“They’ve been looked after,” said Jimson. “You’ll see tomorrow that nothing has suffered in the department.”
“Jimson was working day and night,” said Mrs. Laud.
“That’s a shock,” murmured Joss. “What else happened?”
“Trant’s Homestead was burned to the ground,” said Lilias.
“We know that,” replied David Croissant. “We called there on the way here.”
“What happened to the Trants?” asked Joss. “They escaped, I hope.”
“By great good fortune, yes. And they’ve set up a sort of cookhouse in the town. It’s quite useful.”
“It must have been a terrible blow to them.”
“It was. James was quite broken, but Ethel rallied him, and they got this idea and now they’re doing fairly well. It’s useful for those who are working in the offices. They can slip out and get a meal—and a lot of people buy cooked food to take away.”
“Some good has come out of it then,” said Joss.
“I think you will find that some good has come of Tom Paling’s accident,” said Mrs. Laud. “I’ve heard that the department has never been run so well as it has since Jimson took over.”
“We’ll see,” replied Joss.
“I thought,” went on Mrs. Laud, “that you would want the Bannocks to come up to dine. You’ll see Ezra tomorrow in the town, of course, but perhaps you would like me to ask them for dinner tomorrow.”
“Isa will want to see what I’ve brought with me,” said David.
“Yes, I think it’s a good idea,” Joss said. “There’ll be a lot of detail to discuss.” He turned to me: “Ezra Bannock is our manager-in-chief. He lives not far from here—about five miles actually, but that’s close out here. They have a homestead…he and his wife Isabel—Isa.”
“So it will be for tomorrow then,” said Mrs. Laud.
“That will do very well,” Joss told her.
“Oh,” cried Lilias, “we haven’t told Mr. Madden about Desmond Dereham.”
“What?”
Everyone seemed to be leaning forward in their seats…I with the rest.
“It came from the Trants,” said Mrs. Laud.
“Yes,” went on Jimson, “someone came to stay there just before the place was burned down. He had recently arrived from America and he said he had been with Desmond Dereham out there and that Desmond had died. They’d become friends and gone into business together, which was buying and selling precious stones, mainly opals. Desmond was ill for some time, he was dying of some disease of the lungs and he told this man an extraordinary story about the Green Flash.”
“What story?” demanded Joss.
“He swore he’d never stolen it. He said he had been tempted to and had been caught in the act of trying to take it by Ben himself. Ben had forced him either to face exposure or leave immediately, leaving no trace of his whereabouts. If he didn’t, Ben had said, he’d have him arrested for theft because he’d caught him red-handed. Ben told him that there’d be no future for him in Australia, he’d see to that. So he went to America.”
“And of course,” said Joss, “this story is being repeated all over the town.”
“People are talking of nothing else,” agreed Jimson. “Apparently Desmond Dereham had said he had had nothing but bad luck since the night he had tried to steal the opal. He said that for a few minutes he had actually owned it because he held it in his hand, and if Ben hadn’t come in and caught him, the stone would have been his…and that was why he had been unlucky ever since.”
“In that case,” said David, “where is the Green Flash?”
“According to Desmond Dereham it never left Ben’s possession,” said Jimson, “so it’s either in England or here…” He was looking at Joss. “Unless you know…”
“I haven’t seen the Green Flash since the night it was supposed to have been stolen,” said Joss. “I hope people are not making too much of this story about opals being unlucky. It’s bad for business. Stop it when you can.”
“The Green Flash has had rather a history,” said David Croissant.
“Well, don’t let’s dwell on it,” retorted Joss.
“I wonder if that fellow was telling the truth,” went on David. “If so it’ll be a matter of finding where Ben has hidden the Green Flash.”
“Would you like a little more of this apple pie, Mr. Madden?” asked Mrs. Laud. “I made it especially, knowing it was one of your favorites.”
Joss began to talk about our journey out from England. It was clear that he was dismissing the subject of the Green Flash.
Coffee was served in a small parlor close to the dining room.
“Tomorrow,” said Joss to me, “Mrs. Laud will show you round Peacocks while I go into the town to see what’s been happening during my absence. Later on I’ll take you in and explain a few things to you.”
“That will be very interesting,” I said.
***
The bedroom looked very different by candlelight. He had called it the bridal chamber and the four-poster bed was overpowering. Of course it had never been a bridal chamber. The house had been built by Ben, and he had never married.
I sat down at the dressing table and took the pins out of my hair, letting it fall about my shoulders. Images passed in and out of my mind—scraps of conversation came back to me. The Lauds, so meek and unassuming, interested me. There was something I didn’t understand about them…secretive, was it? I thought of Lilias, who seemed to watch me so intently. Was she emotionally involved with Joss? Jimson was mild enough, but when they had talked about how he was conducting the department since Tom Paling’s accident, had I detected something…I wasn’t sure what.
