Hulbert Footner

“ Matters stood thus at the end of the week whose beginning had witnessed the Newport robbery. On Friday morning Irma Hamerton came to town again. I witnessed her arrival in the lobby of the Rotterdam, which you will remember was her hotel before it had been mine. Every one sat up and stared. She was as lovely as only herself, but I thought, looked harassed. Mount was attending her like a shadow, smoother, more elegant and more complacent than ever.
With a fanciful, sentimental feeling I had engaged rooms on the same floor of the hotel as Irma's. Her suite was rented by the year. ”

“ Up went my hands.
"Foxy, Jim, frisk him!" said Lorina.
They found the gun, and flung it on the desk. Lorina dropped it in the middle drawer. There was nothing else incriminating upon me.
"Down on the floor with him!" cried somebody.
"Wait!" said Lorina. "We'll see what we can find out first."
I caught at the little straw of hope that showed. "Send them out and I'll talk freely," I muttered. "I've no mind to be shot when I'm not looking."
Over-confidence betrayed her. With a gun in her hand she felt herself more than a match for any unarmed man. ”

“ Mr. Dunsany was a simple, unassuming man, direct and outspoken. In short, a man's man. I was strongly attracted to him, and I may say without vanity that he seemed to like me. From the first he trusted me more than I had any right to expect.
At this time he was a man of about forty-five years old, somewhat bald, and beginning to be corpulent, but with a humorous, eager, youthful glance. He glanced up from my card with a whimsical smile.
"Confidential investigator? More trouble, I suppose?"
"I'm afraid so," I said. "Have you an employee named Freer, an expert on pearls." ”

“ But there was Irma trying to smile at me. She was wearing a white negligée affair that made her look like a fragile lily. She walked with a firm step, but her face shocked me. It looked dead. The eyes open, were infinitely more ghastly than when I had laid her down with them closed. Mrs. Bleecker and the maid followed, buzzing around her. She seemed to have reached the limits of her patience with them.
"Let me be!" she said as sharply as I ever heard her speak. "I am perfectly well able to walk and to speak. Please go back to the bedroom. I have business to discuss with Mr. Enderby." ”

“ He shrugged. "Who wants to give an actor a regular job?"
We had scrambled eggs and sausages. I stayed for a couple of hours talking about the abstract questions that young men loved to discuss. When I left he was as much of an enigma to me as when I arrived. He was willing to talk about anything under the sun—except himself. Without appearing to, he foiled all my attempts to draw him out.
Hard upon this growing friendship it was a shock to learn from Sadie as a result of her work during the days, that it was Roland Quarles who had deposited forty thousand dollars in his bank. ”

“ Leaving Miss Hamerton I walked twice around Bryant Square to put my thoughts in order. I wished to believe in Roland's innocence almost as ardently as she did, but I had to force myself to keep an open mind. A fixed idea one way or the other is fatal to any investigator. So I argued against him for a while to strike a balance. I told myself there was a type of man who would stop at absolutely nothing to secure the woman he desired. ”

“ And he did; all about Lorina and Foxy and Jumbo as he knew them. They didn't trust him far. He knew nothing of their actual operations, but his honest young heart told him they were crooks. Lorina held him under a spell of terror. He had not up to this time been able to conceive of the idea of escaping her. There are those who would blame the boy, I have no doubt, but I am not one of them. I have seen too often that a mind which may afterwards become strong and self-reliant is at Ralph's age fatally subservient to older minds. ”

“ Instantly I sprang up the outside of the stairway, vaulted over the banisters and stood half way up the stairs, cutting her off, I hoped, from additional ammunition.
She stood at the foot of the stairs gun in hand, glaring up at me. I saw a large, handsome woman with a rope of coarse blonde hair as thick as my wrist hanging down her back and eyes like lambent blue flames. By her snarl I saw that I had the advantage for the moment, but her eyes never quailed. To give her her due she was as bold as a lion. I know of few other women of her age who would look handsome under the circumstances. ”

“ I made copies of the letters and the safe combination, and told Blondy to go ahead and do exactly as he had been told. I suspected from Lorina's care that the little safe would make interesting disclosures. However, I could get into it some other time. I was inclined to believe her story about the safety deposit box. Like all first-class liars she wove truth into her lies when she could. I was hoping, while scarcely daring to hope, that in a matter of such vital importance she would not dare trust any one short of the "boss" himself. ”

“ I asked.
"She knows that it couldn't have been written to Roland Quarles because he has no idea of leaving the company."
"Oh, hasn't he!" I thought to myself. How strangely loving women reason. Aloud I said: "Now for the thing that a mere man would have considered evidence."
"Don't try to be sarcastic," said Sadie. "It doesn't suit you."
"Who's forgetting that I'm the boss now?" I said severely.
She made a face at me and went on: "It seems that Miss Hamerton and Roland Quarles had a bet on about the pearls." ”

“ The more his resolution weakened, the louder he inveighed against life. But he had a sense of humour. He suddenly became conscious of the absurdity of his attitude, and we laughed together. From that moment he was safe, and he was mine. There is nothing to cement a friendship like laughter.
Afterwards I got a room in an obscure hotel. Roland sat down on the edge of the bed, and proceeded to give me his version of the matters that perplexed me so. In the middle of a sentence he fell over and slept like a dead man. I stole out and telegraphed Sadie at Amityville that I had him safe and sound. ”

