The Bandbox by Louis Joseph Vance (read novels website .txt) 📕

“This is a man’s writing,” he said quietly, wondering if it could be possible that Alison was jealous.

“Well?” she demanded. “What of it?”

“I don’t know. Miss Searle got me on the telephone a little after one last night; she said she’d found the necklace in the hat and was bringing it to me.”

“How did she know it was mine?”

“Heard you order it sent to me, in London. You’ll remember my telling you she knew.”

“Oh, yes. Go on.”

“She didn’t show up, but telephoned again some time round four o’clock explaining that she had been in a taxicab accident in the Park and lost her way but finally got home—that is, to her hotel, the St. Simon. She said the necklace was safe—didn’t mention the hat—and asked me to call for it at noon today. I said I would, and I’m by way of being late now. Doubtless she can explain how the hat came to you this way.”

“I’ll be interested to hear,” said Alison, “and to know that the necklace is really safe. On the face of it—as it stands—there’s something queer—wrong.... What are you going to do?”

Staff had moved toward the telephone. He paused, explaining that he was about to call up Miss Searle for reassurance. Alison negatived this instantly.

“Why waste time? If she has the thing, the quickest way to get it is to go to her now—at once. If she hasn’t, the quickest way to get after it is via the same route. I’m all ready and if you are we’ll go immediately.”

Staff bowed, displeased with her manner to the point of silence. He had no objection to her being as temperamental as she pleased, but he objected strongly to having it implied by everything except spoken words that he was in some way responsible for the necklace and that Eleanor Searle was quite capable of conspiring to steal it.

As for Alison, her humour was dangerously impregnated with the consciousness that she had played the fool to such an extent that she stood in a fair way to lose her necklace. Inasmuch as she knew this to be altogether her fault, whatever the outcome, she was in a mood to quarrel with the whole wide world; and she schooled herself to treat with Staff on terms of toleration only by exercise of considerable self-command and because she was exacting a service of him.

So their ride uptown was marked by its atmosphere of distant and dispassionate civility. They spoke infrequently, and then on indifferent topics soon suffered to languish. In due course, however, Staff mastered his resentment and—as evidenced by his wry, secret smile—began to take a philosophic view of the situation, to extract some slight amusement from his insight into Alison’s mental processes. Intuitively sensing this, she grew even more exasperated with him—as well as with everybody aside from her own impeccable self.

At the St. Simon, Staff soberly escorted the woman to the lounge, meaning to leave her there while he enquired for Eleanor at the office; but they had barely set foot in the apartment when their names were shrieked at them in an excitable, shrill, feminine voice, and Mrs. Ilkington bore down upon them in full regalia of sensation.

“My dears!” she cried, regarding them affectionately—“such a surprise! Such a delightful surprise! And so good of you to come to see me so soon! And opportune—I’m dying, positively expiring, for somebody to gossip with. Such a singular thing has happened—”

Alison interrupted bluntly: “Where’s Miss Searle? Mr. Staff is anxious to see her.”

“That’s just it—just what I want to talk about. You’d never guess what that girl has done—and after all the trouble and thought I’ve taken in her behalf, too! I’m disgusted, positively and finally disgusted; never again will I interest myself in such people. I—”

“But where is Miss Searle?” demanded Alison, with a significant look to Staff.

“Gone!” announced Mrs. Ilkington impressively.

“Gone?” echoed Staff.

Mrs. Ilkington nodded vigorously, compressing her lips to a thin line of disapproval. “I’m positively at my wits’ end to account for her.”

“I fancy there’s an explanation, however,” Alison put in.

“I wish you’d tell me, then.... You see, we dined out, went to the theatre and supper together, last night. The Struyvers asked me, and I made them include her, of course. We got back about one. Of course, my dears, I was fearfully tired and didn’t get up till half an hour ago. Imagine my sensation when I enquired for Miss Searle and was informed that she paid her bill and left at five o’clock this morning, and with a strange man!”

“She left you a note, of course?” Staff suggested.

“Not a line—nothing! I might be the dirt beneath her feet, the way she’s treated me. I’m thoroughly disillusioned—disgusted!”

“Pardon me,” said Staff; “I’ll have a word with the office.”

He hurried away, leaving Mrs. Ilkington still volubly dilating on that indignity that had been put upon her: Alison listening with an air of infinite detachment.

His enquiry was fruitless enough. The day-clerk, he was informed by that personage, had not come on duty until eight o’clock; he knew nothing of the affair beyond what he had been told by the night-clerk—that Miss Searle had called for her bill and paid it at five o’clock; had given instructions to have her luggage removed from her room and delivered on presentation of her written order; and had then left the hotel in company with a gentleman who registered as “I. Arbuthnot” at one o’clock in the morning, paying for his room in advance.

Staff, consumed with curiosity about this gentleman, was so persistent in his enquiry that he finally unearthed the bellboy who had shown that guest to his room and who furnished what seemed to be a tolerably accurate sketch of him.

The man described was—Iff.

Discouraged and apprehensive, Staff returned to the lounge and made his report—one received by Alison with frigid disapproval, by Mrs. Ilkington with every symptom of cordial animation; from which it became immediately apparent that Alison had told the elder woman everything she should not have told her.

