‘You must be mad!’
‘Well, as I was saying, the days will go by, you will have ample opportunity of studying my personality, and it is quite possible that in due season the love of an honest heart may impress you as worth having. I may add that I have loved you since the moment when I saw you sheltering from the rain under that awning in Dover Street, and I recall saying as much to Comrade Walderwick when he was chatting with me some short time later on the subject of his umbrella. I do not press you for an answer now . . .’
‘I should hope not!’
‘I merely say “Think it over.” It is nothing to cause you mental distress. Other men love you. Freddie Threepwood loves you. Just add me to the list. That is all I ask. Muse on me from time to time. Reflect that I may be an acquired taste. You probably did not like olives the first time you tasted them. Now you probably do. Give me the same chance you would an olive. Consider, also, how little you actually have against me. What, indeed, does it amount to, when you come to examine it narrowly? All you have against me is the fact that I am not Ralston McTodd. Think how comparatively few people are Ralston McTodd. Let your meditations proceed along these lines and . . .’
He broke off, for at this moment the individual who had come out of the front door a short while back loomed beside them, and the glint of starlight on glass revealed him as the Efficient Baxter.
‘Everybody is waiting, Mr McTodd,’ said the Efficient Baxter. He spoke the name, as always, with a certain sardonic emphasis.
‘Of course,’ said Psmith affably, ‘of course. I was forgetting. I will get to work at once. You are quite sure you do not wish to hear a scuttleful of modern poetry, Miss Halliday?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘And yet even now, so our genial friend here informs us, a bevy of youth and beauty is crowding the drawing-room, agog for the treat. Well, well! It is these strange clashings of personal taste which constitute what we call Life. I think I will write a poem about it some day. Come, Comrade Baxter, let us be up and doing. I must not disappoint my public.’
For some moments after the two had left her – Baxter silent and chilly, Psmith, all debonair chumminess, kneading the other’s arm and pointing out as they went objects of interest by the wayside – Eve remained on the terrace wall, thinking. She was laughing now, but behind her amusement there was another feeling, and one that perplexed her. A good many men had proposed to her in the course of her career, but none of them had ever left her with this odd feeling of exhilaration. Psmith was different from any other man who had come her way, and difference was a quality which Eve esteemed. . . .
She had just reached the conclusion that life for whatever girl might eventually decide to risk it in Psmith’s company would never be dull, when strange doings in her immediate neighbourhood roused her from her meditations.
The thing happened as she rose from her seat on the wall and started to cross the terrace on her way to the front door. She had stopped for an instant beneath the huge open window of the drawing-room to listen to what was going on inside. Faintly, with something of the quality of a far-off phonograph, the sound of Psmith reading came to her; and even at this distance there was a composed blandness about his voice which brought a smile to her lips.
And then, with a startling abruptness, the lighted window was dark. And she was aware that all the lighted windows on that side of the castle had suddenly become dark. The lamp that shone over the great door ceased to shine. And above the hubbub of voices in the drawing-room she heard Psmith’s patient drawl.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I think the lights have gone out.’
The night air was rent by a single piercing scream. Something flashed like a shooting star and fell at her feet; and, stooping, Eve found in her hands Lady Constance Keeble’s diamond necklace.
§ 5
To be prepared is everything in this life. Ever since her talk with Mr Joseph Keeble in the High Street of Market Blandings that afternoon, Eve’s mind had been flitting nimbly from one scheme to another, all designed to end in this very act of seizing the necklace in her hands and each rendered impracticable by some annoying flaw And now that Fate in its impulsive way had achieved for her what she had begun to feel she could never accomplish for herself, she wasted no time in bewildered inaction. The miracle found her ready for it.
For an instant she debated with herself the chances of a dash through the darkened hall up the stairs to her room. But the lights might go on again, and she might meet someone. Memories of sensational novels read in the past told her that on occasions such as this people were detained and searched. . . .