It was clear that I myself was a little overwrought emotionally. It had been such a strange day. Too much had happened and my imagination was running amok.
I took off my dress and put on a dressing gown—part of the trousseau which my grandmother had insisted that I have. It was made of red velvet and was, I thought, becoming.
I sat down at the mirror and started to brush my hair. My reflection looked back at me—wide-eyed, a little apprehensive, watchful, waiting. I could see the room reflected behind me…the posts of the bed, the curtained window, the shadowy furniture, and I thought of my room at the Dower House where my naughty ancestress Margaret Clavering looking down at me was supposed to provide a lesson. I thought how safe it was. Safe! That was the word which occurred to me.
Then suddenly I was so startled that I caught my breath and listened. It was a footstep in the corridor. Someone was out there stealthily coming towards my room. Whoever it was had paused outside my door.
I half rose, and as I did so there was a quiet knock.
“Who’s there?” I cried.
The door was opened, and Joss stood there holding a candle in a silver candlestick.
“What do you want?” I cried in alarm.
“To talk to you about the Flash. I think we ought to find it.”
“Now?”
“The household is asleep. I was going to wait until Croissant had gone, but I’ve changed my mind. I can’t wait to see it. Can you?”
“No,” I answered.
“Then there’s no time like the present. We’ll go down now and see it.”
“And when we’ve found it?”
“We’ll leave it where Ben put it until we decide what to do about it. Come on.”
I wrapped my dressing gown more closely round me and he led the way to the drawing room. He locked the door and lighted more candles. Then he went to “The Pride of the Peacock,” took it down, and laid it face down on a table.
“The spring Ben talked of would be somewhere here,” he said. “Not easy to find, of course. That would have defeated the object if it had been. Hold the candle higher.”
I obeyed. Some minute
s passed before he cried: “I have it. The back comes right off.”
He took it off and there in the right hand corner of the picture was the cavity large enough to hold a big opal. Eagerly he explored the cavity.
“Jessica,” he whispered with a note of excitement in his voice, “you’re going to see the most magnificent thing you ever saw in your life…” He stopped and stared at me. “It can’t be…There’s nothing here. Look. Feel it.”
I put my fingers into the cavity. It was empty.
“Someone has been here before us,” he said briefly.
It was then, as we stood there looking at each other that I was sure I saw a shadow pass the window. I turned sharply but there was no one there.
“What’s wrong?” asked Joss quickly.
“I thought there was someone at the window.”
He took the candle from me and looked out. Then he said: “Wait a minute.” He unlocked the door and hurried through the hall and out of the house. I saw him pass the window. I looked furtively over my shoulder, expecting, I did not know what.
In a short time he was back.
“There’s no one about. You must have imagined it.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” I admitted. “But I was almost sure…”
“Who could have known…?” he murmured. Then he became brisk. “The point is what are we going to do? It looks as if someone discovered the hiding place before we did. We’ve got to find out who, and where the opal is. There’s nothing to be done now but put the picture back and go to bed. I’ll decide tomorrow how we’ll tackle this.”
“It must have been someone who’s in the house or who came to it…someone who knows the house…”
“Ben was full of tricks. I wonder if he didn’t leave it in the picture after all.”
“But why should he tell us that he had?”
“I don’t know. It’s a mystery to me. The most likely solution is that it’s been stolen. But there’s nothing to be done tonight.”
He put the back of the picture in place and hung it on the wall. The proud peacock again faced the room as before looking as though he had nothing in his thoughts but his own glory.
“I’ll conduct you to your room,” said Joss.
I followed him up the stairs and he left me at my door.
Understandably I passed a restless night.
***
When I arose next morning, Joss had already gone into Fancy Town accompanied by Jimson Laud and David Croissant. I felt bewildered by all that had happened on the previous day culminating with the scene in the drawing room where we had made the discovery that the opal was missing.
Mrs. Laud was waiting for me when I went down.
“Mr. Henniker liked things done as they are in England,” she said, “so we serve an English breakfast. There are bacon, eggs, and kidneys. Would you like to help yourself from the sideboard?”
I did so.
“I trust you slept well.”
“Oh yes, thanks, as well as one can in a strange place.”
“Mr. Madden was very anxious that I should show you everything, and if there is anything you want to change please say so. I have been running this household for twenty-seven years. Mr. Henniker was very kind to us. My daughter Lilias helps me in the house. It’s a large place to run, and so many people come here. Merchants and such people when they come on business invariably stay here, though they are sometimes at the Bannock homestead. Managers from the Company dine here often when there is special business to discuss. Then there are certain gatherings…parties you’d call them. Mr. Henniker was all for getting people together. The Bannocks are here a great deal.”
“I believe I am meeting them tonight.”
“Oh yes.” Her lips tightened almost imperceptibly. I wondered whether there was something about the Bannocks she did not like.
“I understand Mr. Bannock is the manager-in-chief.”
