The Secret Agent (Williams)

by Valentine Williams

 

The Secret Agent

by Valentine Williams

Author of “The Man with the Clubfoot,” etc.

IN an exceedingly bad temper, Henry Pettigrew Tibbutts descended the oaken staircase at Scropesby Grange. In his outward man only the enduring redness of his ears recalled the scene of violence which he had just enacted.

Henry had reached that stage in a man's life where the hot tide of youth is perilously near the ebb, where, though forty is still a threat, thirty is no more than a pleasing recollection. Already celibacy had placed its stamp upon inveterate bachelor habits. A comfortable private income, a satisfactorily unresponsible post in a government office, and most eligible bachelor quarters insured to Henry an existence which, he was now telling himself ruefully, should be proof against disturbance by the incompetence of a servant.

As Henry came downstairs to dinner, he asked himself wrathfully how a man recommended, as Merton had been, as an excellent valet, sober and honest, could bring himself to pack a bag without such indispensable articles as handkerchiefs and bedroom slippers. The absence of his own specially woven mouchoirs—which he imported from Paris—was brought home to him by the unfamiliar roughness of the handkerchief lent by his host. Life seemed very bitter to Henry Tibbutts as he descended to the lounge hall of the Ankervilles' big country house, prepared to take a most unfavorable view of the approaching dinner party and of his fellow guests. Most of the party were assembled round the open log fire when Henry made his entry. They were gathered about a pretty blond woman who was wearing a very elaborate jade green evening gown.

“Tibbutts,” cried Colonel Ankerville, on catching sight of Henry's tall form, “you're something of a judge in these matters. Just tell me what you think of these!”

And he held up something that gleamed and flashed in the firelight. It was a magnificent collar of emeralds. Henry took the necklace from his host and examined it curiously. The stones were superb, flawless in color and water, with all manner of strange lights fitfully flaming in their sea-green depths.

“I've never seen emeralds like these,” Henry exclaimed with something like veneration in his voice. “By the setting they look like oriental gems.”

Colonel Ankerville, a big man with red, good-humored face, handed the collar back to the pretty blonde.

“They are the Mohamet Ali emeralds, my boy!” he said. “Mrs, Studd-Bennett here has just been telling us about them. They were part of the collection of the mad Sultan of Egypt, and Mrs. Studd-Bennett's father bought them at the Mohamet Ali auction in Vienna. By the way, let me introduce you!”

And the pretty blonde allowed the colonel to clasp the collar round her shapely white throat and gave Harry a small warm hand. She was a fluffy little thing with large appealing eyes. Her chic was flawless.

“I'd like you to know my husband,” she said, and a clean-shaven, heavily built man with a square, rather grim jaw and a shock of iron-gray hair shuffled forward.

“Your emeralds are wonderful,” said Henry to the lady. “They must be extremely valuable. I never saw a finer collar!”

“Well, now, they are,” replied Mrs. Studd-Bennett, “and I can tell you I have all the trouble in the world to get John here ever to let me wear them. Why he didn't want me to bring them down to Scropesby even. Did you, John?”

“They're a bit of a worry, you know!” remarked her husband placidly. “My wife has not mentioned the fact, Mr. Tibbutts, that when we travel it is my job to carry her jewel case. She won't trust anybody else with it. And I don't like the responsibility. I've a bad habit of losing things!”

Susan Lady Stormbridge, a formidable dowager with a scraggy neck, intervened. Mrs. Ankerville wanted her to see the Mohamet Ali emeralds. Sir George Boldering, the judge, followed. Pretty Mrs. Studd-Bennett's gems were obviously destined to be the central topic of conversation over the week-end. Henry drifted away rather despondently. The Studd-Bennetts struck him as being quite ordinary people, and he had a horror of being bored.

The colonel brought him a cocktail and began to talk about the emeralds at once,

“It appears they are a famous set,” he said. “And they look devilish well on that little lady's neck, don't you think? Nice people, what?”

“Oh, quite,” answered Henry, stifling an inclination to yawn. Instead he sipped his cocktail.

“Who are they?”

“Anita”—this was Mrs. Ankerville—“and I met them at Monte Carlo. They are Australians, and very wealthy. He has large metal or mining interests in Australia—I forget just which it is. This is the first time he has been over since the war. Hang it!” The colonel snapped his watch irritably. “Dinner's late. What the devil are we waiting for?”

