John P. Hopple, Collector.Mercantile and Commercial Protective Association.D. B. stands for Dead Beats. B. D. stands for Bad Debts. We collect Bad Debts from Dead Beats everywhere for everybody. We can collect yours. We collect regardless of Lodge, Politics, or Religion. Do business with us and we will both make money.Some people don't like us.
John P. Hopple, Collector.Mercantile and Commercial Protective Association.
D. B. stands for Dead Beats. B. D. stands for Bad Debts. We collect Bad Debts from Dead Beats everywhere for everybody. We can collect yours. We collect regardless of Lodge, Politics, or Religion. Do business with us and we will both make money.
Some people don't like us.
"Ain't nobody up there," said the ancient, returning from the exploration of Doctor Vardaman's upper rooms. "Except the sick dude in the front room. Say, maybe he ain't been on a bat, ain't he? Oh, no, I guess not!"
"Do I understand that Huddesley has got himself in trouble owing someone?" asked Doctor Vardaman, finding the situation somewhat illuminated. "It appears to me, Mr.—er"—he glanced again at the card—"Mr. Hopple, it appears to me that your methods of collecting are unduly—shall I say vigorous? To rout people out at this hour—I've no doubt the man would have paid you without all this to-do. What is the amount, if I may——"
"Say, ain't you barking up the wrong tree?" interrupted the other, eying him in perplexity. "Or—here—say, that's funny, I give you the wrong card. Excuseme, Doc., my mistake. That's a man's business-card I met in the smoker coming from N'Yawk. This isme. Just read that, will you? It's all square, Doc., I've got a reference—and Judd here's from your own p'lice headquarters anyhow."
Again the doctor applied himself to a card and found thereon the following legend:
William O. Grimm.Paterson Detective Bureau."We never sleep."
It was hardly reassuring, in spite of the last statement; but before Doctor Vardaman had sufficiently collected himself to ask for further enlightenment, the policeman appeared in the doorway.
"Why—er—say," he remarked, "there's a party in a hack outside here wants to know the way to Colonel Pallinder's. I told him that there big house standin' back with them big pillows up the front, ain't that right?"
"That's the place," said the doctor, half-listening.
"An' why—er—say, he said he see by the papers they was a party at Colonel Pallinder's to-night and do you guess they've gone to bed yet, becos he's met a lot o' kerridges comin' away from this di-rection like it was over, an' he'd like to get there, becos he's gotta hump, he says."
"Blamed if that ain't Hopple!" exclaimed the detective, in admiring wonder. "Well, don't that beat the Dutch!"
"They ain't but that one Pallinder in town, is there?" asked the policeman. "He says if they's anybody up yet, he's going to hump right along and ketch 'em."
"Somebody may not have gone to bed yet," said the doctor, sparing a moment from his own muddled affairs to wonder what this late arrival, and energy of pursuit might mean. "In fact it seems my man Huddesley has not got back from there yet. Tell him to drive straight on and turn to the right at the gate. Did you say you were looking for Huddesley, Mr. Grimm? What for?"
"Why, for a number o' things, Doc., bustin' up a safe at the Farmers' an' Traders' Bank o' Sharontown, Missouri, an' makin' a get-away with the specie, thirty-two hundred dollars in coin an' greenbacks, for one thing. That was in July, 1881. If he's the man I'm looking for, his name's Tuttle, or Cohen, or Jimmy the Toff—he goes by all of 'em—and he's wanted in Boston besides for a jewelry-shop job last year."
Doctor Vardaman gazed speechless. Mr. Grimm's words, delivered in a dry, curt, and entirely unsensational manner, fairly rattled about the old gentleman's ears like hail. He was conscious of anger, of resentment, and in the same breath of a ghastly and growing conviction.
"Impossible!" he gasped; and then felt involuntarily for his cuff-buttons. "Jewelry-shop job! You mean Huddesley's a thief!"
"Put it there," said the detective, nodding encouragingly.
"Good Lord! Why—I—I can't believe it. He's been in my house for over two months, and I've never missed a thing!"
"I guess you didn't have nothing worth while," said Grimm, casting the glance of a connoisseur about him. "He thought it was a good place to hide, or else he was fixing to bring off some other job."
"That's what!" said Judd briefly.
"I—I—it don't seem as if itcouldbe! Don't you think there's some mistake?"
"Not likely," said Judd, without emotion. "I spotted him that time I come up here peddlin' collar-buttons—t'ain't more'n two weeks ago—an' I'll bet anything he spotted me, too. He's pretty fly, that fellow."
Mr. Grimm produced a bundle of papers from the insidepocket of his coat, fished out a bit of pasteboard and held it before the doctor's eyes. "That him?" he queried.
Doctor Vardaman surveyed it a while in silence. "I'm afraid so," he said at last, with a sigh. "This is clean-shaven, and Huddesley wears mutton chop side-whiskers, but it's the same face, undoubtedly."
The detective nodded with a satisfied air, and returned the photograph to its place. He repeated his former question. "Did you say he'd gone out? Was it to this party to-night? How'd that happen?"
"The—the circumstances are a little peculiar," said the doctor. "Won't you sit down, Mr. Grimm? The fact is the young gentlemen of the party—it's an entertainment, private theatricals—were dining with me, and one of them was taken sick——"
"The feller upstairs, hey?" interposed Mr. Judd, smiling slightly.
"Ahem—yes. Well, then, Huddesley, who knew his part, volunteered to take his place in the play, you understand. It was a great accommodation——"
"Hold on a minute. Didn't it strike you as kinder queer he should 'a' been so well up in the stage-business? Fact is, hehasbeen an actor, he's been pretty nearly everything, but you didn't know that of course. But didn't you ever have any suspicions?"
"Well, I had always thought the man was rather—rather unusual—a little above his station, perhaps. Butthis! It never occurred to me. You may have heard that there was an attempt at robbing the Pallinder residence this winter, and Huddesley was one of the first to discover it, and rouse the——"
He paused, seeing the two detectives exchange a meaning glance. "Told you so," said Judd. He got up, walked to the door, spat into the porch, and returned to his seat. "I wason—not right off, but pretty soon," said he. "Go ahead, Doc., you say Huddesley took your friend's part in the play——"
"I suppose he had seen these young men go through their parts a dozen times. It didn't seem at all odd to us; it would be a long story to go into all the details, but we—we found it most fortunate that he could supply the sick man's place. I wish to say, Mr. Grimm, that I have no cause, personally, to complain of Huddesley. His conduct since he has been with me has been most exemplary, I have never observed anything suspicious——"
The doctor came to a dead stand-still, for at that moment his discovery of the evening flashed into his mind with inconvenient abruptness.
"You're a kind-hearted man, sir," said Grimm, with warmth, "to say what you can for the fellow, but I've got his record. It's queer he ain't back yet." He looked at his watch. "They keep it up pretty late, don't they? It's after three." He got up briskly. "I guess we'd better leave Clancy here, Judd, an' go on up to the house. Looks to me like that'd ought to be our next move. All ready?" He stood a moment frowning over some new thought. "This here party, Doc., I guess it was goin' to be pretty swell, wasn't it? I mean ladies all diked out with diamond earrings an' breast-pins, hey?"
Doctor Vardaman, gripping the arms of his chair hard, stared at the detective transfixed. If the various revelations which had visited the old gentleman during the last moment had assumed the concrete, tangible form of so many successiveclubbings, he could not have been more stunned. And in the ensuing short silence, Teddy's voice could be heard upstairs mournfully requesting more ice-water for God's sake.
