The Bandbox

In memory of this he now rose, marched over to the bandbox, innocently reposing in the middle of the floor, and dispassionately lifted it the kick he had been promising it ever since the first day of their acquaintance.

It sailed up prettily, banged the wall with a hollow noise and dropped to the floor with a grievous dent in one side.

There – out of his way – Staff left it. Immeasurably mollified, he proceeded to unpack and put his house in order. By the time this was done to his satisfaction and Shultz had dragged the empty trunks into the hall, to be carried down-stairs and stored in the cellar, it was evening and time to dress. So Staff made himself clean with much water and beautiful with cold steel and resplendent with evening clothes, and tucked the manuscript of A Single Woman into the pocket of a light topcoat and sallied forth to dine with Jules Max and Alison Landis.

It was late, something after midnight, when he returned, driving up to his house in a taxicab and a decidedly disgruntled frame of mind. Alison had been especially trying with regard to the play; and Max, while privately letting the author see that he thought him in the right in refusing to make changes until rehearsals had demonstrated their advisability, and in spite of his voluble appreciation of the play’s merits, had given Alison the support she demanded. The inference was plain: the star was to be humoured even at the cost of a crippled play. Between love for the woman and respect for his work, desire to please her and determination not to misrepresent himself to the public, Staff, torn this way and that, felt that he had at length learned the true meaning of “the horns of dilemma.” But this reflection availed nothing to soothe his temper.

When he got out of the cab a short but sharp argument ensued with the operator; it seemed that “the clock” was out of order and not registering – had struck in conformance to the time-honoured custom of the midnight taximeter union. But the driver’s habitual demand for two and one-half times the proper fare by distance proved in this instance quite fruitless. Staff calmly counted out the right amount, put it in the man’s hand, listened with critical appreciation to the resultant flow of profanity until it verged upon personality, then deliberately dragged the man by the scruff of his neck, choking and cursing, from his seat to the sidewalk.

“Now, listen,” said he in a level tone: “you’ve got either to put up or shut up. I’ve been sort of aching to beat the tar out of one of you highwaymen for some time, and I feel just ripe for it tonight. You either put up your fists or crawl – another yap out of you and I won’t wait for you to do either.”

The man bristled and then, analysing the gleam in Staff’s eyes, crawled: that is to say, he climbed back into his seat and swung the machine to the far side of the street before again resorting to vituperation.

To this Staff paid no more attention. He was opening the front door. The passage had comforted him considerably, but he was presently to regret it. But for that delay he might have been spared a deal of trouble.

As he let himself into the house, a man in evening dress came running down the stairs, brushed past rudely and without apology, and slammed the door behind him. Staff wondered and frowned slightly. Presumably the fellow had been calling on one of the tenants of the upper floors. There had been something familiar in his manner – something reminiscent, but too indefinite for recognition. And certainly he’d been in the devil of a hurry!

In the meantime he had mounted the first flight of stairs and turned through the hall to his study door. To his surprise it wasn’t locked. He seemed distinctly to remember locking it when he had left for dinner. Still, memory does play us odd tricks.

He pushed the door open and entered the room. At the same moment he heard the trilling of the telephone bell. The instrument stood upon his desk between the two front windows. Without pausing to switch on one of the lights in the combination gas- and electrolier in the centre of the room, he groped his way through blinding darkness to the desk and, finding the telephone instrument with the certainty of old acquaintance, lifted the receiver to his ear.

“Hello?” he called.

A thin and business-like voice detailed his number.

“Yes,” he said. “What is it?”

“Just a moment,” came out of the night. “Hold the wire.”

There was a pause in which it occurred to him that a little light would be a grateful thing. He groped for his desk-lamp, found it and scorched his fingers slightly on its metal reflector. He had switched on the light and said “Damn!” mechanically before he reflected that the said metal reflector had no right to be hot unless the light had been burning very recently.

As this thought penetrated his consciousness, the telephone waxed eloquent.

“Hello!” called a voice. “Is that you, Staff?”

“Why!” he exclaimed in surprise – “yes, Alison!”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes,” he said. “What is it?”

“I just wanted to know,” returned the girl at the other end of the wire. “I’m coming to see you.”

“What – now?”

“Of course, silly.”

