House in Charlton Crescent (6 page)

“I can't believe it, my lady! Your lovely pearls gone, that I have always been so proud of. I have always wanted you to put them in the Bank, your ladyship knows, and now I suppose everybody will be saying that I have taken them, though I'm as innocent as a babe unborn.”

“Now may Heaven grant me patience with a fool!” Lady Anne groaned in her exasperation. “Please wait to protest your innocence until you are accused, Pirnie!”

“Detective Inspector Furnival will be here as soon as possible,” Lady Anne announced.

She had come into the small study where Bruce Cardyn was working, walking with her stick as usual, and disdaining all proffered help. She waited before closing the door, and spoke apparently for the benefit of those behind her:

“I wish you to receive him, Mr. Cardyn, and to do what you can to help him.”

Then she shut the door very carefully and came forward totteringly to the chair the young man placed for her.

“Well?” she said interrogatively. “Is this robbery of the pearls connected with the work you have in hand?”

Bruce Cardyn shrugged his broad shoulders.

“I don't quite see the connexion, Lady Anne, since, if the thief were already in possession of the pearls, it is difficult to understand why he should wish you out of the way.”

“Unless he—or she,” Lady Anne said very deliberately, “wished to possess himself—or herself—of the diamonds.”

“And that, as they were at the Bank, he was hardly likely to do,” Bruce remarked. “Unless they came to him by inheritance. And Mr. Daventry—”

“Mr. Daventry will not inherit my diamonds,” Lady Anne said sharply. “I have left them to my niece, Miss Dorothy Fyvert.”

“Then that settles the question of any connexion, of course,” Bruce said indignantly.

“Naturally it does,” Lady Anne agreed with a far-away look in her eyes. “Well, Mr. Cardyn, it is no use your or my spending time in guessing. What I came to you to say is, I wish no faintest hint of the work you are really here to do to reach Inspector Furnival's ears, until I give you permission.”

Bruce sat silent for a moment.

“That will be extremely difficult, Lady Anne! Inspector Furnival does not know me personally, it is true, but he is sure to discover who am, and then how am to account for my presence here?”

“I do not care, you must invent something,” Lady Anne said in her most autocratic manner. “What is the good of your being a detective if you cannot?” 

“It seems to me,” Cardyn went on, “that the two cases are so interwoven that he would find the knowledge a help in his task.”

“I do not care about that,” Lady Anne snapped. Then, her manner growing more impressive, “Don't you understand, Mr. Cardyn, that I called you in instead of the regular police because, when you have discovered my would-be murderer, I may wish the whole affair hushed up—-for the sake of my family?” Her voice sank to a whisper and she got up, carefully averting her eyes from Bruce Cardyn's face.

He got up too, and mechanically offered her his arm, one conclusion forcing itself upon him—“Then she has some suspicion after all! But who?”

It was not an hour yet since the loss of the pearls had been discovered, and had thrown the usually peaceful household at the house in Charlton Crescent in a ferment. Bruce Cardyn and John Daventry had searched the escritoire together carefully, but had found no trace of the missing jewels and had only made themselves certain of what Lady Anne had said at first—the locks and springs that guarded the pearls had not been tampered with. Everything had been opened and reclosed in the ordinary way. Some one had found out the secret of the escritoire—but who? It seemed difficult to imagine that anyone outside the house could have had an opportunity of doing so.

From the moment of her outburst, Cardyn had had an uneasy feeling that Pirnie had known more than she acknowledged, though he realized that he had not the slightest real ground for his suspicion except the knowledge that she must have had many more opportunities of watching Lady Anne when she put away the pearls or got them out. There was something about Pirnie's face that he did not like too, and he had fancied that her dramatic outburst when she heard of the loss of the pearls did not ring quite true.

Lady Anne, however, evidently resented his suspicions of her maid, who appeared to be the only person in whose profession of affection she had any faith. Pirnie had insisted on searching in every likely and unlikely place for the pearls since their loss had been found out, and Cardyn had kept her as much as possible under observation.

Already the short January twilight was creeping on, and Bruce Cardyn was about to switch on the electric light when the door opened and Margaret Balmaine put her head in.