His wife, a stout lady with a pleasant face, whose ample corsage was a blaze of diamonds, checked him.

“We're waiting for Miss Branksome,” she said.

Henry, who was mournfully contemplating his empty glass, looked up sharply.

“Miss Branksome?” he queried. “Not an American, by any chance, is she?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Ankerville, “and a most charming girl. And, of course, she knows you, Mr. Tibbutts. You're sitting next to her at dinner.”

At these words the dark mist through which Henry Tibbutts had been contemplating a desolate and unkind world melted away. Mrs. Ankerville's announcement came upon him like the breaking of the sun through the clouds. Warm, generous thoughts surged through his mind; he would give Merton a pound in the morning; perhaps he had been a bit severe—and certainly nobody cleaned brown shoes as Merton did!

Henry suddenly felt hungry. The prospect of dinner invigorated him. Pleasurably he recalled memories of Ankerville's Pichon Longueville. Even his fellow guests assumed a more agreeable aspect in his sight.

Then Jennie Branksome appeared at the head of the oaken staircase, and Henry Tibbutts ceased, for the moment, to be a greedy and spoiled bachelor and became a very lovesick man. As he saw her, a slim girl in a simple but beautifully fitted black evening frock, his mind flashed back to the deck of the Aquitania, where, for six magic days, his love romance had been laid. Then for the first time in his life, he recollected, he had felt displeased with himself and with his perpetual attitude of self-absorption. As never before, he had wished to put the clock back and win admiration, love, instead of just raillery from this girl with the proud eyes and the clustering chestnut hair.

But Jennie Branksome had just “jollied him along.” She liked him; he knew that; indeed, he often wondered why she liked him. For in his way, Henry Tibbutts was very humble. With his keen, gray eyes and aquiline, well-bred nose, his tall, muscular figure, and excellent taste in clothes, he was a very attractive figure of a man.

Yet, where his mind was concerned, Jennie had put him out of all conceit in himself. She rallied him on his uselessness in the general scheme of things; she made fun of his self-importance, his fussiness about his clothes and his food. Above all things she held him off at arm's length.

She let him make love to her to a very limited extent, but in a pleasant, sisterly fashion which drove the unfortunate Henry to despair. And they had parted on arriving in London; for Henry had been obliged to go back to his work, while Jennie was bound for the south of France. In response to long letters from him, she had sent a card or two. But at length even these brief messages ceased. Now, for the first time for six months he saw her again.

At dinner the bisque and the Soles Perigord, in respect of which dishes alone Ankerville's chef was worth his general's pay, left no impression on Henry. He drank his old amontillado and even the celebrated Pichon Longueville as he might have drunk tea. Their generous fragrance lingered not on his palate. In vain Susan Lady Stormbridge, who sat on his left hand, plied him with those carefully selected openings in table talk which had seen service with her for half a century. But Henry devoted himself exclusively to Jennie and glared furiously when, from time to time, the judge on her other side interposed with a remark.

“How did you know I was here?” Henry asked her.

“My intelligence system is very complete,” Jennie Branksome replied with serious air but laughing eyes. “I am sorry to learn that you are so afflicted by Mr. Merton's shortcomings. He is, I understand, a thoroughly stupid fellow who knows no more about packing a man's bag than a Solomon Islander. You have, I fancy, met some thickheads in your time, but——”

“For Heaven's sake, stop!” Henry expostulated. Then gravely he said:

“You heard me ticking off my man, Miss Branksome?”

“I am not deaf, Mr. Tibbutts,” the girl answered demurely. “I have the next room to yours, you see! And I half expected you,” she added, “to come and borrow one of my handkerchiefs. Only, they're just ordinary ones.”

Henry made a gesture of entreaty. But Jennie looked at him severely.

“You don't get any better, do you?” she said.

And yet her eyes were kindly, and when after a long session over the nuts and port, Henry broke away and found her alone in one of the morning rooms, he plucked up courage to ease his mind.

“Jennie,” he said, reverting, now they were alone, to the custom of Christian names they had instituted during their brief friendship, “the last night we were on the Aquitania together I was going to ask you a question.”

“Not a leading question, I hope, Henry?”

