The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 25

"Then prove it!" demanded Jim.

"Call him in and I will."

Van Tuyl made a motion for his wife to touch the bell.

Her slippered toe was still on the rug-covered b.u.t.ton when Wilkins entered, the same austere and self-a.s.sured figure.

"Wilkins," said Van Tuyl, and there was an outspoken and deliberate savagery in his voice even as his wife motioned to him in what seemed a signal for moderation, "Wilkins, I regard you as an especially good servant. Mr. Kerfoot, on the other hand, says he knows you and says you are not."

"Yes, sir," said Wilkins with his totem-pole abstraction.

There was something especially maddening in that sustained calmness of his.

"And what's more," I suddenly cried, exasperated by that play-acting role and rising and confronting him as he stood there, "your name's not Wilkins, and you never got that wrist scar from a coach door."

"Why not, sir?" he gently but most respectfully inquired.

"Because," I cried, stepping still nearer and watching the immobile blue-white face, "in the gang you work with you're known as Sir Henry, and you got that cut on the wrist from a wedge when you tried to blow open a safe door, and the letters of introduction which you brought to the Whippeny Club were forged by an expert named Turk McMeekin; and I know what brought you into this house and what your plans for robbing it are!"

There was not one move of his body as he stood there. There was not one twitch of his mask-like face. But on that face, point by point, came a slow suffusion of something akin to expression. It was not fear. To call it fear would be doing the man an injustice. It began with the eyes, and spread from feature to feature, very much, I imagine, as sentient life must have spread across the countenance of Pygmalion's slowly awakening marble.

For one fraction of a moment the almost pitiful eyes looked at me with a quick and imploring glance. Then the mask once more descended over them. He was himself again. And I felt almost sure that in the mellowed light about us the other two figures at the table had not seen that face as I did.

There was, in fact, something almost like shame on Van Tuyl's heavy face as the calm-voiced servant, utterly ignoring me and my words, turned to him and asked if he should remove the things.

"You haven't answered the gentleman," said Beatrice Van Tuyl, in a voice a little shrill with excitement.

"What is there to answer, madam?" he mildly asked. "It's all the young gentleman's foolishness, some foolishness which I can't understand."

"But the thing can't stand like this," protested the ponderous Van Tuyl.

There must have been something rea.s.suring to them both in the methodic calmness with which this calumniated factor in their domestic Eden moved about once more performing his petty domestic duties.

"Then you deny everything he says?" insisted the woman.

The servant stopped and looked up in mild reproof.

"Of course, madam," he replied, as he slowly removed the liqueur gla.s.ses. I saw my hostess look after him with one of her long and abstracted glances. She was still peering into his face as he stepped back to the table. She was, indeed, still gazing at him when the m.u.f.fled shrill of an electric bell announced there was a caller at the street door.

"Wilkins," she said, almost ruminatively, "I want you to answer the door--the street door."

"Yes, madam," he answered, without hesitation.

The three of us sat in silence, as the slow and methodic steps crossed the room, stepped out into the hall, and advanced to what at least one of us knew to be his doom. It was Van Tuyl himself who spoke up out of the silence.

"What's up?" he asked. "What's he gone for?"

"The police are there," answered his wife.

"Good G.o.d!" exclaimed the astounded husband, now on his feet. "You don't mean you've sprung that trap on the poor devil? You--"

"Sit down, Jim," broke in his wife with enforced calmness. "Sit down and wait."

"But I won't be made a fool of!"

"You're not being made a fool of!"

"But who's arresting this man? Who's got the evidence to justify what's being done here?"

"I have," was the woman's answer.

"What do you mean?"

She was very calm about it.

"I mean that Witter was right. _My Baroda pearls and the emerald pendant were not in the safe. They're gone._"

"They're gone?" echoed the incredulous husband.

"Listen," I suddenly cried, as Van Tuyl sat digesting his discovery.

We heard the sound of steps, the slam of a door, and the departing hum of a motor-car. Before I realized what she was doing Beatrice Van Tuyl's foot was once more on the call bell. A footman answered the summons.

"Go to the street door," she commanded, "and see who's there."

We waited, listening. The silence lengthened. Something about that silence impressed me as ominous. We were still intently listening as the footman stepped back into the room.

"It's the chauffeur, sir," he explained.

"And what does he want?"

"He said Felice telephoned for the car a quarter of an hour ago."

"Send Felice to me," commanded my hostess.

"I don't think I can, ma'am. _She's gone in the car with Wilkins_."

"With Wilkins?"

"Yes, ma'am. Markson says he can't make it out, ma'am, Wilkins driving off that way without so much as a by-your-leave, ma'am."

The three of us rose as one from the table. For a second or two we stood staring at one another.

Then Van Tuyl suddenly dived for the stairs, with the napkin full of jewelry in his hand. I, in turn, dived for the street door. But before I opened it I knew it was too late.

I suddenly stepped back into the hallway, to confront Beatrice Van Tuyl.

"How long have you had Felice?" I asked, groping impotently about the hall closet for my hat and coat.