Arthur Somers Roche

“ The light was bad, the snow from the storm of two days ago having become encrusted upon the window. And as I read by artificial light only when I have to—writing fiction, needless to state, entails sufficient strain upon the eyes without one caring to endure that which is unnecessary—I crossed the room and threw open one of the two large windows that opened upon a balcony that ran along the front of the hotel on the second floor, and half-way around the sides, where it ended, as I had seen this morning, at French windows at either end of the corridor that bisected the second floor. ”

“ For I know that no man, be he ever so misunderstood, be he ever so much in love, would dare put his arms about the pliant figure of a girl who confronted him with such a blaze of anger in her eyes as Miss Gilman held in hers. ”

“ For Minot thought me to be a Healy operative, and that he thought the Healy agency had been retained by some one, and was not working on its own initiative, was evident from his remarks. And from Ravenell’s, too. Of course, private detective agencies never do work on their own initiative: they are always hired: but Minot had suggested that “my people” might pay better than his.
It was clear, therefore, that the major and his niece were believed to be in possession of something worth a fortune, but that that possession was not criminal. ”

“ I can imagine his scorn of me for letting myself continue to be misunderstood, for continuing to play such an ignoble rôle. But if no man may be a hero to his valet, how much less possible is it for an author to be a hero to one of his own characters. ”

“ Before the Greenhams or the Healey agency accepted a case like this, they would have to be shown a mighty clear title to the jewels. And two clear titles could hardly exist. This was not a case, then, where detectives were hired to regain possession of stolen goods without police aid, in order that scandal might not cloud some fair reputation.
But, if criminality were not involved, why was Minot so scornful of my threat of the police? Only guilty people fear to invoke the aid of the law. ”

“ It must be small, to be capable of being carried in the girl’s muff. Was it jewelry? It didn’t seem possible that the major or the girl would have brought hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry down to a country hotel where burglary might prove so feasible.
Moreover, it was not possible that well-known detective agencies would take any part in the forcible abstraction of jewels. One agency, to avert possible scandal, might do so, but both Ravenell and Minot had admitted the right, so to speak, of another agency to be employed, by different employers. ”

“ If others, then, could hire detectives to get whatever the major and his niece possessed, the right of the Greenhams’ employers to that thing didn’t seem very well defined. If the major had stolen something and Minot believed that I was a Healy man, and if Minot’s employers really owned the something, why didn’t Minot, fearful lest I should obtain it, have the major arrested? ”

“ I trust that I am chivalrous enough to consider that the privilege of aiding a lady is a reward in itself, but still there is such a thing as noblesse oblige and its rules are applicable to either sex. ”

“ One opens the window by pulling upon the knob in the window-sash until one has overcome the spring’s resistance and the rod comes free of the hole. Then one slides the window up until the desired height is reached, and then releases the knob, which causes the spring to loosen the rod, which slips into the hole and secures the window. ”

“ I says to her:
“‘Mentionin’ nobody, Miss Gilman, there’s a coupla stowaways aboard this craft what I don’t like the riggin’ of. If they crosses your bows fly a signal from the main-top and I’ll sink ’em!’
“She smiled kinda frightened-like and told me that nobody had annoyed her.
“‘’Sall right,’ said I, ‘but if they do, just tell Captain Noah Perkins, ma’am.’”
He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose heavily to his feet.
“They’re guests in my hotel,” he said, “and while they behaves themselves everything is O. K. But the second they mutinies I stretch ’em with a belayin’-pin. ”

“ Doubtless I had not fastened the catch firmly before climbing through and my work upon the glass had tended to force it downward. Anyway, whether due to the wearing away of the hole in which the little rod should have been fastened, or to my own carelessness, I was locked out upon the balcony. For I soon found that the window could not be opened from outside. ”