The Chinese Jewel/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR.
THAT night, before he went to sleep, Steele slipped his revolver under his pillow. He believed Reagan for once utterly without knowledge of Steele's whereabouts. But fully and grimly he realized that at last the game was set and that no mercy or scruple would enter into it—and that night his hand was never far from the butt of his gun.
When he awoke it was late morning, The house was very still. He got up, dressed, and, moving silently, went to the two windows in the room in which he had slept, peering out into the sunlight from behind the drawn curtains, He had glimpses of garden and lawns, numerous ornamental trees and shrubs, a fountain, and a couple of squirrels chattering on a broad limb over a rustic swing. Beyond, hemming the place in, was the native forest with vistas through it of an open country. He passed into the smaller room and looked out cautiously there. At the rear of the house were other gardens, prolific of summer vegetables, a family orchard heavy with early summer fruit, chicken and rabbit runs, and, making their homy music upon the ridge of a red barn, countless pigeons. Here was a rich man's farm in the Adirondacks which did not belie its name.
He foraged in his cupboard, and found that even a breakfast, that one difficult meal to extract entirely from cold tins, had been made possible by Alice's forethought. He ate his fruit, his cookies and jam, his bow] of crisp wheat with tinned milk; thereafter rinsed his bowl and spoon in the bath-room, and told himself that he had had many a worse meal. He made his own bed, set his room in order, and sat himself down to wait.
Despite his realization that the day would be long, he found it almost interminable. Alice, who seemed to have thought of everything, had brought him some books last night and an armful of magazines. Many a time he picked up a volume, only to lay it aside after a few minutes; no time to read when his mind was thronged with uncertainties into which entered Reagan and Marvella. When he deemed it must be high noon his watch told him that it was but half after ten.
At times, as the morning wore on, he heard sounds about the house and hearkened to them intently, simply because they broke the brooding monotony. Once in the hall he heard Alice's voice, directing two servants who were evidently, under her supervision, completing arrangements for the expected guests. Now and then he heard a door slam; once the unmistakable sound of a rug being beaten in the back yard. And once a sudden burst of melody from a piano below, and, accompanying the tinkle of the keys, Alice's voice, singing. He started up. She was singing to him! He went quietly to the loose section in his floor, gently lifted it up. He lay down with his face close to the ceiling of the room below, He could see the piano and Alice sitting at it. She lifted her face; for a moment her eyes were turned directly toward him. She smiled, and Billy Steele felt absurdly happy. She left the room, and he lost no time in telling himself that he was a blooming fool.
Noon came; the afternoon dragged on. It seemed to him that the day would never pass. And then at last came the long-expected hoot of a motor horn, and a big, dust-covered limousine rolled along the front driveway. Steele was at his front window; he had made at points of vantage some pin holes through the shades, and through these he watched with considerable interest as the big car disgorged its passengers.
Young Stephen Carrington was the first to spring down; he waved his hat toward the house, called a cheery, “'Lo, Alice!” and extended his hand toward the next to alight. In a thoroughly charming great cloak and the most becoming of turbans, Marvella alighted, her hand not hastening from the grasp of Carrington's, her smile ample reward for any devoted swain. Reagan next and Colonel Harwood; Mrs. Harwood, looking as frosty as though the day had been December at its bleakest instead of a glorious summer day flooded with sunshine. An instant Steele's attention was distracted; Alice was running to meet them. His eyes went back to the car. A man had gotten down from the driver's seat an was taking care of the bags and suit cases. As the others came trooping on Steele again bestowed his gaze upon them. The man, plainly a servant, carrying the bags and following at a respectful distance in the rear, impressed him with a vague sense of familiarity. He was wondering if this were the colonel's man or Carrington's, when the man himself answered the question for him by slightly raising his head so that for the first time Steele made out the features clearly.
It was Tony Waldron, Reagan's first lieutenant, as deadly a man as Reagan himself, almost as clever. Steele's lips formed to a silent whistle.