“Yes. He’s said to be very knowledgeable about opals. They all are, of course, but some are supposed to have this special gift. His wife is quite a collector.”
“I shall look forward to meeting them. Of what age are they?”
“He would be about forty-five. She’s much younger…ten years I’d say…though not admitting to it.” Again that slight tightening of the lips. I guessed she was not as calm as she would like to imply, but she was a woman, I guessed, who was determined to keep her feelings to herself.
When I had eaten, we started on a tour of the house. I could not help feeling half amused, half sad, because it brought Ben so vividly to mind. He had tried to make an Oakland Hall of this house and had of course failed to do so. The rooms were lofty; there was the drawing room—and I couldn’t help glancing at the peacock on the wall as I went in—with the study leading from it as at Oakland, but that was really where the similarity ended. At all the windows were the essential blinds to shut out the fierce sunlight so different from that benign and often elusive English version.
Through the different rooms she took me and it was true that there were a great many of them, and finally we came to the gallery which was a replica of that at Oakland.
“Mr. Henniker was very fond of this,” Mrs. Laud told me. “He was anxious that it should be exactly like the one in his English home.”
“It is,” I said. “Oh…there’s a spinet.”
“He had that brought out from England. Someone he was fond of used to play it. She died. So he brought it here.”
I felt emotional. That was the very spinet my mother had mentioned, the one she used to play and then hide when anyone came in, so that the servants thought the gallery was haunted.
Ben had been very sentimental.
She took me to the kitchens and introduced me to some of the servants. Several of them were aborigines.
“They are quite good workers,” she told me as we came out into the gardens, “but every now and then the urge comes over them to ‘go walk about’ as they call it. Then they drop everything and go off. It makes them very unreliable. Mr. Henniker swore he wouldn’t have them back when they returned…but he often relented.”
She took me to the English garden, which was walled in the Tudor manner such as Ben had had at Oakland.
“He used to say this is like a bit of England,” said Mrs. Laud. “It was difficult, he always said, with the droughts over here, but he always liked it to look as much as possible like home. Over that trellis we grow passion vines, but he put the convolvulus there to mingle with them and make it homey, he said. You must see the orchard.”
There grew oranges, lemons, figs, and guavas with vine bananas.
“Mr. Henniker grew a lot of apple trees too, but he always said they weren’t as good as those grown at home.”
“It seems as though he had an obsession for home.”
“Oh, he was a man who could be drawn many ways at once. He wanted to live several lives all at one time and enjoy them all.”
“I think he succeeded,” I said.
“He was a wonderful man,” she replied. “It was a pity he ever saw the Green Flash.”
I looked at her sharply, and she lowered her eyes. “It brings bad luck,” she went on passionately. “Everyone knows it brings bad luck. Why do they want it? Why don’t they let it alone?”
“It seems to fascinate everyone.”
“When I heard it bad been stolen by Desmond Dereham I was glad…yes, glad. I said it’s taken its bad luck with it. Then there was Mr. Henniker’s accident. He was never right after that. Then he died. I thought that was because he had had the Green Flash and had to pay for having it…but if Mr. Henniker had it all the time that would account for it. And where is it now?”
She looked at me steadily and I shook my head.
“It could be in the house. Oh, I don’t like that I’m afraid of it. It will bring bad luck to the
house. It already has, and we don’t want any more.”
I was surprised, for though she endeavored to keep her emotions under control, she was agitated. Before this she had seemed so serene.
“You can’t believe all these stories about bad luck, Mrs. Laud,” I said. “There’s no real foundation for them. They just grow out of gossip and rumor.”
She laid a hand on my arm. “I’m afraid of that stone, Mrs. Madden. I hope to God it’s never found.”
I could see that she was distracted, and so was I when I thought of our discovery last night, so I suggested that I should go to my room and unpack some of my things which had arrived, and this I did.
Harlequin
I did not see Joss until dinnertime, but Lilias came to my room in the afternoon to ask if she could help me unpack.
I thanked her and said I could manage very well, but she sat down and watched me, admiring my clothes as I took them out. She thought them very elegant, she said, and they would surely make Isa Bannock jealous.
“She thinks she is a femme fatale,” Lilias added.
“Is she?”
“She’s reckoned to be so. There’s no one like her in Fancy Town or hereabouts.”
“It will be interesting to meet her.”
“I hope you’ll find it so. My mother has shown you the house, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, it’s fascinating.”
“So like the one in England?”
“It’s not really like it.”
“It just tried to be, I suppose.”
I smiled. “Mr. Henniker set out with the idea in the first place, I expect, and then found it didn’t work.”
“We’re very anxious that you should put us right about anything you don’t like. I hope you don’t think we’re too presumptuous.”
“Certainly not.”
“You see, when my mother came here Mr. Henniker was so good to us and I was only two…slightly less than that…so it’s always been my home.”
“And must continue so…until you marry.”
She cast down her eyes again. It was a habit which she shared with her mother.