The Bandbox - Louis Joseph Vance (read along books .TXT) 📗

of those surrounding him to the stare of his impertinent, pale eyes. Staff, more detached in attitude than any of the others present, for his own amusement followed the range of Iff’s gaze.

Captain Cobb was scowling thoughtfully. Manvers wore a look of deepest chagrin. Jane’s jaw had fallen and her eyes seemed perilously protrudant. Alison was leaning gracefully back in her chair—her pose studied but charmingly effective—while she favoured Iff with a scrutiny openly incredulous and disdainful.

“You say you have proofs of this—ah—assertion of yours?” demanded the captain at length.

“Oh, yes—surely yes.” Iff’s tone was almost apologetic. He thrust a hand between his shirt and waistcoat, fumbled a moment as if unbuttoning a pocket, and brought forth a worn leather wallet from which, with great and exasperating deliberation, he produced a folded paper. This he handed the captain—his manner, if possible, more than ever self-effacing and meek.

The paper (it was parchment) crackled crisply in the captain’s fingers. He spread it out and held it to the light in such a position that Staff could see it over his shoulder. He was unable to read its many closely inscribed lines, but the heading “Treasury Department, Washington, D. C.” was boldly conspicuous, as well as an imposing official seal and the heavily scrawled signature of the Secretary of the Treasury.

Beneath the blue cloth, the captain’s shoulders moved impatiently. Staff heard him say something indistinguishable, but of an intonation calculated to express his emotion.

Iff giggled nervously: “Oh, captain! the ladies—”

Holding himself very stiff and erect, Captain Cobb refolded the document and ceremoniously handed it back to the little man.

“I beg your pardon,” he said in a low voice.

“Don’t mention it,” begged Iff. He replaced the paper in his wallet, the wallet in his pocket. “I’m sure it’s quite an excusable mistake on your part, captain dear.... As for you, Mr. Manvers, you needn’t apologise to me,” he added maliciously: “just make your apologies to Captain Cobb.”

VII STOLE AWAY!

And then (it seemed most astonishing!) nothing happened. The net outcome of all this fuss and fluster was precisely nil. With the collapse of the flimsy structure of prejudice and suspicion in which Manvers had sought to trap Iff, the interest of all concerned seemed to simmer off into apathy. Nobody did anything helpful, offered any useful suggestion or brought to light anything illuminating. Staff couldn’t understand it, for the life of him....

There was, to be sure, a deal more talk in the captain’s cabin—talk in which the purser took little or no part. As a matter of fact, Manvers kept far in the background and betrayed every indication of a desire to crawl under the table and be a good dog. The captain had his say, however, and in the end (since he was rather emphatic about it) his way.

He earnestly desired that the matter should be kept quiet; it would do no good, he argued, to noise it about amongst the passengers; the news would only excite them and possibly (in some obscure and undesignated fashion) impede official investigation. He would, of course, spare no pains to fathom the mystery; drastic measures would be taken to secure the detection of the culprit and the restitution of the necklace to its rightful owner. The ship would be minutely, if quietly, searched; not a member of the crew, from captain to stoker, would be spared, nor any passenger against whom there might develop the least cause for suspicion. Detectives would meet the ship at New York and co-operate with the customs officials in a most minute investigation of the passengers’ effects. Everything possible would be done—trust the captain! In the meantime, he requested all present to regard the case as confidential.

Iff concurred, somewhat gravely, somewhat diffidently. He was disposed to make no secret of the fact that his presence on board was directly due to the missing necklace. He had been set to watch Miss Landis, to see that she didn’t smuggle the thing into the United States. He hoped she wouldn’t take offense of this: such was his business; he had received his orders and had no choice but to obey them. (And, so far as was discernible, Miss Landis did not resent his espionage; but she seemed interested and, Staff fancied, considerably diverted.) Mr. Iff could promise Miss Landis that he would leave no stone unturned in his private inquiry; and his work, likewise, would be considerably facilitated if the affair were kept quiet. He ventured to second the captain’s motion.

Miss Landis offered no objection; Staff and Manvers volunteered to maintain discretion, Jane was sworn to it. Motion seconded and carried: the meeting adjourned sine die; the several parties thereto separated and went to their respective quarters.

Staff accompanied Alison as far as her stateroom, but didn’t tarry long over his second good-nights. The young woman seemed excusably tired and nervous and anxious to be alone—in no mood to discuss this overwhelming event. So Staff spared her.

In his own stateroom he found Mr. Iff half-undressed, sitting on the transom and chuckling noiselessly, apparently in such a transport of amusement that he didn’t care whether he ever got to bed or not. Upon the entrance of his roommate, however, he dried his eyes and made an effort to contain himself.

“You seem to think this business funny,” suggested Staff, not at all approvingly.

“I do,” laughed the little man—“I do, indeed. It’s a grand young joke—clutch it from me, my friend.”

“In what respect, particularly, do you find it so vastly entertaining?”

“Oh ... isn’t that ass Manvers enough?”

Further than this, Mr. Iff declined to be interviewed. He clambered briskly into his berth and chuckled himself to sleep. Staff considered his behaviour highly annoying.

