CHAPTER XIV.
THE STANDERTON DIAMONDS
Edith Standerton made a quick preparation for her journey. She would take her maid into Huntingdon, and go without Gilbert. It was embarrassing that she must go alone, but she had set herself a task, and if she could help her husband by appearing at the dinner of his irritable relative she would do so.
She had her evening things packed, and caught the four o’clock train for the town of Tinley.
The old man did her the exceptional honour of meeting her at the station.
“Where is Gilbert?” he asked when they had mutually introduced themselves.
“He has been called out of town unexpectedly,” she said. “He will be awfully upset when he knows.”
“I think not,” said the old General grimly. “It takes a great deal to upset Gilbert—certainly more than an opportunity of being reconciled to a grouchy old man. As a matter of fact,” he went on, “there is no reconciliation necessary; but I always look upon anybody whom I have to cut out of my will as one who regards me as a mortal enemy.”
“Please never put me in your will.”
She smiled.
“I’m not so sure about that,” said he, and added gallantly, “though I think Nature has sufficiently endowed you to enable you to dispense with such mundane gifts as money!”
She made a little face at that.
He was delighted with her, and found her a charming companion. Edith Standerton exerted herself to please him. She had a style of treating people older than herself in such a way as to suggest that she was as young as they. I do not know any other phrase which would more exactly convey my meaning than that. She had a charm which appealed to this wayward old man.
Edith did not know the cause of the change in her husband’s fortunes. She knew very little, indeed, of his affairs; enough she knew that for some reason or other he had been disinherited through no fault of his own. She did not even know that it was the result of a caprice of this old man.
“You must come again and bring Gilbert,” said the General, before they dispersed to dress for dinner. “I shall be delighted to put you both up.”
Fortunately she was saved the embarrassment of an answer, for the General jumped up suddenly.
“I know what you’d like to see,” he said, “you’d like to see the Standerton diamonds, and so you shall!”
She had no desire to see the Standerton diamonds, had, indeed, no knowledge that such an heirloom existed; but he was delighted at the prospect of showing her, and she, being a woman, was not averse to a view of these precious jewels, even though she were not destined to wear them.
He led the way up to the library, and Jack Frankfort followed.
“There they are,” said the old man proudly, and pointed to a big safe in the corner, a large and ornate safe.
“That is something new,” he said proudly. “I bought it from a man who wanted sixty guineas for it—an infernal, swindling, travelling rascal! I got it for thirty. What do you think of that for a safe?”
“I think it’s very pretty,” said Jack. He could think of nothing more fitting.
The old man glared at him.
“Pretty!” he growled. “What do you think I want with ‘pretty’ things in my library?”
He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the door of the safe, pulled open a drawer, and took out a large morocco case.
“There they are!” he said with pride, and indeed he might well be proud of such a beautiful collection.
With all a girl’s love for pretty things Edith handled the gorgeous jewels eagerly. The setting was old-fashioned, but it was the old fashion which was at that moment being copied. The stones sparkled and glittered as though every facet carried a tiny electric lamp to send forth the green, blue and roseate gleam of its fire.
Even Jack Frankfort, no great lover of jewellery, was fascinated by the sight.
“Why, sir,” he said, “there are nearly a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of gems there.”
“More,” said the old man. “I’ve a pearl necklace here,” and he pulled out another drawer, “look at it. There is nearly two hundred thousand pounds’ worth of jewellery in that safe.”
“In a thirty-guinea safe,” said Jack unwisely.
The old man turned on him.
“In a sixty-guinea safe,” he corrected violently. “Didn’t I tell you I beat the devil down? I beg your pardon, my dear.” He chuckled at the thought, replaced the jewels, and locked the safe again. “Sixty guineas he wanted. Came here with all his fine City of London manner, frock-coat, top-hat, and patent boots, my dear. The way these people get up is scandalous. He might have been a gentleman by the airs he gave himself.”
Jack looked at the safe. He had some ideas of commercial values.
“I can’t understand how he sold it,” he said. “This safe is worth two hundred pounds.”
“What?”
The old General turned on his lawyer in astonishment.
Jack nodded.
“I have one at my office, now that I come to think of it,” he said. “It cost two hundred and twenty pounds, and it is the same make.”