“Tony Waldron, masquerading as a valet!” he muttered. “Reagan is getting ready to play this strong.”
They all went into the house, Alice and Marvella leading the way, Marvella's arm about Alice's waist, and were lost to Steele's sight. But presently Tony Waldron came out again, going to the car, which had been left on the driveway. He got in, drove around to the garage at the rear, and then, the perfect servant in his chauffeur's livery, his leather cap in his hand, he disappeared up the front steps.
Came a period of silence, then arising to Steele odds and ends of broken talk. Alice was showing Marvella and Mrs. Harwood to their rooms, inviting them to make themselves absolutely at home, farm style, and to come out when they had taken off their wraps and rested. Then Steele heard the three women mounting the stairs. As though Alice realized that he must be listening, and, appreciating to the full how dull the day had been for him, sought to approach as near communication with him as circumstances allowed, she paused a moment in the hall opposite his own door.
“My room is just here,” she was saying, and it was borne in upon him that she was addressing him as well as her two companions. “Yours, Mrs. Nevil, adjoins. If you want anything,” laughingly, “all you'll need to do is hammer on our division wall and demand it and I'll see that you have it. Mrs. Harwood, you are to have your old room at the far end, over the sun porch. Mary,” and he visualized a maid in respectful attendance, “you will do what you can to make my friends comfortable.” They went on, a door closed, and Steele found himself listening to the talk of the men in the room below.
Stephen Carrington, quite at home here it appeared, was playing the part of host to Harwood and Reagan. Steele could catch glimpses of them, now of one, now another. Tony Waldron stood quietly a little to one side, awaiting any instructions which might be coming his way and being apparently forgotten for the moment by Reagan. Carrington rang, and a manservant came whom he addressed familiarly as Beckett. At Carrington's order Beckett brought in a tray with bottle and glasses. The three men drank together—Tony Waldron still stood discreetly aside—and then Carrington took it upon himself to show the others to their rooms. They moved now out of Steele's ken and hearing, Tony Waldron at their heels with the bags; their quarters were somewhere on the ground floor, off to the west end of the house.
Quiet for a while, with the various guests, no doubt, freshening themselves after the long ride or resting. The day was warm and still. After a little there was again the crunching of gravel on the driveway, and uncle Abner drove around the house in the Blake car, going to the garage. Steele heard him presently on the back porch, exchanging civilities with the cook.
Steele brought a quilt and a couple of cushions and placed them on the floor near the trap.
“Miss Blake was right, and it isn't a pretty job, this of eavesdropping,” he admitted. “But since it's all in the game a man might as well be comfortable at it.”
Later during the afternoon he saw the various guests at one time or another. Reagan and the colonel came out, smoking cigars, and went to the veranda; Marvella entered the living room, discovered a cozy corner and a box of candy, and made herself at home with both. Stephen loitered in, brightened at sight of Marvella, and drew a chair up close to her. Alice came and went, bright and casual. And Mrs. Harwood, severe in a severe gown, sat fanning herself and staring into nothingness, with seemingly small relish in her visionings.
While they were at dinner Steele munched his own sandwich and waited for a return to the living room. He heard a light step on the stairs and in the hallway outside his room. Then a faint rustle of paper, and he saw a note slipped under his door, The step had hardly paused an instant; Alice, for he knew it was she, hurried on. Steele took up the note. It read:
You must have had simply a horrible day. I can't think of anything worse than just being cooped up. I shall excuse myself early to-night and make a brief call on you.
Alice.
Darkness came on. Lights were switched on below, and, better than during the day, he could see what went forward below. Alice went to the piano and played and sang; Marvella followed suit. Reagan appeared vastly serene and content, but Steele noted that his eyes were as much for Marvella as for Stephen Carrington. And that Colonel Harwood, when no one in the room looked his way, had an uneasy habit of staring furtively at Stephen and impatiently away toward Reagan.
“The old bird isn't used to Reagan's methods and his nerve isn't of the best,” Steele judged. “He's anxious to have the job over and done with.”