But it was on the following day—the last of the voyage—that he found reason to consider the affair astonishing because of the lack of interest displayed by those personally involved. He made no doubt but that the captain was keeping his word to the extent of conducting a secret investigation, though no signs of any such proceeding appeared on the surface of the ship’s life. But Alison he could not understand; she seemed to have cast care to the winds. She appeared at breakfast in the gayest of spirits, spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon on deck, the centre of an animated group shepherded by the indefatigable Mrs. Ilkington, dressed herself radiantly for the grand final dinner, flirted with the assiduously attentive Arkroyd until she had reduced Staff to the last stages of corroded jealousy, and in general (as Staff found a chance to tell her) seemed to be having the time of her life.

“And why not?” she countered. “Spilt milk!”

“Judged by your conduct,” observed Staff, “one would be justified in thinking the Cadogan collar an article de Paris.”

“One might think any number of foolish things, dear boy. If the collar’s gone, it’s gone, and not all the moping and glooming imaginable will bring it back to me. If I do get it back—why, that’ll be simply good luck; and I’ve never found it profitable yet to court Fortune with a doleful mouth.”

“You certainly practise your theory,” he said. “I swear I believe I’m more concerned about your loss than you are.”

“Certainly you are, you silly boy. For my part, I feel quite confident the necklace will be returned.”

He stared. “Why?”

She opened her hands expressively. “I’ve always been lucky.... Besides, if I never see it again, it’ll come back to me this way or that—in advertising, for one.”

“Isn’t that dodge pretty well worked out with the newspapers? It seems to me that it has come to that, of late; or else the prime donne have taken to guarding their valuables with greater care.”

“Oh, that makes no difference. With another woman it might, but I”—she shrugged—“I’m Alison Landis, if you please. The papers won’t neglect me. Besides, Max can do much as he likes with them.”

“Have you—?”

“Of course—by wireless, first thing this morning.”

“But you promised—”

“Don’t be tiresome, Staff. I bought this necklace on Max’s suggestion, as an advertisement—I meant to wear it in A Single Woman; that alone would help make our play a go. Since I can’t get my advertising and have my necklace, too, why, in goodness’ name, mayn’t I get what I can out of it?”

“Oh, well ...”

Staff abandoned argument and resting his forearms on the rail, stared sombrely out over the darkling waters for a moment or two.

This was at night, during an intermission in a dance on deck which had been arranged by special permission of the weather—the latter holding very calm and warm. Between halves Staff had succeeded in disentangling Alison from a circle of admirers and had marched her up to the boat-deck, where there was less light—aside from that furnished by an obliging moon—and more solitude.

Under any other circumstances Staff would have been enchanted with the situation. They were quite alone, if not unobserved; and there was magic in the night, mystery and romance in the moonlight, the inky shadows, the sense of swift movement through space illimitable. Alison stood with back to the rail so near him that his elbow almost touched the artificial orchid that adorned her corsage. He was acutely sensitive of her presence, of the faint persistent odour of her individual perfume, of the beauty and grace of her strong, free-limbed body in its impeccable Paquin gown, of the sheen of her immaculate arms and shoulders and the rich warmth of her face with its alluring, shadowed eyes that seemed to mock him with light, fascinating malice, of the magnetism of her intense, ineluctable vitality diffused as naturally as sunlight. But—the thought rankled—Arkroyd had won three dances to his two; and through all that day Alison had seemed determined to avoid him, to keep herself surrounded by an obsequious crowd, impenetrable to her lover....

On the deck below the band began to play again: signalling the end of the intermission. Alison hummed lightly a bit of the melody, her silken slipper tapping the deck.

“Do I get another dance?” he asked suddenly.

She broke off her humming. “So sorry,” she said; “my card is quite full and running over.”

“May I see it?” She surrendered it without hesitation. He frowned, endeavouring to decipher the scrawl by the inadequate moonlight.

“You wanted to know—?” she enquired, with a laugh back of her tone.

“How many has Arkroyd, this half?” he demanded bluntly.

“Two, I think,” she answered coolly. “Why?”

He stared gravely into her shadowed face. “Is that good advertising, too,” he asked quietly—“to show marked preference to a man of Arkroyd’s calibre and reputation?”

Alison laughed. “You’re delicious when you’re jealous, Staff,” said she. “No; it isn’t advertising—it’s discipline.”

“Discipline?”

“Just that. I’m punishing you for your obstinacy about the play. You’ll see, my dear,” she taunted him: “I’m going to have my own way or make your life perfectly miserable.”

Before he could invent an adequate retort, the beautiful Mr. Bangs came tripping across the deck, elation in his manner.

“Ah, there you are, Miss Landis! My dance, you know. Been looking everywhere for you.”

“So sorry: I was just coming down.”

Alison caught up the demi-train of her gown, but paused an instant longer, staring Staff full in the face, her air taunting and provocative.

“Think it over, Staff,” she advised in a cool, metallic voice; and dropping her hand on Bangs’ arm, moved languidly away.

Staff did think it over, if with surprisingly little satisfaction to himself. It wasn’t possible to ignore the patent fact that Alison had determined to make him come to heel. That apparently was the only attitude possible for one who aspired to the post of first playwright-in-waiting and husband-in-ordinary to the first actress in the land. He doubted his ability to supple his back to the requisite degree. Even for the woman he loved....