“Don't play the fool with me, Jennie,” he pleaded earnestly. “I was going to ask you—whether—if—that is to say what would you think should——”

Jennie Branksome put her hand on his arm.

“Stop right there, Henry!” she said. “And don't ask me now!”

But the blood of the Tibbutts was up.

“I should have asked you that night to marry me,” Henry said firmly, “but I'm conventional, Jennie, and—well, an acquaintanceship of only six days seemed too short for a proposal of that kind. I felt I wanted to go away by myself somewhere and think it all out. But directly you were gone I regretted not having asked you. And now——”

Jennie smiled at him very indulgently. She had a very pretty mouth, and the smile seemed to hover lovingly over it.

“Henry,” she observed, “do you know that you're a very honest man? There are not many men who would be as honest with themselves—and with me—as you've been!”

And Henry shrugged his shoulders, but he looked at her expectantly.

She proceeded. “But you mustn't ask me to marry you!”

“Why not? Don't you like me?”

“Very much,” the girl said thoughtfully, looking away. “Very much indeed, Henry.”

“Do you love me?”

“Sometimes!”

“Then why not marry me?”

Very positively the girl shook her head.

Henry Tibbutts braced himself up.

“Jennie,” he said very solemnly, “I ought to tell you that I am very comfortably off. Some day, when Uncle Septimus dies—he's eighty-one and suffers from asthma—I shall have a great deal of money.”

She laughed.

“You ridiculous creature,” she said. “I don't care about your old money. But I do care about my freedom. And you'd be rather difficult, Henry. What would you do supposing I should forget to pack your bedroom slippers?”

“Ah, but you wouldn't forget!”

He spoke perfectly serious. The girl went into a peal of laughter.

“Why,” she said, “I wouldn't pack for you, Henry, not for you or for any man!”

But then she grew serious again.

“It's very foolish of us to talk about these things,” said she thoughtfully. “You see, Henry, neither of us knows anything about the other, though I fancy that the advantage lies on my side.”

“My dear girl,” responded Henry, “I know all about you I care to.”

The girl laughed merrily.

“A doubtful compliment, I must say!”

The hapless Henry crimsoned.

“I didn't mean it in that way. I wanted to say that I liked you and trusted you the first moment I saw you.”

Again Jennie smiled indulgently on him.

“You put things very nicely, Henry. But all the same you know nothing about me. Why, I might be a milliner!”

Henry Tibbutts laughed in a self-satisfied sort of way.

“I hardly think so,” he said. “I know that your late father was a wealthy American.”

“And that he had left me all his money?”

It was rather cruelly said, and Jennie felt sorry when she saw how the man winced.

“As a matter of fact,” he replied quietly, “I heard that from the Ankervilles. But I am well enough off for that consideration to make no difference, Jennie.”

“I know,” she interposed hastily. “I was only teasing. Why do you always take me seriously?”

“Probably because I'm so fond of you!”

“I wonder!” answered the girl, speaking almost to herself. “I'm a great idealist, Henry. I'd expect a terrible lot from the man who loves me. And you're frightfully conventional, aren't you?”

“Yes, I've had a pretty strict upbringing, if that's what you mean,” he answered rather pompously.

“Conventionality and love don't go well in harness,” commented Jennie mischievously. “Supposing I wanted you to marry me in an aëroplane or something freakish like that?”

“If you'd only marry me, Jennie, you could be married any old way you wanted.”

“No, I could not!” affirmed the girl. “And you know it, Henry Tibbutts. Why, my dear man, you'd feel a monster of immorality if we were married any other way than with six bridesmaids, 'The Voice That Breath'd,' and a reception at the most fashionable hotel. Now, wouldn't you?”

Henry laughed.

“I'm not very original, I expect,” he said. “But I love you, Jennie, dear!”

A note of sincerity in his voice sobered the girl.

“What is love?” she asked. “Would you stick to me through thick and thin whatever happened?”

“Try me!” he said.

“Don't speak rashly!” she warned him. “I might take you at your word!”

Then the door of the morning room was thrust open and the judge appeared.

“Now then, Miss Branksome,” he cried. “What about that rubber of bridge? You promised me, you know!”

“I'm ready when you are, Sir George,” replied Jennie.

“Curse the fellow!” said Henry to himself.

