Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels

Yes, Madame Vanderstein was in her room. Would Monsieur go up?

Certainly Monsieur would; and he was ushered into the lift and carried aloft.

He heard Madame Querterot’s voice say “Come in” in response to the boy’s knock, and in another minute he was in the room, with the door closing behind him.

For a moment he thought there must be some mistake, and, if she had not spoken, would have turned and fled. Surely he had never seen before the beautifully dressed, dark-haired lady who was bending over a box at the end of the room.

But at the sound of her voice he knew her again, though the difference in her appearance caused by her dyed hair and painted complexion was truly marvellous. She wore her elaborate dress with quiet assurance, and jewels sparkled at her throat, in her ears, on her fingers, her wrists.

“What in the world are you doing here?” she said, in a tone of the deepest disapproval.

Bert’s voice shook as he took the paper from his pocket and held it out to her.

“Have you seen this?” he asked. “Every one in London knows you are here. It is madness to stay.”

“Of course I have seen it,” she answered coolly. “And of course I shall not stay. I do but finish my packing. In ten minutes I shall ring to have my luggage taken downstairs. There is a train in half an hour.”

“You will never escape now,” he said gloomily. “Do you know, too, that they have found the body of Mrs. Vanderstein?”

This time she was startled.

“What do you say?” she cried. “What bêtise is this?”

“It is true,” he said. “They found it last night. I was there.”

“You were there? Last night?” she repeated. “And you were not arrested, not suspected? Why, then, our star is indeed guarding us.”

“No, I wasn’t arrested,” he said, watching her, “and Joolie hasn’t been arrested yet, either.”

She started, and for a moment her eyes shone with the hatred and spite she cherished for her daughter. Then they fell before his. “Julie,” she said; “why should Julie be arrested?”

“Don’t you know?” he asked. “How is she to account for the pearls, and for the dresses and opera cloaks?”

“Oh, the dresses. Hasn’t she burnt them? I told her to. If she has not she must do so at once.”

“And the pearls – was she to burn them too?” said Bert quietly.

“They looked so well round her neck, the dear child. I left them as my wedding gift to you both.”

“You left them because you knew you couldn’t get rid of them. My God! I believe you meant to keep the whole lot for yourself. But the pearls were too dangerous, so you gave them to Joolie! You must have meant suspicion to fall upon her!”

“My dear Bert, you are absurd. Come and help me to fasten this portmanteau. I shall register the luggage to Paris, and leave the train myself at Amiens. From there I can go off in another direction, and you will never hear of me again.”

“Nor of the jewels either, no doubt.”

“Oh, don’t be afraid, you shall have the money for the jewels!”

Madame Querterot began to go on with her packing, which for the moment she had abandoned. As she bent over the trunk, filling up corners with crumpled newspapers, she hummed a merry little tune, and the implied disregard of his reproaches exasperated Bert beyond endurance. He stood quite still, making a violent effort at self-control, and looking about him in an unconscious attempt to regain his balance by a concentration of his attention upon some everyday object.

The fresh breeze off the water was fluttering the white muslin blinds by the open window and, as Bert passed his tongue over his parched lips, he tasted the salt taste of the sea. The tide was up, and the room full of the noise of the breaking waves, so that the rattle of a cart passing on the road beneath was merged and lost in the continuous volume of sound.

On the table were several outspread pieces of blue paper, and he read the typed messages from where he stood. They were the telegrams which Sir Gregory, Gimblet, and Sidney had dispatched that morning to Mrs. Vanderstein.

“Have you answered those?” he said, pointing to them.

“I answered Mr. Sidney’s, and I sent one to the servants in Grosvenor Street,” Madame Querterot broke off her tune to reply.

“I don’t know who Aberhyn Jones is,” she added, “nor where he lives, so I can’t answer him; and I haven’t quite decided what to say to the detective.”

She went on packing, and resumed her humming. Bert did not speak for a minute, then he said very quietly:

“I took the girl to Regent’s Park, to the very edge of the water; and then a policeman came up and prevented me doing as we arranged.”

“What!” Madame Querterot almost screamed.

She stood erect and gazed at Bert in incredulous dismay.

“I hit her and ran,” he went on. “I don’t suppose I did her much damage or I should have seen it mentioned in the papers, and there has been nothing about it.”

“If she is alive I don’t understand how it is they still believe Mrs. Vanderstein is here. But never mind that now. The point is, the girl, if she lives, will put them on my track. I shall not be able to escape now so easily. Perhaps the best thing to do is to go back and face it out. Better get my story in before they have time to puzzle out the truth.”

She spoke musingly, more to herself than to her companion.

“Your story!” Bert repeated, speaking only a little above a whisper. His voice would not come out somehow; he felt as if he were choking. “You mean you will say that I did it! Why not say that you have been hiding from me in fear of your own life, all these days? That would round it off well!”

“Not a bad suggestion, Bert,” she said. “I must look after myself, you know. It would be a pity, wouldn’t it, for people to say that Julie’s mother was hanged?”

