Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels

CHAPTER XII

The next morning dawned grey and boisterous. The English climate was giving an example of that infinite variety to which custom never reconciles the stranger within our gates. Julie Querterot, whose life had been passed entirely in London, suffered from an hereditary sensitiveness to the changes of the weather, and was never able to prevent her spirits from drooping as the barometer fell. Rain and gloomy skies made her dismal even when her whole day was spent within doors, and on this Wednesday morning, when she had done with the business of sweeping and cleaning about the house, and took up her station in the little shop behind the hair-pins and pomades, the view from the window must have had more than its usual depressing effects upon her, for if the unlooked for had happened and a customer had chanced to enter he might have seen that her eyelids were swollen as by the shedding of many tears.

Soon after midnight the storm that had been brewing had burst over the empty streets; for hours the lightning had torn the clouds and the tremendous noise of the thunder had made sleep impossible. All night torrents of rain had fallen, and people lying awake, or at best dozing uneasily, had heard its constant patter. Julie’s face, white and weary, looked as if to her at least the night had brought no rest. Sitting in the half-dusk of the shop she took up her work with slow deliberation; then letting it fall back to her knee leant her chin upon her palm with a hopeless gesture. She had had no breakfast, and hunger was combining with fatigue to bring her to the point of exhaustion. By her, on the counter where she had put it down, a halfpenny paper lay spread out; and presently she took it up, and glanced again at the prominent headlines, which in large black type flaunted across the page.

After a while Julie rose and put away her needlework. Going up to her little bedroom, she took from the cupboard a small black hat, and regardless of the weather prepared to go out. Not that she made an elaborate toilette. A neat coat of plainest black was added to her blouse and skirt, a rather tawdry brooch pinned where a button had been torn off, and another, for pure ornament, in a place where it was not needed. It has already been said that Julie was fond of trinkets, and she seemed to derive some slight comfort from them even this morning. Two or three bracelets jingled already on either wrist, and when she had added a pair of gloves her attire was complete. A few minutes later the girl opened her umbrella and stepped into the street; then, locking the shop door behind her, she set her face westward. The rain was falling less heavily, and before she had taken many turnings it ceased altogether. Julie shut her umbrella with a sigh of relief. Since leaving the house she had not been able to put aside a minor, but still consuming, anxiety, as to the fate of her hat.

In his rooms in Whitehall, Gimblet was studying a copy of the same newspaper that lay now neglected in the Pimlico shop. One glance at the headlines had told him to whom they referred, and the paragraph that followed was still more explicit.

“We learn that anxiety is felt as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Vanderstein, a lady residing at No. 90, Grosvenor Street, W. Mrs. Vanderstein left her house on the evening of Monday last for the purpose of attending the gala performance at the Royal opera house at Covent Garden. She was accompanied by a young lady, Miss Barbara Turner, who lives at Grosvenor Street in the capacity of friend and companion to Mrs. Vanderstein. The two ladies drove to the opera in their private motor car, and some surprise was felt by the servants on being told at the door of the theatre that their return after the performance was over was not desired. No alarm, however, was experienced until yesterday morning, when the household awoke to find that neither of the ladies had returned.

“Inquiry at the hospitals, where it was thought the ladies might have been carried in the event of an accident having occurred, were productive of no result, and as the day passed without news of their whereabouts being obtained it was deemed advisable to secure the services of a detective. It is whispered that one of London’s most celebrated criminal investigators has consented to look into the matter. Rumours reach us that differences between Mrs. Vanderstein and one of her nearest relatives have more to do with her disappearance than at first seems obvious. Mrs. Vanderstein is the widow of the late Mr. Moses Vanderstein, a financier well known in city circles. She is a lady of remarkable personal attractions, and is a great favourite in Jewish society. Miss Turner is the daughter of the late Mr. William Turner, of Newmarket, and is not much over twenty years of age. It is believed that the police have a clue to the continued absence of the two ladies, and that foul play is apprehended.”

“So,” said Gimblet to himself, “it appears that the worthy Mr. Chark has been talking.”

As he threw aside the paper, and took up another to see if it also had something to say on the same subject, the bell of the flat rang, and a moment later Higgs announced Mr. Joseph Sidney.

With a scarcely perceptible start Gimblet recognised the young man he had observed in the Park on Sunday.