But what he said aloud was: “I think I'll go and get a small drink!”

II.

Henry looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past one. Barefooted, and clad in a lavender-colored silken slumber suit, he stood at the door of his bedroom and listened.

More than half an hour earlier the last guest had left the billiard room. The house seemed very still. Henry's mind was still reeling beneath a staggering blow.

The unspeakable Merton had forgotten to put any cigarettes in Henry's bag.

As a matter of fact, any cigarettes were not good enough for Henry. For his own exclusive usage he was accustomed to import an obscure but expensive brand from Cairo, and a box or two of these cigarettes always accompanied him on his country-house visits.

It was his invariable habit to smoke a final cigarette in pajamas before retiring for the night. Having smoked in the course of the evening all the cigarettes in his case, and Merton having betrayed his trust, the disgusted Henry was now faced with the alternative of foregoing his final cigarette or fetching one of his host's. “It will probably poison me,” Henry reflected, and added bitterly to himself, “I'll get rid of Merton after this!”

But he checked himself. His mind suddenly conjured up a picture of Jennie Branksome asleep in the next room. Jennie would not approve of his visiting his wrath upon Merton!

Well, he'd just have to go downstairs and fetch a cigarette. Fortunately he had not to go far. Henry's bedroom was situated on a short end of corridor which ran off a broader and altogether larger corridor known as the long gallery, from one extremity of which the main staircase descended to the lounge hall. Only four of the guests, as Henry knew, had rooms off Henry's corridor: to wit, Jennie Branksome, the Studd-Bennetts, and himself. Mr. Studd-Bennett's dressing room was opposite Henry's, for, only half an hour earlier, Henry had bidden him good night at the door. Mrs. Studd-Bennett's room, alongside her husband's, was opposite Jennie Branksome's.

Henry fished a torch out of his suit case, slipped on a flowered-silk dressing gown, and with a sigh of regret for his soft leather babooshes, donned the more utilitarian slippers provided by his host.

The short corridor was in darkness save for a glimmer of light which came from a lamp burning in the long gallery. Henry was just leaving his room when he heard the creak of a hinge across the corridor.

He saw the door of Mr. Studd-Bennett's dressing room slowly open. For an instant, against the white painted door, a slim figure detached itself from the shadows of the corridor. It was a woman wearing a wrapper. Henry was absolutely panic-stricken. He hastily drew back into the shadows of the doorway of his room. He resolved to let Mrs. Studd-Bennett get back to her room before he sallied forth from his.

But an amazing thing happened. The woman tiptoed softly from the one door to the other. But instead of going in, she stood stock-still, her back to the corridor. Then she bent her head down, pressing her ear against the keyhole of the door. As she leaned forward, the pale beam of light falling from the long gallery struck across her hair. It glinted on chestnut hair clustering thickly round a well-shaped head.

Henry Tibbutts acted quickly. As quietly as possible he stepped out into the corridor. The door of Jennie Branksome's room was closed. He drew back against the wall between the two doors hoping that against the dark wainscoting he would not be observed. From here he presently saw the slim form across the corridor straighten up and creep across to the opposite door. But as she put forth her hand to turn the handle of the door, Henry shot out his hand and clutched her wrist.

The girl was game all through. She did not scream or cry out. She only started violently, like an imprisoned bird, and whispered very softly:

“Let me go!”

“Go into the long gallery!” commanded Henry.

He, too, spoke in a whisper. But there was a firmness in his voice which surprised himself.

Mutely obstinate the girl shook her head and struggled to free herself.

“Go into the long gallery!”

Henry repeated the command and gave the girl a little forward push to emphasize his meaning. On a sudden he found himself shaking with almost uncontrollable rage—disappointment—grief; anyway, some force which summoned up all his masculinity, swamping the indolent cynic in the man.

And at length the girl obeyed. She walked with noiseless feet before him until the long gallery was reached. Before a carved Italian cupboard there hung an oil lamp set in an ancient lantern swinging by chains from the paneled ceiling. Here in the dim yellow light she turned and faced him.

He spoke first.

“You!” he said.

That was all.

She was wearing a black-and-gold Japanese kimono. Her chestnut hair was rolled up in a loose knot lying low on the full white neck. Her bare feet were thrust into little mules.

“What do you want with me? How dare you stop me? Let me go to my room immediately!”

