The Second Latchkey Part 33

THE DEVIL'S ROSARY

Ruthven Smith summoned courage to ask for a few words alone with Knight that Easter morning, in order to explain as well as apologize for the "seeming liberty he had taken." By dint of stammering, and punctuating his sentences with short, dry coughs, he made "a clean breast," as he called it, of the "whole business."

He had come to Valley House, he confessed, because of an anonymous letter, written apparently by a person of education, to inform him that the Malindore diamond had come into the possession of the Nelson Smiths.

Whether they were aware of its ident.i.ty, the writer was not sure; but in any case their ownership of the jewel was kept secret.

Having got so far in his story, Ruthven Smith decided that the easiest way of finishing it would be to produce the letter. He did so (a typewritten sheet of plain creamy paper, in an envelope post-marked "West Hampstead"), and simplified things for himself by pointing to the last sentence.

Mrs. Nelson Smith always wears a thin gold chain round her neck, which she lets drop to her shoulders for evening dress. What precious thing which has to be hidden hangs on that chain? Mr. Ruthven Smith is advised to find out.

"I see now," the unfortunate man excused himself, "that someone has been taking advantage of my anxiety about the losses of my firm to play a cruel practical joke on me. I can't help thinking, at the same time, that the person must have had a grudge against you and your wife also."

"Or else a desire to make mischief between you and us," was Knight's calm suggestion.

Ruthven Smith caught it up, eagerly. "Ah, that possibility hadn't occurred to me."

"I suppose we all have enemies." Knight pursued the subject without excitement. "The writer probably wished to put the idea in your head that I had deliberately bought an historic diamond which I knew to be stolen."

"But that would have been ridiculous!" exclaimed the jewel expert, and felt sincere in making his protest.

Nevertheless, he had glanced at Annesley's face while talking of the Malindore diamond to Lady Cartwright. It had been on the edge of his mind that, if she looked self-conscious, it would be a point against her and her husband. Also he had determined to make his daring attempt at discovery before she had time to get rid of the diamond if she were hiding it. Now, however, in the light of her shining innocence, he had almost forgotten that he had suspected an underhand design on her part.

He asked Nelson Smith if he could think of any one, man or woman, among his acquaintances capable of writing the anonymous letter. Nelson Smith replied that his brain was a blank, and that he hardly thought it worth while to follow the matter up, unless Ruthven Smith wished to do so. In that case they might put the affair in the hands of the police.

But the elder man was of the younger's opinion. He had made a fool of himself, and was ashamed that he had attached importance to an unsigned communication. All he desired was to let the unpleasant business drop.

This being settled, Knight, in whose hand was the typewritten letter, tossed the thing into the fireplace of the library, where the two had been talking. When he and Ruthven Smith had shaken hands and agreed to forget the whole incident the latter was glad to escape from the interview. He went to his room and lay down, to soothe his nerves and think of an excuse to return to London early on Monday morning.

As soon as his meagre back was turned Knight stooped and retrieved the letter in its envelope, unscorched, from the fireplace. There was nothing about it--not even a tell-tale perfume--to give any clue to the writer.

Nevertheless, Knight considered it of value. He intended to use it as a bluff to frighten the Countess de Santiago, for only through her own fear could he prove her treachery.

Most of the guests at Valley House went to church, to give thanks for the fairy-like Easter eggs they had received. Annesley had a headache, however, and no one was surprised that her husband should choose to stop at home to look after her.

His adoring devotion for the girl was no secret. People laughed at it, but admired it, too, and some women envied Annesley. They imagined him spending the morning with his wife, but as a matter of fact he did not go near her. He feared to speak lest she might change her decision and refuse to travel to America with him.

His one hope--a desperate hope--lay in her going. He decided not to see her alone again until Monday evening, after the arrival of the cable from America.

In order to insure the coming of this message, and to make it realistic, he motored into Torquay and sent a long telegram, partly in cipher.

Returning, he had a conversation with Charrington, the butler, and Char, the chauffeur, a conversation which left the brothers grave and subdued.

Later Char went off in the car again, though it poured with rain, and was gone until late at night.

Between twelve and one o'clock Knight, strolling toward the garage, heard the automobile return, and stopped in the blaze of the acetylene for the motor to slow down.

"Is it all right?" he inquired.

"It's all right," Char answered, somewhat sullenly, yet with a certain reluctant respect. "Nothing will happen here Monday night."

"Good!" his master answered, and smiled at the thought of Madalena's malicious prophecy which would not be fulfilled. It was not a pleasant smile, yet, as he had said to Annesley, he planned no revenge against the tigress--the woman whose claws had ripped his heart open.

Tigress or no, she was a woman, and he knew that, as far as she was capable of caring, she had cared for him.

Perhaps it had been partly his fault. She was handsome, and had been years younger when he had met her first. She was married then to an old man, jealous and suspicious, knowing that his money had won the beautiful wild creature for him. It was at Buenos Aires, and the husband had found Madalena out in an intrigue; partly political, partly mercenary, and partly pa.s.sionate. He had turned her from his house without a penny, and Knight--not personally concerned in the intrigue, but interested--had been flush enough at the time to lend her a thousand dollars, enough to go away with. It had been called a loan, but he had not expected to get the money back, and never did get it.