“I hope I don’t disturb you,” Sidney said at once, “but they told me in Grosvenor Street that you had been up there asking questions, and so I suppose Sir Gregory has engaged you to look into this business.”

“That is so,” said Gimblet. “I hope you have come to give me some assistance.”

“Why, I wish to goodness I could,” said Sidney, “but I never heard a word about it till I saw the paper this morning; and then I couldn’t believe it. But I rang up Grosvenor Street pretty quick, and old Blake, my aunt’s butler, swears it’s gospel. It’s a queer thing to happen, isn’t it? What can they have done with themselves? Really, women ought not to be allowed out alone. If my aunt couldn’t take care of herself, I do think she might have made an effort to look after Miss Turner!”

“It’s a queer business indeed,” said Gimblet, “and I’m afraid it looks stranger every minute, and very much more serious than it did at first. For here’s another night gone by and no news of either of the ladies. And we have no clue, no idea where to hunt, nor anything whatever to go on in our search. I was in hopes you might have some information to offer me, Mr. Sidney; you were, I believe, one of the last people who spoke with Mrs. Vanderstein on Monday.”

Gimblet looked narrowly at the young man, who, for his part, seemed not altogether at his ease. He hesitated, crossed to the window and drummed with his fingers on the pane. In the detective’s ears was echoing a sentence heard above the murmur of the crowd: “I’m pretty desperate, I can tell you. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get the money.”

A second later Sidney turned; and, coming back to where Gimblet sat impassively waiting, drew up a chair upon which he sat himself down with an air of resolution.

“I did see my aunt on Monday, Mr. Gimblet, and to tell you the truth I don’t like telling you what she said to me then. One doesn’t care about confiding one’s private family affairs to strangers. Still, if you think it can be of any possible use… Well, the fact is that I had a frightful row with Mrs. Vanderstein on Monday.”

“What about?” asked Gimblet.

“I,” Sidney hesitated again, and then continued with a plunge, “I have been losing a great deal of money lately; I am ashamed to say that I have lost it on race-courses, and that it is a sum far larger than I can afford. I went to my aunt to ask for help. I asked her, in fact, to lend me some money to tide over my difficulties for the present. She was very irate about it. She can’t stand betting; and as soon as I told her she got in a fearful rage and threw me out of the house. That is all the conversation I had with her on Monday. You can understand I don’t much like owning up to it, as it’s not precisely to my credit.” Sidney ended with a rueful laugh.

“Mrs. Vanderstein absolutely refused to help you in any way?”

“Said she’d see me damned first. Well, you know, she mayn’t have put it exactly like that.”

“Hardly, I should think. I’d rather have her own words, if you can remember them, please.”

Sidney searched his memory. “As far as I can recollect, what she actually said was, ‘I will have nothing whatever to do with a gambler like you. Not only will I not give you money now, but you shall never have a penny that is mine to use for that degrading vice. I shall alter my will,’ she said, ‘and that to-morrow. And never let me see you again. I’ll not have you in my house.’ That’s what she said, and I had nothing to do but to go out of the house like a whipped dog. And I went.” Sidney’s voice was bitter as he recalled his humiliation, but when he spoke again he had recovered his normal good temper. “Poor Aunt Ruth,” he said, “there’s a good deal to be said on her side, you know, and just about nothing at all on mine. However, I didn’t come to talk about my own rotten affairs. I wonder where she can have got to? There’s something uncommon fishy about her vanishing this way, don’t you think? Hope to goodness she’s not been knocked on the head for the sake of her diamonds, you know.”

His tone was light, but Gimblet seemed to perceive a note of genuine anxiety underlying it.

“I hope not, indeed,” he agreed gravely.

“I really feel a bit worried about her – her and Miss Turner,” went on the young man. “Hang it all, since I’ve begun confiding in you I think I may as well make a clean breast of the whole show. The fact is I’ve got a beastly guilty conscience sort of feeling, because I was on the verge, a day or two ago, of playing the dickens of a shabby trick on Aunt Ruth. You can see how badly I want this money, as I told you, to pay my debts next week. Well, I as near as makes no difference tried to get it out of my aunt by what I suppose you’d call false pretences – which sounds a nice blackguardly thing to do, don’t it? I don’t suppose anyone’s told you that she had a craze for Royalty in any shape? Well, I didn’t know it myself till lately, but it seems there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to get in contact with great people. A friend of mine suggested that we should get another of my pals to impersonate some royal prince, and that I should introduce him to my aunt. The idea was that he should rather make up to her, and then intercede on my behalf, or get the money out of her in some way. I don’t think I should have done it when it came to the point, because I saw very plainly the next day what an impossible thing it was to do. And if I’d gone as far as to ask my friend to help, I haven’t the slightest doubt he would have told me not to be an ass. But there you are – I did think of it, and it sticks on my conscience now. I shall never get the taste out of my mouth, I believe, and if there’s anything you think I could do to be of any use, now that she’s gone and mislaid herself, you can understand that I’d do it all the more gladly since I feel I owe her a good turn.”

