Part 3

Standing beside an empty fireplace, and facing the entrance in attitudes of expectancy, were a young man and woman. In the soft pink lamplight I had an impression of their two astonished faces, or, rather, astonished eyes, for they were making a spirited struggle to obliterate all surprise from their faces. The woman was succeeding the best. She did it quite well. When she saw me she smiled almost naturally, and came forward with a fair imitation of a hostess’ welcoming manner. She was young and very pretty--a fine-featured, delicate woman, in a floating lace tea-gown. Her hand was thin and small, a real American hand, and gleamed with rings. I could see her husband, out of the tail of my eye, battling with his amazement and staring at Tom. Tom was behind me, looming up bulkily, not saying anything, but looking blankly through the glass wedged in his eye and pulling his mustache.

“My dear Mrs. Kennedy,” I said, in my sweetest and most languid drawl, “are we late? I hope not. There is such a fog, really I thought we’d never get here.”

My fingers touched her hand, and my eyes looked into hers. She was immensely curious and upset, but she smiled boldly and almost easily. I could see her inward wrestlings to place me, and to wonder if she could possibly have asked us, and had forgotten that too.

“And at last,” I continued, glibly, “I am able to present my husband. I was afraid you were beginning to think he was a sort of Mrs. Harris. Harry, dear, Mrs. and Mr. Kennedy.”

They all bowed. Tom held out his big paw, and took her little hand for a moment, and then dropped it. He had just the stolid, awkward, owlish look of a certain kind of army man.

“Awfully glad to get here, I’m sure,” he boomed out. And then he said “What?” and looked at Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy was not as much master of the situation as his wife. He wasn’t exactly frightened, but he was inwardly distracted with not knowing what to do.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, loudly, to Tom, quite forgetting his English accent. “Glad you could get around here. Foggy night, all right!”

I looked at the clock. Tom stood solemnly on the hearth-rug, staring at the fire. The Kennedys, for a moment, could think of nothing to say, and I had to look at the clock again, screw up my eyes, and remark:

“Just half-past. We’re not really late at all. You know, Harry is _such_ a punctual person, and he’s afraid I’ve got into unpunctual habits while he’s been away.”

“He _has_ been away for some time, hasn’t he?” said Mrs. Kennedy, looking from one to the other with piquant eyes that yearned for information.

“Four years with the Lancers in India,” Tom boomed out again.

The Kennedys were relieved. They’d got hold of something. They both sat down, and it was obvious that they gathered themselves together for new efforts.

I did likewise. I realized that I must be biographical to a reasonable extent--just enough to satisfy curiosity, without giving the impression that I was sitting down to tell my life-story the way the heroine does in the first act of a play.

“He arrived only last Saturday,” I said, “and you may imagine how pleased I was to be able to bring him to-night, in answer to your kind invitation.”

“Only too glad he could come,” murmured Mrs. Kennedy, oblivious of the terrified side-glance that her husband cast in her direction. “Very fortunate that you had this one evening disengaged.”

“I’m taking him about everywhere,” I continued, with girlish loquacity. “People had begun to think that Major Thatcher was a myth, and I’m showing them that there’s a good deal of him and he’s very much alive. For four years, you know, I’ve been living here, first in those miserable lodgings in Half Moon Street, and after that in my flat--you know it--on Gower Street. A nice little place enough, but much nicer now, with Harry in it.”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Kennedy, as sympathetically as was compatible with her eagerness to pounce upon such crumbs of information as I let drop. “How dull these four years have been for you!”

“Dull!” I echoed, “dull is not the word!” And I gave my eyes an expressive, acrobatic roll toward the ceiling.

“She couldn’t have stood it out there,” said Tom, in an unexpected bass growl. “Too hot! Ethel can’t stand the heat--never could.”

Then he lapsed into silence, staring at the fire under Mr. Kennedy’s fascinated gaze. Dinner was just then announced, and I heard him saying as he walked in behind us:

“Is India very hot, Mrs. Kennedy? Once in Delhi I sat for four days in a cold bath, and read the Waverley novels.”