“ No matter how clear one's conscience may be, one is taken at a disadvantage discovered in the posture of a burglar.
For a while we looked at each other in silence. I cautiously reassured myself that my gun was safe in my pocket. I saw that Jumbo was making a tremendous effort to hold himself in, and I realised that he had more to fear from a showdown than I had. I began to breathe more easily. I had taken off my hat for coolness, and the wig was sewn inside the band. ”

“ I suppose if either of my worthy friends ever suspected that I was not a "good fellow," my life would not be worth a jack-straw. The same menace lurks behind Jumbo's swimming pig-eyes, and Foxy's dull ones. But I am enjoying the spice of danger. The only thing that irks me are the tiresome hours at my work bench in Dunsany's. I'll be glad when the game becomes livelier. ”

“ I doubt if there was ever a time when I was not harboring some thief or another. They never steal from me, you understand. They are the pickets, the outposts, who watch where the jewels go, and report to Headquarters. But Freer! He had been with me ten years. He had an instinct for pearls!"
"Headquarters?" I said eagerly. "Then you agree with me that there is an organised gang at work?"
"That's no secret," he said. "Every jeweller knows that there is a kind of corporation of jewel thieves. It is probably ten years old, and better organised and administered than our own association." ”

“ I am ashamed to make my living by exhibiting a pretence of love!"
"It was your father's profession and your mother's," she murmured.
"They were the real thing," he said gloomily. "They had a genuine call. They loved their work. I hark back to an earlier strain, I guess. I have no feeling for art to make it worth while. I hate the tinsel and show and make-believe. I want to lead a real life with you——!"
No man has any right to hear another man bare his heart like this. I went to the open window and leaned out. I had forgotten Roland's supposed guilt. ”

“ Fortunately for humans, old habits of work reassert themselves automatically. My brain screwed itself down upon the hardest problem of my career. There was not the slightest use in flying up to the flat on One Hundredth street. There would be no one there. Neither could I call on the police for aid without precipitating the catastrophe. If Sadie was to be saved it must be by unaided wits.
I thought of Mr. Dunsany with hope and gratitude. In him I had a line on the gang they did not as yet suspect. ”

“ I believed Milbourne had stolen the pearls, and I worked hard to justify my belief, but without being able to lay anything bare against him.
Every night he talked me to a standstill. He seemed to be a man totally devoid of individuality, temperament, a mere windbag. But I told myself that dullness is the favourite and most effective disguise of a sharper. His talk was a little too dull to be natural, and once in a while I received an impression that he was anything but dull.
One night I said to him as Roland had said to me: "You don't seem like an actor. ”

“ Suddenly putting down her head she ran like a deer for the rear hall, the little dog whimpering in terror at her heels.
The door at the head of the basement stairs banged open and she plunged down, calling on her servant. I had to make a quick decision. The way was presumably open to Sadie, but there were plenty of knives in the kitchen and if she liberated the man I would have to fight my way out of the house against the two of them. I ran after her. A rough house in the basement followed, doors slamming, chairs overturned, and the ceaseless yelping of the dog. ”

“ It was a very distinguished-looking car of a foreign make with a dark green body of the style the French call coupé de ville. It seemed a little odd that any one should choose to ride in a closed car in such hot weather. An irreproachable chauffeur and footman waited near.
We turned into Suffolk street, and hastened on out of town out to Ringstead plains. It was all just as Blondy had given it to me over the phone. There was the last house at the edge of the plain, and half a mile ahead stood the lonely locust tree beside the road. ”

“ As a matter of fact, I suppose, really passionate people are always like this, they couldn't live with themselves else, but we are blind to it. Roland had the spirit of a fanatic. He was always torturing himself one way or another. You couldn't help being fond of him he was so noble—and so silly.
Now, if you please, he had sold everything he possessed, and with the proceeds had pensioned off his old servant with an annuity. The mysterious legacy which had counted so against him, he had turned over to me with instructions to use it in bringing the thieves of Irma's pearls to justice. ”

“ There has never been a meeting of our association but what I have urged with all my eloquence that we get together and break up the thief trust. They will not support me. Everybody suspects that he has spies in his establishment, perhaps like Freer in a responsible position. The crooks seem to have us where they want us. They have never robbed us, you see. There is a sort of unwritten agreement, you leave us alone and we'll leave you. The other men in the association say: 'If our customers are careless with their jewels, we are not responsible.' But I say we are! ”

“ The second night I was there, Milbourne braced me in the parlour. Looking for a new listener, I guess. He started in to tell me what a hit he made with the Irma Hamerton production. If this man is a crook he's the smoothest article I ever ran up against. Because he isn't smooth at all. He talks all the time about himself as simple as a child, but at that he don't tell you much. He's got a dull eye which don't seem to take in nothing, and he talks in a slow, monotonous way and says a thing over and over until you're doped. ”

“ Jumbo became panicky. His suggestion was for the gang to scatter and lie low for the time-being.
Lorina scorned him. She proceeded to point out to us all just where you stood. She appeared to know as well as you do. Her insight is uncanny. You have no case, she said, except possibly against Foxy. You are too conceited to be satisfied with one. You will not strike until you have a chance of landing the whole gang.
"But how about the kidnapping?" asked Jumbo.
"The police would have been here before this if Enderby wanted to proceed on that," she said. ”