"Got himself good and tanked, didn't he?" said the detective, grinning.
"Mr. Grimm," said the doctor, with difficulty, "I have reason to believe that my young friend has been drugged. I think Huddesley found something among some few medicines I keep—it was a preparation of chloroform—and put it in his wine. I happened to examine the bottle, and it had been filled up with water. And the young man's glass smelled perceptibly of the stuff—I was at a loss to account for it—why Huddesley should want to drug him, I mean, but I—I am beginning to understand. And—wait a minute!" he interposed as both of the others opened their mouths on a question. "In one of the plays which they were to perform, there is a question of some diamonds being stolen—the plot turns on that episode, in fact. Jewels were loaned for the young people to use—very costly ones. I am told Mrs. Pallinder's necklace alone is valued at——"
"Told you so!" shouted Judd, starting to his feet. Grimm quieted him with a gesture. "Well?" he said.
"Teddy's part—the part Huddesley contrived to get himself substituted in, was that of a butler who steals the diamonds——"
"Well, WELL?"
"Well, sir, he would have them on his person, in his possession, at his mercy, for the last two acts, the better part of an hour——"
"And he ain't back yet!" screeched Mr. William O. Grimm.He made a frantic gesture. "Have they got a telephone? Where's your telephone?"
"I have none," said the doctor, feeling as if he were confessing to arson. "The nearest is the drug-store corner of——"
Mr. Grimm uttered an oath direct and brilliant as a lightning-stroke. Then he commanded himself with an effort. "Judd!" he bawled, making for the door, and even in headlong flight, discharged a shaft of melancholy satire: "No telephone! Say, Doc., it's a good ways to Broadway, ain't it?" said he, and waved a farewell. "So long! Many thanks! See you later!" He flashed forth from the house, his retainer at his heels. The doctor saw their tumultuous passage down the walk, saw them scramble, clamber, struggle into the waiting hack, saw it hurl upon its way with vociferations—and silence fell like a blow. There stood Doctor Vardaman and the policeman staring at each other in the empty porch.
"That fellow can hump, can't he?" said Clancy admiringly. "You justgottawhere he comes from. Tell you, New York's th' place!"
Before "William Tell" was half over it became evident that Teddy's place was more than filled. There were those among the audience who assured me later that they had penetrated the disguise early in the performance; but, if so, they exhibited rare powers of self-control, for they did not remark upon it at the time, nor indeed until the whole calamitous story had come out and been town-talk for days. Some queeresprit de corpskept the girls from spreading the miserable truth about Teddy. Sick! We knew only too well what was the matter with him; but that was no reason why we should proclaim it to the world. We entered into the conspiracy of silence, partly from a real generosity of spirit and desire to shield the poor fellow, and partly because, as Mazie sagaciously pointed out, talking about it would certainly discredit a girl (in a manner of speaking) with the other men. Mazie undoubtedly possessed some of the qualities of a born leader, among them that of getting herself listened to, without being either disagreeable or ridiculous; no one of us, not even Kitty, would have questioned her knowledge of men and their ways. We knew a dozen who were prettier, better bred, cleverer, and kinder than Mazie Pallinder, but, when it came to influence, they were nowhere beside her. Even now, I believe if she came into my life again, with her sallow, paint-touched face, her slip-shod pronunciation, her odd flat black eyes, her ineffably appropriate and beautiful clothes—I say, even now, I should probably follow and imitate her as I did then!
But when the curtain went up on "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara," and the moment arrived when Huddesley must appear as Teddy with no disguise save that of a livery and false whiskers, we trembled for the success of the deception. We might have spared our worry; Huddesley came on in the ballroom scene with which the play opened, handing a tray of ices—and he was so like Teddy in face and movements that even upon the stage where the devices of his make-up could be studied close at hand, the effect was startling.Plus roi que le roi, he was; he passed his tray not like a butler imitating a gentleman, but like a gentleman imitating a butler; he dropped hish'sand stumblingly forgot to drop them with all Teddy's humorous self-consciousness. He managed his double part so well, no light task even for a finished actor, that he achieved a kind of equality with us; we forgot that he was Doctor Vardaman's servant. The thing was so much a matter for gratulations that I think we scarcely remembered it was also a matter for wonder. If J. B. or the other men felt any uneasiness they did not reveal it; but, so ingenuously self-centred is youth, it is probable we were much too deeply interested, everyone in his own appearance and the impression he was making, to be genuinely concerned about anybody else.
The audience about whom I had had such fearsome fancies must have been singularly lenient, even more so than such audiences usually are to such performers. My recollection is that, excepting Huddesley, we were too bad even to be funny. "Mrs. Tankerville" is a good stirring comedy-drama, of the type Boucicault and Tom Taylor made so popular during the quarter-century succeeding 1850; there is an abundance of vivid dialogue, with plenty of "points," and plenty of"situations." But what it all became in our hands is a dire memory. Mazie, it is true, made a splendid figure on the stage, and was quite dashing and theatrical, but she forgot two-thirds of her lines, and in the great scene where she accused Muriel of the robbery, had to be prompted at every other word. And Muriel—well, there was no blinking the fact, Muriel was a "stick." She was so big and gentle and honest-looking that no sane person in stage-land or out of it, could have suspected her for a moment of anything more criminal, say, than hopping into bed to say her prayers because her feet were cold! The excitement flushed her so that it was visible through her paint, and she did not look so statuesquely calm and finished as usual; nervousness, which is unbecoming to everybody, set particularly ill on a person of her weight and inches. She knew every word of her part, and recited it with the conscientiousness which she would have shown to the Catechism—and with much the same expression! She replied to Mazie's halting tirades in the tone and with the air of someone declining a cup of afternoon tea. "Will you drive me into the street?" she remarked amiably, and her manner suggested: "Well, all right, just wait till I get my hat on!" Kitty mimicked her in the bedroom, until the rest of us were feeble with laughter. Owing to Colonel Pallinder's forethought, the machinery of the curtain and footlights worked perfectly, and the stage-settings were orderly and accurate; but aside from these, every accident known to the production of amateur theatricals befell us. At one juncture, when there should have been a "loud crash" behind the scenes, none occurred, no one in particular having been entrusted with that feature of the performance; and, in the midst of a dead silence, Jimmie Hathaway found himselfobliged to exclaim, "Good Heavens! What is all that infernal din about?" To make matters worse, some over-zealous person immediately thereon made a "loud crash," and Jimmie, lacking the presence of mind to repeat his former remark, went on with the next speech: "Everything is quiet as the grave, now. What could it have been?" The general verdict was that J. B. did very well, even in the love-scenes where we had thought he would make a failure of it; but J. B. was deservedly popular anyway. He triumphed by sheer force of personality. The young fellow was so kind and hearty and good-looking he could not but be pleasing. Whatever applause "Mrs. Tankerville" brought forth (and that of a sadly feeble and perfunctory nature, I fear) went to him, and none of us grudged it.
The play has three acts, and our much-enduring audience had sat through two of them, when Huddesley waylaid Mazie behind the scenes as she was rushing back for one of her numerous changes of costume. These afforded a species of entertainment that was "not in the bill," as some humourist observed; "Mrs. Tankerville's" clothes were one of the few points of real interest about the performance.
