Part 5

That afternoon I bought a new hat, which suited me. That always gives me courage. And I took a hansom. Nothing keeps one’s nerves steadier and raises one’s self-respect more than a little extravagance, and I could not afford either the hat or the hansom. I drove to No. 14, and demanded in a clear and unfaltering voice if I could see Lady Meskell.

“Her ladyship is not at home,” said the butler. And I own that it was some relief to me to hear it.

“Will you tell her ladyship,” I said, as I handed him my card, “that I called with reference to her pearl necklace?”

The man hesitated. “It is just possible that I may be mistaken,” he said. “If you will wait for one minute I will inquire.”

He showed me into a big, over-furnished and over-decorated drawing-room. As I was looking at rather a nice copy of a well-known Rubens, the door opened and Lady Meskell came towards me.

Lady Meskell was anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five. She was still distinctly beautiful. Her eyes and hair were very dark. Her complexion was perhaps a little too pale, but I liked it. Rouge would not have suited her. Her general appearance seemed to suggest a curious association of poetry and commonness. The commonness was not in her dress, which was very quiet, very expensive, and in the fashion of the day after to-morrow. I think it lay in her mouth (she had a brute of a mouth) and in her rather podgy white hands. Her smile of welcome showed perfect teeth--perhaps it was intended to show them. The fat fingers of one hand twisted up my card.

“This is very good of you, Miss Castel,” she said at once. “Do sit down and tell me all about it. And first of all, have you got my pearls?”

“No, Lady Meskell,” I said, “I have not got them.”

Her expression did not change at this. She still listened with an air of polite attention.

“But,” I continued, “I have thought over the case and I have formed a theory. If the theory is correct I can tell you where your pearls are.”

“How interesting! The police, you know, have been no good at all. I shall be so glad to have some fresh light on the subject, even if it does not actually lead to anything.”

I felt convinced that she did not expect me to be able to tell her anything at all, and that, as a kind-hearted woman, she meant to let me babble for a few minutes and then get rid of me.

“On the other hand,” I said, “if my theory should happen to be wrong, you will be exceedingly angry with me.”

Lady Meskell laughed. “Oh, I hope not,” she said. “I am very seldom angry, but when I am I become rather awful.”

“The Spanish are privileged to have passions,” I said, “and you, I think, are partly Spanish. You begin to frighten me.”

Again she laughed. “You needn’t be afraid really. How did you know I was partly Spanish? Oh, yes, it was in the papers, of course. Whatever your theory is, I want to hear it. And I will take all the responsibility of making you tell me it.”

“That’s very kind of you. Your pearl necklace was not lost at all. It was stolen by a man of about forty. He was wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat. He left the Square garden at five-and-twenty minutes to seven by the gate on the other side of the Square. He was a foreigner and is almost certainly employed in some menial capacity. I cannot tell you his name, but I have no doubt that further information could be obtained at the Spanish Embassy. Although I have brought you here the information which may enable you to recover your necklace, it is information that you had in your possession all along. You know more even than I do, for you know both the names of this man.”

“This is really very interesting,” said Lady Meskell. “You saw this man leave the garden, I suppose?”

“I did.”

“And you have remembered it all this time?”

“I have trained myself to remember.”

“You are right in your description of his appearance. He is a foreigner, and he is--or was--a servant. What made you suggest that anything could be heard of him at the Spanish Embassy?”

“Your mother was Spanish. The Spanish Ambassador attends your receptions. His carriage was pointed out to me.”

“A mistake,” said Lady Meskell bluntly. “He has never been here, and I know no Spaniards. Deduction is a dangerous game, and it seems to me that you’ve been playing it rather freely. You deduced, for instance, that what you said would make me extremely angry. Now, nothing that you have said could possibly make anybody angry. Not even your suggestion of complicity. But I can quite imagine that something which you thought might annoy a woman in my position extremely. Now tell me what you thought.”

“I have made a mistake. I am sorry to have troubled you, and I will go now, please.”

“Please don’t. You won’t tell me?”

I shook my head.

“Then I will tell you,” said Lady Meskell. “I will take a hand at this game of deduction and see if I can play it any better than you do. You knew that my mother was a Spaniard, and you supposed, quite wrongly, that I had some connection with the Spanish Embassy. Why should a woman in my position meet a man in his position secretly, and in the Square garden? How could he get into the Square garden unless I lent him a key? There must be a romance here. Romance fits well with the Spanish blood, doesn’t it? Briefly, you scented a love affair. The man had robbed me, and I wanted to get my pearls back. But I did not want the world to hear that story about me.” She looked a malicious devil as she was saying all this. “You are quite right,” she continued. “I do not want the world to hear any such story. Two hundred and fifty pounds would not be too much to pay for your silence.” She took a step or two towards the writing-table. “Shall I write you a cheque?” she said.