To which Mrs. Kennedy answered, brightly:

“I should think that would have put you to sleep, and you might have been drowned.”

That was one of the most remarkable dinners I ever sat through. Of the two couples, the Kennedys were the least at ease. They were more afraid of being found out than we were. The cold sweat would break out on Mr. Kennedy’s brow when the conversation edged up toward the subject of previous meetings, and Mrs. Kennedy would begin to talk feverishly about other things. She was the kind of woman who hates to be unequal to any social emergency; and I am bound to confess, considering how unprepared she was, she held her own this time with tact and spirit. She had the copious flow of small talk so many Americans seem to have at command, and it rippled fluently and untiringly on from the soup to the savory. I added to the impression I had already made by alluding to various titled friends of mine, letting their names drop carelessly from my lips as the pearls and diamonds fell from the mouth of the virtuous princess.

Tom did well, too--excellently well. When the conversation showed signs of languishing, he began about India. He gave us some strange pieces of information about that distant land that I think he invented on the spur of the moment, and he told several anecdotes which were quite deadly and without point. When they were concluded, he gave a short, deep laugh, let his eye-glass fall out, looked at us one after the other, and said, “What?”

I would have enjoyed myself immensely if a sense of heavy uneasiness had not continued to weigh on me. What troubled me was the uncertainty of not knowing whether we really had escaped our pursuers. There was the horrible possibility that they had seen us enter the house, and were waiting to grab us as we came out. If they were there, and I was caught with the diamonds in my possession, it would be a pretty dark outlook for Laura the Lady--so dark I could not bear to picture it, even in thought. As I talked and laughed with my hosts, my mind was turning over every possible means by which I could get rid of the stones before I left the house, trying to think up some way in which I could dispose of them, and yet which would not place them quite beyond reclaiming. I think my nerves had been shaken by that spectral pursuit in the fog. Anyway, I wasn’t willing to risk a second edition of it.

We sat over dinner a little more than an hour. It was not yet ten when Mrs. Kennedy and I rose, and with a reminder to Tom that we were to “go to the opera,” I trailed off in advance of my hostess across the hall into the drawing-room. Here we sat down by a little gilt table, and disposed ourselves to endure that dreary period when women have to put up with one another’s society for ten minutes. It was my opportunity of getting rid of the diamonds, and I knew it.

We had sipped our coffee for a few minutes, and dodged about with the usual commonplaces, when I suddenly grew grave, and, leaning toward Mrs. Kennedy, said:

“Now that we are alone, my dear Mrs. Kennedy, I must ask you about a matter of which I am particularly anxious to hear more.”

She looked at me with furtive alarm. I could see she was nerving herself for a grapple with the unknown.

“What matter?” she said.

I lowered my voice to the key of confidences that are dire if not actually tragic:

“How about poor Amelia?” I murmured.

She dropped her eyes to her cup, frowning a little. I was thrilling with excitement, waiting to hear what she was going to say. After a moment she lifted her face, perfectly calm and grave, to mine, and said:

“Really, the subject is a very painful one to me. I’d rather not talk about it.”

It was a master-stroke. I could not have done better myself. I eyed her with open admiration. You never would have thought it of her; she seemed so young. After she had spoken she gave a sigh, and again looked down at her cup, with an expression on her face of pensive musing. At that moment the voices of the men leaving the dining-room struck on my ear.

I put my hand into the front of my dress, and undid the safety-pin. My manner became furtive and hurried.

“Mrs. Kennedy,” I said, leaning across the table, and speaking almost in a whisper, “I entirely sympathize with your feelings, but I am _very much_ worried about Amelia. You know the--the--circumstances.” She raised her eyes, looked into mine, and nodded darkly. “Well, I have something here for her. It’s nothing much,” I said, in answer to a look of protest I saw rising in her face--“just the merest trifle I would like you to give her. _She_ will understand.”

I drew out the bag, and I saw her looking at it with curious, uneasy eyes. The men were approaching through the back drawing-room. I rose to my feet, and still with the secret, hurried air, I said:

“Don’t give yourself any trouble about it. It’s just from me to her. Our husbands, of course, mustn’t know. I’ll put it here. Poor Amelia!”