He ceased speaking, crossed one leg over the other, and leant back, looking at Gimblet with an air half ashamed, half ingenuous.

The detective returned his gaze with interest.

“Here,” he was saying to himself, “is a young man either very innocent or beyond the common crafty.”

“Who was it who suggested this questionable proceeding in the first place?” he asked.

“Oh, I really can’t tell you that,” cried Sidney; “it can’t have any importance, and I’m not so dead to all sense of decency as you naturally think!”

“You say you only contemplated it for a short time. Did you tell your friend ultimately that, on second thoughts, you didn’t like the idea and had decided to give it up?”

“It wasn’t necessary. Before I could communicate with my friend I got a message from her – him – my friend, I mean – ” Sidney grew scarlet as he realised his slip, but continued hastily in the vain hope of covering it, “a message to say that the plan was ruined. I don’t know what had happened, but for some reason, apparently, it was completely off, irrespective of my jibbing.”

“And so now,” said Gimblet, after a pause, “you have no hope, I suppose, of paying your debts.”

A shade crossed Sidney’s face as he replied sadly: “Devil a hope.”

“There has been no alteration in your prospects since Monday then,” pursued the detective; “you have had no better news to-day? Your difficulties have not so far been removed?” He spoke with great deliberation, while one hand, hidden in his pocket, fingered the telegraph form that Barbara Turner had omitted to sign.

Sidney looked up suspiciously, but the little man’s face wore no expression beyond one of calm inquiry.

“No,” said he slowly, “everything is just as it was. I have heard nothing at all and my prospects are as bad as they can be.”

There was something about Sidney that disarmed suspicion, and Gimblet did not fail to be influenced by it. In vain he reflected that the young man was certainly refraining from telling him of Miss Turner’s telegram, and deliberately, since Gimblet had purposely reminded him of it by quoting words it actually contained. As he sat considering what should be his next move, the door opened, and Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones was announced.

“Good morning, Mr. Gimblet. Have you any news for me? No, I see you have not; and there is none in Grosvenor Street, as you doubtless know. Ah, Sidney, how are you? This is a trying time for us all. I am glad to see you, very.” He shook hands warmly with the young man; and then, before Gimblet guessed what he would be at, the harm was done. “I’m more than glad to meet you, my dear boy,” Sir Gregory was declaring, “so as to be able to tell you that I don’t believe a word they may say against you. I’m positive you never had a hand in this black business, any more than I did myself. And all the Charks and beastly rags of newspapers in London shan’t convince me to the contrary.” Sir Gregory, still holding Joe by the hand, shook it up and down with extra and exaggerated heartiness.

Sidney wrenched it away.

“What the deuce are you talking about?” he exclaimed. “Who’s been saying things about me?”

“I tell you I don’t believe a word of it,” said Sir Gregory soothingly. “But you must have seen it in the papers. ‘It is believed,’ they say, ‘that a quarrel took place between Mrs. Vanderstein and a near relative, which has more to do with the unfortunate ladies’ disappearance than seems plain at first.’ You did quarrel with her, didn’t you? And Chark, her lawyer, you know, is taken with the idea; in fact, he’s been round telling me this morning that he’s ascertained for a fact that you’re infernally hard up, which would provide a motive, he says. Infernal nonsense, of course.”

“Infernal lies,” cried Sidney; “what the devil does anyone mean by suggesting such things? Do they imagine I’ve spirited away not only Aunt Ruth but Miss Turner too, and am holding them for ransom, or what? Or perhaps your friend Chark would rather think that I was given to poisoning my relations? If it comes to that, I’ll begin on him if he don’t look out. Infernal ass.”

He was furious. Gimblet, watching him with interest, wondered whether his face was so red from anger or from some other emotion.