She spoke with a sneer. She had not forgotten that Bert had used those words to her, nor forgiven him. She was not afraid to let him see that his guess at her intentions was a good one; she felt for him a contempt too complete and profound to dread anything he might say or do.

It is a common failing among clever rascals to despise their dupes, but they often learn to their cost that danger may come from the most unlikely quarter.

The derisive note in her voice was the last straw on Bert’s frayed nerves. His rage took hold of him so that he no longer knew what he was about; he became a tool in other hands than Madame Querterot’s.

“Oh you fiend, you fiend!” he cried, and his voice was high and cracked, “hanging would be too good for a devil like you! You needn’t be afraid, people never shall say that of Joolie’s mother. You would have let her be hanged, you devil! Her and me, both of us. Oh – oh – ”

The air was full of the murmur of the sea. It mingled with a maddening noise that buzzed in his ears and made thought impossible. A mist gathered before his eyes – a dreadful red mist in which everything swam and danced.

He bounded upon the woman, holding his hands outstretched before his face as though to fend off something unspeakably hideous and terrifying. Then they closed upon her throat and, with a sob, he shook her to and fro as a dog shakes a rat that has bitten it badly.

At last his rage spent itself. As it passed he became conscious of what he was doing, and with an exclamation of disgust loosened his grip.

She fell backwards, with a crash, across the open lid of the box she had been packing. The hinges snapped under the impact and the lid broke off and dropped to the floor with her. There she lay, head downwards, in an untidy heap, one arm twisted at a curious angle under her body.

Bert never doubted that she was dead, and he felt a glow of satisfaction stealing over him at the knowledge. There were great livid marks on her neck where his convulsive fingers had clutched at it, and he stooped over her and looked at them with a gratified smile. They were already turning black.

A slight noise in the next room brought him to his senses.

He crept on tiptoe to the door and listened intently with his ear to it. The sounds in the next room continued, some one seemed to be opening and shutting drawers; but there was no movement in the passage, and after a moment he opened the door cautiously and went out.

No one was in sight, and as an afterthought he went back, and removing the key locked the door on the outside, as silently as he had opened it. Then putting the key in his pocket he ran down the stairs. The page who had shown him up was idling in the hall, but no one else was about, though he caught a glimpse of a seated figure in the bureau as he passed. Forcing himself to pause as he passed the page, he said to him:

“Mrs. Vanderstein has asked me to tell you that she has a headache, and does not wish to be disturbed again to-day. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. I will give the message at the bureau. They will tell the waiter and chambermaid.”

The page spoke English perfectly, and Bert felt assured that he would do his errand. To make sure, he repeated his injunction and gave the boy a shilling to impress it on his memory. Then he walked down the steps with every outward appearance of calm.

His impulse was to go back towards the harbour, but as a precaution he started off in the opposite direction and only approached the docks after several turnings separated him from the sea-front. There was no boat back to England, however, till past seven, and he hung about the port for three whole hours that seemed like three centuries. In a quiet corner behind some empty trucks he got rid of his black beard, and applying a match to it saw it frizzle up and disappear in two or three seconds. He ground the ashes into the earth with his heel, and with a recklessness which surprised himself walked back past the doorway of the Hôtel de Douvres, to see if he would be known. The page was still lolling in the doorway, and, to Bert’s satisfaction, stared at him as he passed with a vacant eye. He felt certain he had not been recognised, and went back to the harbour with a lighter heart.

There he watched the steamer from Folkestone arrive and disembark her passengers, among whom – though he did not know it – was the man sent by the London police to interview Mrs. Vanderstein; and a few minutes later it was time to go on board the boat, which took him back to England.

The next morning found him back in his place at the house agents’ office, and as the day passed without event he began to feel a sense of security to which he had lately been a stranger. After all, he had passed hours in the company of London’s greatest detective without arousing any suspicion; and every hour, he believed, added to his safety.

He was comparatively cheerful when he went down to Pimlico that evening to see Julie.

But he found her in a harder mood than usual; and when, with exceeding want of discretion, he chose that most unpropitious moment to urge his suit, she told him very plainly that she would never consent to be his wife.

She had no intention of marrying, she said; she was going to enter the convent as she had always wished. But, she added, with unnecessary cruelty – for she was still angry with him for his behaviour a day or two before – in no case would she have married him. She did not reciprocate his feelings, and she considered that he and she were quite unsuited to each other; he had much better never think of her again.

Thus it happened that he went away in the blackest depths of misery and despair, so that when the police rapped at his door an hour later they found a man broken and unstrung to such a point as to hail their coming with something like relief.

Such was the gist of Albert Tremmels’ story; and, as it never varied in the smallest detail in the course of its many repetitions, it may be imagined that it was true in substance.

Whether this would have been the opinion expressed by a jury cannot now be known, for Bert died in prison while awaiting his trial. His constitution, always frail, had not been able to withstand the bodily fatigues, and more especially those torments of the mind which he had endured during that week of stress, and a latent tendency to disease was not slow to take advantage of his weakened condition. Its rapid development was perhaps due, in part, to the fact that he made little effort to get well, and seemed to have no wish to live. What, indeed, as he said, had he to live for?