By this time I had become rather angry myself. “I don’t know,” I said, “whether you mean to admit in this way that I had thought correctly, but if you suggest that I had come here to blackmail you, or that you can offer me money in that way----”

Here Lady Meskell, somewhat to my surprise, burst into peals of laughter. She sat down and rubbed her fat hands together cheerfully. “You are a very good girl,” she said. “I thought you were from the first. But I was just making sure. No, unromantic though it may seem, there is no _liaison_ between myself and the man--he happens to be a cook--whom you saw leaving the garden. But, amid your mistakes, you made one or two very happy guesses. It is true that he took my pearls, and that I knew all along he had taken them, and that I knew his name. The advertisement will keep on appearing for the rest of this week. I have my own reasons for that. But, as a matter of fact, the pearls were returned to me the day before yesterday. I have got them upstairs, and I will show them to you, if you like, before you go.”

“They were returned to you by this cook man?”

“Oh, dear, no! That wouldn’t have done at all. I can’t compound a felony. At any rate, if I do, there must be no evidence of it. My friend the cook quite understood that. A nice, ruddy-faced cabman brought the pearls back and described how his little girl had found them in the gutter, and had supposed them to be beads and had worn them ever since. He knew it was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, and he knew that I knew. But we went through it all with perfect solemnity. My expert went over the pearls to see that they were all right, and the bank-notes were handed to the cabman. But I think that as you’ve been so clever--a little too clever, perhaps--you ought not to be left in the dark as to the rest of the story. I did not want to prosecute, because I did not want to have everybody laughing at me, and they would certainly have laughed. Tell me, did you find out nothing else about me?”

“Two or three other things. You were connected in different ways with several charities. Then again, you----”

“That’ll do. It began with the charities. I came across this good gentleman in hospital. He is an Italian; he has a bright and sunny imagination, and he told me strange stories of streets at the back of Tottenham Court Road. After demanding a pledge of secrecy he confessed himself to be an Anarchist.”

“Then it was romantic, after all?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t. I am sometimes inclined to think that nothing ever is. But I thought it was romantic. I was as bad in that respect as you are. He had something on his mind, which he wished to tell me. He was to leave the hospital next day--I could not go to see him, nor would it be safe for him to call at my house. I had servants who knew him. He gave me the name of one of them, and quite correctly too. I have no idea how he got hold of it. Would I give him a meeting one evening in the Square garden? What he had to tell me was a matter of life and death. It was a matter, in fact, that concerned the life of the greatest in the land. He was most urgent and most serious. If it were found out that he had betrayed the plot his own life would be forfeited. I told him that luckily I was in the habit of walking in the Square garden on fine summer evenings. I am inclined to think that he knew this already. I would go to the summer-house in the middle of the garden, and half an hour later he might join me there, coming in from the other side of the Square. Well, he came.”

“Wasn’t it very rash of you?”

“Very likely. I may be a lot of other things, but I am not a funk. I carried a useful weapon--it was not a dagger or revolver, but merely a police whistle. I was not in the least afraid of him. He kept it up splendidly to the very end. He told me a long and beautiful story, illustrated by plans of Buckingham Palace. The plans looked quite all right, but no woman can understand plans, and my knowledge of the interior of Buckingham Palace is very limited. He accepted ten sovereigns, under protest, to enable him to get out of the country. As I left the summer-house he helped me on with my cloak. That was his opportunity. I did not discover the loss until I got back to my own house. Even then, when I felt certain that he had stolen my necklace, I could not quite bring myself to disbelieve his story. It was so circumstantial, so full of details, so correct in every point in which I was able to check it. I drove at once to Scotland Yard, and it was not till I was actually there that I made up my mind to say nothing about my Italian friend and his story. I dreaded the courteous smile of an inspector who could put his hand at any time on any Anarchist in London. I merely notified them that I had lost the pearl necklace and gave a description of it. I wished to recover it and to let my cook friend go scot-free--not on his own account, but because I could not bear that my friends should know what an idiot I had made of myself.”

“And what about that servant who knew the Italian?”

“Simplicity itself. He did not know the Italian, nor did the Italian know him. The Italian merely knew that I employed a man of that name. Naturally, one of the first things I did was to satisfy myself on that point. Really, do you know, when I remember how my advertisement was worded, it seems to me that you have earned the reward. Won’t you let me write that cheque?”

“Thanks, very much,” I said, “but I’m afraid I don’t feel as if I’ve earned it myself. And so I can’t take it. I am sorry to have wasted your time with my mistakes.” I held out my hand to say good-bye.

She glanced at the clock nervously. “But you mustn’t go yet--not until you have seen the pearls.” She rang and had the necklace brought to her. It was just an ordinary necklace, and I could not imagine why she had bothered about it. I admired it and again said good-bye.