Sir Gregory, for once, was silenced.

“Where’s this newspaper editor?” demanded Sidney. “I’m going to kick him, now, at once.”

“You’d better wait till he gets up,” said Gimblet; “at this hour he’s probably still in bed.”

“I’ll soon get him out.”

“Better not take any notice of it. More dignified not to,” urged Sir Gregory, repenting too late his well-meant assurances. “Best treat that sort of idiot with contempt,” he went on. “Chark’s the worst. It’s he that’s put them up to it.”

“Mr. Chark,” said Gimblet, “has a longing to be mixed up in a sensational affair. I saw that yesterday. He ought to know better than to indulge in libel, a lawyer too! I daresay he’s frightened to death, now that he has done it, and has time to think of the consequences.”

“I’ll frighten him,” said the young man.

He calmed down, however, as the detective continued to pour oil on the troubled waters, and was at last persuaded to depart peacefully.

Gimblet wrote out a short description of the missing ladies, together with the promise of a reward to whosoever should bring news of either of them, and this he gave into Sidney’s keeping, charging him to have it inserted in the evening papers, of which the early editions were already appearing in the streets.

CHAPTER XIII

Sir Gregory lingered. “I suppose there’s nothing to do but wait?” he said, as the door closed behind Sidney.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” replied the detective. “Believe me, I am doing what is possible, and now that Chark has been talking to the press no doubt the police, on their side, will do what they can. Did you hear anything in Grosvenor Street?”

“No,” said Sir Gregory, “no one had been there. They had seen no more of Mr. Chark. But no doubt there will be folks calling to-day. I daresay the street will be blocked by people wanting to know if what they’ve seen in the papers is true. There’s plenty of curiosity about. It was beginning already, from what I could see, when I came away; there were three or four idlers staring at the house. What they thought they saw in it, don’t ask me. Expect the police soon moved them on. Too much of this lazy loafing about; I’d soon compel them to do some honest work, if I had my way.”

“And yet you’re against compelling them to be trained for the defence of the country!” murmured Gimblet. “Well, well! Just ordinary loafers, were they?” he went on.

“That’s all,” said Sir Gregory, after a moment, during which he glared fiercely at Gimblet.

“Except one young woman,” he continued, as an afterthought. “Poor thing, she seemed really distressed; but more because she thought she’d never see her money than on Mrs. Vanderstein’s account.”

“One of the maidservants?” suggested the detective.

“No, no, I think not. She came up just as I was leaving the house. ‘Oh, sir,’ she cried, ‘can you tell me if there’s any truth in what I’ve seen in the papers, about the lady that lives here having disappeared? Surely it’s not true?’ She seemed so much concerned that I explained the state of affairs to her. ‘It is true,’ I said, ‘that the ladies of this house went out on Monday night, and have not yet come back. But I hope we may find out where they are at any moment.’ To my surprise no sooner had I said this than she leant back against the door-post as if she were going to faint or something, devilish ill she looked, poor creature, and then quite suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. I must own,” Sir Gregory confessed, “that the sight of so much feeling exhibited on Mrs. Vanderstein’s account moved me considerably. A very little more and I should have mingled my tears with those of the poor girl. ‘Don’t cry, my dear child,’ I said, a good deal affected. ‘It is natural that those who care for her should feel anxious and upset, but we must show a brave face and hope for the best.’ Still, in spite of all I could say, she went on crying, and sobbed very piteously, poor thing; till at last, on my asking her how it was that she was so anxious about Mrs. Vanderstein, she managed to regain control of herself, and said in a doleful tone: ‘I’m only a poor girl, sir, and the lady owes us money. If she is lost it means a great deal to me.’ I own I was disappointed, having thought her distress prompted by affection rather than mercenary considerations; but people are all alike in this world; self-interest, Mr. Gimblet, that’s the only motive that rules men’s actions nowadays. However, I did my best to comfort her, and told her that whatever happened Mrs. Vanderstein’s bills would not go unpaid. I can’t say I was very successful in my efforts to reassure her and she went off in the end looking dreadfully woe-begone. ’Pon my word, I never saw such a miserable, frightened-looking little creature! I didn’t like to let her go without trying to help her in some way, but I hardly knew what to do, for she didn’t look the sort one could offer money to,” concluded Sir Gregory, who had the kindest heart in the world.