The Bandbox Part 28

She wondered when Staff would learn the secret of his besetting mystery, and wondered too why Alison had wished to make a mystery of it. The joke was hardly apparent--though one's sense of American humour might well have become dulled in several years of residence abroad.

Meanwhile, instinctively, Eleanor was trying on the hat before the long mirror set in the door of the closet. She admitted to herself that she looked astonishingly well in it. She was a sane and sensible young woman, who knew that she was exceedingly good looking and was glad of it in the same wholesome way that she was glad she had a good singing voice. Very probably the hat was more of a piece with the somewhat flamboyant if unimpeachable loveliness of Alison Landis; but it would seem hard to find a hat better suited to set off the handsome, tall and slightly pale girl that confronted Eleanor in the mirror.

It seemed surprisingly heavy, even for a hat of its tremendous size. She was of the opinion that it would make her head ache to wear it for many hours at a time. She was puzzled by its weight and speculated vaguely about it until, lifting it carefully off, her fingers encountered something hard, heavy and unyielding between the lining and the crown.

After that it didn't take her long to discover that the lining had been ripped open and resewn with every indication of careless haste. Human curiosity did the rest. Within a very few minutes the Cadogan collar lay in her hands and she was marvelling over it--and hazily surmising the truth: Staff had been used as a blind agent to get the pearls into the country duty-free.

Quick thoughts ran riot in Eleanor's mind. Alison Landis would certainly not delay longer than a few hours before demanding her hat of Mr. Staff. The subst.i.tution would then be discovered and she, Eleanor Searle, would fall under suspicion--at least, unless she took immediate steps to restore the jewels.

She acted hastily, on impulse. One minute she was at the telephone, ordering a taxicab, the next she was hurriedly dressing herself in a tailor-made suit. The hour was late, but not too late--although (this gave her pause) it might be too late before she could reach Staff's rooms. She had much better telephone him she was coming. Of course he would have a telephone--everybody has, in New York.

Consultation of the directory confirmed this a.s.sumption, giving her both his address and his telephone number. But before she could call up, her cab was announced. Nevertheless she delayed long enough to warn him hastily of her coming. Then she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the necklace, dropped it into her handbag, replaced the hat in its bandbox and ran for the elevator.

It was almost half-past one by the clock behind the desk, when she pa.s.sed through the office. She had really not thought it so late. She was conscious of the surprised looks of the clerks and pages. The porter at the door, too, had a stare for her so long and frank as to approach impertinence. None the less he was quick enough to take her bandbox from the bellboy who carried it and place it in the waiting taxi, and handed her in after it with civil care. Having repeated to the operator the address she gave him, the porter shut the door and went back to his post as the vehicle darted out from the curb.

Eleanor knew little of New York geography. Her previous visits to the city had been very few and of short duration. With the shopping district she was tolerably familiar, and she knew something of the district roundabout the old Fifth Avenue Hotel and the vanished Everett House.

But with these exceptions she was entirely ignorant of the lay of the land: just as she was too inexperienced to realise that it isn't considered wholly well-advised for a young woman alone to take, in the middle of the night, a taxicab whose chauffeur carries a companion on the front seat. If she had stopped to consider this circ.u.mstance at all, she would have felt comforted by the presence of the superfluous man, on the general principle that two protectors are better then one: but the plain truth is that she didn't stop to consider it, her thoughts being fully engaged with what seemed more important matters.

The cab bounced across Amsterdam Avenue, slid smoothly over to Columbus, ran for a block or so beneath the elevated structure and swung into Seventy-seventh Street, through which it pelted eastward and into Central Park. Then for some moments it turned and twisted through the devious driveways, in a fashion so erratic that the pa.s.senger lost all grasp of her whereabouts, retaining no more than a confused impression of serpentine, tree-lined ways, chequered with lamplight and the soft, dense shadows of foliage, and regularly s.p.a.ced with staring electric arcs.

The night had fallen black beneath an overcast sky; the air that fanned her face was warm and heavy with humidity; what little breeze there was, aside from that created by the motion of the cab, bore on its leaden wings the scent of rain.

A vague uneasiness began to colour the girl's consciousness. She grew increasingly sensitive to the ominous quiet of the hour and place: the stark, dark stillness of the shrouded coppices and thickets, the emptiness of the paths. Once only she caught sight of a civilian, strolling in his shirt-sleeves, coat over his arm, hat in hand; and once only she detected, at a distance, the grey of a policeman's tunic, half blotted out by the shadow in which its wearer lounged at ease.