Suddenly, as she stood there, she found the way. Close beside her, lying on its side, was the flower-pot which Psmith had overturned as he came to join her on the terrace wall. It might have defects as a cache, but at the moment she could perceive none. Most flower-pots are alike, but this was a particularly easily-remembered flower-pot: for in its journeying from the potting shed to the terrace it had acquired on its side a splash of white paint. She would be able to distinguish it from its fellows when, late that night, she crept out to retrieve the spoil. And surely nobody would ever think of suspecting . . .
She plunged her fingers into the soft mould, and straightened herself, breathing quickly. It was not an ideal piece of work, but it would serve.
She rubbed her fingers on the turf, put the flower-pot back in the row with the others, and then, like a flying white phantom, darted across the terrace and into the house. And so with beating heart, groping her way, to the bathroom to wash her hands.
The twenty-thousand-pound flower-pot looked placidly up at the winking stars.
§ 6
It was perhaps two minutes later that Mr Cootes, sprinting lustily, rounded the corner of the house and burst on to the terrace. Late as usual.
11 ALMOST ENTIRELY ABOUT FLOWER-POTS
§ 1
THE Efficient Baxter prowled feverishly up and down the yielding carpet of the big drawing-room. His eyes gleamed behind their spectacles, his dome-like brow was corrugated. Except for himself, the room was empty. As far as the scene of the disaster was concerned, the tumult and the shouting had died. It was going on vigorously in practically every other part of the house, but in the drawing-room there was stillness, if not peace.
Baxter paused, came to a decision, went to the wall and pressed the bell.
‘Thomas,’ he said when that footman presented himself a few moments later.
‘Sir?’
‘Send Susan to me.’
‘Susan, sir?’
‘Yes, Susan,’ snapped the Efficient One, who had always a short way with the domestic staff. ‘Susan, Susan, Susan. . . . The new parlourmaid.’
‘Oh, yes, sir. Very good, sir.’
Thomas withdrew, outwardly all grave respectfulness, inwardly piqued, as was his wont, at the airy manner in which the secretary flung his orders about at the castle. The domestic staff at Blandings lived in a perpetual state of smouldering discontent under Baxter’s rule.
‘Susan,’ said Thomas when he arrived in the lower regions, ‘you’re to go up to the drawing-room. Nosey Parker wants you.’
The pleasant-faced young woman whom he addressed laid down her knitting.
‘Who?’ she asked.
‘Mister Blooming Baxter. When you’ve been here a little longer you’ll know that he’s the feller that owns the place. How he got it I don’t know. Found it,’ said Thomas satirically, ‘in his Christmas stocking, I expect. Anyhow, you’re to go up.’
Thomas’s fellow-footman, Stokes, a serious-looking man with a bald forehead, shook that forehead solemnly.
‘Something’s the matter,’ he asserted. ‘You can’t tell me that wasn’t a scream we heard when them lights was out. Or,’ he added weightily, for he was a man who looked at every side of a question, ‘a shriek. It was a shriek or scream. I said so at the time. “There,” I said, “listen!” I said. “That’s somebody screaming,” I said. “Or shrieking.” Somethi
ng’s up.’
‘Well, Baxter hasn’t been murdered, worse luck,’ said Thomas. ‘He’s up there screaming or shrieking for Susan. “Send Susan to me!”’ proceeded Thomas, giving an always popular imitation. ‘“Susan, Susan, Susan.” So you’d best go, my girl, and see what he wants.’
‘Very well.’
‘And, Susan,’ said Thomas, a tender note creeping into his voice, for already, brief as had been her sojourn at Blandings, he had found the new parlourmaid making a deep impression on him, ‘if it’s a row of any kind . . .’
‘Or description,’ interjected Stokes.
‘Or description,’ continued Thomas, accepting the word, ‘if ’e’s ’arsh with you for some reason or other, you come right back to me and sob out your troubles on my chest, see? Lay your little ‘ead on my shoulder and tell me all about it.’
