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“Diamonds!” said Mrs. Blair ecstatically.
“Diamonds!” breathed Miss Beddingfeld.
They both addressed Colonel Race.
“I suppose you’ve been to Kimberley?”
I had been to Kimberley too, but I didn’t manage to say so in time. Race was being inundated with questions. What were mines like? Was it true that the natives were kept shut up in compounds? And so on.
Race answered their questions and showed a good knowledge of his subject. He described the methods of housing the natives, the searches instituted, and the various precautions that De Beers took.
“Then it’s practically impossible to steal any diamonds?” asked Mrs. Blair with as keen an air of disappointment as though she had been journeying there for the express purpose.
“Nothing’s impossible, Mrs. Blair. Thefts do occur—like the case I told you of where the Kafir hid the stone in his wound.”
“Yes, but on a large scale?”
“Once, in recent years. Just before the War in fact. You must remember the case, Pedler. You were in South Africa at the time?”
I nodded.
“Tell us,” cried Miss Beddingfeld. “Oh, do tell us!”
Race smiled.
“Very well, you shall have the story. I suppose most of you have heard of Sir Laurence Eardsley, the great South African mining magnate? His mines were gold mines, but he comes into the story through his son. You may remember that just before the War rumours were afield of a new potential Kimberley hidden somewhere in the rocky floor of the British Guiana jungles. Two young explorers, so it was reported, had returned from that part of South America bringing with them a remarkable collection of rough diamonds, some of them of considerable size. Diamonds of small size had been found before in the neighbourhood of the Essequibo and Mazaruni rivers, but these two young men, John Eardsley and his friend Lucas, claimed to have discovered beds of great carbon deposits at the common head of two streams. The diamonds were of every colour, pink, blue, yellow, green, black, and the purest white. Eardsley and Lucas came to Kimberley where they were to submit their gems to inspection. At the same time a sensational robbery was found to have taken place at De Beers. When sending diamonds to England they are made up into a packet. This remains in the big safe, of which the two keys are held by two different men whilst a third man knows the combination. They are handed to the Bank, and the Bank send them to England. Each package is worth, roughly, about £100,000.
“On this occasion, the Bank were struck by something a little unusual about the sealing of the packet. It was opened, and found to contain knobs of sugar!
“Exactly how suspicion came to fasten on John Eardsley I do not know. It was remembered that he had been very wild at Cambridge and that his father had paid his debts more than once. Anyhow, it soon got about that this story of South American diamond fields was all a fantasy. John Eardsley was arrested. In his possession was found a portion of the De Beer diamonds.
“But the case never came to court. Sir Laurence Eardsley paid over a sum equal to the missing diamonds and De Beers did not prosecute. Exactly how the robbery was committed has never been known. But the knowledge that his son was a thief broke the old man’s heart. He had a stroke shortly afterwards. As for John, his Fate was in a way merciful. He enlisted, went to the War, fought there bravely, and was killed, thus wiping out the stain on his name. Sir Laurence himself had a third stroke and died about a month ago. He died intestate and his vast fortune passed to his next of kin, a man whom he hardly knew.”
The Colonel paused. A babel of ejaculations and questions broke out. Something seemed to attract Miss Beddingfeld’s attention, and she turned in her chair. At the little gasp she gave, I, too, turned.
My new secretary, Rayburn, was standing in the doorway. Under his tan, his face had the pallor of one who has seen a ghost. Evidently Race’s story had moved him profoundly.
Suddenly conscious of our scrutiny, he turned abruptly and disappeared.
“Do you know who that is?” asked Anne Beddingfeld abruptly.
“That’s my other secretary,” I explained. “Mr. Rayburn. He’s been seedy up to now.”
She toyed with the bread by her plate.
“Has he been your secretary long?”
“Not very long,” I said cautiously.
But caution is useless with a woman, the more you hold back, the more she presses forward. Anne Beddingfeld made no bones about it.
“How long?” she asked bluntly.
“Well—er—I engaged him just before I sailed. Old friend of mine recommended him.”
She said nothing more, but relapsed into a thoughtful silence. I turned to Race with the feeling that it was my turn to display an interest in his story.
“Who is Sir Laurence’s next of kin, Race? Do you know?”
“I should say so,” he replied, with a smile. “I am!”
CHAPTER XIVIt was on the night of the Fancy Dress dance that I decided that the time had come for me to confide in some one. So far I had played a lone hand and rather enjoyed it. Now suddenly everything was changed. I distrusted my own judgment and for the first time a feeling of loneliness and desolation crept over me.
I sat on the edge of my bunk, still in my gipsy dress, and considered the situation. I thought first of Colonel Race. He had seemed to like me. He would be kind, I was sure. And he was no fool. Yet, as I thought it over, I wavered. He was a man of commanding personality. He would take the whole matter out of my hands. And it was my mystery! There were other reasons, too, which I would hardly acknowledge to myself, but which made it inadvisable to confide in Colonel Race.
