Beggar’s Choice (23 page)

She lifted her head and saw the outer world again—the very blue sky, the green, smooth slopes running down to meet the trees, the sunshine flooding everything with gold. Her color was bright and steady as she turned at Mr. Carthew's call.

“Anna—where are my keys? I want to open the safe. Bless my soul, what have I done with them?”

XXXI

Mr. Carthew, having successfully conducted Corinna through a complete photographic record of his married life, had arrived at the next stage of the proceedings.

“People say one oughtn't to keep jewelry in the house, but I've had all my servants for years, and I trust them all just as I'd trust myself. And besides, a safe's a safe—what? No good having one if it won't keep a burglar out—that's what I say. Besides, I shouldn't like to think of my wife's things put away in a bank. Some of 'em were my mother's, and some of 'em were
her
mother's, and they've always been in this house, and they'll stay in it as long as I'm here myself.”

“And no one wears them?” said Corinna. “Not ever?”

“No one's got the right to wear them,” said Mr. Carthew gruffly. He dropped his voice, but he looked at Anna for a moment, and Corinna looked too; but Anna did not know that they were looking at her.

“I love seeing jewelry,” said Corinna quickly. “Is there much?”

Mr. Carthew turned back the leaves of the album.

“She wore my mother's necklace to go to Court in—you can see it here. And the stars are what I gave her when we were married. But you can't see the Queen Anne bow, because it is on the other side of the bodice. Stupid of the photographer—what? But I'll show it to you.”

“What is it?” asked Corinna.

“Aha! It's an heirloom. You're American—Americans like old things, don't they? It's a bow of diamonds—very fine stones—and a big emerald in the middle of it, with another one hanging down as a drop. Queen Anne gave it to my great-great-great-grandfather. And if you want to know why, I can't tell you, but it had something to do with some state secret—and if you ask me, I should say it was probably not anything very creditable, because there was a lot of dirty work going on, and the higher up you were, the more dishonest you were. So perhaps it's just as well we don't know any more about it. But it's a handsome piece of jewelry, and the emeralds are worth a lot of money. You shall see it for yourself. Now where are my keys? Anna—where are my keys? I'm going to open the safe.”

Anna turned from the window and came down the room.

“Your keys, Uncle John? Haven't you got them?”

“Should I ask for 'em if I'd got 'em?”

Anna smiled.

“Well, you might. Aren't they in your pocket? Or—did you put them down under those albums?”

“Why should I do that?”

“I don't know.” She smiled again, and found the keys under the corner of the largest photograph album.

Mr. Carthew took them, letting them swing and jingle.

“Pull down the blinds and put on the light,” he said.

Corinna found it all very exciting. The library door was locked, the blinds pulled down, and all the electric lights put on. Then Mr. Carthew mounted three steps of a book-ladder, took down the portrait of Mrs.Carthew which hung above the mantel piece, stood it to one side of the black marble shelf, selected a key, and put it into a keyhole which hardly showed on the smooth, dark paneling.

“Good place for a safe—what?” he said, and Corinna clapped her hands. A square piece of the paneling opened like a door and showed a steel-lined cavity with three deep shelves.

It pleased Mr. Carthew enormously to have such an appreciative audience. He beckoned to Corinna to come nearer.

“And now for the Queen Anne bow! Why, bless my soul—the case ought to be just here—just on the left of the bottom shelf! And I'll take my oath that's where I put it. Now what the deuce—I beg your pardon, my dear.” His voice sharpened. “Anna, come here! Where's that case! You saw me put it away. It's always in that left-hand bottom corner.”

Corinna's round eyes turned gravely from Cousin John, all flushed and stammering, to Anna. Anna was most extraordinarily pale. A moment ago she had had rather a bright color. It was all gone.

The ladder Mr. Carthew was using had three steps on either side. Anna mounted until she stood level with him. Corinna stared up at them both.

Anna said, “It must be there.” Her voice sounded as if she had been running.

“I tell you it's not there! And I tell you I put it there myself—what—you saw me!”