"Miss Pallinder?" said Huddesley, timidly halting in her way.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Here's the di'monds," said Huddesley, presenting the box, done up for the sake of stage-effect in a rather large and lumbering parcel. "I've been carrying 'em around like you told me to, so they'd be safe. I didn't want to give 'em to hanybody but you, and I've got to go now. You know I don't have to show again, except where Mr. Taylor comes in and sees me in the mirror, and plugs me over with thepistol-shot, and then they drag me out from behind the screen. And I thought anybody could put on the clothes for that, as long as the audience don't see anything but just a body——"
"Yes, but what's the matter? Why can't you finish?" asked Mazie, a little startled. She took the box mechanically, and edged toward her room.
"If you please, ma'am, I ain't feelin' very well. I think maybe it's the wet cold night. It's just come over me—I've got a kind of bad turn on the stomach and——"
"Oh, I'm so sorry," interrupted Mazie, fearful from his manner that Huddesley was about to enter on some embarrassing details. "Better go down and ask my father for some whisky—he's in the dining-room—tell him I sent you. But what shall we do—oh, Mr. Carson?"
The enslaved Chorus, who figured in a small part in "Mrs. Tankerville," approached; he was always hanging around whenever Mazie went on or left the stage, in hopes of a word. But the girl now saw him, to her surprise, in overcoat and hat.
"You're not going?" she asked, with a pang of regret; she wished, momentarily, that she had been "nicer" to him. Whether a woman cares for a man or not, she never sees him leave her without dismay. "You're not going?" said Mazie, directing a troubled and wistful smile upon him.
"Can't help it, Miss Pallinder," said Bob, warming to the very marrow at her glance. "I—I hate to awfully. But it's getting late, you know, and I've got to meet my sister; her train will be in about midnight."
"Oh, it's not that yet."
"Pretty near."
"But, Mr. Carson, I don't know what we—I don't knowwhat I shall do without you. I haven't anybody to go to but you. Such a pity about Mr. Johns, isn't it—his being taken sick, I mean—it's upset everything dreadfully. Here's Huddesley——"
Huddesley explained volubly—"And if you, or somebody of the young gentlemen could just put on the clothes, Mr. Robert, the audience will never know the difference; they don't see anything but the body when they drag me out after Mr. Taylor's shot me. I've got a bad turn on my stomach and——"
"All right," said Bob hastily. "Is that package the diamonds? They have to find 'em on you, don't they? Here, I'll do it—I guess I can make the train anyhow. Come along and get the costume off, Huddesley, you want to hurry."
Mazie stopped him, with a hand on his arm. "Oh, Mr. Carson, we—I ought to give Huddesley something, oughtn't I? For coming this evening? It was very accommodating, you know, he isn't like a darky servant. What ought I to give him? Five dollars? Ten dollars?" she whispered, with a manner of special confidence that was like a caress to the young man.
"Never mind, Ma—Miss Pallinder," he said, absurdly tremulous and excited. "I'll see about it—don't worry—it's like you to think of it—you're so—that is——" words forsook him. "I'll fix Huddesley, you know," he faltered, chafing privately at the limitations of etiquette and the English language. Mazie rewarded him with a long look, and walked off.
By this time, in the crowded area behind the scenes, what with gas-jets burning full head on, the smell of cookery coming up the back stairs, sawdust, recent paint, cut flowers,innumerable other odours perfectly impossible to classify, the air had grown well-nigh unbearable. Everybody was overheated and out of temper; the play dragged on stupidly. I went down to the second landing for a breath of fresh air, and was standing there by the open window, in, I suppose, the only quiet and cool spot in the whole house, when someone came with a rush down the stairs. It was Huddesley. I remember being struck, as I turned and saw him, with the sharp rigidity of his features; devoid of paint and false beard, they resembled a parchment mask. There was an animal swiftness in his movements, yet he stopped short as we faced, taking the last three steps with an air of leisure, and a certain reckless and impudent triumph in his glance. He had something in his hand, and I recall the jaunty motion with which he tossed and caught it—it was a gold coin—and thrust it deep in his pocket; Bob's money, no doubt, but I knew nothing of that, and seeing the man pause, looked at him inquiringly "Why, if there ain't little tootsie that I made a face at!" he said. "Sorry I scared you, toots! Bye-bye!" And while I yet stood in a helpless stupor of surprise, passed an arm around my bare shoulders, twitched my chin into his hand, and—he was gone with a laugh, out of the house, and out of our lives! I may fairly say that of all that company I was the last to have any dealings with Huddesley; and I took care, as may be imagined, that no one else should know the picturesque circumstances of his departure. Fortunately my testimony was not necessary, was not even asked. He went, and the night received him into its dark world of wet and wind and tossing branches. No exit could have been more appropriate, more typical.
A moment later the thunderous rumble of chairs andoutburst of voices overhead announced that "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara" had at last run its disastrous course. It was very late; "William Tell" had not begun until nearly ten o'clock, and the encores had taken up a good deal of time. The second play had not been prolonged by undue enthusiasm from the audience, at any rate; yet I doubt if they were as weary of it as we. It hung on in spite of us; the speeches that we had heard till flesh and spirit fairly recoiled from the sound of them (and yet no one knew his own!) simply wouldnotget themselves said. We had reached the mood when we hated the smooth and conscientious politeness of our hearers.
"Up at the 'Peoples' they'd guy this thing off the stage," one young man said to another. "And serves us right, too!"
"I wish to goodness we'd stopped with 'Tell,' the audience wouldn't have been so tired——"
"Audience! It's a congregation!" said Kitty Oldham savagely. "And I'm glad the obsequies are over. 'Mrs. Tankerville' is dead and buried—for mercy's sake, don't anyone mention her name to me again!"
"You did awfully well, Miss Kitty—you reminded me of Lotta."
"Of course," said Kitty with neat sarcasm. "Now go and tell Muriel she reminded you of Bernhardt!"
"She looked more like Mrs. Langtry, didn't she?" said her companion diplomatically. "But Miss Pallinder now did have a kind of likeness to Bernhardt, she's so tall and thin. I thought she was stunning in that red dress and the diamonds—why didn't she put them on again? Right at the end there, where they find them, I mean?"
"I don't know, unless she wanted to shorten up the lastscene, and get through. She said she was going to give them back to her mother as soon as it was over."
"Mrs. Pallinder's not wearing them, though. What became of Huddesley toward the last there?"
"Mazie said he had to go, the doctor had sent for him or something, I didn't catch what it was. That was Bob in his clothes, you know."
"Say, Teddy's had a lot of substitutes this evening, hasn't he? Do you suppose anyone suspects?"
"Nobody's said anything to me anyhow."
"Hello, here's Capoul!"[6]
"Oh, Capoul—Rats!" said Bob, reddening with vexation. He had a secret conviction that a tenor voice lacked manliness, and mistook the felicitations of his friends for artfully disguised raillery. "People will be poking that 'La-hee-ho' business at me from now till doomsday, I suppose."
"We were just wondering if anyone knew about Ted."
"Guess not; I haven't heard anybody say a word about it."
"Look here, how do you happen to be here yet, my son? I thought you said you had to go and meet Susie."
"Well, I do, but not right away. I got one of the cab-drivers outside—there's about fifty of 'em, you never saw such a jam in your life—to go down to the drug-store and telephone, and they say the train from New York won't be in till two o'clock or after. Tell you, the telephone's an institution, isn't it? It's like Jules Verne coming true; they say they'll have 'em all over in private houses andeverywhere before long. Have you seen Miss Pallinder? I've got this next waltz—oh, there she is with her mother."