The new parlourmaid, primly declining to reply to this alluring invitation, started on her journey upstairs; and Thomas, with a not unmanly sigh, resumed his interrupted game of halfpenny nap with colleague Stokes.
∗∗∗∗∗
The Efficient Baxter had gone to the open window and was gazing out into the night when Susan entered the drawing-room.
‘You wished to see me, Mr Baxter?’
The secretary spun round. So softly had she opened the door, and so noiselessly had she moved when inside the room, that it was not until she spoke that he had become aware of her arrival. It was a characteristic of this girl Susan that she was always apt to be among those present some time before the latter became cognisant of the fact.
‘Oh, good evening, Miss Simmons. You came in very quietly.’
‘Habit,’ said the parlourmaid.
‘You gave me quite a start.’
‘I’m sorry. What was it,’ she asked, dismissing in a positively unfeeling manner the subject of her companion’s jarred nerves, ‘that you wished to see me about?’
‘Shut that door.’
‘I have. I always shut doors.’
‘Please sit down.’
‘No, thank you, Mr Baxter. It might look odd if anyone should come in.’
‘Of course. You think of everything.’
‘I always do.’
Baxter stood for a moment, frowning.
‘Miss Simmons,’ he said, ‘when I thought it expedient to instal a private detective in this house, I insisted on Wragge’s sending you. We had worked together before . . .’
‘Sixteenth of December, 1918, to January twelve, 1919, when you were secretary to Mr Horace Jevons, the American millionaire,’ said Miss Simmons as promptly as if he had touched a spring. It was her hobby to remember dates with precision.
‘Exactly. I insisted upon your being sent because I knew from experience that you were reliable. At that time I looked on your presence here merely as a precautionary measure. Now, I am sorry to say . . .’
‘Did someone steal Lady Constance’s necklace to-night?’
‘Yes!’
‘When the lights went out just now?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, why couldn’t you say so at once? Good gracious, man, you don’t have to break the thing gently to me.’
The Efficient Baxter, though he strongly objected to being addressed as ‘man’, decided to overlook the solecism.
‘The lights suddenly went out,’ he said. ‘There was a certain amount of laughter and confusion. Then a piercing shriek . . .’
‘I heard it.’
‘And immediately after Lady Constance’s voice crying that her jewels had been snatched from her neck.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Still greater confusion, which lasted until one of the maids arrived with a candle. Eventually the lights went on again, but of the necklace there was no sign whatever.’
‘Well? Were you expecting the thief to wear it as a watch-chain or hang it from his teeth?’
Baxter was finding his companion’s manner more trying every minute, but he preserved his calm.
‘Naturally the doors were barred and a complete search instituted. And extremely embarrassing it was. With the single exception of the scoundrel who has been palming himself off as McTodd, all those present were well-known members of Society.’
‘Well-known members of Society might not object to getting hold of a twenty-thousand-pound necklace. But still, with the McTodd fellow there, you oughtn’t to have had far to look. What had he to say about it?’
‘He was among the first to empty his pockets.’
‘Well, then, he must have hidden the thing somewhere.’
‘Not in this room. I have searched assiduously.’
‘H’m.’
There was a silence.
‘It is baffling,’ said Baxter, ‘baffling.’
‘It is nothing of the kind,’ replied Miss Simmons tartly. ‘This wasn’t a one-man job. How could it have been? I should be inclined to call it a three-man job. One to switch off the lights, one to snatch the necklace, and one to – was that window open all the time? I thought so – and one to pick up the necklace when the second fellow threw it out on to the terrace.’
‘Terrace!’
The word shot from Baxter’s lips with explosive force. Miss Simmons looked at him curiously.
‘Thought of something?’
‘Miss Simmons,’ said the Efficient One impressively, ‘everybody was assembled in here waiting for the reading to begin, but the pseudo-McTodd was nowhere to be found. I discovered him eventually on the terrace in close talk with the Halliday girl.’