In California she had set herself up as a palmist and had become successful, a success she duplicated in New York; and she had gladly made herself useful in many ways to "Don" and those with whom he "worked."

One way was to find out the number and worth of her rich clients' jewels, and where they were kept. Through her crystal gazing she was able to conjure women's secrets without their realizing that they, not she, gave them to the light. And aboard the _Monarchic_ was not by any means the first time that Madalena had been invaluable in diverting suspicion by throwing it upon the wrong track.

Knight had consulted her, praised her, and flattered her from time to time. Now he told himself that he was paying for his thoughtlessness.

He had taken Madalena for granted, regarding her as a machine rather than a woman; and though he owed to her the loss of his happiness, that happiness had been undeserved and, as he expressed it to himself, walking the wet paths at midnight, he had "stood to lose it anyhow."

He would frighten Madalena so that she would never dare to try her tricks again, and he would let her understand that because of what she had done their partnership had come to an end once and forever. Otherwise she should feel herself safe from him.

Bad he might be, and was, as he knew; but he didn't think it was in his make-up, somehow, to strike a woman.

He did not go back to the house, after his short talk with Char, until after he had heard the stable clock strike four. It was easier to think and see things clearly out of doors than in his room adjoining Annesley's--that closed room, forbidden to him now, where she was perhaps crying, and surely hating him. As for the long nightmare day he had lived through, it had been too full for much deliberate thinking; and he wanted to plan for the future: how to begin again, and how to keep the woman who had come to mean more for him than anything else had ever meant--more, he knew, than anything else could mean.

He was not sure whether the love in his heart was a punishment or a blessing, but there it was. It had come to stay.

"This woman to this man!"

He found himself repeating the words he remembered best in the marriage service, not bitterly as he had repeated them to Annesley, but yearningly, clingingly, groping after some promise of hope in them.

"She gave herself to me. I'm the same man she loved, after all, though she says I'm not," he told himself. "G.o.d! What's the good of being a man at all, if I can't get her back?"

As he wandered through one winter-saddened garden after another--the Italian garden, the Dutch garden, the rose garden--he searched his soul, asking it how much more he should have to tell the girl about his past.

In a kind of desperate resignation he persuaded himself that there was nothing he would not be willing to tell her now, if it were for her good, and if she wished to hear.

But something within him said that she would wish to hear no more. She would deign to put no questions to him, even if she felt curiosity. She would doubtless refuse to listen if he volunteered a further confession.

He was instinctively sure of his ground there; and in his bitterness of spirit there was a faint gleam of comfort; certain details of his degradation (she would think it that) might be kept decently hidden.

For instance, he would not have to tell her how, as a boy in Chicago, he had learned to make strange use of those clever, nervous hands of his, which she had lovingly praised as "sensitive and artistic." He could almost see the girl shudder and grow pale at hearing how proud he had been at sixteen of being admitted to friendship with a "swell mobsman"

fascinating as any "Raffles" of fiction; how it had amused the fellow to teach him a deft and delicate touch, beginning his lessons with the game of jack-straws, in which he was given prizes if he could separate the whole stack, one straw from another, without disturbing the balance of the pile.

It would gain him no credit in Annesley's eyes if he should a.s.sure her that, though he knew how to pick pockets--none better--he had somehow never cared to put his skill in practice, but had always preferred, leaving that part of the industry to others. No excuse could help him with her, and he was glad she need not know all the ways in which he had served the eccentric friend and employer with whose interests he had been a.s.sociated more or less since his twenty-fifth year.

How disgusting would seem to Anita the inside history of the _Monarchic_ episode, upon which he had rather prided himself until love for her had begun making subtle changes in his view of life. He and old Paul Van Vreck had laughed together at the patent lock on which the agent depended--a lock invented by the retired member of the firm himself, and followed by a second invention, even more clever: a little instrument designed to open a door in spite of it.

There had been the drug, too, which leaving no odour behind, had the same effect as chloroform, and "took" even more quickly. Paul Van Vreck had read of certain experiments made by a professor of chemistry in Tours, had gone to France to see the man, had bought the formula, which had not yet proved itself entirely successful; had added an ingredient on his own account, and triumphed.

These parts of the complicated and well-fitting scheme had seemed deliciously amusing to Knight in those days; that Van Vreck should use his secret skill against his own brothers and nephews in the business he had made; that the great expert should add to his fortune by stealing from his own firm, or rather, from the great insurance company who would repay their losses; that in such ways, with such money, he could add treasures to his famous collection, practically at no expense to himself, and have besides the exquisite pleasure of laughing in his sleeve at the world.

It had all added zest to the work. And Knight had been pleased with some small inventions of his own, praised by Van Vreck: a smart hiding-place in the heel of a boot, almost impossible to detect, and another equally convenient and invisible in the jet standard of Madalena de Santiago's famous crystal. He had enjoyed the excitement when he and Madalena and their two a.s.sistants, among the other pa.s.sengers on board ship, had consented to be searched for the missing jewels. And he had laughed sneeringly at the credulity of those who believed in Madalena's trumped-up vision "of the small fair man," the lighted life-preserver dropped into the sea at night, and the yacht which sent out a boat to pick it up.

For that other vision her crystal had supplied after the robbery in Portman Square he was not responsible; but it was he who had suggested the "pictures" for her to see on shipboard.

He hated the recollection now. Even Annesley could not think it more contemptible than he did.