He drifted off, and Kitty gave her partner a meaning look. "Bob means business, I guess," said the latter, returning it.
His hostess welcomed the young man with a wan vivacity. "How do you do, Mr. Carson? This is the first chance I've had to congratulate you. Everybody didsowell. You were especially good at the last."
Undoubtedly Mrs. Pallinder was not her usual suave and confident self that night; her attention wandered. She had forgot what part Bob took, and there was no graciousness in her fixed smile; it might have been painted on her face like some of her other adornments.
"The last was the best part of the whole performance, I guess, for the audience," said Bob, grinning. "That was me they dragged in from behind the screen, you know. It's not everybody that can make believe to be dead as artistically as I can. I'm the second-assistant-deputy-Ted Johns. Miss Pallinder told you about Huddesley, didn't she? She said you knew."
"Yes—very unfortunate, wasn't it?" said Mrs. Pallinder, smiling mechanically. "I mean fortunate, of course—that he could take Mr. Johns' part, that is. Did you—have you got my necklace, Mr. Carson?"
"Me? Why, no," said Bob, in surprise. "They were supposed to find the jewels onJenks'body, you know, in a bundle, and Miss Pallinder took them. Don't you remember where she says: 'Oh, my tiara! That poor child! What has become of her?'"
Mrs. Pallinder ought to have remembered it, for Mazie had begun with: "'Oh, my child! That poor tiara, what hasbecome of it?'" so that a number of the audience and nearly all the actors had been extinguished in giggles. But she only said vaguely, "Oh, ah, yes, I believe there was something of the kind said. Mazie, honey, I've just been asking Mr. Carson what he had done with the tiara, the necklace, I mean—I reckon he thinksIthink he's stolen it!"
"Oh, I didn't even undo the parcel," said Mazie languidly. "I just pretended to on the stage. I couldn't worry around with the thing. That play's too long anyhow; I cut it short right at the end there on purpose. We had the necklace all twisted up on wires, you know. I just pitched it into the bureau-drawer and locked it up. It's safe."
"I'm afraid you're tired," said Bob, as Mrs. Pallinder, with a return of her accustomed tact, moved unobtrusively away. "I'm afraid you're worn out," repeated the young fellow tenderly. "You had the hardest part of anybody."
FOOTNOTE:[6]Happening to mention Capoul the other day, I discovered that none of my hearers remembered that dashingFaust,Count Almaviva,Romeoof twenty-five years ago. "And who was Capoul?" their blank looks seemed to ask.Sic transit gloria!—M. S. W.
[6]Happening to mention Capoul the other day, I discovered that none of my hearers remembered that dashingFaust,Count Almaviva,Romeoof twenty-five years ago. "And who was Capoul?" their blank looks seemed to ask.Sic transit gloria!—M. S. W.
[6]Happening to mention Capoul the other day, I discovered that none of my hearers remembered that dashingFaust,Count Almaviva,Romeoof twenty-five years ago. "And who was Capoul?" their blank looks seemed to ask.Sic transit gloria!—M. S. W.
It was over at last—the party was over; like everything else in life, things had turned out neither quite so good nor quite so bad as we had expected. "Mrs. Tankerville" was a failure—but then "William Tell" had been a success, so the score was even. The curtain had gone down on both of them, and was about to descend upon another little drama, if we had known it. Everyone said the evening was a great success, one more feather in the Pallinder crown; downstairs, under the colonel's benevolent supervision, limitless champagne flowed; the supper was a triumph; the german one of the prettiest ever danced. Muriel led with J. B., and some of the older people stayed to see it, and talked for days afterwards about the favours Mazie had brought from New York; the figure where the men got little silver pencil-cases and the girls painted gauze fans; and that other figure where they all looked so pretty with Japanese parasols and paper lanterns; and the figure where they had the Easter eggs—that was charming! But it was all over at last; blank dreariness and silence settled upon the ballroom, the last carriage rumbled away, the musicians sacked and boxed up their instruments and disappeared, featureless and unremarked, along with the caterers' men rattling their dishes, and banging amongst their folding chairs—"into the dark went one and all." They left behind a tired and not too good-tempered mob of young people; on the stage and behind it everything was in a frenzied disorder; and when in thepinched and colourless small hours, we went yawning to our beds, those useful articles of furniture were hardly to be found cumbered as they were with wreckage. There were hats, dresses, damp towels, artificial flowers and withering natural ones, slippers and odd stockings, soiled and tumbled veils, handkerchiefs, gloves, fans, the gilt and tinsel scraps of favours—it was a wilderness where the most amazing things turned up in the most amazing places. Somebody found a comb in a box of candy; a pair of corsets wrapped carefully together with some fine damask table-napkins, and sticking upright in a water-pitcher (an empty one by good luck); and old Mrs. Botlisch's teeth (the lower set) jammed firmly between the strings of a guitar that had been used in "Tell"—these were some of the discoveries. We were too tired to be amiable, and there were some sharp wrangles over lost nightdresses, and the ownership of tooth-brushes in the girls' quarters before we settled down for what was left of the night—the morning, rather. We were two in a bed, one on the lounge, and always three or four in a room according to the Pallinders' happy-go-lucky style of hospitality. The men, very likely, retired with even less formality; they had some big rooms in an ell running out from the main building at the back given over to their use.
It seemed as if I had no more than closed my eyes (and, as I afterwards found, it had actually only been about ten minutes since the last door locked and the last gas-jet was turned off) when the consciousness of disturbance somewhere about the house roused me. Someone was shouting out of a window, and being answered from below. The sash slammed; and presently there was the sound of stockinged feet padding downstairs. Kitty waked up, and crossly suggested that oneof the guests had forgot something, and come back for it. "Of all things at this time of night!" she snapped. "Might have waited till daylight, seems to me. Some people have no sense!"
The bolts of the front door rattled, the hall-gas flashed up, sending a dim shaft of light through our transom; and a rumble of voices arose. Then the feet padded back, and there was some stir in Mrs. Pallinder's room.
"Oh, bother! Whatever it is, they'll never find it to-night in this mess," said Kitty vigorously. She sat up in bed. "Why don't they tell 'em to go home, and let us have a little peace and quiet?"
That simple expedient, however, did not seem to occur to anyone else. One of the girls awake in the next room called in that somebody must have lost some money or jewelry—"they couldn't be coming back for anything else." Again the feet padded down. The rumbling talk increased in volume. We distinctly heard Colonel Pallinder's voice, raised in explanation or argument, it was impossible to guess which; Mrs. Pallinder or someone in skirts went rustling along the hall. Apparently she paused to lean over the banister and listen a while. Lights began to start up elsewhere in the house; there was some movement among the men in their reservation; and old Mrs. Botlisch challenged raucously from her room at the end of the passage to know what was the matter. No one answered her, and after a moment there came a tap at our door. I got out of bed and opened it, full of uneasy wonder. There stood Mrs. Pallinder in a flowered blue silk tea-gown flung on anyway over her nightdress, and flowing about her in a huddle of lace and ribbons; she clutched it together at the throat; thin wisps of straw-coloured hairhung around her face. There was something indefinably alarming in the very haste and carelessness of her appearance, she who was always powdered and corseted to a fashion-plate correctness. She looked the scared ghost of her everyday self, immeasurably older, and a surprising likeness to Mrs. Botlisch came out on her harassed features.
"So sorry to disturb you, my dear," she said, with a tortured smile. "But can you wake Mazie—I want to speak to her."