She was very angry, and her voice shook.

“What were you doing in that room?”

The man was calmer now. But his chin had an obstinate thrust. He tried in vain to keep his voice steady, and the blood pounded in his ears.

“Let me go to my room!” cried the girl in sharp entreaty. “Oh, if any one should come!”

“What were you doing in that room?”

“I refuse to answer. Besides, what right have you to ask?”

“But I mean to know,” said he stubbornly.

“I was talking to Mrs. Studd-Bennett——” she began.

“And in her husband's dressing room?”

“Yes!”

“Then why did you listen at her door afterward?”

Anger blazed up in her eyes.

“I won't be cross examined like this, do you hear?” she exclaimed. “Oh, if you are a man, if you have a scrap of chivalry, you will let me go to my room. Don't you realize what this means to me if anybody should come?”

On that he dropped her arm abruptly. It was as though he cast her off.

“So you prefer to leave me to think that——”

“You may think what you please!”

With that she pushed past him and ran softly down the gallery. He did not try to stop her. As she turned the corner into the corridor, she paused and looked back.

Head bowed, the man stood as she had left him, a solitary, rather pitiable figure, motionless in the yellow pool of light shed by the ancient lantern.

III.

The real latent force of tragedy is the unusual. When man, born searching for happiness, finds sorrow and disappointment in its stead, it is the shock of the unexpected which really takes him out of himself. The organized monotony of Henry Tibbutts' existence had been absolutely shattered that day by a series of upsetting occurrences.

Love, in whose existence he had taught himself to disbelieve, had come to him. To his own great surprise he had discovered that for six months past he had idealized one woman. On the heels of this discovery came the shock of finding her as he had. And as he lay awake after he went to bed that night, Henry could hardly believe that he was the same man.

It was as though the world had turned over with him. And all the time he was conscious of a little stab of pain, keen enough to assert itself through the wrapping of self-righteous indignation in which he sought to envelop himself. He told himself that he had been blind, that the girl was worthless. Yet somehow——

The rattle of a window blind awakened him. Merton, neat and freshly shaved, crossed and recrossed a broad beam of sunshine which poured into the room. Henry drowsily watched his man, a vague sense of resentment in his mind.

He sat up in bed abruptly. Of course he was to speak to Merton, to speak to him very seriously about forgetting the cigarettes.

But on this a flood of recollection engulfed him. A man with towsled hair and lavender silk pajamas is no figure of tragedy, I grant you, yet one may grant a shred of pity to the fool who awakes to his sorrow.

Merton was speaking.

“Quite an upset, sir. The colonel, sir, has sent for the police, they was telling me——”

Henry looked blankly at the servant.

“What on earth are you talking about, Merton?”

“I was telling you, sir, that Mrs. Studd-Bennett has missed her emerald necklace. And a fine ole to-do there is about it, too, I must say!”

Henry was quite awake now. From Merton he gathered that about an hour previously, it being then toward nine o'clock, Mrs. Studd-Bennett's maid had come downstairs in a great fuss and informed the butler that her mistress had lost her emerald collar. Mrs. Studd-Bennett, it seemed, had taken off the collar and placed it in its morocco case on the dressing table in her bedroom before going to bed. Her husband, who had come up to bed after her, had not noticed anything unusual. When her maid brought up her tea in the morning, Mrs. Studd-Bennett asked the girl to lock up the collar in her jewel case. But, though the morocco case still stood on the dressing table, the necklace had vanished. And a prolonged search of the bedroom had failed to produce it. The Studd-Bennetts had slept with their bedroom window open, “and they're saying below, sir,” added Merton, as he folded up Henry's dress coat, “they're saying as how some one must have climbed in the window and pinched the jools in the night!”

“In the night!”

Henry's tired brain snatched at the phrase. Link by link the chain of the night's events came back to him with perfect clearness; the stealthy opening of Studd-Bennett's dressing-room door, the girlish figure creeping along the corridor to listen at the wife's door.

This was no case of human frailty. This was felony. And Henry sprang out of bed.

An air of deep embarrassment rested over the breakfast table. Muttering a furtive “Good morning,” the guests drifted in, and each one after helping himself, after the English manner, to a plateful of porridge—or whatever it might be—from the sideboard, bore it to his place to be consumed in gloomy silence. As one by one people turned up, the silence seemed to deepen, the gloom to wax blacker. Nobody wished to talk about the necklace, and there was no sign of the Studd-Bennetts.