At a little after nine o'clock Mrs. Harwood, complaining of fatigue, took a book and went off upstairs to bed; Steele heard her pass along his hall and heard her sigh as she passed his door. The colonel fidgeted a good deal, and soon he, too, as though anxious to escape, left the room, saying an all-embracing “'good night.”
Alice, for the first time that Steele had seen, chatted for a while with Stephen. He appeared absent-minded, and his glance wandered toward Marvella, where she was laughing gayly with Reagan. Reagan for his part appeared content enough; the calm force of the man was in full evidence, summoned perhaps for one of the supreme crises of his life. He was a man who concealed habitually much that went on in his mind; to-night he concealed nothing of what lay in his heart. His look for Marvella Nevil was one of absolute adoration.
Alice soon found a pretext to draw Reagan and Marvella into the conversation, and in another few minutes she had made it possible for Stephen to move to Marvella's side. Steele heard only bits of their talk, but he saw Reagan, at Alice's side, moved with his hostess out of sight, going to the veranda. Marvella's eyes followed them swiftly, somewhat uncertain, a half frown of perplexity in them. Then she turned to Stephen, all girlish gayety again, even for an instant laying her hand lightly on his arm.
“Your promise!” Stephen said quickly. “Remember your promise to me, Marvella! When am I to see it?”
It? The Pride of Burma? Had Marvella brought it with her? And was it, after all, in the jewel rather than the lady that Stephen Carrington's interest centered?
Marvella looked about her before she answered.
“Do you know, my friend,” she said queerly, “I have the very unpleasant sensation strong upon me that I was foolish beyond words to bring it. But I did what you asked and—it was quite the safe thing to do, you think? It is worth a disgracefully large amount of money. People have been tempted to theft for less—and to worse than theft”
Who to know better than Marvella!
Carrington grinned, amused at the thought of danger.
“Why, my dear lady,” he assured her, “here we are in the heart of the land of the simple life, very far from cutthroats or pickpockets even. And if you have been foolhardy, how about me? At least I did not hold back from practicing my own preachments.”
“So you actually brought” She ended in a whisper; her eyes were shining excitedly. He nodded carelessly.
“Not a soul in the world but you knows,” he told her, “so where's the risk? A small black lock case, and that in turn under some shirts in a suit case” He laughed. “Tell me, Marvella, whoever heard of a guest at a private home in the mountains having his bags rifled? And who would ever suspect that a man would have such things along with him?”
“The lamb telling his secrets to the lioness!” muttered Steele, somewhat in disgust. He had his doubts concerning the old adage that love blinds; but certainly infatuation does scatter much dust in a man's eyes.
There were steps on the porch, hinting at the return of Alice and Reagan. Again Marvella's hand fluttered to Carrington's arm as she said hastily:
“To-night, then? After they have all gone to bed?”
Alice was saying lightly from the doorway:
“At Blake's Farm one is always invited to do as he pleases—and the very genuine invitation extends even to the hostess! I am off to bed, for I am to be up early. And I imagine the rest of you, given the chance, would emulate the wise Harwoods? You are to make yourselves quite at home; stay up all night if it pleases you or follow my example. Good night, Mrs. Nevil; good night, Mr. Reagan and Stephen.” And Alice left them, and Steele presently heard her humming on the stairs.
Remembering her promised visit, he went to his outer door and quietly unlocked it. With his hand on the knob, he waited; when he heard Alice just outside, her own fingers brushing the panel, he softly opened the door. She slipped in, a moment framed against the light of the hall. Then the door closed after her, and he and she were lost to each other's sight in the utter darkness. Steele's hand went out to guide her; their fingers met, and, on tiptoe, they went to the open trap.
Reagan was standing, looking curiously at the couple whose confidences his entrance had interrupted. Something of their close community of interest was still obvious from their bearing; his eyes noted, and though his own thoughts were now veiled his attitude was vaguely indicative of a vast determination.