Between the Dark and the Daylight Part 9

CHAPTER V

THE COURT IS STARTLED

They dined together--it was still not too late to dine--in a private room at the Piccadilly Restaurant. Mrs. Tranmer found that she was, indeed, not irreparably damaged; and by the time she could be induced to look over the fact that she was not what she called "dressed" she began to enjoy herself uncommonly well. Delia Angel was in the highest spirits, which, on the whole, was not surprising. The recovery of the bag and the will had transformed the world into a rose-coloured Paradise. The evening was one continuous delight. As for Philip Roland--his mood was akin to Miss Angel's. Everything which had begun badly was ending well. He was the host. The meal did credit to his choice--and to the cook. The wine was worthy of the toasts they drank.

There was one toast which was not formally proposed, and of which, even in his heart he did not dream, but whose presence was answerable for not a little of the rapture which crowned the feast--"The Birth of Romance." His life had been tolerably commonplace and grey. For the first time that night Romance had entered into it. It was just possible that, maintaining the place it had gained, it would continue to the end.

So might it be; for sure, the Spirit is the best of company.

After dinner the three journeyed together to Miss Angel's solicitor. He lived in town, not far away from where they were, and though the hour was uncanonical it was not so very late. And though he was amazed at being required to do business at such a season, the tale they had to tell amazed him more. Nor was he indisposed to commend them for coming straight away to him with it at once.

He heard them to an end. Then he looked at the bag; then at the will.

Then once more at the bag; then at the will again. Then he smoothed his chin.

"It seems to me--speaking without prejudice--that this ends the matter.

In the face of this the other side is left without a leg to stand upon. With this in your hand"--he was tapping the will with his finger-tip--"I cannot but think, Miss Angel, that you must carry all before you."

"So I should imagine."

He contemplated Mr. Roland.

"So you, sir, are one of the jury. As at present advised, I cannot see how, in the course of action which you have pursued, blame can in any way be attached to you. But, at the same time, I am bound to observe that in the course of a somewhat lengthy experience I cannot recall a single instance of a juryman--an actual juryman--playing such a part as you have done. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the position you have taken up is--in a really superlative degree--irregular."

Such, also, seemed to be the opinion of counsel before whom, at a matutinal hour, he laid the facts of the case. When, in view of those facts, counsel on both sides conferred before the case was opened, the general feeling plainly pointed in the same direction. And, on its being stated in open court that, in face of the discovery of the vanished will, all opposition to Miss Delia Angel would, with permission, be at once withdrawn, it was incidentally mentioned how the discovery had been brought about. All eyes, turning to the jury-box, fastened on Philip Roland, whose agitated countenance pointed the allusion. The part which he had played having been made sufficiently plain, the judge himself joined in the general stare. His lordship went so far as to remark that while he was pleased to accede to the application which had been made to him to consider the case at an end, being of opinion that the matter had been brought to a very proper termination, still he could not conceal from himself that, so far as he could gather from what had been said, the conduct of one of the jurymen, even allowing some lat.i.tude--here his lordship's eyes seemed to twinkle--was marked by a considerable amount of irregularity.

Mit.w.a.terstraand

THE STORY OF A SHOCK

Chapter I

THE DISEASE

On the night before their daughter's Wedding Mr. and Mrs. Staunton gave a ball. As the festivities were drawing to a close, Mr. Staunton b.u.t.ton-holed the bridegroom of the morrow.

"By the way, Burgoyne, there's one thing with reference to Minnie I wish to speak to you about. I--I'm not sure I oughtn't to have spoken to you before."

In the ball-room they were playing a waltz. Mr. Burgoyne's heart was with the dancers.

"About Minnie? What about Minnie? Don't you think that the little I don't know about her already, I shall find out soon enough upon my own account?"

"This is something--this is something that you ought to be told."

Mr. Staunton hesitated, and the opportunity was lost. The next morning Mr. Burgoyne was married.

During their honeymoon the newly-married pair spent a night at Mont St.

Michel. In the course of that night an unpleasant incident took place.

There was a bright moon, and the occupants of the bedrooms gathered on the balconies of the Maison Blanche to enjoy its radiance. The room next to theirs was tenanted by two sisters, Brooklyn girls. The costumes of these young ladies, although in that somewhat remote corner of the world, would have made an impression on the Boulevards, and still more emphatically in the Park. The married one--a Mrs. Homer Joy--wore some striking jewellery, in particular a diamond brooch, redolent of Tiffany, which would have attracted notice on a Shah night at the opera. Mr. Burgoyne had noticed this brooch earlier in the day, and had told himself that we must have returned to the days of King Alfred--with several points in our favour--if a woman could journey round the world with that advertis.e.m.e.nt in diamond work flashing in the sun.

Someone proposed a midnight stroll about the rock. They strolled. In the morning there was a terrible to-do. The advertis.e.m.e.nt in diamond work had disappeared!--stolen!--giving satisfactory proof that in those parts, at any rate, the days of King Alfred were now no more.

Mrs. Joy stated that, previous to starting for the midnight ramble about the Mount, she had placed it on her dressing-table, apparently despising the precaution of placing it even in an ordinary box. She was not even sure that she had closed her bedroom door, so it had, of course, struck the eye of the first person who strolled that way, and, in all probability, that person had, in the American sense, "struck it." Mont St. Michel was still in a little tumult of excitement when Mr. and Mrs. Burgoyne journeyed on their way.