"Nobody's sick, is there?" I asked, startled.
"Is it a telegram? It's not bad news for anyone, is it?" Kitty cried out apprehensively from the bed.
"No, no, it's nothing—really nothing at all," repeated Mrs. Pallinder—and this was so palpably false that even I could see through it. "Tell Mazie to come here, please, I want to speak to her."
"I'm coming," said Mazie drowsily, beginning to fumble in the dark for her slippers. And somebody, Muriel, I think, scrambled out of bed and lit the gas.
"You mustn't get up, don't any of you get up," said Mrs. Pallinder excitedly. "I tell you it's only Mazie I want to speak to. All of you go back to bed and go to sleep. Shut your doors and go to bed!" Her usually soft voice broke shrilly; she laid a hot trembling hand on my shoulder and pushed me back within the room. By this time, however, everybody was broad awake, staring, listening, and wondering. And Mrs. Botlisch began again:
"What's the matter? Is it fire? Mirandy, where are you? Is the house took fire?"
"No, it ain't, ma. Shut up, will you?" said Mrs. Pallinder roughly. Astonishment struck us all dumb; never beforehad we heard her speak so to the old woman. Mazie, looking very long and limp in her white gown with strands of black hair sailing down her back, came to the door, and her mother dragged her outside, slamming it on us sharply. More low-voiced confusion ensued. Mazie gave a high exclamation, and Mrs. Pallinder hushed her violently. All the girls congregated in the room, in wild array of curl-papers and "Mother Hubbards." In the hall one of the men could be heard asking what was the matter, and excuse him, but could he be of any use?
"What on earth do you suppose has happened?" said Kitty, no longer out of temper, but on edge with curiosity; before anyone could offer a guess, Mazie came back. She did not look at any of us; she did not speak; she walked straight to the bureau in her room, took a package from its top drawer, and walked straight out again. For so simple an act it was the strangest bit of pantomime that can be imagined; so quick and purposeful were her movements in contrast to her ordinary languor, that no one had a chance to ask questions, even if we had dared; but I believe we were all a little frightened by the unexplained change in her bearing and her mother's. There was a controlled menace about the girl; she dominated us to the last; and when she went out, closing the door not fiercely as her mother had done, but with a resolute gentleness, we should not have been surprised to hear the key turn in the lock. The scene was not without its ludicrous aspects; there we were eight or ten night-gowned girls, shivering in the draughts, perched here and there amid the rich, fantastic disorder of that room, while mystery whispered in the hall outside. We did not talk; we were all openly listening, and such was the tension that when Murielsaid suddenly: "There's a carriage coming!" everyone in the room started violently. A girl by the window put the blind aside and peeped out cautiously. "Why, there's one here already!" she said, and then: "There're two men in the other; they're just getting out——"
Upon the words, a strange voice, a man's voice, cried out in the hall below, with mingled anger and surprise, "Damnation!" it shouted, "What d'ye mean bythis?" Mrs. Pallinder screamed harshly like a strangling animal, and with a truly melodramatic fitness, the door bell began furiously to ring!
That was too much for us. I don't know who was first in the hall; it seemed as if we were all there at once. The immediate person I saw was Mazie standing against the opposite wall. She had snatched up some kind of shawl or blanket and wrapped it around her over her nightgown; her face was white, but she was laughing in a hysterical way. At the head of the stair Mrs. Pallinder clung to the newel. From the hall there arose a clamour of excited voices, punctuated by peal after peal on the bell like the knocking at the castle-gate in the awful scene of the murder from "Macbeth." The door of Mrs. Botlisch's room was open, and there was the old woman sitting up in bed, a tremendous figure in her red flannel nightdress, roaring out questions to which no one paid any attention.
"Oh, do go back, girls, do go back, here 're the men!" said Mazie, still giggling feebly.
"Men!" cried her grandmother, catching the word. "Time enough! I'd like to see someone with some sense. Where's that Taylor feller?"
"Taylor—what Taylor?" said I, bewildered. I thought,for an instant, the old woman had suddenly gone crazy, and wanted to be measured for a pair of breeches. Anything seemed possible in the hurly-burly.
"Here I am," said J. B., presenting himself in trousers and a night-shirt, one red sock and one polka-dotted blue one, and his suspenders trailing in the rear. "He went the kilt one better, didn't he?" said Kitty, recalling his appearance later, and she wondered what Muriel thought. But if the men were a weird crew, what were we?
"Here I am," said J. B. "What's the matter? Can I do anything?" He afterwards said that everything under the sun that could have happened went through his mind, from fire and murder to the reappearance of Arthur Gwynne's ghost—everything that could have happened, except the inconceivable thing thathadhappened!
Mazie ran to the banisters. "Do somebody open the door! Can't you hear the bell?" she screamed.
"Find out who it is first! Find out who it is—don't let them in without finding out!" Mrs. Pallinder called out desperately.
"You Taylor, for the Lord's sake, see what it's all about!" cried Mrs. Botlisch. "Mirandy, gimme my teeth——"
A fresh outbreak of voices downstairs announced that the door had finally been opened. Mazie came running back as Colonel Pallinder limped up the stairs. "There!Huddesley!" she exclaimed and burst into shrill laughter. "They're asking for him. The minute that man opened the package I thought about Huddesley. Never mind, ma, they can't come onusfor anything. Huddesley's got the laugh on everybody!"
Mrs. Pallinder all at once broke into sharp crying. "Ican't stand it, I can't stand it any longer!" she screamed out, and beat her hands together. "I can't stand this life, I tell you, I can't stand it!"
"All right, honey, you shan't have to," said the colonel, trying to soothe her. "I'll take care you shan't."
She pulled away from him furiously. "Oh,you!" she said with fierce scorn. "Oh,you!" And then in some strange and violent revulsion: "No, no, I didn't mean that, Willie, I didn't mean that, my dear!" and began to cry wildly in his arms. It was horrible.
I relate these circumstances as faithfully as I remember them; but it is difficult to give any idea of the mirthless farce, the grotesque tragedy of that night. It was at this moment, I believe, as we were all standing in a miserable embarrassment, and irresolution and (speaking for the girls, at least) something not unlike fright, that one of the strange men whom we had heard, came up the steps. He paused as his head rose above the landing, and he caught sight of us. Well he might! We must have been a fearsome picture.
"Sorry to intrude, ladies and gents," said he, hastily dropping back a little, and removing his hat. "But I gotta hump——"
J. B. came to the head of the flight, and, as it were, took command of the situation. He was no great figure of a hero with his suspenders slapping at his heels; but for all that he looked a manly and masterful young fellow, and I think we were all both grateful and relieved at his assumption of responsibility. No one else seemed equal to the needs of the hour.
"Look here," said J. B. quite pleasantly and firmly. "You can't come up here. These ladies must not be disturbed anymore, do you understand? Now who are you and what do you want?"
"That's business," said the other frankly. "I'm a detective. My name's Grimm. I've got another plain-clothes man from your police headquarters downstairs, if you don't believe me, ask him——"
"Mr. Taylor—isn't that Mr. Taylor?" said someone from below. "Don't you remember me—Judd—don't you remember me at the bank?"
"That's all right," said J. B. "I remember you. Go ahead, Mr. Grimm, what do you want?"
"Well, say," said another voice a little farther down, "young fellow, if you're bossing this, my name's Hopple, and I——"
"One at a time," said J. B. forcibly. "Go on, Mr. Grimm."
