The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 38

"D'you know what this'll cost you?" he cried, white to the lips.

"That's not worrying me," was my calm retort. "I got what I came after."

He sat forward in his seat with a face that looked foolishly threatening.

"Don't imagine you can get away with that," he declared. I could afford to smile at his impotent fury.

"Just watch me!" I told him. Then I added more soberly, with my hand on the door-k.n.o.b, "And if you interfere with me after I leave this cab, if you so much as try to come within ten yards of me to-night, I'll give you what's coming to you."

I opened the door as I spoke, and dropped easily from the still moving cab to the pavement. I stood there for a moment, watching its placid driver as he went on up the avenue. The gla.s.s-windowed door still swung open, swaying back and forth like a hand slowly waving me good-by.

Then I looked at my watch, crossed to the University Club, jumped into a waiting taxi, and dodged back to the theater, somewhat sore in body but rather well satisfied in mind.

A peculiar feeling of superiority possessed me as I presented my door-check and was once more ushered back to my empty box. During the last hour and a half that pit full of languid-eyed people had been witnessing a tawdry imitation of adventure. They had been swallowing a capsule of imitation romance, while I, between the time of leaving and reentering that garishly lighted foyer, had reveled in adventure at first hand, had taken chances and faced dangers and righted a great wrong.

I felt inarticulately proud of myself as I watched the final curtain come down. This pride became a feeling of elation as I directed my glance toward Alice Churchill, who had risen in the box in front of mine, and was again showering on me the warmth of her friendly smile.

I knew I was still destined to be the G.o.d from the machine. It was as plain that she was still unconscious of her loss.

I stopped her and her hollow-cheeked brother on their way out, surprising them a little, I suppose, by the unlooked-for cordiality of my greeting.

"Can't you two children take a bite with me at Sherry's?" I amiably suggested. I could see brother and sister exchange glances.

"Benny oughtn't to be out late," she demurred.

"But I've something rather important to talk over," I pleaded.

"And Benny _would_ like to get a glimpse of Sherry's again," interposed the thin-cheeked youth just back from the wilds. And without more ado I bundled them into a taxi and carried them off with me, wondering just what would be the best way of bringing up the subject in hand.

I found it much harder, in fact, than I had expected. I was, as time went on, more and more averse to betraying my position, to descending mildly from my pinnacle of superiority, to burning my little pin-wheel of power. I was like a puppy with its first buried bone. I knew what I carried so carefully wrapped up in my waistcoat pocket. I remembered how it had come there, and during that quiet supper hour I was inordinately proud of myself.

I sat looking at the girl with her towering crown of reddish-gold hair.

She, in turn, was gazing at her own foolishly distorted reflection in the polished bowl of the chafing-dish from which I had just served her with _capon a la reine_. She sat there gazing at her reflected face, gazing at it with a sort of studious yet impersonal intentness. Then I saw her suddenly lean forward in her chair, still looking at the grotesque image of herself in the polished silver. I could not help noticing her quickly altering expression, the inarticulate gasp of her parted lips, the hand that went suddenly up to her throat. I saw the fingers feel around the base of the compactly slender neck, and the momentary look of stupor that once more swept over her face.

She ate a mouthful of capon, studiously, without speaking. Then she looked up at us again. It was then that her brother Benny for the first time noticed her change of color.

"What's wrong?" he demanded, his thin young face touched suddenly with anxiety.

The girl, when she finally answered him, spoke very quietly. But I could see what a struggle it was costing her.

"Now, Benny, I don't want any fuss," she said, almost under her breath.

"I don't want either of you to get excited, for it can't do a bit of good. But my necklace is gone."

"Gone?" gasped Benny. "It can't be!"

"It's gone," she repeated, with her vacant eyes on me as her brother prodded and felt about her skirt, and then even shook out her crumpled opera cloak.

"Does this happen to be it?" I asked, with all the nonchalance at my command. And as I spoke I unwrapped the string of pearls with the pigeon-blood ruby and let them roll on the white damask that lay between us.

She looked at them without moving, her eyes wide with wonder. I could see the color come back into her face. It was quite reward enough to witness the relieving warmth return to those widened eyes, to bask in that lovely and liquid glance of grat.i.tude.

"How," she asked a little weakly, as she reached over and took them up in her fingers, "how did you get them?"

"You lost them in the theater-box during the first act," I told her.

Her brother Benny wiped his forehead.

"And it's up to a woman to drop forty thousand dollars and never know it," he cried.

I watched her as she turned them over in her hands. Then she suddenly looked up at me, then down at the pearls, then up at me again.

"_This is not my necklace_," were the astonis.h.i.+ng words that I heard fall from her lips. I knew, of course, that she was mistaken.

"Oh, yes, it is," I quietly a.s.sured her.

She shook her head in negation, still staring at me.

"What makes you think so?" she asked.

"I don't think it, I know it," was my response. "Those aren't the sort of stones that grow on every bush in this town."

She was once more studying the necklace. And once more she shook her head.

"But I am left-handed," she was explaining, as she still looked down at them, "and I had my clasp, here on the ruby at the back, made to work that way. This clasp is right-handed. Don't you see, it's on the wrong side."

"But you've only got the thing upside down," cried her brother. And I must confess that a disagreeable feeling began to manifest itself in the pit of my stomach as he moved closer beside her and tried to reverse the necklace so that the clasp would stand a left-handed one.

He twisted and turned it fruitlessly for several moments.

"Isn't that the limit?" he finally murmured, sinking back in his chair and regarding me with puzzled eyes. The girl, too, was once more studying my face, as though my movement represented a form of uncouth jocularity which she could not quite comprehend.

"What's the answer, anyway?" asked the mystified youth.

But his bewilderment was as nothing compared to mine. I reached over for the string of pearls with the ruby clasp. I took them and turned them over and over in my hands, weakly, mutely, as though they themselves might in some way solve an enigma which seemed inscrutable.

And I had to confess that the whole thing was too much for me. I was still looking down at that l.u.s.trous row of pearls, so appealing to the eye in their absolute and perfect graduation, when I heard the younger man at my side call my name aloud.

"Kerfoot!" he said, not exactly in alarm and not precisely in anxiety, yet with a newer note that made me look up sharply.

As I did so I was conscious of the figure so close behind me, so near my chair that even while I had already felt his presence there, I had for the moment taken him for my scrupulously attentive waiter. But as I turned about and looked up at this figure I saw that I was mistaken.

My glance fell on a wide-shouldered and rather portly man with quiet and very deep-set gray eyes. What disturbed me even more than his presence there at my shoulder was the sense of power, of unparaded superiority, on that impa.s.sive yet undeniably intelligent face.

"I want to see you," he said, with an unemotional matter-of-factness that in another would have verged on insolence.

"About what?" I demanded, trying to match his impa.s.sivity with my own.

He nodded toward the necklace in my hand.

"About that," he replied.

"What about that?" I languidly inquired.