“But you must stay and have some tea with me. I am quite alone, and it would be so kind of you. I want you to tell me all about this marvellous memory of yours. I would give anything if I could cultivate it in myself.” Once more she glanced at the clock.

It was quite obvious, for some reason which I could not discover, that she was trying to keep me. I was determined to go. She implored me to wait at any rate until her carriage could be brought round to drive me back. She could not bear to think of the amount of trouble I had taken for her, an entire stranger to me. I might at least let her carriage take me home. But I immediately determined to walk. She still tried one or two frantic excuses for keeping me, but I was firm, and a minute or two later I was outside in the Square. I walked round to the other side of it, and there, in the Square garden, pacing up and down, was a man of about forty, of a foreign appearance, wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat.

And then I knew what a remarkably clever woman, and, at the same time, what an absolute fool Lady Meskell was.

I was one of the few people in London who were not surprised some few weeks later when her marriage with an Italian cook made paragraphs in the papers. She had met him, it was said, in a hospital, where she was visiting, and the two had fallen violently in love with one another.

As for the necklace, I have not the least doubt that it was really dropped in the street, and really found by the cabman’s child, and that the fortunate chef had nothing whatever to do with it. It is very wrong, of course, but I own that when I thought of the rapidity, the brilliance, and the convincing character of Lady Meskell’s lies to me, I had some feeling of envy. It was only the chance that I decided to go at the time when he was waiting for her in the Square garden that gave her away to me. I could not have done as well for myself in so tight a place.

VII

A QUEER COMMISSION

For a time things went very badly. My luck was right out. A point was reached when I doubted if I could continue to afford four shillings a week for the quite invaluable services of Minnie Saxe. I was determined that this should be almost the last of my economies. I was quite willing to economise on food and firing and--yes, even on dress. But I did not want to make my own bed any more. I had to get the more sordid part of the work of living done for me. Naturally I was not anxious that Minnie Saxe should discover the badness of my luck and the lowness of my exchequer. She accepted without comment my statement that I found tea and bread-and-butter the best breakfast if one were going to work in the morning. She said nothing when I found it was more hygienic to work in a cold room. When she came in unexpectedly one night and caught me in the very act of dining on tea and bread-and-butter she became extremely bad-tempered and was rather rude. Next morning she informed me that her cousin at Yarmouth had sent them a present of a box of kippers, and her father had taken the liberty of asking if I would accept six with his best thanks for all my kindness to her. I went into my own room to cry, and then came back and had a kipper for breakfast. They were remarkably good kippers, fat and well-liking.

An exclusive diet of tea and bread-and-butter would perhaps be good for many people, but it does not act as a stimulus to the imagination. The editors at this time sent my work back with commendable promptitude; but I did get one little story placed in _Tomlinson’s Magazine_, which I had considered to be altogether too high for me and had only attempted in desperation. I had a mutton-chop for dinner the night I received my cheque, and this gross feeding, acting on an already enfeebled constitution, as they say in the obituaries, led me to believe that I could write just the kind of serial that _Tomlinson’s Magazine_ would like. I planned it all out that night. Next morning I took a ’bus to the City to see the editor of _Tomlinson’s Magazine_ and tell him all about my idea.

He consented to see me. He seemed to be a very young man and very tired, and had the fingers of a confirmed cigarette-smoker. An older and a fatter man was standing by his side when I was shown in, and was handing him some proof sheets for inspection.

“Cut out ‘A Mother’s Prayer,’ and fill up with small jokes. Otherwise all right.” The fat man went out and the editor turned to me. I began to tell him my business.

“About a serial story!” he said. “All right, send it in and we’ll read it.” He rose from his chair and glanced at the large, framed notice on the wall. The notice said--

“YOU CAN SAY IT ALL IN FIVE MINUTES.”

I followed the glance and looked back at him. “So I can,” I said, “and I don’t want to waste any time over a long story unless I know that it has, at any rate, a chance.”

“Certainly,” he said. “Quite natural. The first few chapters and a synopsis will be enough.” He was opening the door and shaking hands with me. The fat man was in the passage outside, and he called to him that after all he would let that “Mother’s Prayer” stand. Some people liked a bit of sentimental verse now and then.

I got on a ’bus to go home and felt incompetent and hopeless. I rode on the top, and in front of me sat a well-dressed man, making pencil notes. In Piccadilly he got up, and as he passed me I noticed that he had a strong face, full of character. A moment later I noticed that he had left his pocket-book behind him. I picked it up and dashed after him.

“Pardon,” I said, as I handed the book to him, “but you left this on the ’bus.”

He took off his hat and looked at me keenly with deep-set, blazing eyes.

“Thank you,” he said. “My house is quite near, in the Square here. I should like to speak to you of this, if you can spare a few minutes.”