"Right you are, sir," said Grimm fervently. "I thought I'd struck an asylum full of lunys at first, but I guess it ain't so after all. I'm looking for a man named Huddesley—that is, he called himself Huddesley here—that's wanted for several crooked jobs all over the country. I've been after him for six months. It's a dead cinch Huddesley's the man—Judd here's had an eye on him for six weeks——"
"That's what!" said Judd, with emphasis.
"——he was in the house to-night. Is he here now, do you know?"
"Huddesley has been here," said J. B., commanding his surprise. He turned his face towards us, and hushed us with a gesture. "Huddesley has been here, but he left the house some time ago, I don't quite know when. Miss Pallinder, do you remember when he went?"
He had to repeat the question twice before Mazie could get herself together enough to answer it. "When he went?" she said vaguely. "When he went?" Someone else said it was before midnight; at last Mazie exclaimed that it was three hours, oh, yes, she was sure it must be quite three hours since he had gone.
"He said he was sick and was going home—that is to Doctor Vardaman's, where he is employed," said J. B. "If you will go there, you may find him, the house is——"
"Find him the hell!" interrupted Mr. Grimm with dismay in his face. "When he's had three hours' start!" He made a gesture of finality. "It's all off!" said he. "Why, I've been to Doctor Vardaman's, mister, how'd you s'pose I happened to come here?"
"Somebody's tipped it off," said Judd, below stairs.
"That's what you get for peddlin' collar-buttons, sonny," said Grimm. "He was onto you from the word Go!"
"If he's not at the doctor's, I suppose he got wind of you somehow, and skipped out," said J. B., overriding these cryptic remarks, and anxious to end the business. "Anyhow that's none of our affair. Is that all you wanted to know, Mr. Grimm? For we're all tired and we'd like to go to bed."
"Here, wait a minute—" said Hopple, vigorously, and the detective, sweeping us with a comprehensive glance, spoke at the same moment: "Hold on, young man, no affair of yours, hey? Well, I ain't so sure about that. The old gent said he would likely have the handling of some valuables, a necklace or something. Will you kindly ask all those ladies if they'll take account o' stock and see if they're missing anything?"
The unseen Mr. Hopple uttered a strong exclamation. Every girl made a movement toward her bedroom, or nervously grabbed at some part of her person as her own particular treasures occurred to her. Every girl but Mazie, that is; and her next words, pronounced with entire calm, by the way, were comparable in effect to the explosion of a bomb amongst this singular company.
"Oh, mercy-me!" she said. "How slow you all are! Can't yousee? Why, I saw it right off! I believe he's got the necklace!"
There was an instant of appalled silence. Then:
"Told you so! Always said he was a rascal!" cried Mrs. Botlisch triumphantly.
"Huddesley got the necklace?" said J. B. aghast. "Why, how could he? He gave it back to you. Bob Carson had it, didn't he?" Everybody spoke at once. The detective whistled, swore softly, then he stooped to mutter with Judd. "That's what!" said the latter vehemently. Two or three of the coloured servants had collected on the third-floor landing above us, and hung over the banisters, giggling and nudging. In the darkness their faces were nothing but shining teeth and eyeballs, reminding me, oddly enough, of a picture in "Alice in Wonderland," of the Cheshire Cat's grin materialising; Gwynne and I had had the book when we were little. I cannot think why I should have thought of it then, of all times; or, indeed, why the incongruous memory abides with me now. Mazie was speaking in a high, strained voice. "I never opened the package," she was saying. "Why, you know I didn't. I just took it from him and I never opened it. After 'Mrs. Tankerville' I locked the thing up and never thought of it again. I wouldn't have dreamed ofsuspecting Huddesley; why, he's been in and out of the house all day long forweeks, hasn't he, ma? Hasn't he, girls?" There was a kind of defiance in her voluble explanation. "Tell that Hopple man, will you?" she urged the detective, forgetting that "that Hopple man" was almost within arms' reach of her. "He'd better go after Huddesley if he wants his necklace—wehaven't got it. Huddesley must have banked on my not opening the package; but anyhow, he was out of the house and gone long before I had a chance to——"
"Who's Bob Carson, and who's Mrs. Tankerville, and what package are you talking about?" Grimm inquired succinctly.
"Well, this is the package, I guess," said Hopple's voice, and two hands reaching up delivered to Mr. Grimm a crumpled piece of wrapping-paper, and about a ladleful of carpet tacks.
"There's your diamond necklace," continued the voice in hoarse satire. "Leastways there's what was given me for a diamond necklace. I don't know Huddesley from Adam's off ox, but it's a pretty slick sort o' story, seems to me."
What Mr. Hopple looked like, I cannot say, for none of us saw the gentleman. He made a movement to ascend the stairs, but J. B. looming very large and square on the top step intercepted him.
"Are you another detective, sir?" asked J. B. in his mild and steady voice.
"No, I ain't," returned Mr. Hopple, sulkily, yet not uncivilly this time.
"Then," said J. B. with increasing mildness, "perhaps you will be good enough to explain what you are doing here?"
"I'm collecting a bill for Goldstein Brothers—that's my business, collecting. I know it's a little bit late at night, but I can't help that. I've got to hump myself; I thought I might find somebody up on account of the blow-out——"
"It's an outrage, sir, an outrage which no Southern gentleman——" said Colonel Pallinder, turning from his wife. "I repeat, sir, no Southern gentleman——"
"If we had the money, don't you suppose we'd pay your old bill?" cried Mrs. Pallinder, in a kind of hysterical screech. Her face was red and swollen with crying; her fair hair hung in strings. She ran to the banisters and shook her slim fist at the man, a tousled virago, unrecognisable in her rage. "Why don't you believe us? As if anybodywantedto owe you—as if anybodylikedto owe you! It's too silly—you act perfectly crazy! We'd have given you the necklace if we'd had it, but we haven'tgotit—Huddesley's stolen it. What are you staying around here for? We haven't got the money and we haven't got the necklace, I tell you! Why don't you go away? You haven't any right here—you're a cheat, trying to collect for that necklace when we haven't got it. Make him go away, Willie!"
"That's right, Mirandy, you talk to him like a Dutch uncle!" said old Mrs. Botlisch with keen enjoyment.
"I don't care—I'm glad Huddesleyhasgot it!" said Mazie fiercely.
"Owing to circumstances—a temporary shortage of funds, sir," said Colonel Pallinder, addressing J. B., blandly, "I have been unable to satisfy this fellow's monstrous, his preposterous demand. But if—Mr.—ah—Mr. Hopple will come around to my office to-morrow at half-past elevensharp, I——"
Mr. Hopple's voice invited him to teach his grandmother to suck eggs. "This here bill's been owing three years, and I'm going to collect it, don't you worry—I'll be at the office. I'm going to collect if I've got to hang around this town till the cows come home!"
"You can't get blood out of a turnip," said Mr. Grimm philosophically. J. B. interrupted this lively exchange of metaphor.
"Mr. Grimm," said he, "it's pretty plain, I think, that the criminal you want, this Huddesley, has got away with the diamond necklace. Why we never suspected him seems strange enough now; I can think of a dozen things that should have put us on our guard, but the fact remains we never did. If you'll just step downstairs, and wait until I can get some clothes on, I'll tell you all that we know about him. Mr. Hopple, you can see for yourself that there's nothing to be done here now. Your business can very well hold over until to-morrow—until daylight, that is—it's none of my business, of course"—he interrupted himself, glancing inquiringly at Colonel Pallinder, and as that gentleman remained silent, went on—"but I think it's about time you went to your hotel, and let these people go to bed——"
"Huh! I don't take my orders from you, young fellow!"