“Why, how miserable you look here, Mr. Cardyn! No lights and the fire out? We have at least got a good fire in Lady Anne's sitting-room, and Lady Anne says you are to come in and have some tea. We must try and pull ourselves together even if the pearls are lost. Soames has brought us up some lovely hot scones. He is doing all the waiting himself, just as if it were a wedding or a funeral!”

“Poor old Soames! A butler always feels most at home at one of the above-mentioned ceremonies, I fancy,” Cardyn said as he followed her. But though he spoke with apparent lightness his eyes had never been keener or more alert than now, as he glanced from one to the other of the little group round the fire in Lady Anne's sitting-room.

Lady Anne herself was sitting near the escritoire in her revolving chair; Dorothy Fyvert was busy at the tea-table; and John Daventry stood on the hearthrug waiting to hand round the hot cakes. By the flickering light of the flames as they leaped up Cardyn could see that every face looked white and troubled. Lady Anne's was the most unmoved of them all; her hands, with their rheumatic knuckles were resting on the open flap of the escritoire before her. Every now and then her eyes wandered curiously round, and Cardyn guessed that she was asking herself whether it was—whether it could be possible that one of these dear familiar people had robbed her of her pearls and, not content with despoiling her, was further encompassing her death?

A great pang of pity for her loneliness shot through him. The death of her boys had left her bereft indeed, and she had turned her hardest side to the world ever since, but he guessed that the apparent hardness covered a kind and loyal heart.

Various odd pieces of jewellery were lying about the room on the Victorian centre-table and on the flap of the writing-table. Lady Anne smiled as she saw Bruce looking at them.

“Various treasures that Pirnie had unearthed in her zeal that no possible place of hiding for the pearls should be overlooked,” she remarked. “Of no value, most of them. This is the only thing that is worth much—a dagger.” And she reached out her hand and picked up a short slender blade set in a gold and jewelled handle. “That was given to my father when he was in India by one of the native princes. It is said to be worth something fabulous.”

“Yes, I remember seeing this when I was a boy,” John Daventry said as he came forward and weighed it in his hand. “A nice sort of toy. I expect you would be a match for a whole army of burglars with this, Aunt Anne. You wouldn't lose any more pearls if the thieves knew you were armed with this.”

“Well, I haven't any more pearls to lose,” Lady Anne said in her most matter-of-fact tones. “And, if I had, I am sure my poor rheumatic hands would not be able to defend them. Where is Maureen, Dorothy?”

“She has been out for a walk with Alice. They seem to have some great secret together to-day.” Miss Fyvert answered. “And I believe she is having tea with Alice too. I am quite out of favour with her, and I fancy she is sulking because I would not talk to her about the pearls. She is such an excitable child, and quite fond enough of talking about robbers and burglars as it is. She is very fond of Alice too.”

“Too fond, I think,” Miss Balmaine said significantly. “She would not be allowed to be so much with the servants if she were my sister. I should get a temporary governess for her until she goes back to school.”

“I am afraid we shall have to do something of the sort,” said Dorothy absently. “But Maureen will hate it so, and Alice is quite a nice girl. Cream, Mr. Cardyn, and sugar?”

“No cream, please. But sugar—heaps of it—three lumps at least,” Bruce said as he strode up to take his cup from her hand. “How this Russian fashion of taking lemon in tea grows. It wouldn't do for me.”

“Nor for me either,” Dorothy laughed. “I am a sugar-baby too. Oh, Soames, how lovely! You do spoil us!” as the butler entered the room with a tray of hot cakes in his hand.

“Only the spoiling is unnecessary as the last lot is not finished yet,” John Daventry said, helping himself to another piece of cake.

Soames regarded him benevolently.

“They don't last long, sir. I know the young ladies' tastes. If Miss Maureen—Ah!”

The covered dish which he was about to set upon the tea-table dropped from his hand and he stood still, staring at the window farthest from Lady Anne. His breath came quick and fast, his jaws worked about from side to side. Everyone turned to look, and there was an outburst of screams from the girls. Then Bruce Cardyn sprang forward.