“I don’t want a reward,” I said bluntly, “and I don’t see what there is to say.”

“I never dreamed of offering you a reward.” He grinned pleasantly. “You really insult me in supposing that I could have made the blunder. But you have done me a very great service, and I wish you to understand how great it is. I shall wish very probably to speak to you on quite a different matter. We cannot talk here. Come, my name is Wentworth Holding, and only respectable people live in Berkeley Square.”

“Very well,” I said. “My time, unfortunately, is not valuable. I will come. I know your name, of course. In fact, I once met an agent of yours, a Dr. Morning.”

He looked at me sharply. “Were you the honest medium?” he said.

“I was.”

“You impressed Dr. Morning and his wife very favourably, especially his wife.” I certainly had not thought so at the time. “He couldn’t make out how you got mixed up with that crew. You will have to tell me that, for I can’t make it out either, and I hate puzzles.”

I laughed. “Oh, I’ll tell you anything you like about that,” I said.

The library of his house was on the ground floor. Every available inch of wall space was covered with book-shelves, and when I sat down I noticed that the books near me dealt principally with Satanism. He remained standing, opened the pocket-book, and showed me that it contained twenty bank-notes of fifty pounds each.

“These,” he said, “are of comparatively little importance. These pages of memoranda are worth more. At any rate there are people in the City who would have given you a good deal more for them. If you had read them you would have had very little difficulty in finding your market. Don’t you think you had better have slipped the book into your pocket and said nothing?”

I hated this kind of thing. “No,” I said bluntly. “Why say these things?”

He looked at me long and seriously. “You are,” he said, “in many respects exactly like Charles. Charles,” he added, “is my son. He is a singularly quixotic young man, and at present he’s in the deuce of a mess.”

What on earth was I to say to that? As I did not know, I said nothing.

“May I ask,” he said, “if you have any occupation or profession?”

“I write stories which are not accepted. I have tried other things--taking good ideas to a business man, for instance. But I could do nothing with it. My time is my own.”

“You live alone?”

“Quite alone.”

He walked up and down the room once or twice and then sat down in a chair opposite to me. “Would you have any objection,” he said, “to telling me rather more about yourself? I can assure you that I do not ask from idle curiosity, and if you wish it, nothing that you say will be repeated.”

“I don’t think,” I said, “that there are any dark secrets in my life. At the same time I don’t know why I should tell you anything.”

“No more do I,” he repeated. “Except that I have some delicate work that I want done and that I think you are one of the few people who could do it for me properly.”

“That’s all right,” I said, “I want work. I’ll tell you.”

I gave him a rapid sketch of what I had done. I noticed at the time that it was still more a sketch of what I had failed to do. He put in a keen question here and there. At the end he turned to me with a smile.

“Now,” he said, “I am going to speak to you plainly, Miss Castel. I should imagine that your father was a clever fool.”

“He was--but I don’t let you say so. You can speak quite plainly about myself.”

“Certainly,” he said. “We will begin then with you. You have a decided taint of the clever fool in your disposition. For the rest, you are a singularly honest lady; you look pretty; you inspire confidence, and you have tact. You are not, perhaps, the most perfect person I could find for the work I wish to have done, but the work presses, and it might take me months to find anyone better. The work concerns my son Charles. Do you know him?”

“No,” I said.

“He is, I am sorry to say, a very good young man. He is quixotically good. I get very little amusement out of spending money myself, but I had hoped that my only son would have some gift for it. He has none. He has never from childhood done an extravagant thing. He buys cheap clothes, and when I get angry in consequence he tells me that these are not the things which matter. He might marry brilliantly, but he will not. He has decided to marry a poor girl who has worked for her living. I don’t mind that in the least, but, if you will pardon me the expression, I am damned if he is going to marry Miss Sibyl Norton.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“Matter with her? Haven’t I said the name?--Sibyl Norton.”

“Yes, but I don’t know it.”

“You don’t want to know it. It’s a name that gives itself away. It’s obviously not a real name. It’s dishonest; it’s stagey; it makes the whole room smell of patchouli.”

I laughed. “Really,” I said, “this is very extravagant. Is that all you’ve got against her?”

“No. I dislike her type of mind and her personal appearance. She is quite respectable, has failed on the stage, and is as cunning as a cartload of monkeys. She talks of virtue and she thinks of the main chance. She lives with a tow-coloured aunt, who has less individuality than I ever met in anybody in my life. It is with the greatest possible difficulty in conversation with her that one can manage to remember that she is there at all. To come to business, the work I want you to do is to prevent my son from marrying Miss Sibyl Norton.”

“How?”

“Any way you like. That’s your affair. When I tell a clerk to get me out a statement he does not say ‘how?’ He knows how to do it, and he knows that I don’t.”

I got up to go. “Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t think I care about this kind of thing.”