And that was far behind when, abruptly, with a grinding crash of brakes, the cab came from full headlong tilt to a dead halt within twice its length. She pitched forward from the seat with a cry of alarm, only saving herself a serious bruising through the instinct that led her to thrust out her hands and catch the frame of the forward windows.

Before she could recover, the chauffeur's companion had jumped out and run ahead, pausing in front of the hood to stoop and stare. In another moment he was back with a report couched in a technical jargon unintelligible to her understanding. She caught the words "stripped the gears" and from them inferred the irremediable.

"What is the matter?" she asked anxiously, bending forward.

The chauffeur turned his head and replied in a surly tone: "We've broken down, ma'm. You can't go no farther in this cab. I'll have to get another to tow us back to the garage."

"Oh," she cried in dismay, "how unfortunate! What am I to do?"

"Guess you'll have to get out 'n' walk back to Central Park West," was the answer. "You c'n get a car there to C'lumbus Circle. You'll find a-plenty taxis down there."

"You're quite sure--" she began to protest.

"Ah, they ain't no chanst of this car going another foot under its own power--not until it's been a week 'r two in hospital. The only thing for you to do 's to hoof it, like I said."

"That's dead right," averred the other man. He was standing beside the body of the cab and now unlatched the door and held it open for her.

"You might as well get down, if you're in any great hurry, ma'm."

Eleanor rose, eyeing the man distrustfully. His accent wasn't that of the kind of man who is accustomed to saying "ma'm." His back was toward the nearest lamp post, his face in shadow. She gained no more than a dim impression of a short, slender figure masked in a grey duster b.u.t.toned to the throat, and, above it, a face rendered indefinite by a short, pointed beard and a grey motor-cap pulled well down over the eyes....

But there was nothing to do but accept the situation. An accident was an accident--unpleasant but irreparable. There was no alternative; she could do nothing but adopt the chauffeur's suggestion. She stepped out, turning back to get her bandbox.

"Beg pardon, ma'm. I'll get that for you."

The man by the door interposed an arm between Eleanor and the bandbox.

She said, "Oh no!" and attempted to push past his arm.

Immediately he caught her by the shoulder and thrust her away with staggering violence. She reeled back half a dozen feet. Simultaneously she heard the fellow say, sharply: "All right--go ahead!" and saw him jump upon the step. On the instant, the cab shot away through the shadows, the door swinging wide while Eleanor's a.s.sailant scrambled into the body.

Before she could collect herself the car had disappeared round a curve in the roadway.

Her natural impulse was to scream, to start a hue-and-cry: "Stop thief!"

But the strong element of common-sense in her make-up counselled her to hold her tongue. In a trice she comprehended precisely the meaning of the pa.s.sage. Somebody else--somebody aside from herself, Staff and Alison Landis--knew the secret of the bandbox and the smuggled necklace, and with astonishing intuition had planned this trap to gain possession of it. She was amazed to contemplate the penetrating powers of inference and deduction, the cunning and resource which had not only in so short a time fathomed the mystery of the vanished necklace, but had discovered the exchange of bandboxes, had traced the right one to her hotel and possession, had divined and taken advantage of her impulse to return the property to its rightful owner without an instant's loss of time. And with this thought came another, more alarming: in a brace of minutes the thieves would discover that the necklace had been abstracted from the hat and--men of such boldness wouldn't hesitate about turning back to run her down and take their booty by force.

It was this consideration that bade her refrain from crying out.

Conceivably, if she did raise an alarm, help might be longer in coming than the taxicab in returning. They had the hat and bandbox, and were welcome to them, for all of her, as long as she retained the real valuables. Her only chance lay in instant and secret flight, in hiding herself away in the gloomy fastnesses of these unknown pleasure-grounds, so securely that they might not find her.

She stood alone in the middle of a broad road. There was n.o.body in sight, whichever way she looked. On one hand a wide asphalt path ran parallel with the drive; on the other lay a darksome hedge of trees and shrubbery. She hesitated not two seconds over her choice, and in a third was struggling and forcing a way through the undergrowth and beneath the low and spreading branches whose shadows cloaked her with a friendly curtain of blackness.

Beyond--she was not long in winning through--lay a broad meadow, glimmering faintly in the glow of light reflected from the bosoms of low, slow-moving clouds. A line of trees bordered it at a considerable distance; beneath them were visible patches of asphalt walk, shining coldly under electric arcs.

Having absolutely no notion whatever of where she was in the Park, after some little hesitation she decided against attempting to cross the lawn and turned instead, at random, to her right, stumbling away in the kindly penumbra of trees.

