring into Jimmy’s mind, but he could not frame them. He seemed to have lost the power of coherent thought.

Molly said nothing. It was not a night for conversation. The moon had turned terrace and garden into a fairyland of black and silver. It was a night to look and listen and think.

They walked slowly up and down. As they turned for the second time Molly’s thoughts formed themselves into a question. Twice she was on the point of asking it, but each time she checked herself. It was an impossible question. She had no right to put it, and he had no right to answer. Yet something was driving her on to ask it.

It came out suddenly, without warning.

“Mr. Pitt, what do you think of Lord Dreever?”

Jimmy started. No question could have chimed in more aptly with his thoughts. Even as she spoke he was struggling to keep himself from asking her the same thing.

“Oh, I know I ought not to ask,” she went on. “He’s your host and you’re his friend, I know. But——”

Her voice trailed off. The muscles of Jimmy’s back tightened and quivered, but he could find no words.

“I wouldn’t ask any one else. But you’re—different somehow. I don’t know what I mean—we hardly know each other—but——”

She stopped again, and still he was dumb.

“I feel so alone,” she said very quietly, almost to herself. Something seemed to break in Jimmy’s head. His brain suddenly cleared. He took a step forward.

A huge shadow blackened the white grass. Jimmy wheeled round. It was McEachern.

“I have been looking for you, Molly, my dear. I thought you must have gone to bed.”

He turned to Jimmy and addressed him for the first time since their meeting in the bedroom.

“Will you excuse us, Mr. Pitt?”

Jimmy bowed and walked rapidly towards the house. At the door he stopped and looked back. The two were standing where he had left them.

★ 16 ★ _A Marriage has been Arranged_

Neither Molly nor her father had moved or spoken while Jimmy was covering the short strip of turf that ended at the stone steps of the house. McEachern stood looking down at her in grim silence. His great body against the dark mass of the castle wall seemed larger than ever in the uncertain light. To Molly there was something sinister and menacing in his attitude. She found herself longing that Jimmy would come back. She was frightened. Why, she could not have said. It was as if some instinct told her that a crisis in her affairs had been reached, and that she needed him. For the first time in her life she felt nervous in her father’s company. Ever since she was a child she had been accustomed to look upon him as her protector, but now she was afraid.

“Father!” she cried.

“What are you doing out here?”

His voice was tense and strained.

“I came out because I wanted to think, father dear.”

She thought she knew his moods, but this was one that she had never seen. It frightened her.

“Why did he come out here?”

“Mr. Pitt? He brought me a wrap.”

“What was he saying to you?”

The rain of questions gave Molly a sensation of being battered. She felt dazed and a little mutinous. What had she done that she should be assailed like this?

“He was saying nothing,” she said, rather shortly.

“Nothing! What do you mean? What was he saying? Tell me!”

Molly’s voice shook as she replied.

“He was saying nothing,” she repeated. “Do you think I’m not telling you the truth, father? He had not spoken a word for ever so long. We just walked up and down. I was thinking, and I suppose he was, too. At any rate, he said nothing. I—I think you might believe me.”

She began to cry quietly. Her father had never been like this before. It hurt her.

McEachern’s manner changed in a flash. In the shock of finding Jimmy and Molly together on the terrace he had forgotten himself. He had had reason to be suspicious. Sir Thomas Blunt, from whom he had just parted, had told him a certain piece of news which had disturbed him. The discovery of Jimmy with Molly had lent an added significance to that piece of news. He saw that he had been rough. In a moment he was by her side, his great arm round her shoulder, petting and comforting her as he had done when she was a child. He believed her word without question, and his relief made him very tender. Gradually the sobs ceased. She leaned against his arm.

“I’m tired, father,” she whispered.

“Poor little girl. We’ll sit down.”

There was a seat at the end of the terrace. He picked her up as if she had been a baby and carried her to it. She gave a little cry.

“I didn’t mean I was too tired to walk,” she said, laughing tremulously. “How strong you are, father! If I were naughty you could take me up and shake me till I was good, couldn’t you?”

“Of course; and send you to bed, too, so you be careful, young woman.”

He lowered her to the seat. Molly drew the cloak closer round her and shivered.

“Cold, dear?”

“No.”

“You shivered.”

“It was nothing; yes, it was,” she went on quickly.

“It was. Father, will you promise me something?”

“Of course. What?”

“Don’t ever, ever be angry with me like that again, will you? I couldn’t bear it—really I couldn’t. I know it’s stupid of me, but it hurt. You don’t know how it hurt.”

“But my dear——”

“Oh, I know it’s stupid. But——”

“But, my darling, it wasn’t so. I was angry, but it wasn’t with you.”

“With——. Were you angry with Mr. Pitt?”

McEachern saw that he had travelled too far. He had intended that Jimmy’s existence should be forgotten for the time being—he had other things to discuss; but it was too late now. He must go forward.

“I didn’t like to see you out here alone with Mr. Pitt, dear,” he said. “I was afraid——”

He saw that he must go still farther forward. It was more than awkward. He wished to hint at the undesirability of an entanglement with Jimmy without admitting the possibility of it. Not being a man of nimble brain, he found this somewhat beyond his powers.

“I don’t like him,” he said briefly. “He’s crooked.”

Molly’s eyes opened wide. The colour had gone from her face.

“Crooked, father?”

McEachern perceived that he had travelled very much too far, almost to disaster. He longed to denounce Jimmy, but he was gagged. If Molly were to ask the question that Jimmy had asked in the bedroom—that fatal, unanswerable question! The price was too great to pay.

He spoke cautiously, vaguely, feeling his way.

“I couldn’t explain to you, my dear—you wouldn’t understand. You must remember, my dear, that out in New York I was in a position to know a great many queer characters—crooks, Molly. I was working among them.”

“But, father, that night at our house you didn’t know Mr. Pitt. He had to tell you his name.”

“I didn’t know him—then,” said her father slowly; “but—but——” He paused. “But I made inquiries,” he concluded, with a rush, “and found out things.”

He permitted himself a long, silent breath of relief. He saw his way now.

“Inquiries?” said Molly. “Why?”

“Why?”

“Why did you suspect him?”