“He only asked me sixty guineas.”
“That’s strange. Do you mind opening it again? I’d like to see the bolts.”
The General, nothing loath, turned the key and pulled open the huge door. Jack looked at the square, steel bolts—they were absolutely new.
“I can’t understand how he offered it for sixty. You certainly had a bargain for thirty, sir,” he said.
“I think I have,” said the General complacently. “By the way, I am expecting a man to dinner to-night,” he went on, as he led the way back to the drawing-room, “a doctor man from Yorkshire—Barclay-Seymour. Do you know him?”
Jack did not know him, but the girl broke in—
“Oh, yes, he is quite an old friend of mine.”
“He’s rather a fool,” said the General, adopting his simple method of classification.
Edith smiled.
“You told me yesterday that there were only two classes of people, General—rogues and fools. I am wondering,” she said demurely, “in which class you place me.”
The old man wrinkled his brows. He looked at the beautiful young face in his high good humour.
“I must make a new class for you,” he said. “No, you shall be in a class by yourself. But since most women are fools——”
“Oh, come!” she protested, laughingly.
“They are,” he averred. “Look at me. If women weren’t fools shouldn’t I have had a wife? If any brilliant, ingenious lady, possessed of the necessary determination had pursued me and had cultivated me, I should not be a bachelor, leaving my money to people who don’t care two—pins,” he hastily substituted a milder phrase for the one he had intended, “whether I’m alive or dead. Does your husband know the Doctor, by the way?”
The girl shook her head.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “They nearly met one night at dinner, but Gilbert had an engagement.”
“But Gilbert knows him,” insisted the old man. “I’ve often talked to him about Barclay-Seymour, who, by the way, is perhaps not such a fool as most doctors. I used to be rather more enthusiastic about him than I have been lately,” he admitted, “and I’m afraid I used to ram old Barclay-Seymour down poor Gilbert’s throat more than his ability or genius justified me doing. Has he never spoken about him?”
The girl shook her head.
“Ungrateful devil!” growled the old General inconsequently.
One of his many footmen came into the drawing-room at that moment with a telegram on a salver.
“Hey hey?” demanded Sir John, fixing his glasses on the tip of his nose and scowling up at his servant. “What’s this?”
“A telegram, Sir John,” replied the footman.
“I can see it’s a telegram, you ass! When did it come?”
“A few minutes ago, sir.”
“Who brought it?”
“A telegraph boy, Sir John,” said the imperturbable servitor.
“Why didn’t you say so at first?” snapped Sir John Standerton in a tone of relief. And Edith had all she could do to prevent herself from bursting into a fit of laughter at the little scene.
The old man opened the telegram, spread it out, read it slowly and frowned. He read it again.
“Now, what on earth does that mean?” he asked, and handed the telegram to the girl.
She read—
“Take the Standerton jewels out of your safe and deposit them without fail in your bank to-night. If it is too late to send them to your bank place them under an armed guard.”
It was signed “Gilbert Standerton.”
CHAPTER XV.
THE TALE THE DOCTOR TOLD
The General read the telegram again. He was, despite his erratic temperament, a shrewd and intelligent man.
“What does that mean?” he asked quietly for him. “Where is Gilbert? And where does he wire from?”
He picked up the telegram and inspected it. It was handed in at the General Post Office at London at 6.35 p.m.
The General’s hour for dining was consonant with his breakfast hour, and it was a quarter after nine when the dinner gong brought Edith Standerton down from her room.
She was worried; she could not understand the reference to the jewels. What had made Gilbert send this message? Had she known more of the circumstances of what had happened on the previous afternoon she would have wondered rather how he was able to send the message.
The General took the warning seriously, but not so seriously that he was prepared to remove his jewellery to any other receptacle. Indeed, the purchase of the safe had been made necessary by the fact that beyond the butler’s strong room, which was strong only in an etymological sense, there was no security for property of any value.
He had made an inspection of the jewels in the safe and had relocked the door, leaving a servant in the library, with strict instructions not to come out until he was instructed to leave by his master.
Edith came down to find that another guest had arrived, a guest who greeted her with a cheery and familiar smile.
“How do you do, Doctor?” she said. “It is not so long since I met you at mother’s. You remember me?”