"Oh, don't be a fool, Hopple," said the detective impatiently. "He's right. Go along; you can't do anything here."
J. B. descended a step. "You don't have to take my orders, Mr. Hopple," said he gently. "But I should think you'd rather take an order than a kick."
"Noble boy!" ejaculated Colonel Pallinder, much affected. "There spoke a son of old Kentucky!" Thecollector retreated with sundry mutterings. J. B. came back, dusting his hands lightly together.
"Sir," said Colonel Pallinder, holding his wife with one arm, and stretching out the other in a fine gesture. "Your hand! A Southern gentleman, sir——"
"Oh—er—that's all right," said J. B., embarrassed. He turned a kind troubled glance upon us. "I wish all you girls and everybody would go to bed. It's—it's all right, you know. I'm going to see those fellows, and they'll go away presently."
"You're A Number One, that's what you are, Taylor," said old Mrs. Botlisch, in high approval. "You got more gumption in your little finger than all the rest of 'em in their whole bodies, d——d if you ain't!"
Mrs. Pallinder dried her eyes, and began to arrange her dishevelled dress with fluttering hands. "You mustn't mind ma, girls," she said, resuming her smile. "She's really awfully eccentric."
Next day the crash came. The papers revelled in it; the Pallinders' affairs occupied the place of honour (or at least of supreme notoriety) in the first column of the first page; the Pallinders' creditors assembled and filled the air with thunder; Muriel was incontinently recalled to Washington; excited Gwynnes rushed upon the scene. And when at last the smoke of conflict lifted, where were the Pallinders? Nobody knew; nobody cared—except Scheurmann and Goldstein Brothers, and perhaps a few others. Within a fortnight there was a red flag, flaunting garishly on the lawn among the budding lilacs and faintly greening beeches. Templeton had out sandwich-men and yard-long posters announcing an auction in the house—"everything without reserve to the highest bidder."
The Armenians reappeared, and various other greasy-looking, dark-skinned birds of prey flocked through the rooms, rapping on the mirrors, testing the peacock-blue and old-gold draperies between their dirty talons. I met Mrs. Maginnis coming out of Doctor Vardaman's yard, boo-hooing and calling on all the saints to bless him, with a tribe of little Maginnises at her heels. What had the doctor done? I do not know. The old gentleman went quite shabby that summer in an old linen duster we had not seen on him for years; and it is certain he bought no more first editions for a long while.
And here closes the episode—for episode it truly was, and no story, as must have been discovered by this time. A story, properly conceived and executed, must have a beginning and an end, and this lacks both; it even lacks a hero and heroine. Fiction would have demanded, and a conscientious storyteller would have supplied, a much more picturesque and appropriate final act. The diamonds should have been restored, and (let us hope) the bill paid; Muriel should have married J. B.; Bob should have married Mazie; the curtain should have gone down on the lovers embracing and everyone else shaking hands. I have not been a novel-reader all these years for nothing, and nobody need remind me how a romance should end; if this narrative finishes in open defiance of all the proprieties, I can only offer the mean apology that it is all, or nearly all, true.Pars minima fui!Some of it I saw, some heard, some merely guessed, and alas, none of the beautiful things mentioned above came to pass! Looking back on it now, with the compliant wisdom of forty-odd, I am satisfied it is as well those marriages did not take place. Muriel would hardly have been a success transplanted; and the Pallinder connection would inevitably have proved disastrous to poor Bob.
As for Huddesley, I cannot sincerely say I was ever sorry that that entertaining and original scoundrel escaped; in other and more gallant days, he and the Pallinders alike might have figured as a sort of pirates, differing in degree and methods perhaps, hardly at all in kind. There is humour in the spectacle of one of them preying on the other. And, for the soul of me, I cannot be angry with either.Bon voyage, oh ye adventurers! What shores have you not coasted, and what men essayed in all thesetwenty-five years! At least I did not suffer by you, and therefore, with a noble generosity, I wish you well!
I fell in with J. B. the other day, after a long interval; and he had a good deal to tell me in the pleasant hour we spent of, "Don't you remember——" and "Whatever has become of——?" J. B. goes up and down the world, and knows many men and their cities these days; he is getting a little bald and massive, yet is still a notable figure, not greatly changed; and, "What do you think?" he said, "I've seen Huddesley, and he knew me at once! It was the year of the St. Louis Fair; that's the last time I was West, you know. I went from there to the town of Joliet, Illinois, where you know the Government runs an elegant home for ladies and gentlemen whose society and services the community doesn't need all the time.
"I went out there—voluntarily," he added, with a chuckle. "It was the Fourth of July and blazing hot, and I had three hours to put in before my train left. The man I went to see told me I'd find the Pen 'very instructive.' But when I got there, they were giving all these wretches a holiday, in honour of Uncle Sam's birthday, and I tell you they were a pretty hard-looking set. The guard was showing me through a yard, when suddenly one of these jolly, cursing, sky-larking parties in stripes dropped out of a bunch of them, and, says he, getting in the way, and staring hard at me: 'Mr. Breckinridge, don't you know me?' I didn't at all, for a minute, although really, considering his age, and the kind of life he must have led, he hasn't changed much. Then: 'Will you 'ave 'ock with your hoysters, sir?' said the scoundrel with a wink—and it flashed on me who he was! 'Huddesley!' I shouted out. The attendant wasperfectly petrified; he thought I must be some old pal of Huddesley's—I had to explain before he would let us talk. Eh? Why,sure! As the children say,sure! I talked to him, and he asked after everybody with the greatest interest. He even got quite autobiographical and confidential after a while; told me he was up for five years this time (for a little trouble he got into in New Orleans, he said delicately), but he had served two-thirds of the sentence, and would be out in six months, his time having been shortened for good behaviour. 'There's nothin' to it, anyway, Mr. Breckinridge,' says he, in a serious manner. 'I guess I ought to know, I've tried both ways. It's me for the simple life after this; my eyes are kind of troubling me, and I'm getting along in years. I'm goin' to square it after I get out this time——' He meant he was going to live honestly, you know. 'In all I've spent eighteen years in the stir'—that's slang for the prison, it seems—'with a sentence here and a sentence there, since the first time of all in Pentonville, 'long back in '72. That's a good while out of a man's life that ain't but fifty-five years old. I'm going to cut it out after this. I begun pretty young and I'm through now.' He told me he was London-born, Seven Dials, some slum, I suppose—'That's where Hi got the haccent,' he said, grinning again. He had a chequered career before we knew him, footman, errand-boy, sneak-thief, actor, preacher, insurance-agent, confidence-man—it would be hard to say what he hadn't been. There was an interval when he was apprentice to a pastry-cook—I think he was honest then, for about a year, until the till was left open one evening. He said that was where he learned the trade of cook—'But I was always was one to pick up things quick,youknow that, Mr. Breckinridge,' he said with a funnyswagger. I asked him if he had had an eye on Mrs. Pallinder's diamonds from the first, or whether he just took the chance when it came. He gave me an odd look. 'Say, you don't mind asking questions, do you?' he said. And then, quickly with a half-laugh: 'Oh, well, Mr. Taylor, you're straight, I know you wouldn't throw me down, and it's twenty years, anyhow.' He went on to say that he had landed in town just about the time of the Charity Ball, when the papers were full of the diamonds—you remember, don't you? The Pallinders were It then. 