“It
must
be there,” said Anna again. She leaned across him, looking into the safe. “Uncle John—oh, what a fright you gave me! There it is!”

“Where? I don't see it.”

“There—on the right, by your hand—under the big, square case. Look!”

“And who put it there?” said Mr. Carthew angrily. “I'll swear it wasn't me. Who's been messing the things about? Who——”

He pulled out the case with a jerk. It was very rubbed and shabby and old; the leather, which had once been scarlet, was now a dim pinkish brown; the gold crown on the lid could only just be distinguished, a mere tarnished hint of royalty.

Mr. Carthew turned round, still grumbling.

“I suppose you'll say I'm losing my memory—but I never put it there, and that I'll swear to.”

Anna stepped down. She did not say a word. She kept her eyes on the table.

“Oh, do show it to us!” said Corinna.

Mr. Carthew came down too. He opened the case, and the case was empty.

The library seemed to fill with silence. It was like water rushing into an empty place.

Mr. Carthew and Corinna both looked at what he had in his hand. The case had a satin lining, the white of which had turned to a yellowish brown. The outline of a loosely shaped bow was marked upon it, both by the dinting of the satin and by a deeper discoloration. Two brownish hollows marked the places of those emeralds which Mr. Carthew had described as worth a lot of money. From their size, he did not seem to have been guilty of overstatement.

Anna looked too, and then looked away.

Corinna spoke first. She said in a whisper,

“It's gone!”

And then, to her own surprise, her legs began to tremble so much that she looked round for a chair and sat down abruptly.

“What's it mean?” said Mr. Carthew in an odd, troubled voice.

Then, with sudden passion, “What's it mean?
Anna!”
The word came out with explosive force. Then, checking himself, he advanced to the table and put down the empty case.

As if his voice, speaking her name in that sharp peremptory way, had called her from the wings where like many another actress she had been standing dumb with stage-fright, Anna started, drew on that sense of drama which never left her for very long, and took up her part. It was the first step, the first plunge, that stopped one's breath and set one's heart thudding. She heard herself say, “It
must
be there,” and approved the low shocked tone that contradicted the assertion.

It was she who rummaged in the safe, handing things down to Corinna until nothing more remained, whilst John Carthew stood half turned away, looking, still looking, at the empty case.

When the safe had been cleared, he roused himself and displayed a sudden energy. Everything was to be put back, the safe re-locked, the picture hung, the blinds drawn up.

When the sun was slanting in again, he slipped the case into his pocket. He looked older. His sudden energy had failed. He leaned with one hand on the table.

“What are you going to do?” said Corinna, and Anna blessed her for the question. In another moment she would have had to ask it herself.

“Do?” said Mr. Carthew. “Do? The thing's an heirloom. It's got to be found.” He straightened himself up as if his own loud voice had encouraged him. “What do we have police for? If we have got a Socialist government, we haven't got to the point where a burglar can break into my safe and take a family heirloom and get away with it—no, by jingo, we haven't, though that's where we're heading for! Thank God, I shan't be here to see it! Law and order'll last my time, and an heirloom's an heirloom. It don't belong to me—it belongs to all the Carthews—it belongs——” His voice had been dropping; now it ceased.

Corinna thrilled to the broken sentence. Was it Car's name that had broken it? Anna knew that it was, and a rising passion swept away her last qualm.

“You can't call in the police,” she said in a hard, dogmatic tone.

Mr. Carthew stiffened at once.

“I can't—what? And why not?”

Corinna saw his angry flash, and remembered Car saying, “He's all right as long as you don't cross him. He likes his own way.” Funny that Anna shouldn't have known better than to lay down the law to him like that, and to keep on doing it in the face of his rising anger.

“It will make such a talk.”—Anna, pale and shrinking.

“And why the deuce should I care about that?”—Cousin John, the very image of the old squire who is just going to turn an erring daughter out into the snow.

“But, Uncle John, you can't!”

“And why can't I? And whose business is it except my own?”

“You mustn't!”

“Mustn't I—what?”—and a snort of wrath and the click of the telephone.