There was a crystal and silver bowl on the table, and I put the bag into it and placed a book over it.

“Mrs. Thatcher,” she said, quickly, “really, I--”

“Hush!” I said, dramatically, “it’s for Amelia! _We_ understand!”

And then the men entered the room.

We left a few minutes later. The butler called a cab for us, and even if a person had never been a thief he ought to have had some idea of how we felt as we issued out of that house and walked down the steps. We neither of us spoke till we got inside the hansom and drove off--safe for that time, anyway.

We went to Handsome Harry’s place for that night, and sent him back for Maud, with the message she must get out immediately with what things she could bring. By eleven she was with us with her trunk and mine on top of a four-wheeler. The next morning we had scattered--I for Calais _en route_ for Paris, Tom for Edinburgh. Maud went to join a vaudeville company that she acts with “between-whiles.” We had to leave a good many things in the flat; but I felt we’d got out cheaply, and had no regrets.

That is the history of my connection with the Castlecourt diamond robbery. Of course, it was not the end of the connection of our gang with the case, but my actual participation ended here. I was simply an interested spectator from this on. My statement is merely the record of my own personal share in the theft, and as such is written with as much clearness and fulness as I, who am unused to the pen, have got at my command.

Statement of Cassius P. Kennedy, formerly of Necropolis City, Ohio, now Manager of the London Branch of the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage Company (Ltd.) of Chicago and St. Louis.

Statement of Cassius P. Kennedy, formerly of Necropolis City, Ohio, now Manager of the London Branch of the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage Company (Ltd.) of Chicago and St. Louis.

We had been in London two years when a series of extraordinary events took place which involved us, through no fault of our own, in the most unpleasant predicament that ever overtook two honest, respectable Americans in a foreign country.

I had been sent over to start the English branch of the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage Company, one of the biggest concerns of the Middle West, and it wasn’t two months before I realized that the venture was going to catch on, and I was going to be at the head of a booming business. I’d brought my wife and little girl along with me. We’d been married five years--met in Necropolis City, and lived there and afterward in Chicago, where I got my first big promotion. She was Daisy K. Fairweather, of Buncumville, Indiana, and had been the belle of the place. She’d also attracted considerable attention in St. Louis and Kansas City, where she’d visited round a good deal. There was nothing green about Daisy K. Fairweather--never had been.

Daisy and I didn’t know many people when we first came over, but that little woman wasn’t here six months before she’d sized up the situation, and made up her mind just how and where she was going to butt in. The first thing she did was to conform to those particular ones among the local customs that seemed to her the most high-toned. In Chicago we’d always dined at half-past six, and given the hired girls every Thursday off. In London we dined the first year at half-past seven, and the second at half-past eight. We had four servants and a butler called Perkins, who ran everything in sight--myself included. I always dressed for dinner after Perkins came, and tried to look as if it was my lifelong custom. I’d have sunk out of sight in a sea of shame rather than have had Perkins think I had not been brought up to it.

Daisy caught on to everything, and then passed the word on to me. She was always springing innovations on me, and I did the best I could to keep my end up. She stopped talking the way she used to in Necropolis City, and made Elaine--that’s our little girl--quit calling me “Popper” and call me “Daddy.” She called her front hair her “fringe” and her shirt-waist her “bloos,” and she made me careful of what I said before the servants. “Servants talk so!” she’d say, just as if she’d heard them. In Necropolis City, or even Chicago, we never bothered about the “help” talking. They said what they wanted and we said what we wanted, and that was all there was to it. But I supposed it was all right. Whatever Daisy K. Fairweather Kennedy says goes with me.

By the second season Daisy’d broken quite a way into society, and knew a bishop and two lords. We were asked out a good deal, and we’d some worthy little dinners at our own shack--15 Farley Street, near Walworth Crescent, a thirty-five foot, four-story, high-stooped edifice that we paid the same rent for you’d pay for a seven-room flat in Chicago. Daisy by this time was in with all kinds of push. She was what she called a “success.” Nights when we didn’t go out she’d sit with me and say:

“Well, I don’t really see how I’ll ever be able to live in Chicago again, and Necropolis City would certainly kill me.”

