Miss Million's Maid Part 52

James Burke to me as the car stopped at last outside what are called the grim portals of justice. (Plenty of grimness about the portals, anyway!) "You ought to have kept----"

Even at that awful moment he made me wonder if he were really going to say, boldly out before the detective and everybody: "You ought to have kept your hands in mine as I wanted you to!"

But no. He had the grace to conclude smoothly and conventionally: "You ought to have kept the rug up about you!"

Then came "Good-nights"--rather a mockery under the circ.u.mstances--and the departure of the two young men, with a great many parting protests from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop about the "prepa.s.sterousness" of the whole procedure. Then we arrested "prisoners" were taken down a loathsome stone corridor and handed over to a----

Words fail me, as they failed Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. I can't think of words unpleasant enough to describe the odiousness of that particular wardress into whose charge we were given.

The only excuse for her was that she imagined--why, I don't know, for surely she could have seen that there was nothing of that type about either Miss Million or Miss Smith--she imagined that we were militant Suffragettes!

And she certainly did make herself disagreeable to us.

The one mercy about this was that it braced Miss Million up to abstain from shedding tears--which she seemed inclined to do when we were separated.

Words didn't fail her! I heard the ex-maid-servant's clearest kitchen accent announcing exactly what she thought of "that" wardress and "that"

detective, and "that there old Rattenheimer" until stone walls and heavy doors shut her from earshot....

I only hope that her rage has kept up all night, that it's prevented her from relapsing into the misery and terror in which she started away from the shelter of Vi Va.s.sity's wing at the "Refuge"! For then, I know, she was perfectly convinced that what we were setting out for was, at the very least, ten years' penal servitude! Evidently Miss Million hasn't the slightest touch of faith in the ultimate triumph of all Innocence.

To her, because that Rattenheimer ruby is stolen, and she and her maid are suspected of being the thieves, it means that it's impossible for us to be cleared!

I don't feel that; but I do feel the humiliation and the discomfort of having been put in prison!

How many nights like the last, I wonder dismally, am I to spend in this horrible little cell?

Well! I suppose this morning will show us.

This morning, in about an hour's time, I suppose we are to go before the magistrate of this court, and to answer the "serious charge" that has been brought against us by Mr. Julius Rattenheimer.

CHAPTER x.x.x

OUT ON BAIL

THERE!

The much-dreaded ordeal is over.

That is, it is over for the present. For we have been committed for trial, and that trial is still to come.

We shall have to go on living somehow under a cloud of the blackest suspicion. But there's one ray of comfort that I find among the inky gloom of my (mental) surroundings.

At least, there isn't going to be any more prison cell for us to-night!

At least, I shall have a long and perfect and much-needed sleep in my delightfully luxurious white bed at the Hotel Cecil.

For that's where we've returned for the day, to pack up a few more things before we accept Miss Vi Va.s.sity's kindly invitation and return to the "Refuge"--a refuge indeed!

It's too good of her to welcome two suspect characters such as my young mistress and me among her professional friends.

The Breathing Statue, the Boy-Impersonator, the Serio, the emerald-green-tighted Acrobat Lady--these all dwell on the heights of respectability as far as their private characters are concerned.

Of course, Marmora, the Twentieth-Century Hebe, is an arrant flirt, but a girl may be that and a model of propriety at the same time. This touch of nature never fails to exasperate, for some reason, any of the men who know her. The Ventriloquist's wife and the understudy to "Cigarette"

in the Number Eleven Company of "Under Two Flags," there isn't a single word to be said against any of them!

But what are we?

Two alleged jewel thieves, out on bail! And even then Mrs. Rattenheimer protested loudly in court against "those two young women" being given bail at all!

By that time Miss Million and I were so utterly crushed by all that had gone before that I verily believe neither of us felt that we deserved to be let out at large--no, not even though three of our friends were sureties for us to the tune of 300 each!

I have come to the conclusion that it takes a born criminal to act and look like a perfectly innocent person when charged with a crime!

It's the perfectly innocent person who looks the picture of guilt!

At least I know that's what poor little Miss Million looked like as she stood beside me in the dock this morning.

Her little face was as white as her handkerchief, her grey eyes were shrunk and red with crying and want of sleep. Her hair was "anyhow." Her small figure seemed more insignificant than ever.

All the confidence with which she'd faced the wardress last night seemed to have evaporated in those hours of wakeful tossing on that vilely uncomfortable prison bed. She trembled and shook. She held on to the bar of the dock just as a very sea-sick pa.s.senger holds on to the steamer rail. She picked at her gloves, she nervously smoothed the creases in her pink, Bond Street tub-frock.

When the magistrate addressed her she started and gulped, and murmured "Sir" in the most utterly stricken voice I ever heard.

Altogether, if ever a young woman did look as if her sins had found her out, Miss Nellie Million, charged with stealing a valuable ruby pendant, the property of Mr. Julius Rattenheimer, looked the part at that moment.

I don't wonder the magistrate rasped at her.

As for me, I don't think I looked quite as frightened. You can't be at the same moment frightened and very angry.

I felt like murder; whom I should have wished to murder I don't quite know--the owner of the ruby alone would not have been enough for me. I was inwardly foaming with rage over having been forced into this idiotic position; also for having been made, not only mentally, but physically and acutely uncomfortable.

This is only one detail of the discomfort, but this may serve to sum up the rest; for the very first time in the whole of my life I'd had to go without my morning bath, and to stand fully dressed, but with the consciousness of being untubbed and unscrubbed, facing the world!

There was such a horrible lot of the world to face, too, in that awful police-court, where the windows were steaming and opaque, and the walls clammy as those of an uncared-for country vestry!

The place seemed crowded with all sorts and conditions of men and women, lumped together, so to speak, in Fate's lucky-bag. And it was only after I'd given two or three resentful glances about that stuffy cave of a place that I recognised among all the strangers the faces of the people who'd come to back up Miss Million and me.

First and foremost, of course, there sat, as close to us as she could manage to get herself placed, the sumptuous, peg-top-shaped, white-clad figure of London's Love, Miss Vi Va.s.sity, with her metallic hair.

She kissed her plump hand to us with effusion, waving encouragingly to us with her big gold mesh bag and all its glittering, clashing attachments: the cigarette case, the lip-salve tube, the gold pencil, the memorandum tablets, the Darin powder-box, the card-case, the Swastika, the lucky pig, the touchwood, the gold-tipped coral charm, the threepenny bit, and all the other odd things that rattled and jingled together like a pedlar's cart, making an unearthly stir in court.

From where I stood I could see two men sketching the owner of all this clatter!

Close beside her sat Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, very boyish, very grave; his well-cut Dana-Gibson mouth seeming to be permanently set into the exclamation, "Preppa.s.sterous!" and his serious eyes fastened on his trembling little cousin in the dock.

The Honourable James Burke sat behind them. All the policemen and officials, I noticed, were being as pleasant and deferential to that young scamp as if he were at least a judge, instead of a person who ought by rights to be locked up in the interests of the public!