She thanked her stars that she had chosen to wear this dark, short-skirted suit that gave her so much freedom of action and at the same time blended so well with the shadows wherein she must skulk....

Before many minutes she received confirmation of her fears in the drone of a distant motor humming in the stillness and gaining volume with every beat of her heart. Presently it was strident and near at hand; and then, standing like a frozen thing, not daring to stir (indeed, half petrified with fear) she saw the marauding taxicab wheel slowly past, the chauffeur scrutinising one side of the way, the man in the grey duster standing up in the body and holding the door half open, while he raked with sweeping glances the coppice wherein she stood hiding.

But it did not stop. Incredible though it seemed, she was not detected.

Obviously the men were at a loss, unable to surmise which one she had chosen of a dozen ways of escape. The taxicab drilled on at a snail's pace for some distance up the drive, then swung round and came back at a good speed. As it pa.s.sed her for the second time she could hear one of its crew swearing angrily.

Again the song of the motor died in the distance, and again she found courage to move. But which way? How soonest to win out of this strange, bewildering maze of drives and paths, crossing and recrossing, melting together and diverging without apparent motive or design?

She advanced to the edge of the drive, paused, listening with every faculty alert. There was no sound but the muted soughing of the night wind in the trees--not a footfall, not the clap of a hoof or the echo of a motor's whine. She moved on a yard or two, and found herself suddenly in the harsh glare of an arc-lamp. This decided her; she might as well go forward as retreat, now that she had shown herself. She darted at a run across the road and gained the paved path, paused an instant, heard nothing, and ran on until forced to stop for breath.

And still no sign of pursuit! She began to feel a little rea.s.sured, and after a brief rest went on aimlessly, with the single intention of sticking to one walk as far as it might lead her, in the hope that it might lead her to the outskirts of the Park.

Vain hope! Within a short time she found herself scrambling over bare rocks, with shrubbery on either hand and a looming ma.s.s of masonry stencilled against the sky ahead. This surely could not be the way. She turned back, lost herself, half stumbled and half fell down a sharp slope, plodded across another lawn and found another path, which led her northwards (though she had no means of knowing this). In time it crossed one of the main drives, then recrossed. She followed it with patient persistence, hoping, but desperately weary.

Now and again she pa.s.sed benches upon which men sprawled in crude, uneasy att.i.tudes, as a rule snoring noisily. She dared not ask her way of these. Once one roused to the sharp tapping of her heels, stared insolently and, as she pa.s.sed, spoke to her in a thick, rough voice. She did not understand what he said, but quickened her pace and held on bravely, with her head high and her heart in her mouth. Mercifully, she was not followed.

Again--and not once but a number of times--the sound of a motor drove her from the path to the safe obscurity of the trees and undergrowth.

But in every such instance her apprehensions were without foundation; the machines were mostly touring-cars or limousines beating homeward from some late festivity.

And twice she thought to descry at a distance the grey-coated figure of a policeman; but each time, when she had gained the spot, the man had vanished--or else some phenomenon of light and shadow had misled her.

Minutes, in themselves seemingly endless, ran into hours while she wandered (so heavy with fatigue that she found herself wondering how it was that she didn't collapse from sheer exhaustion on any one of the interminable array of benches that she pa.s.sed) dragging her leaden feet and aching limbs and struggling to hold up her hot and throbbing head.

It was long after three when finally she emerged at One-hundred-and-tenth Street and Lenox Avenue. And here fortune proved more kind: she blundered blindly almost into the arms of a policeman, stumbled through her brief story and dragged wearily on his arm over to Central Park West. Here he put her aboard a southbound Eighth Avenue surface-car, instructing the conductor where she was to get off and then presumably used the telephone on his beat to such effect that she was met on alighting by another man in uniform who escorted her to the St.

Simon. She was too tired, too thoroughly worn out, to ask him how it happened that he was waiting for her, or even to do more than give him a bare word of thanks. As for complaining of her adventure to the night-clerk (who stared as she pa.s.sed through to the elevator) no imaginable consideration could have induced her to stop for any such purpose.

But one thing was clear to her intelligence, to be attended to before she toppled over on her bed: Staff must be warned by telephone of the attempt to steal the necklace and the reason why she had not been able to reach his residence. And if this were to be accomplished, she must do it before she dared sit down.

In conformance with this fixed idea, she turned directly to the telephone after closing the door of her room--pausing neither to strip off her gloves and remove her hat nor even to relieve her aching wrist of the handbag which, with its precious contents, dangled on its silken thong.