“‘I. Arbuthnot,’” Alison translated: “Arbuthnot Ismay.”

“Gracious!” Mrs. Ilkington squealed. “Isn’t that the real name of that odd creature who called himself Iff and pretended to be a Secret Service man?”

Staff nodded a glum assent.

“It’s plain enough,” Alison went on; “this Searle woman was in league with him—”

“I disagree with you,” said Staff.

“On what grounds?”

“I don’t believe that Miss Searle—”

“On what grounds?”

He shrugged, acknowledging his inability to explain.

“And what will you do?” interrupted Mrs. Ilkington.

“I shall inform the police, of course,” said Alison; “and the sooner the better.”

“If I may venture so far,” Staff said stiffly, “I advise you to do nothing of the sort.”

“And why not, if you please?”

“It’s rather a delicate case,” he said—“if you’ll pause to consider it. You must not forget that you yourself broke the law when you contrived to smuggle the necklace into this country. The minute you make this matter public, you lay yourself open to arrest and prosecution for swindling the Government.”

“Swindling!” Alison repeated with a flaming face.

Staff bowed, confirming the word. “It is a very serious charge these days,” he said soberly. “I’d advise you to think twice before you make any overt move.”

“But if I deny attempting to smuggle the necklace? If I insist that it was stolen from me aboard the Autocratic—stolen by this Mr. Ismay and this Searle woman—?”

“Miss Searle did not steal your necklace. If she had intended anything of the sort, she wouldn’t have telephoned me about it last night.”

“Nevertheless, she has gone away with it, arm-in-arm with a notorious thief, hasn’t she?”

“We’re not yet positive what she has done. For my part, I am confident she will communicate with us and return the necklace with the least possible delay.”

“Nevertheless, I shall set the police after her!” Alison insisted obstinately.

“Again I advise you—”

“But I shall deny the smuggling, base my charge on—”

“One moment,” Staff interposed firmly. “You forget me. I’m afraid I can adduce considerable evidence to prove that you not only attempted to smuggle, but as a matter of fact did.”

“And you would do that—to me?” snapped the actress.

“I mean that Miss Searle shall have every chance to prove her innocence,” he returned in an even and unyielding voice.

“Why? What’s your interest in her?”

“Simple justice,” he said—and knew his answer to be evasive and unconvincing.

“As a matter of fact,” said Alison, rising in her anger, “you’ve fallen in love with the girl!”

Staff held her gaze in silence.

“You’re in love with her,” insisted the actress—“in love with this common thief and confidence-woman!”

Staff nodded gently. “Perhaps,” said he, “you’re right. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.... But, if you doubt my motive in advising you to go slow, consult somebody else—somebody you feel you can trust: Max, for instance, or your attorney. Meanwhile, I’d ask Mrs. Ilkington to be discreet, if I were you.”

Saluting them ceremoniously, he turned and left the hotel, deeply dejected, profoundly bewildered and ... wondering whether or not Alison in her rage had uncovered a secret unsuspected even by himself, to whom it should have been most intimate.

Slipping quickly into the room through an opening hardly wide enough to admit his spare, small body, the man as quickly shut and locked the door and pocketed the key. This much accomplished, he swung on his heel and, without further movement, fastened his attention anew upon the girl.

Standing so—hands clasped loosely before him, his head thrust forward a trifle above his rounded shoulders, pale eyes peering from their network of wrinkles with a semi-humourous suggestion, thin lips curved in an apologetic grin: his likeness to the Mr. Iff known to Staff was something more than striking. One needed to be intimately and recently acquainted with Iff’s appearance to be able to detect the almost imperceptible points of difference between the two. Had Staff been there he might have questioned the colour of this man’s eyes, which showed a lighter tint than Iff’s, and their expression—here vigilant and predatory in contrast with Iff’s languid, half-derisive look. The line of the cheek from nose to mouth, too, was deeper and more hard than with Iff; and there was a hint of elevation in the nostrils that lent the face a guise of malice and evil—like the shadow of an impersonal sneer.

The look he bent upon Eleanor was almost a sneer: a smile in part contemptuous, in part studious; as though he pondered a problem in human chemistry from the view-point of a seasoned and experienced scientist. He cocked his head a bit to one side and stared insolently beneath half-lowered lids, now and again nodding ever so slightly as if in confirmation of some unspoken conclusion.

Against the cold, inflexible purpose in his manner, the pitiful prayer expressed in the girl’s attitude spent itself without effect. Her hands dropped to her sides; her head drooped wearily, hopelessly; her pose personified despondency profound and irremediable.

When he had timed his silence cunningly, to ensure the most impressive effect, the man moved, shifting from one foot to the other, and spoke.

“Well, Nelly ...?”

His voice, modulated to an amused drawl, was much like Iff’s.

The girl’s lips moved noiselessly for an instant before she managed to articulate.

“So,” she said in a quiet tone of horror—“So it was you all the time!”

“What was me?” enquired the man inelegantly if with spirit.

“I mean,” she said, “you were after the necklace, after all.”

“To be sure,” he said pertly. “What did you think?”

“I hoped it wasn’t so,” she said brokenly. “When you escaped yesterday morning, and when tonight I found