FullReads

Everybody was assembled there that I expected to see, with an addition. Not a welcome one by the look on Tom’s face. He stood on the hearthrug conversing with a great hulking, high-shouldered fellow, sallow-faced, with a heavy mustache and drooping eyelids, from the corners of which flashed out a sudden suspicious look as I approached, which lighted up into a greedy one as it rested on my rubies, and seemed unaccountably familiar to me, till Lady Carwitchet tripping past me exclaimed:

“He has come at last! My naughty, naughty boy! Mr. Acton, this is my son, Lord Carwitchet!”

I broke off short in the midst of my polite acknowledgments to stare blankly at her. The sapphire was gone! A great gilt cross, with a Scotch pebble like an acid drop, was her sole decoration.

“I had to put my pendant away,” she explained confidentially; “the clasp had got broken somehow.” I didn’t believe a word.

Lord Carwitchet contributed little to the general entertainment at dinner, but fell into confidential talk with Mrs. Duberly-Parker. I caught a few unintelligible remarks across the table. They referred, I subsequently discovered, to the lady’s little book on Northchurch races, and I recollected that the Spring Meeting was on, and to-morrow “Cup Day.” After dinner there was great talk about getting up a party to go on General Fairford’s drag. Lady Carwitchet was in ecstasies and tried to coax me into joining. Leta declined positively. Tom accepted sulkily.

The look in Lord Carwitchet’s eye returned to my mind as I locked up my rubies that night. It made him look so like his mother! I went round my fastenings with unusual care. Safe and closets and desk and doors, I tried them all. Coming at last to the bathroom, it opened at once. It was the housemaid’s doing. She had evidently taken advantage of my having abandoned the room to give it “a thorough spring cleaning,” and I anathematized her. The furniture was all piled together and veiled with sheets, the carpet and felt curtain were gone, there were new brooms about. As I peered around, a voice close at my ear made me jump–Lady Carwitchet’s!

“I tell you I have nothing, not a penny! I shall have to borrow my train fare before I can leave this. They’ll be glad enough to lend it.”

Not only had the portiere been removed, but the door behind it had been unlocked and left open for convenience of dusting behind the wardrobe. I might as well have been in the bedroom.

“Don’t tell me,” I recognized Carwitchet’s growl. “You’ve not been here all this time for nothing. You’ve been collecting for a Kilburn cot or getting subscriptions for the distressed Irish landlords. I know you. Now I’m not going to see myself ruined for the want of a paltry hundred or so. I tell you the colt is a dead certainty. If I could have got a thousand or two on him last week, we might have ended our dog days millionaires. Hand over what you can. You’ve money’s worth, if not money. Where’s that sapphire you stole?”

“I didn’t. I can show you the receipted bill. All I possess is honestly come by. What could you do with it, even if I gave it you? You couldn’t sell it as the Valdez, and you can’t get it cut up as you might if it were real.”

“If it’s only bogus, why are you always in such a flutter about it? I’ll do something with it, never fear. Hand over.”

“I can’t. I haven’t got it. I had to raise something on it before I left town.”

“Will you swear it’s not in that wardrobe? I dare say you will. I mean to see. Give me those keys.”