'I thought I might get the job of butler at the house, and applied,' he said. 'Nothin' doin'—their help was all coloured. The very next day Doctor Vardaman's advertisement came out; say, I was right there with the goods. He was easy, the old gent was. I hadn't spieled my little spiel five minutes before I saw it was 'M' lud, the carriage waits,' for mine. And let me tell you, Mr. Taylor, I was wise to the Pallinder game from the start; I knew Pallinder was due to blow up any day, and your Uncle James would have to hustle to get those diamonds, or somebody else would. That's why I went after 'em by the Romeo-and-Juliet route, 'stead of taking it slow and easy, and getting to be like a son of the house like I'd planned. Well, you know that deal fell through owing to Mrs. Pallinder's neuralgia; if you and the colonel and everybody else had stepped a little livelier, you'd 'a' nipped me. As it was, I just barely had time to get back home; and then what does the faithful, devoted, all-to-the-square-dealing Huddesley do but wake up Doctor Vardaman, and lodge an information against himself——' 'What?' I cried. 'You were the burglar?' To tell the truth, I hadn't quite been able to follow Huddesley's flights of metaphor for the last few sentences, until all atonce it come over me what he meant. 'You mean you were the burglar all the time?' I asked him. He grinned with a queer kind of pride. 'Sure I was. But, say, didn't I play it smooth? Couldn't I give Hen. Irving cards and spades, though? Next day Ididhave a sore throat—I'm subject to 'em—but I wasn't sick like Doctor Vardaman thought. I kept up the game—stayed in bed and passed up the cops and the high-brows with the stylographic pens—I couldn't risk seein' 'em, you know. I don't know how that fellow Judd got on the trail—I guess he had a little more grey matter than the rest of 'em. Of course they had photos and descriptions of me all over the country. Anyway, when he turned up, peddlin' collar-buttons about six weeks later, I was next right off. I knew I'd better beat it for the tall and waving—but I did hate like poison to go without those rhinestones—after all the trouble I'd took, too.' The fellow's persistence and patience were something astonishing," said J. B., with wonder. "Enough to have insured his success at any honest undertaking, you'd think. He told me it was very hard to keep up the rôle. 'Sometimes I'd forget—about the talk, and all, you know,' he said. 'And then I'd lay awake at nights in a cold sweat for fear somebody had noticed it. Yes, sir, I'd been studying and studying, making myself solid with everybody, and playing the faithful-and-devoted racket until I was sick of it—and no diamonds in sight yet! Then "Mrs. Tankerville" came up, and all at once I began to see a ray o' light. But just as things was going like greased rollers on a toboggan-slide, hanged if the doctor didn't sour on the Pallinders! Said he was never going there again. 'Stead of shooting the chutes, looked like I was due to bump the bumps.'
"'In the end, that was the best thing that could have happened—because, you know, the old gent invited you all to dinner, and the minute he did that, I saw the chance. I knew Johns was a good deal of a lusher, and if I could get him stewed good and plenty, why, I could turn the trick. If some of the rest of you got a little how-come-you-so, not batty, you know, just a little googleish, it wouldn't hurt. But I wasn't taking any chances on Johns; I fixed him with some kind of rock-a-bye-baby dope out of the doctor's closet. You remember what happened after that. Say, I enjoyed it—honest-to-goodness I did; I liked all you boys first-rate. Say, if I'd been different, if I'd been born and brought up like you, for instance, I'd have cut a pretty wide swath, now, wouldn't I? It's all in the start a man gets, ain't it?'"
J. B. paused.
"I dare say Huddesley could imitate me better than I can him," he said. "But wasn't that last a funny thing for a man like that to say? He was in earnest, proud of his peculiar talents, and a little regretful. I didn't know what to say, but I knew better than to sermonise."
"Do you suppose he really did 'square it' after he got out?"
"Not likely, I think. Good resolutions aren't very lasting with that class. I've no doubt he meant it at the time. He asked about Doctor Vardaman. I told him, and do you know the fellow's face clouded over for a second. I believe he really was pained.
"'Well,' he said. 'The doctor was an old man, and of course it wasn't to be expected he could live very much longer. I might have known. But it makes me feel bad, Mr. Taylor. I kind of expected to go and see him when I gotout this time, and tell him I was going to finish out on the square. He was the whitest man I ever knew. I never took the value of a cent from him, though I had plenty of chances; yes, sir, he was the real thing, that old gent was.' And, just as I was leaving he said: 'I'd like mighty well to know who that nice little trick was that I kissed on the back stairs when I was dusting out with the necklace. I didn't know her name, I guess she didn't ever come to rehearsals when I was around. Kind of a fat little girl, with brown eyes—she was too surprised to squeal; it was a fool thing to do, but I felt pretty good, and she was just my size in girls.' I couldn't place her for him, but I shouldn't wonder if it was Kitty. It would be like Kitty to keep quiet about it." I agreed with him that it would be much like Kitty; her eyes are blue, by the way, but J. B. had forgot that.
His face was a little sober as he answered some of my questions.
"I met the colonel in New York not long ago," he said. "He looks pretty old and seedy and shifty-eyed these days. He talked just the same; had a few shares to sell—just a few, you know, they were soaring up in price and in a week would be unobtainable for love or money, but he wanted to let me in on the ground floor—in a gold mine down in Eastern Tennessee.
"Don't laugh; it wasn't funny. He was too anxious to be so fluent and convincing as he used to be in the old days; he reminded me of a poor, hungry, eager old dog. I bought some of the shares, for the sake of auld lang syne—I couldn't help it. And there was something sordidly pathetic in the air of affluence he put on after he'd gathered the money up in his trembling old hands. I suppose he hadn't handled so muchin months; yet the sum was not large. He insisted on my going home to dinner with him; they were in a dingy boarding-house over in Brooklyn. It gave me a start to see Mrs. Pallinder; I actually thought for a minute it was the old Botlisch woman, although she died years ago, the colonel told me. Mrs. Pallinder's got to looking exactly like her, but she has more manner, you know; she put on a lot of 'side' for my benefit. The boarding-house people were very much impressed. I shouldn't wonder if my visit bolstered up the Pallinder credit a good deal—I'm so solidly respectable. But do you know, I'm sure, that aside from any motives of self-interest, the Pallinders were honestly glad to see me; they talked about old times the same as you and I are doing now—just as if they hadn't left owing everybody and under a cloud generally! I wouldn't have opened my mouth about the diamond necklace, and that last night, but Mrs. Pallinder brought it up right away; she rather flourished it before the other boarders. Huddesley and her jewels, and what she said, and what So-and-So said—it was rather diverting to hear her version."
"Mazie wasn't with them, was she?"
"Oh, no, Mazie's married. Married an army-officer, and they're living in the Philippines. Mrs. Pallinder told me the name, but I've forgotten it."
"We used to think that Bob Carson——"
"Yes. Bob's never married—he was awfully in earnest. Remember what a sweet voice he had? They used to get him to sing 'Comfort ye, my people,' in Trinity the last Sunday in Advent, don't you remember? Poor old Bob!"
"Rich old Bob, you'd better say! He's made a lot ofmoney. Susie's children will get it all, most likely. He's very fond of them; he sent the youngest girl to Europe last year to study music, somebody told me. Maybe, if Mazie knew, she'd be sorry she wouldn't have him. But it's better so; they wouldn't have been happy. Do you suppose he ever asked her, though?"