Outside the window, so close to the pane that it seemed to be pressing against it, was a white face—a chalk-white face, whether of man or woman none could tell. Around it there seemed to float a grey mist. Spirit or living creature! Even Bruce Cardyn, keen-witted detective as he was, felt a momentary doubt. He shook the window. It was latched. As he raised his hand to open it he momentarily took his eyes from the figure outside, and in that moment it vanished. Throwing the sash up he leaned out, conscious that the others were pressing up against him, calling, questioning, exclaiming.

Hearing the outcry, a man came running across the grass towards the house. Cardyn was rubbing his eyes in utter amazement; where on earth had the figure at the window disappeared to? What in the world had become of it? There was no ladder or rope to be seen, no sign of anyone on the terrace beneath. And yet Bruce had only taken his eyes off the creature, whatever it was, for one moment, not time enough for the slickest burglar to have got away.

The man hastening over the lawn had reached the sundial at the foot of the low terrace now—Cardyn knew him for one of his underlings, put on as an extra gardener to watch the house.

“Bradley!” he shouted. “Some one has been trying to get into the house and pretty nearly succeeded too. Did you see him?”

“No, sir!” said the man, staring upwards in a puzzled fashion, “leastways, just as I heard the shouting I thought I saw something moving on the wall, but didn't notice where it came from or where it went to. I don't think it was a man—all gliding about like a snake it was.”

“Snakes haven't got white faces,” Cardyn said sharply. 

“The Cat Burglar!” One of the girls behind him cried out.

Cardyn never knew which, for in the pause which followed, his quick ear caught another sound—a groan, a cry, a stifled choking groan.

“What was that?” he cried, turning quickly and pushing back those who were pressing against him—John Daventry, Margaret Balmaine, Dorothy Fyvert and Soames.

Nobody answered him. Every one appeared to be struggling to lean out of the window at once.

With a terrible prevision of evil, he extricated himself from the crush. The next minute he knew that his prevision had been horribly justified. Lady Anne sat still in her revolving chair, but she had fallen aside and lay across the arm in a huddled-up position. It was from her lips that cry had come—they were still parted, open, and from one corner a thin stream of blood and froth was trickling down her chin on to the laces of her gown.

As Cardyn reached her she opened her eyes and looked at him with a gleam of comprehension.

“It was—it was—”

The last word broke in a rush of blood. Lady Anne's head fell back, her jaw dropped, and before anyone could realize the horror that had happened in their midst the keen-witted, clear-headed mistress of the house in Charlton Crescent had ceased to exist. For one moment he thought of heart failure—of an aneurism that had burst crossed Cardyn's mind. Then in a flash he realized— knew that what he had sworn to prevent had happened. In spite of all his precautions Lady Anne's assassin had been successful. But now John Daventry and Soames were beside him. They cried aloud in horror; they tried to raise Lady Anne but she lay in their arms a limp, inert mass.

“It is her heart—it has been weak for years! That brute has killed her—the shock of seeing him at the window has frightened her to death!”

“Shock had nothing to do with it,” Cardyn said shortly. He motioned Soames aside and took the pitiful-looking figure that till ten minutes ago had been the masterful Lady Anne Daventry from John Daventry. He rested it as well as he could against the wooden back of a chair.

“Look!” he cried, pointing downwards.

Protruding from the dead woman's breast was the gold and jewelled dagger she had shown them half an hour before. And, looking horribly incongruous among the laces of her fichu, a deep stain was spreading.

Some one had switched on the electric light and Cardyn saw that John Daventry's ruddy face had turned an ugly, sickly green, that Dorothy Fyvert and Margaret Balmaine were clinging together, shaking with fright—even in that awful moment his eyebrows contracted at the sight—and that Soames stood staring at his dead mistress like a man turned to stone. But as Bruce looked at him his face twitched to one side, and he put up his hands.

“Oh, my poor lady! my poor lady!”

“But what does it mean—what has happened?” John Daventry demanded, his voice and manners those of a man out of his mind.

For answer Cardyn pointed to the handle of the dagger—to that ominous growing stain.