Oddly enough, this discordant note, once struck, was struck again--kept on striking, in fact. At almost every place where the honeymooners stopped for an appreciable length of time there something was lost.

It seemed fatality. At Morlaix, a set of quaint, old, hammered silver-spoons, which had accompanied their coffee, vanished--not, according to the indignant innkeeper, into thin air, but into somebody's pockets. It was most annoying. At Brest, Quimper Vannes, Nantes, and afterwards through Touraine and up the Loire, it was the same tale, the loss of something of appreciable value--somebody else's property, not their's--accompanied their visitation. The coincidence was singular.

However they did seem to have shaken off the long arm of coincidence at last. There had been no sort of unpleasantness at either of the last two or three places at which they had stopped, and when they reached Paris at last, they were so contented with all the world, that each seemed to have forgotten everything in the existence of the other.

They stayed at the Grand Hotel--for privacy few places can compete with a large hotel--and directly they stayed the annoyances began again. It was indeed most singular. On the very morning after their arrival a notice was posted in the _salle de lecture_ that the night before a lady had lost her fan--something historical in fans, and quite unique.

She had been seated outside the reading-room--the Burgoynes must have been arriving at that very moment--preparatory to going to the opera.

She laid this wonderful fan on a chair beside her, it was only for an instant, yet when she turned it was gone. The administration charitably suggested--in their notice--that someone of their lady guests had mistaken it for her own.

That same evening a really remarkable tale was whispered about the place. A certain lady and gentleman--not our pair, but another--happened to be honeymooning in the hotel. Monsieur had left Madame asleep in bed. When she got up and began to dress, she discovered that the larger and more valuable portion of the jewellery which had been given her as wedding presents, and which she, perhaps foolishly, had brought abroad, had gone--apparently vanished into air. The curious part of the tale was this. She had dreamed that she saw a woman--unmistakably a lady--trying on this identical jewellery before the looking-gla.s.s. Query, was it a dream? Or had she, lying in bed, in a half somnolent condition, been the unconscious witness of an actual occurrence?

"Upon my word," declared Mr. Burgoyne to his wife, "If the thing weren't actually impossible, I should be inclined to believe that we were the victims of some elaborate practical joke; that people were in a conspiracy to make us believe that ill luck dogged our steps!"

Mrs. Burgoyne smiled. She was putting on her bonnet before the gla.s.s.

They were preparing to sally out for a quiet dinner on the boulevard.

"You silly Charlie! What queer ideas you get in your head. What does it matter to us if foolish people lose their things? We have not a mission to make folks wiser, or, what amounts to the same thing, to compel them to keep valuable things in secure places."

The lady, who had finished her performance at the gla.s.s, came and put her hands upon her lord's two shoulders,

"My dear child, don't look so black? I shall be much better prepared to discuss that, or any subject, when--we have dined."

The lady made a little _moue_ and kissed him on the lips. Then they went downstairs. But when they had got so far upon their road, the gentleman discovered that he had brought no money in his pockets.

Leaving his wife in the _salle de lecture_, he returned to his bedroom to supply the omission.

The desk in which he kept his loose cash was at that moment standing on the chest of drawers. On the top of it was a bag of his wife's--a bag on which she set much store. In it she kept her more particular belongings, and such care did she take of it that he never remembered to have seen it left out of her locked-up trunk before. Now, taking hold of it in his haste, he was rather surprised to find that it was unlocked--it was not only unlocked, but it flew wide open, and in flying open some of the contents fell upon the floor. He stooped to pick them up again.

The first thing he picked up was a silver spoon, the next was an ivory chessman, the next was a fan, and the next--was a diamond brooch.

He stared at these things in a sort of dream, and at the last especially. He had seen the thing before. But where?

Good G.o.d! it came upon him in a flash! It was the advertis.e.m.e.nt in diamond work which had been the property of Mrs. Homer Joy!

He was seized with a sort of momentary paralysis, continuing to stare at the brooch as though he had lost the power of volition. It was with an effort that he obtained sufficient mastery over himself to be able to turn his attention to the other articles he held. He knew two of them. The spoon was one of the spoons which had been lost at Morlaix; the chessman was one of a very curious set of chessmen which had disappeared at Vannes. From the notice which had been posted in the _salle de lecture_ he had no difficulty in recognising the fan which had vanished from the chair.

It was some moments before he realised what the presence of those things must mean, and when he did realize it a metamorphosis had taken place--the Charles Burgoyne standing there was not the Charles Burgoyne who had entered the room. Without any outward display of emotion, in a cold, mechanical way he placed the articles he held upon one side, and turned the contents of the bag out upon the drawers.

They presented a curious variety at any rate. As he gazed at them he experienced that singular phenomenon--the inability to credit the evidence of his own eyes. There, were the rest of the chessmen, the rest of the spoons, nick-nacks, a quaint, old silver cream-jug, jewellery--bracelets, rings, ear-rings, necklaces, pins, lockets, brooches, half the contents of a jeweller's shop. As he stood staring at this very miscellaneous collection, the door opened, and his wife came in.

She smiled as she entered.

"Charlie, have they taken your money too? Are you aware, sir, how hungry I am?"

He did not turn when he heard her voice. He continued motionless, looking at the contents of the bag. She advanced towards him and saw what he was looking at. Then he turned and they were face to face.