Then I thought of Mrs. Blair. She, too, had been kind to me. I did not delude myself into the belief that that really meant anything. It was probably a mere whim of the moment. All the same, I had it in my power to interest her. She was a woman who had experienced most of the ordinary sensations of life. I proposed to supply her with an extraordinary one! And I liked her; liked her ease of manner, her lack of sentimentality, her freedom from any form of affectation.
My mind was made up. I decided to seek her out then and there. She would hardly be in bed yet.
Then I remembered that I did not know the number of her cabin. My friend, the night stewardess, would probably know. I rang the bell. After some delay it was answered by a man. He gave me the information I wanted. Mrs. Blair’s cabin was No. 71. He apologized for the delay in answering the bell, but explained that he had all the cabins to attend to.
“Where is the stewardess, then?” I asked.
“They all go off duty at ten o’clock.”
“No—I mean the night stewardess.”
“No stewardess on at night, miss.”
“But—but a stewardess came the other night—about one o’clock.”
“You must have been dreaming, miss. There’s no stewardess on duty after ten.”
He withdrew and I was left to digest this morsel of information. Who was the woman who had come to my cabin on the night of the 22nd? My face grew graver as I realized the cunning and audacity of my unknown antagonists. Then, pulling myself together, I left my own cabin and sought that of Mrs. Blair. I knocked at the door.
“Who’s that?” called her voice from within.
“It’s me—Anne Beddingfeld.”
“Oh, come in, Gipsy girl.”
I entered. A good deal of scattered clothing lay about, and Mrs. Blair herself was draped in one of the loveliest kimonos I had ever seen. It was all orange and gold and black and made my mouth water to look at it.
“Mrs. Blair,” I said abruptly, “I want to tell you the story of my life—that is, if it isn’t too late, and you won’t be bored.”
“Not a bit. I always hate going to bed,” said Mrs. Blair, her face crinkling into smiles in the delightful way it had. “And I should love to hear the story of your life. You’re a most unusual creature, Gipsy girl. Nobody else would think of bursting in on me at 1 a.m. to tell me the story of their life. Especially after snubbing my natural curiosity for weeks as you have done! I’m not accustomed to being snubbed. It’s been quite a pleasing novelty. Sit down on the sofa and unburden your soul.”
I told her the whole story. It took some time as I was conscientious over all the details. She gave a deep sigh when I had finished, but she did not say at all what I had expected her to say. Instead she looked at me, laughed a little and said:
“Do you know, Anne, you’re a very unusual girl? Haven’t you ever had qualms?”
“Qualms?” I asked, puzzled.
“Yes, qualms, qualms, qualms! Starting off alone with practically no money. What will you do when you find yourself in a strange country with all your money gone?”
“It’s no good bothering about that until it comes. I’ve got plenty of money still. The twenty-five pounds that Mrs. Flemming gave me is practically intact, and then I won the sweep yesterday. That’s another fifteen pounds. Why, I’ve got lots of money. Forty pounds!”
“Lots of money! My God!” murmured Mrs. Blair. “I couldn’t do it, Anne, and I’ve plenty of pluck in my own way. I couldn’t start off gaily with a few pounds in my pocket and no idea as to what I was doing and where I was going.”
“But that’s the fun of it,” I cried, thoroughly roused. “It gives one such a splendid feeling of adventure.”
She looked at me, nodded once or twice, and then smiled.
“Lucky Anne! There aren’t many people in the world who feel as you do.”
“Well,” I said impatiently, “what do you think of it all, Mrs. Blair?”
“I think it’s the most thrilling thing I ever heard! Now, to begin with, you will stop calling me Mrs. Blair. Suzanne will be ever so much better. Is that agreed?”
“I should love it, Suzanne.”
“Good girl. Now let’s get down to business. You say that in Sir Eustace’s secretary—not that long-faced Pagett, the other one—you recognized the man who was stabbed and came into your cabin for shelter?”
I nodded.
“That gives us two links connecting Sir Eustace with the tangle. The woman was murdered in his house, and it’s his secretary who gets stabbed at the mystic hour of one o’clock. I don’t suspect Sir Eustace himself, but it can’t be all coincidence. There’s a connection somewhere even if he himself is unaware of it.”
“Then there’s the queer business of the stewardess,” she continued thoughtfully. “What was she like?”
“I hardly noticed her. I was so excited and strung up—and a stewardess seemed such an anticlimax. But—yes—I did think her face was familiar. Of course it would be if I’d seen her about the ship.”
“Her face seemed familiar to you,” said Suzanne. “Sure she wasn’t a man?”
“She was very tall,” I admitted.
“Hum. Hardly Sir Eustace, I should think, nor Mr. Pagett——Wait!”
She caught up a scrap of paper and began drawing feverishly. She inspected the result with her head poised on one side.
“A very good likeness of the Rev. Edward Chichester. Now for the etceteras.” She passed the paper over to me. “Is that your stewardess?”
“Why, yes,” I cried. “Suzanne, how clever of you!”
She disdained the compliment with a light gesture.
“I’ve always had suspicions of that Chichester creature. Do you remember how he dropped his coffee-cup and turned a sickly green when we were discussing Crippen the other day?”
“And he tried to get Cabin 17!”
“Yes, it all fits in so far. But what does it all mean? What was really meant to happen at one o’clock
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