Nobody took breakfast in bed that morning. Even Susan Lady Stormbridge, whose beaklike profile was more sternly judicial even than the judge's, appeared. With her came Jennie Branksome in a plain gray, knitted silk dress.

She was very trim, but looked a little pale. She met Henry's severe eye unflinchingly. Rather to his amazement, she even bade him “Good morning” and asked him to pass her the cream. Henry did not return her greeting. But he passed the cream, looking as stern about it as possible.

Presently Colonel Ankerville and his wife entered. On their heels followed the Studd-Bennetts, the husband palpably ill at ease, the wife, lachrymose and shrill.

“I do hope, colonel,” she was saying as they came in, “I do hope you won't make a fuss. I'm so terribly mortified, you can't think, that this should have happened. But if we wait a little it must turn up.”

The colonel, very erect, with a set face told them all that he had sent for the police. He feared the police would have to visit the rooms and perhaps search the luggage of his guests.

“Until the police arrive,” he said, “we can only guess at how this daring robbery was carried out. Our friends and I have satisfied ourselves by a protracted search of their bedroom that the collar has not been mislaid. I am prepared to answer for every one of my servants who, I should like to add, have asked that their boxes might be examined. In any case it is difficult to see how any servant could have had access to Mrs, Studd-Bennett's room after she had gone to bed.”

“It was done from the outside, colonel,” said Mr. Studd-Bennett, with a wise wag of the head. “That water pipe below the window is mighty handy for scrambling up, though we weren't able to find any scratches on it. Some swell marksman just followed us down here. I always told Minnie she'd lose those stones carting them around the way she does.”

“Jim!” Mrs. Studd-Bennett protested shrilly. But Henry Tibbutts did not wait to hear more. Jennie Branksome was making a quiet escape from the room. Henry followed her without hesitation and caught up with her in the hall.

“Well,” he said harshly, but lowering his voice, “what are you going to do about it?”

The girl raised her eyes from the ground.

“I don't know what you mean,” she began.

“Don't fry that stuff on me,” he interrupted impatiently. Jealousy, disappointment, wounded pride were playing havoc with his careful manners. Voices sounded from the direction of the breakfast room.

“We can't talk here,” he said. “Come out on the terrace!”

Then he led the way through the big hall door and across the drive to the red-flagged terrace overlooking the gardens. There, leaning against the coping, he spoke to her again. His hands were trembling, and he had to fight hard with himself to control his voice.

“No one knows about—about last night but we two. You've still got time to put those emeralds back before the police come. If you like to give them to me, I'll find some means of restoring them.”

He eyed her narrowly. The girl stared back at him, a puzzled look in her clear, gray eyes. A flush spread slowly over her face.

“Do you mean to say you think I took Mrs. Studd-Bennett's necklace?” she demanded.

Henry stopped her with a gesture.

“We've no time to lose,” he said, “so don't let us waste any!”

She bit her lip and turned away. The movement softened the man.

“Jennie,” he pleaded, bending toward her, “you must have been mad to do such a thing. Give the collar back and tell me why you did it. You know I only want to help!”

She swung quickly round and faced him.

“It's you who must be mad to think me capable of doing such a thing!” she cried.

He expected to find her agitated. Rather to his surprise she was not.

“Listen, Henry,” she said wheedlingly. “Last night you said you would trust me. Well, here's your opportunity. Trust me now! I didn't take those emeralds, and that's all I have to say!”

This human appeal profoundly disturbed the conventional soul of Henry Tibbutts. He promptly pulled up the drawbridge, let down the portcullis, barred the door, and retired into the innermost fastnesses of his castle of convention.

“My dear young lady,” he said coldly, “last night I believed something very unpleasant about you. I had to go by appearances. This morning I judge you to have committed a theft. Again I go by the evidence alone. Do you suggest that I am wrong in both cases?”

“Absolutely!” retorted Jennie with admirable frankness.

“Then allow me to point out that while the first case is a matter between you and your conscience, in the second, personal issues are at stake. By your senseless denials you oblige me to choose for myself between these alternatives. What I want to know from you is this; do you wish me to inform Colonel Ankerville of the name of the person who took the emeralds?”