Corinna, standing back against the mantelpiece, a little abashed at this frank lapse into family manners, turned a pitying glance on Anna. Cousin John had just sworn—yes, really
sworn
at her. She received a shock, because, just for an instant as the angry man shouted into the telephone, a fleeting look changed Anna's shocked pallor into something else and Corinna thought that the something else was triumph.

XXXII

Miss Willy Tarrant lived in a dumpy brick house exactly half-way down the village street. The original small casements of the two front rooms having been replaced by generous bow windows Miss Willy commanded a view of practically every front door in Linwood. She knew at once when Dr. Monk had been sent for to a case, or when the Vicar, to whom time meant nothing, was going to be late for church. She could follow him from a few feet within his own hall door all the way to the vestry, and if the vestry door had been left open, she would have been able to watch him robing. This from the dining-room.

The drawing-room afforded her a perfect view of the interior of the local grocery, a partial one of old Mrs. Hoylake's parlor, and, if she leaned out, an opportunity of seeing Linwood buy its Saturday joints from Mr. Brown the butcher.

Very little went on in Linwood about which Miss Willy did not know at least as much as the people immediately concerned. Sometimes it might be said that she knew a good deal more. She could certainly tell the Vicar just what was wrong with his sermons, and how to improve them; whilst she never met Dr. Monk without contending for the superior efficacy of some specific of her own. She had a finger in every pie, and a better way of baking it than the one which you had always thought quite good enough.

On the morning after Mr. Carthew's wedding-day anniversary Miss Willy was in her dining-room cleaning the cages inhabited respectively by a pink and gray parrot called Archibald, a pair of small, green parakeets, a very large and highly colored macaw, an invisible dormouse, and an elderly and partially bald, white rat. Whilst the cages were being cleaned, their tenants disported themselves about the room, with the exception of the dormouse, who remained obstinately in seclusion, although he should not have begun to think about hibernating for an least another month.

Miss Willy was so busy for once in a way that she did not observe the approach of Mrs. Hoylake's son Bert with the post. She heard the rat-tat too late to get to the door and detain him for news of his wife's sister Ellen, who had married a cousin of Mr. Carthew's second gardener and had just had twins. Miss Willy had the greatest possible contempt for Ellen's mother's views on the upbringing of babies, and she wanted to tell Bert Hoylake so, and to urge him on no account to allow his mother-in-law to give Ellen any advice about the twins. She might have caught him if Rollo, the raven, had not been immediately in front of the door. Rollo required careful handling and had to be coaxed away, by which time the only sign of Bert was the small parcel which he had pushed into the letter-box.

Miss Willy picked the parcel up and went back into the dining-room, where she was greeted by loud squawks of welcome from Archibald, who was climbing methodically up the left-hand curtain, and from the macaw, who was perched on the back of one of the dining-room chairs. She looked round anxiously for the rat, Augustus, because he was not very good at getting out of the way, and, if trodden on, was apt to retaliate. His teeth were still quite good.

When she had located him under the table, she opened the parcel. It was small, about five inches by two, and it excited her curiosity very much. She had cut the string and was unfolding the brown paper, when the front door knocker fell twice with a sharp, clear rap.

Miss Willy looked out of the window, which commanded almost as good view of her own front door as of her neighbor's, and to her great delight saw Anna Lang standing on the step with her hand just raised to knock again.

Miss Willy tapped the window-pane sharply and screamed through the glass,

“Come in! Come in! Mabel's busy, and so am I—and Isobel's out.”

Anna nodded and opened the door. Everything was going very nicely. She had watched Bert Hoylake deliver the parcel, and within the next half-hour the telegram should arrive. Isobel would certainly not leave Linwood House for at least an hour, since, after she and Corinna had stopped talking, Uncle John could be trusted to keep her for at least another half-hour. He liked Isobel. He liked her so much that nothing but the particular lie which Anna had told him would have prevented him from welcoming her as Car's wife with a good deal of pleasure. As a rule, Anna took care that his opportunities of talking to Isobel were strictly limited, but to-day he might make the most of them.