“But why – this time of night – it doesn’t seem – ”

“Oh, I’ve got something most important to say to you – very important indeed. It won’t keep. I’ll be there in five minutes. Listen for the taxi – will you, like a dear boy? – and come down and open the door for me. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” he returned automatically, and hung up the receiver.

What on earth could she be wanting, that could have turned up so unexpectedly in the half-hour since he had left her and that wouldn’t keep till morning?

Abruptly he became aware that the air in the room was stiflingly close. And he had left the windows open when he went out; he knew that he wasn’t mistaken about that; and now they were closed, the shades drawn tight!

This considered in connection with the open door that had been locked, and the heated desk-lamp that should have been cold, he couldn’t avoid the conclusion that somebody had been in his rooms, an unlawful trespasser, just a few minutes before he came in – possibly the very man who had rushed past him in such violent haste at the front door.

He jumped up and turned on all the lights in the room. A first, hasty glance about showed him nothing as it had not been when he had left six hours or so ago – aside from the front windows, of course. Mechanically, thinking hard and fast, he went to these latter and opened them wide.

The possibility that the intruder might still be in the rooms – in his bedroom, for instance – popped into his head, and he went hurriedly to investigate. But there wasn’t anybody in the back-room or the bath-room.

Perplexed, he examined the rear windows. They were closed and locked, as when he had left. Opening them, he peered out and down the fire-escape; he had always had a notion that anybody foolish enough to want to burgle his rooms would find it easy to effect an entrance via the fire-escape, whose bottom rung was only eight feet or so above the level of the backyard. And now, since the Twenty-ninth Street houses had been torn down, lending access easy via the excavation, such an attempt would be doubly easy.

But he had every evidence that his rooms hadn’t been broken into by any such route; although – of course! – an astute burglar might have thought to cover up his tracks by relocking the windows after he had entered. On the other hand, the really wise marauder would have almost certainly left them open to provide a way of escape in emergency.

Baffled and wondering, Staff returned to his study. An examination of the hall-closet yielded nothing illuminating. Everything was undisturbed, and there wasn’t room enough therein for anybody to hide.

He shut the closet door and reviewed the study more carefully. Not a thing out of place; even that wretched bandbox lay where he had kicked it, with a helpless, abused look, the dented side turned pitifully to the light – much like a street beggar exposing a maimed limb to excite public sympathy.

He struggled to think: what did he possess worth stealing? Nothing of any great value: a modest collection of masculine jewelry – stick-pins and the like; a quantity of clothing; a few fairly good pictures; a few rare books. But the merest cursory examination showed that these were intact, one and all. What cash he had was all upon his person. His desk, where the lamp had been lighted, held nothing valuable to anybody other than himself: manuscripts, account books, some personal papers strictly non-negotiable. And these too proved undisturbed.

Swinging round from the desk, he rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands, and lapsed into the most profound of meditations; through which he arrived at the most amazing discovery of all.

Very gradually his eyes, at first seeing not what they saw, focussed upon an object on the floor. Quite excusably he was reluctant to believe their evidence. Eventually, however, he bent forward and picked up the thing.

It lay in his hand, eloquently absurd – in his study! – a bow of violet-coloured velvet ribbon, cunningly knotted, complete in itself. From its reverse, a few broken threads of silk hung, suggesting that it had been originally sewn upon a gown, or some other article of dress, from which it had been violently torn away.

The thing was so impossible – preposterous! – that he sat as if stunned, eyes a-stare, jaw dropping, wits bemused; until abruptly roused by the sharp barking of a taxicab horn as it swung round the corner of Fourth Avenue and the subsequent grumble of its motor in the street below.

Thrusting the velvet knot into his pocket he ran down and opened the front door just as Alison gained the top of the brownstone steps.

He noticed that her taxicab was waiting.

Still in her shimmering, silken, summery dinner-gown of the earlier evening, a light chiffon wrap draped round her shoulders, she entered the vestibule, paused and stood smiling mischievously into his grave, enquiring eyes.

“Surprised you – eh, Staff?” she laughed.

“Rather,” said he, bending over her hand and wondering at her high spirit of gaiety so sharply in contrast with her determined and domineering humour of a few hours since. “Why?” he asked, shutting the outside door.