Jennie Branksome looked at him for a moment before she answered. With all his willingness to sit in judgment upon her, he could not help admitting to himself that she did not give an impression of guilt. She seemed, rather to be put out.

“You make it impossible for me to answer such a charge,” she said.

“Why?” he retorted, bristling up again.

“Because,” she said in a low voice, “my answer must be the admission that I was in Studd-Bennett's dressing room in the middle of the night. That is why I have asked you to trust me; that is why I have asked you to take my word that I did not take the emeralds and to press me no further as to my reasons for being in Studd-Bennett's room. In a little while, I promise you, you shall know the whole truth!”

Henry Tibbutts shook his head firmly. He was a fanatic about convention. Like all fanatics he had an uncommonly large share of obstinacy.

“What you ask is impossible,” he replied briskly. “You can't expect me to stand by and see my host's confidence abused, his guests robbed, and maybe an innocent person arrested. About the Studd-Bennetts I know nothing; but Ankerville and his wife are friends of mine.”

The girl smiled disdainfully.

“You men stick together, don't you?” she observed. “And so your friends come before me?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to deny it; for the narrow bachelor heart of the man beat faster to the appeal of the eager eyes which looked into his. The girl's lips were slightly parted as she leaned forward expecting his reply, and the morning freshness had left a touch of color to her cheeks. But inexorably there forced itself into the forefront of Henry Tibbutts' memory that slim figure creeping through the night.

He looked away from her and made reply:

“Since last night—yes!”

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

“What are you going to do?” she demanded.

“I await your answer to that question!”

“My answer is: nothing!”

Henry bowed stiffly.

“Then I must go to Colonel Ankerville and tell him what I know. You leave me no alternative. It is my duty, and I cannot act otherwise. I will not go behind your back, however. You shall come with me to the colonel.”

Jennie shook her head slightly.

“Listen here, Henry,” she said quietly. “You're going to make a big mistake. I don't care a rap about your making a mistake about me. But you're making a mistake about yourself. If you do this thing you'll never forgive yourself. For, even while you are believing these wicked things of me, you are caring for me, Henry! Come, be a sport, man! Just trust me! Give me twenty-four hours—until this time to-morrow, and then you can do what you like. Is it agreed?”

She wheedled very prettily, like a child trying to persuade her nurse, a slim, pretty child with the fire of the morning sun kindled amid her dark auburn hair.

But Henry stood firm. The castle of convention was siege proof, impregnable.

“What you ask me to do is impossible,” he said curtly. “In twenty-four hours I fear the emeralds would be gone beyond hope of recovery. Why won't you be reasonable and trust me?”

The girl shook her head. She looked very vexed,

“If you weren't such a fool, Henry,” said she, “I might!”

That goad settled it.

“We will go to the colonel,” said Henry with great dignity, and he led the way into the house. Demure but intent, the girl walked at his side. Henry could see her stealing glances at him out of the corner of her eye.

It was with the air of a man resolved upon doing his duty that Henry walked into the house. Colonel Ankerville was in the hall talking with two men in dark overcoats who carried their hats in their hands.

“Colonel,” began Henry in an agitated voice, “I must speak to you at once, privately.”

“If it's about the emeralds,” said the colonel wearily, “you can fire away right here. These gentlemen are from the police.”

Jennie Branksome took a step forward as though to speak, but Henry Tibbutts forestalled her,

“I think you ought to know,” he began, “that at one o'clock this morning I saw Miss Branksome here——”

But voices sounded on the staircase. Mrs. Studd-Bennett fussed into the room with a great jingling of bracelets. Behind her came her husband. She exclaimed shrilly:

“Why, colonel, I don't think you need have been in such a hurry to fetch in the police——”

She broke off short on catching sight of one of the detectives who had stepped forward, with hand outstretched, to greet her.

“Why, 'Crimson Lizzie,” he exclaimed with a broad smile and a marked Australian accent “if this isn't a bonzer surprise! And I'm blowed if you haven't got 'Light-finger Joe' along with you still. Come along, Joe, you needn't be so bashful hanging about in the background like that!”

On the instant Mrs. Studd-Bennett's rather affected society manner had evaporated.

“'Strewth!”” she ejaculated great feeling. “It's Donovan!”

