The Paternoster Ruby Part 10

"Mr. Page was not given to betraying his mind and emotions; indeed, I believe he was usually credited with possessing an abundance of the former to the exclusion of the latter. Nevertheless I knew that he was interested, for it was at this stage that he irritably silenced my references to the nine-thirty train.

"Swift, I don't know whether I can make you see it in the way I do. It is all so marvellous and strange; the canvas is so big, and I can't handle my colors very well. During the course of my narrative he would smile now and then, or even chuckle, as though hugely delighted over some aspect of the subject which did not appear to me as being at all funny; but the instant I paused, he would promptly command me to proceed.

"Candidly, his att.i.tude was very mystifying; but since he was not only harkening to me, but doing so with a marked, if peculiar, attention, I made the best of an extremely disagreeable task, and pleaded my cause with all the ardor of which I was capable."

I here caught Miss Cooper indulging in a furtive little smile.

"When I concluded by bluntly asking him for the ruby, his face was a study." Maillot drew a long breath, and shook his head over the recollection.

"I wouldn't again undergo the ordeal of the succeeding minutes for a whole bushel-basketful of rubies, every one as large and priceless as the blessed stone I was after. It was a question whether I 'd have to defend myself from a sudden a.s.sault, or be treated as a dangerous lunatic. And all the time he sat there twiddling his thumbs, apparently oblivious of my presence.

"I can see the old gentleman now. He was sitting there where Miss Cooper is, his chin on his breast, and from time to time he would take me in with a look from beneath his gathered brows, which, for sheer, downright hyperborean iciness, had a Dakota blizzard backed away down to the equator and stewing in its own perspiration. I was afraid to say anything more, and at the same time I was wild with impatience to get some inkling of what was going on behind his impa.s.sive crust.

"And, Swift, you never, never could guess how that silence was broken.

He suddenly tossed his head back, and burst out with a great guffaw of laughter. I jumped clear out of my chair.

"'What a nephew!' he cried, while I stood staring at him in dumb astonishment. 'Good Lord, what I 've missed by not knowing you all these years! A chip off of the old block!' He abruptly squared round on me, and paid me a compliment very similar to one I had heard a few nights before.

"'See here, my boy,' said he, admiringly, 'for pure and unlimited cheek, you 're in a cla.s.s by yourself. Why, the very audacity of your impudence is not without its attraction! Here you come into my house and ask me to stand and deliver a fortune, with all the light and airy a.s.surance of a bill-collector. And the best of it is that you are dead in earnest, too--oh, Lord!' And he went off into another gale of laughter.

"I here timidly mentioned the fact that I had never in my life been more dead in earnest.

"'Earnest!' he barked at me. 'D' ye suppose I can't tell when a man means what he says? Humph!

"'But see here, my lad, it's a pity we were n't drawn together years ago,' he broke off to snap at me. 'Sit down! I 'm not going to bite--if I am a "hound."'

"Well! I dropped back into my chair, where I sat blinking, a good deal bewildered, realizing only dimly that I had not been thrown bodily from the house, and, after a while, that he was not even angry.

"On the contrary, he seemed to be in the best of spirits. Presently he began to put me through a cross-examination, which I can recommend as a model for any one to follow who wants to elicit the minutiae of detail of another fellow's life.

"Before he finished, he had dragged out everything that had ever occurred to me with which anybody bearing the name of Fluette was even remotely a.s.sociated--a complete history of Belle's and my acquaintance, everything I knew or had ever heard about Mrs. Fluette, all about Genevieve, and every word that I could remember that had ever pa.s.sed between Mr. Fluette and myself.

"He took me through my talk with Mr. Fluette last Wednesday night I don't how many times--anyhow, until he must have had it pretty well photographed upon his mind. For some mysterious reason, he seemed to relish the epithet by which Mr. Fluette had referred to him. I 'll bet I repeated that part of our conversation a score of times; and every time I uttered the word 'hound' Mr. Page chuckled.

"But by and by I came to observe that each mention of either Belle or Mrs. Fluette was received with a courtesy and respect for which I could not account. I was at last moved to ask him whether he was acquainted with them; but he testily shook his head, and bade me with some asperity not to ask questions. He dropped into a brown study pretty soon, so I shut up.

"When he spoke again his words effectively banished all speculation from my mind; in fact, they left me speechless. Of a sudden he looked at me with a sly smile.

"'My boy,' he said, almost in a whisper, 'the ruby 's yours.'"

Thereupon, Maillot declared, Mr. Page inquired whether he had ever seen the ruby; to which the young man replied in the negative. The fire on the hearth had by that time sunk to a glowing bed of coals, and, save for the dim ruddy glow, the illumination was afforded by means of a single candle--just sufficient to make of the commodious library a place of ghostly shadows, and failing to relieve its farther reaches from utter gloom and darkness.

"It's a bonny bit of gla.s.s," the old gentleman had next said. "It's as compact a package, I daresay, as one can crowd a fortune into. I 'll get it." With a brusque injunction to his nephew to remain where he was, he took the candle and disappeared behind the curtains of the alcove, which, as the reader will remember, concealed the pa.s.sageway extending thence, through the conservatory, and into the bedroom.

