The Sins of Severac Bablon Part 18

"I mean to say----"

"That's settled, Zoe!" said the pretty hostess calmly. "Never mind him!

Alexander!"

The footman addressed came forward.

"You will step out on the front porch, Alexander, and say to the first gentleman who pa.s.ses, if he's in evening dress: 'Lady Vignoles requests the pleasure of your company at dinner.' If he says he doesn't know me, reply that I am quite aware of that! Do you understand?"

Alexander was shocked.

"I mean to say, Sheila----" began his lordship.

"Did you hear me, Alexander?"

"I've got to stand out in Cadogan Gardens, my lady----"

"Shall I repeat it again, slowly?"

"I heard you, my lady."

"Very well. Show the gentleman into the library. You have only five minutes."

With an appealing look towards Lord Vignoles, who, having ostentatiously removed and burnished his eyegla.s.s, seemed to experience some difficulty in replacing it, Alexander departed.

"_I_ claim him!" cried Zoe, as the footman disappeared. "Whoever he is or whatever he's like, he shall take me in to dinner!"

"What I mean to say is," blurted Vignoles, "that it would be all right at a country-house party at Christmas, say----"

"It's going to be all right here, dear!" interrupted his wife, affectionately squeezing his arm. "Why, think of the possibilities! New York would just go crazy on the idea!"

A silence fell between them as, with Zoe Oppner and the Zimmermanns, they made their way to the library. Only a few minutes elapsed, to their surprise, ere Alexander reappeared. Martyr-like, he had performed his painful duty, and a beatific consciousness of his martyrdom was writ large upon him. In an absolutely toneless voice he announced:

"Detective-Inspector Pepys!"

"Here! I mean to say--we can't have a policeman----" began Vignoles, but his wife's little hand was laid upon his lips.

Zoe Oppner, with br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes, made a brave attempt, and then fled to a distant settee, striving with her handkerchief to stifle her laughter.

The guest entered.

From her remote corner Zoe Oppner peeped at him, and her laughter ceased. Lady Vignoles looked pleased; her husband seemed surprised.

Zimmermann watched the stranger with a curious expression in his eyes.

Detective-Inspector Pepys was a tall man of military bearing, bronzed, and wearing a slight beard, trimmed to a point. He was perfectly composed, and came forward with an easy smile upon his handsome face.

His clothes fitted him faultlessly. Even Lord Vignoles (a sartorial connoisseur) had to concede that his dress-suit was a success. He looked a wealthy Colonial gentleman.

"This pleasure is the greater in being unexpected, Lady Vignoles!" he said. "I gather I am thus favoured that I may take the place of an absentee. Shall I hazard a guess? Your party numbered thirteen?"

His infectious smile, easy acceptance of a bizarre situation, and evident good breeding, bridged a rather difficult interval. Lord Vignoles had had an idea that detective-inspectors were just ordinary plain-clothes policemen, and had determined, a second before, to a.s.sert himself, give the man half-a-sovereign, and put an end to this ridiculous extravaganza. Now he changed his mind. Detective-Inspector Pepys was a revelation.

Vignoles (to his own surprise) offered his hand.

"It is very good of you," he said, rather awkwardly. "You are sure you have no other dinner engagement, Inspector?"

"None," replied the latter. "I am, strictly speaking, engaged upon official duty; but bodily nutriment is allowed--even by Scotland Yard!"

"You don't mind my presenting you to--the other guests--in your--ah--unofficial capacity--as plain Mr. Pepys? They might--think there was something wrong!"

He felt vaguely confused, as though he were insulting the visitor by his request, and with the detective's disconcerting eyes fixed upon his face was more than half ashamed of himself.

"Not in the least, Lord Vignoles. I should have suggested it had you not done so."

The host was resentfully conscious of a subtle sense of inward grat.i.tude for this concession. Of the easy a.s.sumption of equality by the detective he experienced no resentment whatever. The circ.u.mstances possibly warranted it, and, in any event, it was a.s.sumed so quietly and naturally that he accepted it as a matter of course.

Since Lord Vignoles' marriage with an American heiress the atmosphere of his establishments had grown very transatlantic; so much so, indeed, that someone had dubbed the house in Cadogan Gardens "The Millionaires'

Meeting House," and another wit (unknown) had referred to his place in Norfolk as "The Week-end Synagogue." Furthermore, Lady Vignoles had a weakness for "odd people," for which reason the presence of a guest hitherto socially unknown occasioned no comment.

Mr. Pepys having brought in Zoe Oppner, everyone a.s.sumed the late arrival to be one of Lady Vignoles' odd people, and everyone was pleasantly surprised to find him such a charming companion.

Zoe Oppner, for her part, became so utterly absorbed in his conversation that her cousin grew seriously alarmed. Zoe was notoriously eccentric, and, her cousin did not doubt, even capable of forming an attachment for a policeman.

In fact, Lady Vignoles, who was wearing the historic Lyrpa Diamond--her father's wedding-present--was so concerned that she had entirely lost track of the general conversation, which, from the great gem, had drifted automatically into criminology.

Zimmermann was citing the famous case of the Kimberley mail robbery in '83.

"That was a big haul," he said. "Twelve thousand pounds' worth of rough diamonds!"

"Fifteen!" corrected Bernard Megger, director of a world-famed mining syndicate.

"Oh, was it fifteen?" continued Zimmermann. "No doubt you are correct.

Were you in Africa in '83?"

"No," replied Megger; "I was in 'Frisco till the autumn of '85, but I remember the affair. Three men were captured--one dead. The fourth--Isaac Jacobsen--got away, and with the booty!"

"Never traced, I believe!" asked the novelist.

"Never," confirmed Megger; "neither the man nor the diamonds."

"It was a big thing, certainly," came Vignoles' voice; "but this Severac Bablon has beaten all records in that line!"

The remark afforded his wife an opportunity, for which she had sought, to break off the too confidential _tete-a-tete_ between Zoe and the detective.

"Zoe," she said, "surely Mr. Pepys can tell us something about this mysterious Severac Bablon?"

"Oh, yes!" replied Zoe. "He has been telling me! He knows quite a lot about him!"

Now, the dinner-table topic all over London was the mystery of Severac Bablon, and Lady Vignoles' party was not exceptional in this respect. It had already been several times referred to, and at Miss Oppner's words all eyes were directed towards the handsome stranger, who bore this scrutiny with such smiling composure.

"I cannot go into particulars, Lady Vignoles," he said; "but, as you are aware, I have a kind of official connection with the matter!"