“Just wanted to see you alone for a few moments; I’ve something to say to you – something very important and surprising… But not down here.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said contritely. He motioned toward the stairs: “There’s no elevator, but it’s only one flight up …”

“No elevator! Heavens!” she cried in mock horror. “And this is how the other half lives!”

She caught up her skirts and ran up the stairs with footsteps so light that he could hear nothing but the soft, continuous murmuring of her silken gown.

“Genius,” he said, ironic, as he followed her – “Genius frequently needs a lift but is more often to be found in an apartment without one. Permit me” – he flung wide the door to his study – “to introduce you to the garret.”

“So this is where you starve and write!”

Alison paused near the centre of the room, shrugging her wrap from her shoulders and dropping it carelessly on the table. He saw her shoot swift glances round her with bright, prying eyes.

“I’m afraid I’m not enough of a genius to starve,” he said; “but anyway, here’s where I write.”

“How interesting!” she drawled in a tone that conveyed to him the impression she found it anything but that. And then, a trace sharply: “Please shut the door.”

He lifted his brows in surprise, said “Oh?” and turning back did as bid. At the same time Alison disposed herself negligently in a capacious wing-chair.

“Yes,” she took up his monosyllable; “it’s quite as important as all that. I don’t wish to be overheard. Besides,” she added with nonchalant irrelevance, “I do want a cigarette.”

Silently Staff found his metal cigarette-safe and offered it, put a match to the paper roll held so daintily between his lady’s lips, and then helped himself.

Through a thin veil of smoke she looked up into his serious face and smiled bewitchingly.

“Are you thrilled, my dear?” she asked lightly.

“Thrilled?” he questioned. “How?”

She lifted her white, gleaming shoulders with an air of half-tolerant impatience. “To have a beautiful woman alone with you in your rooms, at this hour o’ night … Don’t you find it romantic, dear boy? Or aren’t you in a romantic mood tonight? Or perhaps I’m not sufficiently beautiful …?” She ended with a charming little petulant moue.

“You know perfectly well you’re one of the most beautiful women in the world,” he began gravely; but she caught him up.

“One of – ?”

“To me, of course – you know the rest: the usual thing,” he said. “But you didn’t come here to discuss your charms – now did you?”

She shook her head slightly, smiling with light-hearted malice. “By no means. But, at the same time, if I’ve a whim to be complimented, I do think you might be gallant enough to humour me.”

But he was in anything but a gallant temper. Mystery hedged his thoughts about and possessed them; he couldn’t rid his imagination of the inexplicable circumstances of the man who had broken into his rooms to steal nothing, and the knot of velvet ribbon that had dropped from nowhere to his study floor. And when he forced his thoughts back to Alison, it was only to feel again the smart of some of the stinging things she had chosen to say to him that night during their discussion of his play, and to be conscious of a certain amount of irritation because of the effrontery of her present pose, assuming as it did that he would eventually bend to her will, endure all manner of insolence and indignity, because he hoped she would marry him.

Something of what was passing through his mind as he stood mute before her, she read in his look – or intuitively divined.

“Heavens!” she cried, “you’re as temperamental as a leading-man. Can’t you accept a word or two of criticism of your precious play without sulking like – like Max does when I make up my mind to take a week’s rest in the middle of the season?”

“Criticise as much as you like,” he said; “and I’ll listen and take it to heart. But I don’t mind telling you I’m not going to twist this play out of all dramatic semblance at your dictation – or Max’s either.”

For a moment their glances crossed like swords; he was conscious from the flicker in her eyes that her temper was straining at the leash; and his jaw assumed a certain look of grim solidity. But the outbreak he expected did not come; Alison was an artiste too consummate not to be able to control and mask her emotions – even as she did now with a quick curtaining of her eyes behind long lashes.

“Don’t let’s talk about that now,” she said in a soft, placating voice. “That’s a matter for hours of business. We’re getting farther and farther away from my errand.”

“By all means,” he returned pleasantly, “let us go to that at once.”

“You can’t guess?” She unmasked again the battery of her laughing eyes. He shook his head. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

He found the courage to say: “You didn’t come to confess that I’m in the right about the play?”

She pouted prettily. “Can’t you let that be? No, of course not.”

“Nor to bicker about it?”

She laughed a denial.

“Nor yet to conduct a guessing contest?”

“No.”

“Then I’ve exhausted my allowance… Well?”

“I came,” she drawled, “for my hat.”