This same season Lady Sara Gyves dined with us twice (it was a great step, Daisy said, and I took it for granted she knew), and once at a reception Daisy stood right up close to the Marchioness of Castlecourt, the greatest beauty in London, and watched her drink a cup of tea. Daisy didn’t meet her that time, but she said to me:

“Next season I’ll know her, and the season after that, if we’re careful, I’ll dine with her. Then, Cassius P. Kennedy, we will have arrived!”

I said “Sure!” That’s what I mostly say to her, because she’s mostly right. You don’t often find that little woman making breaks.

It was in our third season in London, the time the middle of May, when the things occurred of which I have made mention at the beginning of my statement. It was this way:

We’d been going out a good deal, pretty nearly every night, and we were glad to have, for once, a quiet evening at home. Of course, that doesn’t mean the same as it does in Necropolis City or even Chicago. We dine, just the same, at half-past eight, and both of us dress for dinner. We have to, Daisy says, no matter how we feel, because of the servants. The servants in London are good servants all right, but the way you have to avoid shocking their sensitive feelings sometimes makes a free-born American rebellious. I like to think I’m an object of interest to my fellow creatures, but it’s a good deal of a bother to have it on your mind that you mustn’t destroy the illusions of the butler or upset the ideals of the cook.

As we were waiting for dinner to be announced we heard a cab rattle up and stop, as it seemed, at our door. We looked at each other with inquiring eyes, and then heard the cab go off--on the full jump, I should say, by the noise it made--and a minute later the bell rang sharp and quick. Perkins opened the door, and Daisy and I heard a lady’s voice, very sweet and sort of drawling, say something in the vestibule. I peeped through the curtains, and there were a man and a woman--a distinguished-looking pair--taking off their coats and primping themselves up at the hall mirror. I’d never seen either of them before, as far as I could remember, but I could tell by their general make-up that they were the real thing--the kind Daisy was always cultivating and asking to dinner.

I stepped back, and said to her, in a whisper:

“Somebody’s come to dinner, and you’ve forgotten all about it.”

She shook her head, and whispered back:

“I haven’t asked any one to dinner; I’m sure I haven’t.”

“Well, they’re here, whether we’ve asked them or not,” I hissed, “and you can’t turn ’em out. They expect to be fed.”

“Who are they?”

“Search me! Friends of yours I’ve never seen.”

“For pity’s sake, don’t look surprised! Try and pretend it’s all right.”

We lined up by the fireplace, and got our smiles all ready. The portière was drawn, and Perkins announced:

“Major and Mrs. Thatcher.”

They sailed smilingly into the room, the woman ahead, rustling in a long, sparkly, black dress. To my certain knowledge, I’d never seen either of them before. The woman was very pretty; not pretty in the sense that Daisy is, with beautiful features and a perfect complexion, but slim, and pale, and aristocratic-looking. She had black hair with a little wreath of red flowers in it, and the whitest neck I ever saw. She evidently thought she was all right as far as herself and the house and the dinner were concerned, for she was perfectly serene, and easy as an old shoe. The man behind her was a big, handsome, dense chap--just home from India, they said, and he looked it. He’d that dull way those dead swell army fellows sometimes have; it goes with a long mustache and an eye-glass.

I looked out of the tail of my eye at Daisy, and I knew by her face she couldn’t remember either of them. But they were the genuine article, and she wasn’t going to be feazed by any situation that could boil up out of the society pool. She was just as easy as they were. She’d a smile on her face like a child, and she said the little, mild, milky things women say just as milkily and mildly as tho she was greeting her lifelong friends.

Well, it went along as smoothly as a summer sea. They located themselves as Major and Mrs. Thatcher, and told a lot about their life and their movements--all of which I could see Daisy greedily gathering in. I didn’t know whether she remembered them or not, but I didn’t think she did, she was so careful about alluding to places where she had met them. They seemed to know her all right--Mrs. Thatcher, especially. She’d allude to smart houses where Daisy had been asked, and tony people that were getting to be friends of Daisy’s. She seemed to be right in the best circles herself. I wouldn’t like to say how many times she mentioned the names of earls and lords; one of them, Baron--some name like Fiddlesticks--she said was her cousin.