“The same old Donovan from Collins Street, Liz,” retorted the detective, “with the same old warrant which the pair of ye dodged so cleverly at Sydney last year. I only landed in this country last night, and the first thing I hears is that a couple of fly guys corresponding to your description are down here fixing to pull something. We have to thank this young lady”—he turned to Jennie—“for the tip, I believe!”

Colonel Ankerville looked at Jennie; Henry Tibbutts looked at Jennie. And so, you may be sure, did the Studd-Bennetts.

“It's as I thought, inspector,” said that young lady in a brisk, businesslike fashion, addressing the detective who had not yet spoken. “Mr. Studd-Bennett removed the emeralds himself from his wife's room last night. You'll find them in his dressing case; one of the inner straps is hollow. I hid in his dressing room last night and saw him put them there!”

“But, but, look here,” Colonel Ankerville broke in, “what does all this mean?”

“Tell the colonel, inspector,” said Jennie.

“It's very simple, sir,” said the inspector. “This pair of beauties, after lifting these emeralds in a big burglary at a gem setter's on the Queensland side, had 'em strung into a necklace and tried to sell 'em. This they weren't able to do; perhaps awkward questions were asked; so they insured 'em for twenty-five thousand pounds. That's about the way it was, ain't it, Light-finger Joe?

“Aw,” retorted Mr. Studd-Bennett savagely, “cut the cackle, cop, and let's get out o' this; I can't get me breath properly among all these swells!”

“But, one moment, inspector,” put in the colonel, turning from the inspector to Jennie, “what on earth has Miss Branksome to do with all this?”

“You'd better ask her,” replied the inspector dryly, and added, “her, or the Paragon Insurance Company!”

“The Paragon Insurance Company?” repeated the colonel quite bewildered.

“Yes,” said Jennie. “I must apologize, Colonel Ankerville, for playing a trick on you and accepting your hospitality under the guise of a wealthy American. But I thought, as you were a director of the company, you would not mind so much.”

“But, bless my soul,” gasped out the colonel, “are you one of our agents, or what?”

“I'm an agent,” said the girl, “a secret agent to detect frauds on the company—frauds like this. The Paragon Insurance Company suspected Mr. and Mrs. Studd-Bennett and sent me here to prevent them from getting away with just such a game as this.”

“For the love o' Mike,” ejaculated Mrs. Studd-Bennett in accents of profound disgust. “We come to enjoy the society of the high-born county folk, and we have to hobnob with a common nark, A fine ole country gentleman you are, colonel, I don't think!”

“You quit chewing the rag, Crimson,” ordered Donovan. “It's time you and your old man were coming along. And jest you remember that anything either of you says is liable to be used in evidence.”

“Aw, stow it!” remarked Mrs. Studd-Bennett. “We know that bit by heart. “Don't we, Joe?”

Henry Tibbutts, you may have remarked, took no part in the foregoing edifying conversation. For Henry had been reduced to a state of temporary speechlessness. It was as though some felon hand had undermined his castle of convention, proudly impregnable as he had imagined it to be, and blown it sky high. He had fallen in love with a lady detective! And, on top of it all, he had rendered himself a despicable figure in her eyes. Henry could not bear it indoors. So, as quietly as possible, he slunk away through the open door into the fresh air.

It was on the terrace again that Jennie came upon him, a disconsolate figure staring gloomily across the sunlit hills.

“Henry,” she said, “I owe you an apology.”

And she held out her hand.

But Henry drew back.

“No,” he said, “I'm not fit to take it. I behaved like a cad toward you. When you wanted my help I failed you. If only you had told me the truth!”

“True love knows the truth by instinct, I think,” the girl remarked musingly. “I don't think it has to be told. The secret was not mine to tell anyway. If those two had had the least idea that I was watching them, they would have been away long before this. I couldn't afford to be truthful, Henry! And now,” she said, “my work is done. I must be getting back to town.”

She held out her hand. This time the man took it and held it for an instant.

“You'll let me see you again?” he asked,

The girl shook her head.

“My dear, our spheres are wide apart,” she answered. “You'll find the right woman yet, Henry, and she'll be happy with you, for you are a very honest person. And when you find her, tell her I did my share toward making her happy!”

On that she left him and, without looking back, returned to the house.