“Your hat?” His eyes opened wide.

She nodded. “My pretty hat. You remember you promised to give it to me if nobody else claimed it.”

“Yes, but …”

“And nobody has claimed it?”

“No, but …”

“Then I want my hat.”

“But – hold on – give somebody a chance – ”

“Stupid?” she laughed. “Isn’t it enough that I claim it? Am I nobody?”

“Wait half a minute. You’ve got me going.” He paused, frowning thoughtfully, recollecting his wits; then by degrees the light began to dawn upon him. “Do you mean you really did send me that confounded bandbox?”

Coolly she inclined her head: “I did just that, my dear.”

“But when I asked you the same question on the Autocratic – ”

“Quite so: I denied it.”

“And you were in London that Friday, after all?”

“I was. Had to be, hadn’t I, in order to buy the hat and have it sent you?”

“But – how did you know I was sailing Saturday?”

“I happened to go to the steamship office just after you had booked – saw a clerk adding your name to the passenger-list on the bulletin-board. That gave me the inspiration. I had already bought the hat, but I drove back to the shop and instructed them to send it to you.”

“But, Alison! to what end?”

“Well,” she said languidly, smiling with amusement at his bewilderment, “I thought it might be fun to hoodwink you.”

“But – I fail to see the joke.”

“And will, until I tell you All.”

Her tone supplied the capital letter.

He shrugged helplessly. “Proceed …”

“Well,” she began with sublime insouciance, “you see, I’d been figuring all the while on getting the necklace home duty-free. And I finally hit upon what seemed a rather neat little plot. The hat was part of it; I bought it for the express purpose of smuggling the necklace in, concealed in its lining. Up to that point you weren’t involved. Then by happy accident I saw your name on the list. Instantly it flashed upon me, how I could make you useful. It was just possible, you see, that those hateful customs men might be shrewd enough to search the hat, too. How much better, then, to make you bring in the hat, all unsuspecting! They’d never think of searching it in your hands! You see?”

His face had been hardening during this amazing speech. When she stopped he shot in a crisp question:

“The necklace wasn’t in the hat when delivered to me? You didn’t trust it to the shop people over night?”

“Of course not. I merely sent you the hat; then – as I knew you would – you mentioned it to me aboard ship. I got you to bring it to my room, and then sent you out – you remember? While you waited I sewed the necklace in the lining; it took only an instant. Then Jane carried the hat back to your steward.”

“So,” he commented stupidly, “it wasn’t stolen!”

“Naturally not.”

“But you threw suspicion on Iff – ”

“I daresay he was guilty enough in intent, if not in deed. There’s not the slightest doubt in my mind that he’s that man Ismay, really, and that he shipped with us for the especial purpose of stealing the necklace if he got half a chance.”

“You may be right; I don’t know – and neither do you. But do you realise that you came near causing an innocent man to be jailed for the theft?”

“But I didn’t. He got away.”

“But not Iff alone – there’s myself. Have you paused to consider what would have happened to me if the inspector had happened to find that necklace in the hat? Heavens knows how he missed it! He was persistent enough!.. But if he had found it, I’d have been jailed for theft.”

“Oh, no,” she said sweetly; “I’d never have let it go that far.”

“Not even if to confess would mean that you’d be sent to jail for smuggling?”

“They’d never do that to a woman…”

But her eyes shifted from his uneasily, and he saw her colour change a trifle.

“You know better than that. You read the papers – keep informed. You know what happened to the last woman who tried to smuggle. I forgot how long they sent her up for – five months, or something like that.”

She was silent, her gaze evasive.

“You remember that, don’t you?”

“Perhaps I do,” she admitted unwillingly.

“And you don’t pretend you’d ’ve faced such a prospect in order to clear me?”

Again she had no answer for him. He turned up the room to the windows and back again.

“I didn’t think,” he said slowly, stopping before her – “I couldn’t have thought you could be so heartless, so self-centred …!”

She rose suddenly and put a pleading hand upon his arm, standing very near him in all her loveliness.

“Say thoughtless, Staff,” she said quietly; “I didn’t mean it.”

“That’s hard to credit,” he replied steadily, “when I’m haunted by the memory of the lies you told me – to save yourself a few dollars honestly due the country that has made you a rich woman – to gain for yourself a few paltry columns of cheap, sensational newspaper advertising. For that you lied to me and put me in jeopardy of Sing-Sing … me, the man you pretend to care for – ”

“Hold on, Staff!” the woman interrupted harshly.