“I remember you perfectly,” said Dr. Barclay-Seymour.
He was a tall, thin man with a straggling iron-grey beard and a high forehead.
A little absent in his manner, he conveyed the impression, never a very flattering one, that he had matters more weighty to think about than the conversation which was being addressed to him. He was, perhaps, the most noteworthy of the provincial doctors. He came out of his shell sufficiently to recognise her and to remember her mother. Mrs. Cathcart had been a great friend of Barclay’s. They had grown up together.
“Your mother is a very wonderful woman,” said Dr. Barclay-Seymour as he took the girl in to dinner, “a remarkable woman.”
Edith was seized with an almost overwhelming temptation to ask why. It would have been unpardonable of her had she done so, but never did a word so tremble upon a human being’s lips as that upon hers.
They ate through dinner, which was made a little uncomfortable by the fact that General Sir John Standerton was unquestionably nervous. Twice during the course of the meal he sent out one of the three footmen who waited at table to visit what he termed the outpost. Nothing untoward had happened on either occasion.
“I do not know what to do about this jewellery. I hope that Gilbert is not playing the fool,” he said.
He turned to Edith with a genial scowl.
“Has he developed any kittenish ways of late?”
She smiled.
“There is no word which less describes Gilbert than kittenish,” she said.
“Is it not remarkable that he sent that message?” the General went on testily. “I hardly know what to do. I could get a constable up, but the police here are the most awful and appalling idiots. I have a great mind to have my bed put in the library and sleep there myself.”
He brightened up at the thought.
He had reached the stage in life when sleeping in any other room than that to which he was accustomed represented a form of heroism. After the dinner was through they made their way to the drawing-room.
The General was fidgety, and though Edith played and sang a little French love song with no evidence of agitation, she was as nervous as the General.
“I tell you what we will do,” said Sir John suddenly, “we will all adjourn to the library. It is a jolly nice room if you do not mind our smoking.”
It was an excellent suggestion, and one that she accepted with pleasure. She was the only lady of the party, and remarked on the fact as she went upstairs with Sir John.
He glanced hurriedly round.
“I always regard a doctor as a fit chaperone for any lady,” he said with a chuckle—it amused him.
Later he found the complement of the joke, and discoursed loudly upon old women of all professions, a discourse which was arrested by the arrival of the Doctor and Jack Frankfort.
The library was a big room, and it was chiefly remarkable for the fact that it contained no more evidence of Sir John’s literary taste than a number of volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica and a shelf full of Ruff’s Guide to the Turf. It was, however, a delightful room, panelled in old oak with mullioned windows standing in deep recesses. These, explained Sir John, opened out on to a terrace—an excellent reason for his apprehension.
“Pull the curtain, William,” said Sir John to the waiting footman, “and then you can clear out. Have the coffee brought in here.”
The man pulled the heavy velvet curtains across the big recesses, placed a chair for the girl, and retired.
“Excuse me,” said Sir John.
He went across to the safe and opened it again. He inspected the case. Nothing had been disturbed.
“Ah,” he breathed—It was a sigh of infinite relief.
“This wire of Gilbert’s is getting on my nerves,” he excused himself irritably. “What the devil did he wire for? Is he the sort of man that sends telegrams to save himself the bother of licking down an envelope?”
Edith shook her head.
“I am as much in the dark as you,” she said, “but I assure you that Gilbert is not an alarmist.”
“How do you get on with him?” he asked her.
The girl flushed a little.
“I get on very well,” she said, and strove to turn the conversation. But it was a known fact that no human soul had ever turned Sir John from his set inquisitional course.
“Happy, and that sort of thing?” he asked.
Edith nodded, keeping her eyes on the wall behind the General’s head.
“I suppose you love him—hey?”
Edith was embarrassed, and no less so were the two men; but Sir John was not alone in imagining that doctors have little sense of decency and lawyers no idea of propriety. They were saved further discussion by the arrival of the coffee, and the girl was thankful.
“I am going to keep you here until Gilbert comes up for you,” said the old man suddenly. “I suppose you know, but probably you do not, that you are the first of your sex that I have ever tolerated in my house.”
She laughed.