Maillot could not say how long his uncle was gone; he was still too full of awe and wonder to note the pa.s.sage of time; but by and by Mr.

Page returned, bearing the lighted candle in one hand and a small, worn, leather box in the other.

The first he placed upon the table immediately, and then, after resuming his chair, laid the little leather box in front of himself.

He sat absently tapping it with his fingers, and from time to time regarding his nephew with the same secret, indecipherable smile which the young man had already observed and wondered at.

And now we approach the most startling, the most mystifying, stage of this amazing conference.

"Before giving you this ruby," said Mr. Page, after a while, "I 'm going to bind you to a few conditions--for your own protection," he had hastily added, with a grin, when the young man's face suddenly lengthened at this unexpected contingency. "You 'll agree fast enough after you 've heard me. If you don't, you don't get the Paternoster ruby"--and with a peculiar little laugh--"most people would agree to anything for that, my lad."

Maillot's interest was now centred upon the conditions; and they at once became a part of the fairy tale of which he was the beggar-transformed-into-a-prince hero--so much were they of a nature to add to his elation, rather than provoke objections.

Therefore he promptly acquiesced in their terms, binding himself upon his honor as a gentleman to fulfil them to the letter.

"Take this little box to Fluette," were the words with which his uncle charged him; "show him the contents, but"--and here Maillot said the old gentleman probed him through and through with a look--"on no account allow the ruby to go out of your possession--not even for the briefest instant. Whatever else he may be, Alfred Fluette is no fool.

Once he gets his fingers on this ruby, there 's no telling what he 'll try to put over on you. Of course he has no idea that you took him at his word, but I reckon he 'll have to believe the evidence of his own senses."

Mr. Page had here rubbed his hands together in secret delight, and Maillot said that his eyes sparkled as he proceeded.

"Then you can make him come to terms. We 'll see which he wants to keep the worst--his daughter, or the ruby he 's sweat blood to get. . . . Won't let his daughter marry a man that has a drop of this 'hound's' blood in his veins, hey?" Page had snarled. "Well, you just watch the old 'hound' close his jaws." Suddenly he became the masterful, domineering man the world knew; he addressed Maillot in the curt, incisive tones which never failed to exact obedience.

"You tell him this, young man, exactly as I am telling it to you. Tell him you have performed your part of the bargain; tell him that the second Miss Belle is yours, the ruby shall be his; tell him he shall never get his hands on it one tick of the clock before.

"He won't hesitate; I know Alfred Fluette. If you follow my instructions explicitly, the young lady will be Mrs. Royal Maillot by this time tomorrow night. If I 'm not very much mistaken, he 'll be the most astounded man in the world when you open the box. You want to do it, too--open it under his nose; dazzle his eyes--hypnotize him with its blood-red flame." He had been working himself slowly into a pa.s.sion; now it ended in a violent outburst. "Make the old dog get down on his hunkers and beg, d'ye hear? Make him whine! Then close the box and put it in your pocket. . . . A 'hound,' am I?"

He sat silent for a while, then went on quite calmly, in his former concise manner.

"I 'll give you a line over my signature--he has mighty good reasons for recognizing it on sight--so he can't dispute your right to bargain with him. Then--"

Maillot's eagerness and impatience were so intense that he had been unable to restrain himself when the old gentleman lapsed most vexatiously into a revery.

"Well?" Maillot had urged.

"Marry the girl. Then give Fluette the Paternoster ruby. Bring your wife to me--for after all is said and done, Royal, I 'm a lonely old man. I 'll see you started on a honeymoon that will make old Fluette open his eyes still wider. You never heard that I was stingy when I wanted to gratify a whim, did you? Well, it's my whim that this thing be done in the best style. I 'll have to leave that part of it to you.

You just go ahead and do the proper thing--and send me the bills. . . .

_Hound_? Bah!"

Mr. Page sat toying with the jewel-box many minutes before he expressed himself as confident that Maillot would carry out his instructions to the letter; then, without warning, he pressed the spring and the lid flew open.

The gem lay between them like a splash of crimson flame.

CHAPTER VIII

MAILLOT'S EXPERIENCE

"We must have made a Rembrandt-like picture"--to quote the young man again--"the two of us bending over this table by the light of a solitary candle. There was a wan reflection of the flame from the polished table-top, but elsewhere all was darkness and the shadows crowded in close. The most brilliant thing in the room was that wonderful jewel, glowing and scintillating like blood-red fire.

"It was considerably larger than the end of my thumb--as large as a big hickory-nut and, my uncle averred, flawless. Rubies of such a size and without a flaw are extremely rare, I believe; in fact, there are only one or two known to be in existence. The old gentleman declared that one of five carats was worth five times as much as a diamond of equal weight, and that the value increased proportionately with each additional carat.

"But I could only sit and stare at it and wonder, and now and then pinch myself to see whether I was in reality awake and not the victim of a fantastic Arabian Nights sort of dream."