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

I merely sent you the hat; then—as I knew you would—you mentioned it to me aboard ship. I got you to bring it to my room, and then sent you out—you remember? While you waited I sewed the necklace in the lining; it took only an instant. Then Jane carried the hat back to your steward.”

“So,” he commented stupidly, “it wasn’t stolen!”

“Naturally not.”

“But you threw suspicion on Iff—”

“I daresay he was guilty enough in intent, if not in deed. There’s not the slightest doubt in my mind that he’s that man Ismay, really, and that he shipped with us for the especial purpose of stealing the necklace if he got half a chance.”

“You may be right; I don’t know—and neither do you. But do you realise that you came near causing an innocent man to be jailed for the theft?”

“But I didn’t. He got away.”

“But not Iff alone—there’s myself. Have you paused to consider what would have happened to me if the inspector had happened to find that necklace in the hat? Heavens knows how he missed it! He was persistent enough!... But if he had found it, I’d have been jailed for theft.”

“Oh, no,” she said sweetly; “I’d never have let it go that far.”

“Not even if to confess would mean that you’d be sent to jail for smuggling?”

“They’d never do that to a woman....”

But her eyes shifted from his uneasily, and he saw her colour change a trifle.

“You know better than that. You read the papers—keep informed. You know what happened to the last woman who tried to smuggle. I forgot how long they sent her up for—five months, or something like that.”

She was silent, her gaze evasive.

“You remember that, don’t you?”

“Perhaps I do,” she admitted unwillingly.

“And you don’t pretend you’d ’ve faced such a prospect in order to clear me?”

Again she had no answer for him. He turned up the room to the windows and back again.

“I didn’t think,” he said slowly, stopping before her—“I couldn’t have thought you could be so heartless, so self-centred ...!”

She rose suddenly and put a pleading hand upon his arm, standing very near him in all her loveliness.

“Say thoughtless, Staff,” she said quietly; “I didn’t mean it.”

“That’s hard to credit,” he replied steadily, “when I’m haunted by the memory of the lies you told me—to save yourself a few dollars honestly due the country that has made you a rich woman—to gain for yourself a few paltry columns of cheap, sensational newspaper advertising. For that you lied to me and put me in jeopardy of Sing-Sing ... me, the man you pretend to care for—”

“Hold on, Staff!” the woman interrupted harshly.

He moved away. Her arm dropped back to her side. She eyed him a moment with eyes hard and unfriendly.

“You’ve said about enough,” she continued.

“You’re not prepared to deny that you had these possibilities in mind when you lied to me and made me your dupe and cat’s-paw?”

“I’m not prepared to argue the matter with you,” she flung back at him, “nor to hold myself answerable to you for any thing I may choose to say or do.”

He bowed ceremoniously.

“I think that’s all,” he said pleasantly.

“It is,” she agreed curtly; then in a lighter tone she added: “There remains for me only to take my blue dishes and go home.”

As she spoke she moved over to the corner where the bandbox lay ingloriously on its undamaged side. As she bent over it, Staff abstractedly took and lighted another cigarette.

“What made you undo it?” he heard the woman ask.

He swung round in surprise. “I? I haven’t touched the thing since it was brought in—beyond kicking it out of the way.”

“The string’s off—it’s been opened!” Alison’s voice was trembling with excitement. She straightened up, holding the box in both hands, and came hastily over to the table beside which he was standing. “You see?” she said breathlessly, putting it down.

“The string was on it when I saw it last,” he told her blankly....

Then the memory recurred of the man who had passed him at the door—the man who, he suspected, had forced an entrance to his rooms....

Alison was plucking nervously at the cover without lifting it.

“Why don’t you look?” he demanded, irritated.

“I—I’m afraid,” she said in a broken voice.

Nevertheless, she removed the cover.

For a solid, silent minute both stared, stupefied. The hat they knew so well—the big black hat with its willow plume and buckle of brilliants—had vanished. In its place they saw the tumbled wreckage of what had once been another hat distinctly: wisps of straw dyed purple, fragments of feathers, bits of violet-coloured ribbon and silk which, mixed with wads and shreds of white tissue-paper, filled the box to brimming.

Staff thrust a hand in his pocket and produced the knot of violet ribbon. It matched exactly the torn ribbon in the box.

“So that,” he murmured—“that’s where this came from!”

Alison paid no attention. Of a sudden she began digging furiously in the débris in the box, throwing out its contents by handfuls until she had uncovered the bottom without finding any sign of what she had thought to find. Then she paused, meeting his gaze with one half-wrathful, half-hysterical.

“What does this mean?” she demanded, as if ready to hold him to account.

“I think,” he said slowly—“I’m strongly inclined to believe it means that you’re an uncommonly lucky woman.”

“How do you make that out?” she demanded in a breath.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, formulating his theory as he spoke: “When I came home tonight, a man passed me at the door, fairly running out—I fancy, to escape recognition; there was something about him that seemed familiar. Then I came up here, found my door ajar, when I distinctly remembered locking it, found my windows shut and the shades drawn, when I distinctly remembered leaving them up, and finally found this knot of ribbon on the floor. I was trying to account for it when you drove up. Now it seems plain enough that this fellow knew or suspected you of hiding the necklace in the hat, knew that I had it, and came here in my absence to steal it. He found instead this hat, and knowing no better tore it to pieces trying to find what he was after.”

