The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 24

Before I had completed that speech the maid Felice had stepped into the room. She was a woman of about thirty, white-skinned, slender of figure, and decidedly foreign-looking. Her face was a clever one, though I promptly disliked an affectation of languor with which she strove to hide a spirit which was only too plainly alert.

"I want you to fetch my jewel case from the boudoir safe," her mistress told her. "Bring everything in the box."

I could not see the maid's face, for at that moment I was busy watching Wilkins. From that worthy, however, came no slightest sign of disturbance or wonder.

"Here, madam?" the maid was asking.

"Yes, here and at once, please," answered Beatrice Van Tuyl. Then she turned to me. "And since you're such a jewel expert you'll be able to tell me what's darkening those turquoises of mine."

I dropped a lump of sugar into my coffee and sipped it. Wilkins opened a dark-wooded buffet humidor before me, and I picked out a slender-waisted Havana corseted in a band of gold. I suddenly looked up at the man as he stood at my side holding the blue-flamed little alcohol lamp for the contact of my waiting cigar end.

"Wilkins, how did you get that scar?" I asked him, out of a clear sky.

The wrist itself was covered by its cuff and sleeve end, but under them, I knew, was the telltale mark.

"What scar, sir?" he asked, his politeness touched with an indulgent patience which seemed to imply that he was not altogether unused to facing gentlemen in unaccountably high spirits.

"This one!" I said, catching his hand in mine and running the cuff back along the white forearm. Not one trace of either alarm or resentment could I see on that indecipherable countenance. I almost began to admire the man. In his way he was superb.

"Oh, that, sir!" he exclaimed, with an almost offensively condoning glance at the Van Tuyls, as though inquiring whether or not he should reply to a question at once so personal and at the same time so out of place.

"Tell him where you got it, Wilkins," said Beatrice Van Tuyl, so sharply that it practically amounted to a command.

"I got it stopping Lord Entristle's brougham, madam, in London, seven years ago," was the quiet and unhesitating answer.

"How?" sharply asked the woman.

"I was footman for his lords.h.i.+p then, madam," went on the quiet and patient-noted voice. "I had just taken cards in when the horses were frightened by a tandem bicycle going past. They threw Siddons, the coachman, off the box as they jumped, and overturned the vehicle. His lords.h.i.+p was inside. I got the reins as one of the horses went down.

But he kicked me against the broken gla.s.s and I threw out one hand, I fancy, to save myself."

"And the coach gla.s.s cut your wrist?" asked Van Tuyl.

"Yes, sir," replied the servant, moving with methodic slowness on his way about the table. His figure, in its somber badge of livery, seemed almost a pathetic one. There was no anxiety on his face, no shadow of fear about the mild and unpartic.i.p.ating eyes. I was suddenly conscious of my unjust superiority over him--a superiority of station, of birth, of momentary knowledge.

The silence that ensued was not a pleasant one. I felt almost grateful for the timely entrance of the maid Felice. In her hands she carried a j.a.panned tin box, about the size of a theatrical makeup box. This she placed on the table beside her mistress.

"Is there anything else, madam?" she asked.

"That is all," answered Beatrice Van Tuyl as she threw back the lid of the j.a.panned box. I noticed that although the key stood in it, it was unlocked. Then my hostess looked up at the waiting butler. "And, Wilkins, you can leave the cigars and liqueur on the table. I'll ring if I want anything."

The carefully coiffured blonde head was bent low over the box as the servants stepped out of the room. The delicate fingers probed through the array of leather-covered cases. I could see by her face, even before she spoke, that the box's contents were intact.

"You see," she said, ladling handful after handful of glittering jewelry out on the white table-cloth between her coffee-cup and mine, "everything is here. Those are my rings. There's the dog collar.

There's angel Jim's sunburst. Here's the ordinary family junk."

I sat for a moment studying that Oriental array of feminine adornment.

It was plainly an array of evidence to discountenance me. I felt a distinct sense of relief when the woman in blue suddenly dropped her eyes from my face to her jewel box again. It was Van Tuyl's persistent stare that roweled me into final activity.

"Then so far, we're in luck! And as from now on I want to be responsible for what happens," I said, as I reached over and gathered the glittering ma.s.s up in a table napkin, "I think it will simplify things if you, Van Tuyl, take possession of these."

I tied the napkin securely together and handed it to my wondering host.

Then I dropped a silver bon-bon dish and a bunch of hothouse grapes into the emptied box, locking it and handing the key back to Beatrice Van Tuyl.

That lady looked neither at me nor the key. Instead, she sat staring meditatively into s.p.a.ce, apparently weighing some question in which the rest of that company could claim no interest. It was only after her husband had spoken her name, sharply, that she came back to her immediate surroundings.

"And now what must I do?" she asked, with a new note of seriousness.

"Have the maid take the box back to where it came from," I told her.

"But be so good as to retain the key."

"And then what?" mocked Van Tuyl.

"Then," cut in his wife, with a sudden note of antagonism which I could not account for, "_the sooner we send for the police the better_."

An answering note of antagonism showed on Van Tuyl's face.

"I tell you, Kerfoot, I can't do it," he objected, even as his wife rang the bell. "You've got to show me!"

"Please be still, Jim," she said, as Wilkins stepped into the room.

She turned an impa.s.sive face to the waiting servant. "Will you ask Felice to come here."

None of us spoke until Felice entered the room. Wilkins, I noticed, followed her in, but pa.s.sed across the room's full length and went out by the door in the rear.

"Felice," said the woman beside me, very calmly and coolly, "I want you to take this box back to the safe."

"Yes, madam."

"Then go to the telephone in the study and ring up police headquarters.

Tell them who you are. Then explain that I want them to send an officer here, at once."

"Yes, madam," answered the attentive-faced maid.

"Felice, you had better ask them to send two men, two--"

"Two plain-clothes men," I prompted.

"Yes, two plain-clothes men. And explain to them that they are to arrest the man-servant who opens the door for them--at once, and without any fuss. Is that quite clear?"

"Yes, madam, quite clear," answered the maid.

"Then please hurry."

"Yes, madam."

I looked up at Van Tuyl's audible splutter of indignation.

"Excuse me," he cried, "but isn't all this getting just a little highhanded? Aren't we making things into a nice mess for ourselves?

Aren't we moving just a little too fast in this game, calling out the reserves because you happen to spot a scar on my butler's wrist?"

"I tell you, Jim," I cried with all the earnestness at my command, "the man's a thief, a criminal with a criminal's record!"