He showed no repentance for his attack on Miss Turner, beyond saying that it would have been unnecessary if he had had the sense to kill Madame Querterot first, but he maintained with his last breath that the idea was not his, any more than the thought of murdering Mrs. Vanderstein, which he persisted in affirming had never crossed his mind. He gloried in the death of his confederate, however, nor could all the efforts of the prison chaplain move him to a better frame of mind with regard to his deed. On the contrary, he did not cease to gloat over the remembrance of it. Not even when he heard that Julie piously refused him her forgiveness, in spite of her mother’s designs upon herself, would Bert admit that he regretted that which he had done. It is a cynical freak of circumstance that his love for the girl, which was pure and unselfish and the only creditable part of his whole nature, should from first to last have been the inspiring source from which his crimes proceeded.

CHAPTER XXVIII

It was a few days before Joe Sidney was allowed to see Barbara. The news of her friend’s death had been broken to her by the doctor, and though her grief was profound she bore the shock better than they had feared likely, and continued to make good progress towards recovery.

It was on the day following that on which she learnt the truth, or rather a bowdlerised version of it, that Sidney refused to be longer denied, and practically forced his way into the private room at the hospital to which she had been moved.

At sight of her sad, tear-stained face, framed in bandages, and wearing such a different aspect from when he had last looked on it, the little speech he had prepared to greet her with died on his lips, and he could only take her hand in silence and gaze at her without a word till the door had shut behind the nurse, who, dearly as she would have liked to remain, was luckily prevented from doing so by an urgent summons to attend on the house surgeon elsewhere.

“Oh, my dear, I thought you were dead,” he stammered.

She was very weak still, and while the tenderness in his voice, still more than the words themselves, brought a feeble little smile of the purest content to play a moment round the corners of her mouth, they also caused the blood to rush to her face in a hot, embarrassing wave, so that she turned her head away, and lay facing the wall with no conscious wish except to hide from him.

Then the flush died away, leaving her very white and still and silent, with eyes tightly shut. She knew that if she opened them or tried to speak she would not be able to help crying.

Sidney did not understand her stillness. A dreadful fear came upon him that she had fainted, and he looked round for the bell. It was just out of reach; but, when he tried to withdraw the hand which still held hers, her clasp gently tightened on it, and would not let him go.

With a muffled exclamation he fell on his knees beside the pillow.

“Barbara, Barbara,” he cried, “will you always go hand in hand with me now?”

And with face still averted she murmured: “Always, always!”

It was half an hour later that he asked her about the unsigned telegram she had sent him. What had she meant by saying good luck was coming his way?

She reluctantly confessed her determination to provide him with the money he needed.

“Of course I always knew you were clever and dear enough to manage even that,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t bother unnecessarily over the mess I’d got into.”

“Oh,” cried Barbara, “how dare you say that! Why, you were desperate; I was terrified by the things you hinted at.”

“It was disgraceful of me to talk in that way,” he admitted, ashamed. “But you haven’t told me how you intended to provide me with money. As if I’d have taken it from you! I didn’t know you were a millionaire.”

“You know Mr. Vanderstein left me £30,000, which I was to have if poor Mrs. Vanderstein died? I shall get it now, I suppose,” said Barbara, her eyes filling with tears.

Joe stroked her hand in silent sympathy, and with a quaver in her voice she went on.

“Well, I meant to borrow £10,000 on the strength of my prospects, and place it anonymously to your credit at Cox’s. So you see you would have had to take it!” she concluded triumphantly. “You wouldn’t have known who it was from.”

“I should have known perfectly well,” he said. “Who else could good luck come to me from if not from you? I knew you sent the telegram, you see.”

“You couldn’t have proved it, and you’d have had to take the money, because there would have been no one to send it back to.”

“It was like you to think of it,” Joe said, “but I don’t believe you could have raised the money anyhow. Aunt Ruth’s life was nearly as good as yours then, and you hadn’t really any security to offer, you silly darling.”

Barbara’s face fell. “I didn’t think of that, but surely I could have got £10,000 when I would have offered £30,000 in exchange,” she said sadly. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

He hastened to reassure and comfort her.

“And you will never bet again?” she asked presently.

“I have sworn that I never will,” Joe answered. “I’ve had a lesson more severe than even I needed, I think.”

“If ever you want to have a teeny tiny bet,” she smiled, “I can do it for you, perhaps, if you’re good.”

“No, no,” he said seriously, “you must give it up too. I shall want you to help me to stick to my resolutions. Promise!”

“Very well,” she said, seeing how grave he looked; “I promise faithfully never to gamble again in any way, as long as I live.”

“Now we are safe!” he cried. “Indeed, I have used up all the luck one man can scrape together in a lifetime in winning you, and I shall think of that, if I am ever again tempted to stake anything on the chance of further kindness at the hands of Fortune.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Barbara urged; “there is heaps and heaps more luck in store for you.”

And so, in their serene confidence of the happy future which awaits them, we will leave these two young people, who, if any more dangers lie unsuspected in the path down which they are to travel through the years, will brave them no longer in solitary isolation, but strengthened and reinforced by an enduring love.

THE END