She didn’t stay long after dinner. I don’t think I sat ten minutes with the major--and it was a dull ten minutes, and no mistake. There was nothing light and airy about him. He asked me about Chicago (which he pronounced “Chick-ago”), and said he had heard there was good sport in the Rocky Mountains, and thought of going there to hunt the Great Auk. I didn’t know what the Great Auk was, and I asked him. He looked blankly at me, and said he believed a “large form of bird,” which surprised me, as I had an idea it was a preadamite beast, like a behemoth.

I was glad to have the major go, not only because he was so dull, but because I was so dying to find out from Daisy if she’d placed them and who they were. They were hardly on the steps and the front door shut on them before I was back in the parlor.

“Who are they, for heavens’ sake?” I burst out.

She shook her head, laughing a little, and looking utterly bewildered.

“My dear boy,” she said, “I haven’t the least idea. It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever knew.”

“Isn’t there anything about them you remember? Didn’t they say something that gave you a clew?”

“Not a word, and yet they seem to know me so well. The queerest thing of all was that, when you were in the dining-room with the man, the woman, in the most confidential tone, began to ask me about some one called Amelia. It was _too_ dreadful! I hadn’t the faintest notion what she meant.”

“What did you say? I’ll lay ten to one you were equal to it.”

“I realized it was desperate, and, after going through the dinner so creditably, I wasn’t going to break down over the coffee. She said: ‘How about poor Amelia?’ I knew by that ‘poor’ and by the expression of her face it was something unusual and queer. I thought a minute, and then looked as solemn as I could, and answered: ‘Really, the subject is a very painful one to me. I’d rather not talk about it.’”

We both roared. It was so like Daisy to be ready that way!

“And then--this is the strangest part of all--she put her hand in the front of her dress and drew out some little thing of chamois leather, and told me to give it to Amelia from her. I tried to stop her, but it was too late. She put it here in the crystal bowl.”

Daisy went to the bowl, and took out a little limp sack of chamois leather.

“It feels like pebbles,” she said, pinching it.

And then she opened it and shook the “pebbles” into her hand. I bent down to look at them, my head close to hers. The palm of her hand was covered with small, sparkling crystals of different sizes and very bright. We looked at them, and then at one another. They were diamonds!

For a moment we didn’t either of us say anything. Daisy had been laughing, and her laugh died away into a sort of scared giggle. Her hand began to shake a little, and it made the diamonds send out gleams in all directions.

“What--what--does it mean?” she said, in a low sort of gasp.

I just looked at them and shook my head. But I felt a cold sinking in that part of my organism where my courage is usually screwed to the sticking-place.

“Are they real, do you think?” she said again, and she took the evening paper and poured them out on it.

Spread out that way, they looked most awfully numerous and rich. There must have been more than a hundred of them of different sizes, and shaking around on the surface of the paper made them shine and sparkle like stars.

“It’s a fortune, Cassius,” she said, almost in a whisper; “it’s a fortune in diamonds. Why did she leave them?”

“Didn’t she say they were for Amelia?” I said, in a hollow tone.

“Yes; but who is Amelia? How will we ever find her? What shall we do? It’s too awful!”

We stood opposite one another with the paper between us, and tried to think. In the lamplight the diamonds winked at us with what seemed human malice. I turned round and picked up the bag they had come from, looked vaguely into it, and shook it. A last stone fell out on the paper, quite a large one, and added itself to the pile.

“Why did she leave them here?” Daisy moaned. “What did she bother us for? Why didn’t she take them to Amelia herself?”

“Because she was afraid,” I said, in the undertone of melodrama. “They’re stolen, Daisy.”

I had voiced the fear in both our hearts. We sat down opposite one another on either side of the table, with the newspaper full of diamonds between us. I don’t know whether I was as pale as Daisy, but I felt quite as bad as she looked. And sitting thus, each staring into the other’s scared face, we ran over the events of the evening.