He moved away. Her arm dropped back to her side. She eyed him a moment with eyes hard and unfriendly.

“You’ve said about enough,” she continued.

“You’re not prepared to deny that you had these possibilities in mind when you lied to me and made me your dupe and cat’s-paw?”

“I’m not prepared to argue the matter with you,” she flung back at him, “nor to hold myself answerable to you for any thing I may choose to say or do.”

He bowed ceremoniously.

“I think that’s all,” he said pleasantly.

“It is,” she agreed curtly; then in a lighter tone she added: “There remains for me only to take my blue dishes and go home.”

As she spoke she moved over to the corner where the bandbox lay ingloriously on its undamaged side. As she bent over it, Staff abstractedly took and lighted another cigarette.

“What made you undo it?” he heard the woman ask.

He swung round in surprise. “I? I haven’t touched the thing since it was brought in – beyond kicking it out of the way.”

“The string’s off – it’s been opened!” Alison’s voice was trembling with excitement. She straightened up, holding the box in both hands, and came hastily over to the table beside which he was standing. “You see?” she said breathlessly, putting it down.

“The string was on it when I saw it last,” he told her blankly…

Then the memory recurred of the man who had passed him at the door – the man who, he suspected, had forced an entrance to his rooms…

Alison was plucking nervously at the cover without lifting it.

“Why don’t you look?” he demanded, irritated.

“I – I’m afraid,” she said in a broken voice.

Nevertheless, she removed the cover.

For a solid, silent minute both stared, stupefied. The hat they knew so well – the big black hat with its willow plume and buckle of brilliants – had vanished. In its place they saw the tumbled wreckage of what had once been another hat distinctly: wisps of straw dyed purple, fragments of feathers, bits of violet-coloured ribbon and silk which, mixed with wads and shreds of white tissue-paper, filled the box to brimming.

Staff thrust a hand in his pocket and produced the knot of violet ribbon. It matched exactly the torn ribbon in the box.

“So that,” he murmured – “that’s where this came from!”

Alison paid no attention. Of a sudden she began digging furiously in the débris in the box, throwing out its contents by handfuls until she had uncovered the bottom without finding any sign of what she had thought to find. Then she paused, meeting his gaze with one half-wrathful, half-hysterical.

“What does this mean?” she demanded, as if ready to hold him to account.

“I think,” he said slowly – “I’m strongly inclined to believe it means that you’re an uncommonly lucky woman.”

“How do you make that out?” she demanded in a breath.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, formulating his theory as he spoke: “When I came home tonight, a man passed me at the door, fairly running out – I fancy, to escape recognition; there was something about him that seemed familiar. Then I came up here, found my door ajar, when I distinctly remembered locking it, found my windows shut and the shades drawn, when I distinctly remembered leaving them up, and finally found this knot of ribbon on the floor. I was trying to account for it when you drove up. Now it seems plain enough that this fellow knew or suspected you of hiding the necklace in the hat, knew that I had it, and came here in my absence to steal it. He found instead this hat, and knowing no better tore it to pieces trying to find what he was after.”

“But where – where’s my hat?”

“I’ll tell you.” Staff crossed the room and picked up the string and label which had been on the box. Returning, he examined the tag and read aloud: “Miss Eleanor Searle.” He handed the tag to Alison. “Find Miss Searle and you’ll find your hat. It happens that she had a bandbox the exact duplicate of yours. I remember telling you about it, on the steamer. As a matter of fact, she was in the shop the afternoon you ordered your hat sent to me, though she steadily refused to tell me who was responsible for that imposition. Now, on the pier today, our luggage was placed side by side, hers with mine – both in the S section, you understand. My examination was finished first and I was taken back to my stateroom to be searched, as you know. While I was gone, her examination was evidently finished, for when I came back she had left the pier with all her things. Quite plainly she must have taken your box by mistake for her own; this, of course, is her hat. As I said at first, find Miss Searle and you’ll find your hat and necklace. Also, find the person to whom you confided this gay young swindling scheme of yours, and you’ll find the man who was intimate enough with the affair to come to my rooms in my absence and go direct to the bandbox for the necklace.”