“But where—where’s my hat?”

“I’ll tell you.” Staff crossed the room and picked up the string and label which had been on the box. Returning, he examined the tag and read aloud: “Miss Eleanor Searle.” He handed the tag to Alison. “Find Miss Searle and you’ll find your hat. It happens that she had a bandbox the exact duplicate of yours. I remember telling you about it, on the steamer. As a matter of fact, she was in the shop the afternoon you ordered your hat sent to me, though she steadily refused to tell me who was responsible for that imposition. Now, on the pier today, our luggage was placed side by side, hers with mine—both in the S section, you understand. My examination was finished first and I was taken back to my stateroom to be searched, as you know. While I was gone, her examination was evidently finished, for when I came back she had left the pier with all her things. Quite plainly she must have taken your box by mistake for her own; this, of course, is her hat. As I said at first, find Miss Searle and you’ll find your hat and necklace. Also, find the person to whom you confided this gay young swindling scheme of yours, and you’ll find the man who was intimate enough with the affair to come to my rooms in my absence and go direct to the bandbox for the necklace.”

“I—but I told nobody,” she stammered.

By the look in her eyes he disbelieved her.

“Not even Max, this morning, before he offered that reward?” he asked shrewdly.

“Well—yes; I told him.”

“Max may have confided it to somebody else: these things spread. Or possibly Jane may have blabbed.”

“Oh, no,” she protested, but without conviction in her accents; “neither of them would be so foolish....”

“I’d find out, if I were you.”

“I shall. Meanwhile—this Miss Searle—where’s she stopping?”

“I can’t tell you—some hotel. It’ll be easy enough to find her in the morning.”

“Will you try?”

“Assuredly—the first thing.”

“Then—there appears to be nothing else to do but go home,” said the woman in a curiously subdued manner.

Without replying verbally, Staff took up her chiffon wrap and draped it over her shoulders.

“Thank you,” said she, moving toward the door. “Good night.”

“Oh,” he protested politely, “I must see you out.”

“It’s not necessary—I can find my way.”

“But only I know how to fix the front door.”

At the foot of the stairs, while he fumbled with the latch, doubting him, she spoke with some little hesitation.

“I presume,” she said stiffly—“I presume that this—ah—ends it.”

Staff opened the door an inch and held it so. “If by ‘it,’” he replied, “we mean the same thing—”

“We do.”

“It does,” he asseverated with his twisted smile.

She delayed an instant longer. “But all the same,” she said hastily, at length, “I want that play.”

“My play?” he enquired with significant emphasis.

“Yes, of course,” she said sharply.

“Well, since I’m under contract with Max, I don’t well see how I can take it away from you. And besides, you’re the only woman living who can play it properly.”

“So good of you.” Her hand lay slim and cool in his for the fraction of an instant. “Good night,” she iterated, withdrawing it.

“Good night.”

As he let her out, Staff, glancing down at the waiting taxicab, was faintly surprised by the discovery that she had not come alone. A man stood in waiting by the door—a man in evening clothes: not Max but a taller man, more slender, with a better carriage. Turning to help Alison into the cab, the street lights threw his face in sharp relief against the blackness of the window; and Staff knew him.

“Arkroyd!” he said beneath his breath.

He closed the door and set the latch, suffering from a species of mild astonishment. His psychological processes seemed to him rather unique; he felt that he was hardly playing the game according to Hoyle. A man who has just broken with the woman with whom he has believed himself desperately in love naturally counts on feeling a bit down in the mouth. And seeing her drive off with one whom he has every right to consider in the light of a hated rival, he ought in common decency to suffer poignant pangs of jealousy. But Staff didn’t; he couldn’t honestly make himself believe that he was suffering in any way whatever. Indeed, the most violent emotion to which he was sensible was one of chagrin over his own infatuate myopia.

“Ass!” he called himself, slowly reascending the stairs. “You might ’ve seen this coming long ago, if you hadn’t wilfully chosen to be blind as a bat!”

Re-entering his study, he pulled up with a start and a cry of sincere amazement.

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

“Then why not lead a better life?” enquired Mr. Iff.

He was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, looking much like an exceptionally cruel caricature of himself. As he spoke, he slouched wearily over to the wing-chair Alison had recently occupied, and dropped into it like a dead weight.

He wore no hat. His clothing was in a shocking condition, damp, shapeless and shrunken to such an extent as to disclose exhibits of bony wrists and ankles almost immodestly generous. On his bird-like cranium the pale, smooth scalp shone pink through scanty, matted, damp blond locks. His face was drawn, pinched and pale. As if new to the light his baby-blue eyes blinked furiously. Round his thin lips hovered his habitual smile, semi-sardonic, semi-sheepish.

“Do you mind telling me how in thunder you got in here?” asked Staff courteously.

Iff waved a hand