“It is a fact,” he said seriously. “You know I do not get on with women. They do not realise that though I am an irritable old chap there is really no harm in me, and I am an irritable old chap,” he confessed. “It is not that they are impertinent or rude, but it is their long-suffering meekness that I cannot stand. If a lady tells me to go to the devil I know where I am. I want the plain, blunt truth without gaff. I prefer my medicine without sugar.”
The Doctor laughed.
“You are different from most people, Sir John. I know men who are rather sensitive about the brutal truth.”
“More fools they,” said Sir John.
“I do not know,” said the Doctor reflectively. “I sympathise with a man who does not want the whole bitterness of fact hurled at his head in the shape of an honest half a brick, although there is an advantage in knowing the truth sometimes, it saves a lot of needless unhappiness,” he added a little sadly. He seemed to have aroused some unpleasant train of thought. “I will give you an extraordinary instance,” he went on in his usual deliberate manner.
“What’s that?” asked the General suddenly.
“I think it was a noise in the hall,” said Edith.
“I thought it was a window,” growled the General, rather ashamed that he should have been detected in his jump.
“Go on with your story, Doctor.”
“A few months ago,” Dr. Seymour recalled, “a young man came to me. He was a gentleman, and evidently not a townsman of Leeds, at any rate I did not know him. I found afterwards that he had come from London to consult me. He had some little tooth trouble, a jagged molar, a very commonplace thing, and he had made a slight incision in the inside of his mouth. Apparently it worried him, the more so when he discovered that the tiny scratch would not heal. Like most of us, he had a terrible dread of cancer.” He lowered his voice as a doctor often will when he speaks of this most dreadful malady. “He did not want to go to his own doctor; as a matter of fact, I do not think he had one. He came to me, and I examined him. I had my doubt as to there being anything wrong with him, but I cut a minute section of the membrane for microscopic examination.”
The girl shivered.
“I am sorry,” said the Doctor hastily, “that is all there is in the story which is gruesome unless you think—— However,” he went on, “I promised to send him the result of my examination, and I wanted his address to send it. This, however, he refused. He was very, very nervous. ‘I know I am a moral coward,’ he said, ‘but somehow I do not want to know just the bare truth in bald language; but if it is as I fear, I would like the news broken to me in the manner which is the least jarring to me.’ ”
“And what was that?” asked Sir John, interested in spite of himself.
The Doctor drew a long breath.
“It seems,” he said, “that he was something of a musician”—Edith sat upright, clasping her hands, her face set, her eyes fixed upon the Doctor—“he was something of a musician, that is to say, he was very keen on music, and the method he had of breaking the news to himself was unique, I have never heard anything quite like it before in my life. He gave me two cards and an addressed envelope, addressed to an old musician in London whom he patronised.”
Edith saw the room go swaying round and round, but held herself in with an effort. Her face was white, her hands that held the chair were clenched so tightly that the bones shone white through them.
“They were addressed to an old friend of his, as I say, and they were identically worded with this exception. One of them said in effect you will go to such and such a place and you will play the ‘Melody in F,’ and the other gave the same instructions but varied to this extent, that he was to play the ‘Spring Song.’ Now here comes the tragedy.” He raised his finger. “He gave me the ‘Melody in F’ to signal to him the fact that he had cancer.”
There was a long silence, which only the quick breathing of the girl broke.
“And, and—?” whispered Edith.
“And”—the Doctor looked at her with his far-away eyes—“I sent the wrong card,” he said. “I sent it and destroyed the other before I remembered my error.”
“Then he has not cancer?” whispered the girl.
“No, and I do not know his address, and I cannot get at him,” said Barclay-Seymour. “It was tragic in many ways. I think he was just going to marry, for he said this much to me: ‘If this is true, and I am married, I will leave my wife a pauper,’ and he asked me a curious question,” added the Doctor. “He said, ‘Don’t you think that a man condemned to die is justified in taking any action, committing any crime, for the protection of the loved ones he leaves behind?’ ”
“I see,” said Edith.
Her voice was hollow and sounded remote to her.
“What is that?” said the General, and jumped up.
This time there was no doubt. Jack Frankfort sprang to the curtain that covered the recess and pulled it aside. There stood Gilbert Standerton, white as a ghost, his eyes staring into vacancy, the hand at his mouth shaking.