‘His partner,’ said Miss Simmons, nodding. ‘We thought so all along. And let me add my little bit. There’s a fellow down in the servants’ hall that calls himself a valet, and I’ll bet he didn’t know what a valet was till he came here. I thought he was a crook the moment I set eyes on him. I can tell ’em in the dark. Now, do you know whose valet he is? This McTodd fellow’s!’
Baxter bounded to and fro like a caged tiger.
‘And with my own ears,’ he cried excitedly, ‘I heard the Halliday girl refuse to come to the drawing-room to listen to the reading. She was out on the terrace throughout the whole affair. Miss Simmons, we must act! We must act!’
‘Yes, but not like idiots,’ replied the detective frostily.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you can’t charge out, as you looked as if you wanted to just then, and denounce these crooks where they sit. We’ve got to go carefully.’
‘But meanwhile they will smuggle the necklace away!’
‘They won’t smuggle any necklace away, not while I’m around. Suspicion’s no good. We’ve made out a nice little case against the three of them, but it’s no use unless we catch them with the goods. The first thing we have to do is to find out where they’ve hidden the stuff. And that’ll take patience. I’ll start by searching that girl’s room. Then I’ll search the valet fellow’s room. And if the stuff isn’t there it’ll mean they’ve hidden it out in the open somewhere.’
‘But this McTodd fellow. This fellow who poses as McTodd. He may have it all the while.’
‘No. I’ll search his room, too, but the stuff won’t be there. He’s the fellow who’s going to get it in the end, because he’s got that place out in the woods to hide it in. But they wouldn’t have had time to slip it to him yet. That necklace is somewhere right here. And if,’ said Miss Simmons with grim facetiousness, ‘they can hide it from me, they may keep it as a birthday present.’
§ 2
How wonderful, if we pause to examine it, is Nature’s inexorable law of compensation. Instead of wasting time in envy of our mental superiors, we would do well to reflect that these gifts of theirs which excite our wistful jealousy are ever attended by corresponding penalties. To take an example that lies to hand, it was the very fact that he possessed a brain like a buzzsaw that rendered the Efficent Baxter a bad sleeper. Just as he would be dropping off, bing! would go that brain of his, melting the mists of sleep like snow in a furnace.
This was so even when life was running calmly for him and without excitement. To-night, his mind, bearing the load it did, firmly declined even to consider the question of slumber. The hour of two, chiming from the clock over the stables, found him as wide awake as ever he was at high noon.
Lying in bed in the darkness, he reviewed the situation as far as he had the data. Shortly before he retired, Miss Simmons had made her report about the bedrooms. Though subjected to the severest scrutiny, neither Psmith’s boudoir nor Cootes’s attic nor Eve’s little nook on the third floor had yielded up treasure of any description. And this, Miss Simmons held, confirmed her original view that the necklace must be lying concealed in what might almost be called a public spot – on some window-ledge, maybe, or somewhere in the hall. . . .
Baxter lay considering this theory. It did appear to be the only tenable one; but it offended him by giving the search a frivolous suggestion of being some sort of round game like Hunt the Slipper or Find the Thimble. As a child he had held austerely aloof from these silly pastimes, and he resented being compelled to play them now. Still . . .
He sat up, thinking. He had heard a noise.
∗∗∗∗∗
The attitude of the majority of people towards noises in the night is one of cautious non-interference. But Rupert Baxter was made of sterner stuff. The sound had seemed to come from downstairs somewhere – perhaps from that very hall where, according to Miss Simmons, the stolen necklace might even now be lying hid. Whatever it was, it must certainly not be ignored. He reached for the spectacles which lay ever ready to his hand on the table beside him: then climbed out of bed, and, having put on a pair of slippers and opened the door, crept forth into the darkness. As far as he could ascertain by holding his breath and straining his ears, all was still from cellar to roof; but nevertheless he was not satisfied. He continued to listen. His room was on the second floor, one of a series that ran along a balcony overlooking the hall; and he stood, leaning over the balcony rail, a silent statue of Vigilance.