“The wrong card!” he said. “My God!”
CHAPTER XVI.
BRADSHAW
A month later Gilbert Standerton came back from the Foreign Office to his little house in St. John’s Wood.
“There is a man to see you, Gilbert,” said his wife.
“I think I know, it is my bank manager,” he said.
He greeted the tall man who rose to meet him with a cheery smile.
“Now, Mr. Brown,” he said, “I have to explain to you exactly what I want done. There is a man in America, he has been there some week or two, to whom I owe a large sum of money—eighty thousand pounds, to be exact—and I want you to see that I have sufficient fluent capital to pay it.”
“You have quite sufficient, Mr. Standerton,” said the manager, “even now, without selling any of your securities.”
“That is good. You will have all the particulars here,” said Gilbert, and took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “It is really a trust, in the sense that it is to be transferred to two men, Thomas Black and George Smith. They may sub-divide it again, because I believe,” he smiled, “they have other business associates who happen to be entitled to share.”
“I did not congratulate you, Mr. Standerton,” said the bank manager, “upon the marvellous service you rendered the city. They say that through you every penny which was stolen by the famous Wallis gang has been recovered.”
“I think that pretty well described the position,” said Gilbert quietly.
“I was reading an account of it in a paper the other day,” the bank manager went on. “It was very providential that there was an alarm of fire next door to their headquarters.”
“It was providential that it was found before the fire reached the Safe Company’s premises,” said Gilbert. “Fortunately the firemen saw me through the skylight. That made things rather easy, but it was some time before they got me out, as you probably know.”
“Did you ever see this man Wallis?” asked the bank manager curiously.
“Didn’t the papers tell you that?” bantered Gilbert with a dry smile.
“They say you learnt in some way that there was to be a burglary at your uncle’s, and that you went up to his place, and there you saw Mr. Wallis under the very window of the library, on the parapet or something.”
“On the terrace it was,” said Gilbert quietly.
“And that he flew at the sight of you?”
“That is hardly true,” said Gilbert, “rather put it that I persuaded him to go. I was not sure that he had not already secured the necklace, and I went through the window into the room without realising there was anybody there. You see, there were heavy curtains which hid the light. Whilst I was there he escaped, that is all.”
He made one or two suggestions regarding the transfer of the money and showed the bank manager out, then he joined Edith in the drawing-room.
She came to him with a little smile.
“Does the Foreign Office seem very strange to you?” she asked.
“It did seem rather strange after my other exploits.”
He laughed.
“I never thought Sir John had sufficient influence to get you back.”
“I think he has greater influence than you imagine,” he said; “but then there were other considerations. You see, I was able to render the Foreign Office one or two little acts of service in the course of my nefarious career, and they have been very good.”
She looked at him wistfully.
“And do we go back now to where we started?” she asked.
“Where did we start?” he countered.
“I do not know that we started anywhere,” she said thoughtfully.
She had been looking at a time table when he came into the room, and now she picked it up and turned the pages idly.
“Are you interested in that Bradshaw?”
“Very,” she said. “I am just deciding.”
“Deciding what?” he asked.
“Where—where we shall spend our honeymoon,” she faltered.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
The J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd. (1915) edition was consulted for many of the changes listed below.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. dressing gown/dressing-gown, lifelong/life-long, upkeep/up-keep, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Merge disjointed contractions.
Punctuation: several missing commas and periods, and some quotation mark pairings.
[Chapter II]
Change (“Have you told Mrs. Carthcart this?” he asked.) to Cathcart.
“when his wordly prospects had seemed much brighter than” to worldly.
[Chapter V]
“had shown extraordinary knowledge of the safes’ contents” to safe’s.
[Chapter VI]
“The Manager himself never quite understood how his chief” to manager.
[Chapter VIII]
“suggested Mr. Warrell, with his eyes stil upraised” to still.
“I will let you know how it developes” to develops.
[Chapter IX]
“Was very absent minded and worried apparently.” to absent-minded.
(“Perhaps you would like to go,” he had suggested. briefly. “I am) delete the first period.
[Chapter X]
“never failed to excite great, interest” delete the comma.
“the abstract problem of the chureh” to church.
[Chapter XI]
“there are lot of little things I might be able to discover.” to lots.
[End of text]