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III
THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. GASTER'S MAID
Two days after my bargain with Mr. Harold Van Gilt, in which he acquired possession of the Scrappe jades and Mrs. Van Raffles and I shared the proceeds of the ten thousand dollars check, I was installed at Bolivar Lodge as head-butler and steward, my salary to consist of what I could make out of it on the side, plus ten per cent. of the winnings of my mistress. It was not long before I discovered that the job was a lucrative one. From various tradesmen of the town I received presents of no little value in the form sometimes of diamond scarf-pins, gold link sleeve-buttons, cases of fine wines for my own use, and in one or two instances checks of substantial value. There was also what was called a steward's rebate on the monthly bills, which in circles where lavish entertainment is the order of the day amounted to a tidy little income in itself. My only embarrassment lay in the contact into which I was necessarily brought with other butlers, with whom I was perforce required to associate. This went very much against the grain at first, for, although I am scarcely more than a thief after all, I am an artistic one, and still retain the prejudice against inferior associations which an English gentleman whatever the vicissitudes of his career can never quite rid himself of. I had to join their club – an exclusive organization of butlers and "gentlemen's gentlemen" – otherwise valets – and in order to quiet all suspicion of my real status in the Van Raffles household I was compelled to act the part in a fashion which revolted me. Otherwise the position was pleasant, and, as I have intimated, more than lucrative.
It did not take me many days to discover that Henriette was a worthy successor to her late husband. Few opportunities for personal profit escaped her eye, and I was able to observe as time went on and I noted the accumulation of spoons, forks, nutcrackers, and gimcracks generally that she brought home with her after her calls upon or dinners with ladies of fashion that she had that quality of true genius which never overlooks the smallest details.
The first big coup after my arrival, as the result of her genius, was in the affair of Mrs. Gaster's maid. Henriette had been to a bridge afternoon at Mrs. Gaster's and upon her return manifested an extraordinary degree of excitement. Her color was high, and when she spoke her voice was tremulous. Her disturbed condition was so evident that my heart sank into my boots, for in our business nerve is a sine qua non of success, and it looked to me as if Henriette was losing hers. She has probably lost at cards to-day, I thought, and it has affected her usual calmness. I must do something to warn her against this momentary weakness. With this idea in mind, when the opportunity presented itself later I spoke.
"You lost at bridge to-day, Henriette," I said.
"Yes," she replied. "Twenty-five hundred dollars in two hours. How did you guess?"
"By your manner," said I. "You are as nervous as a young girl at a commencement celebration. This won't do, Henriette. Nerves will prove your ruin, and if you can't stand your losses at bridge, what will you do in the face of the greater crisis which in our profession is likely to confront us in the shape of an unexpected visit of police at any moment?"
Her answer was a ringing laugh.
"You absurd old rabbit," she murmured. "As if I cared about my losses at bridge! Why, my dear Bunny, I lost that money on purpose. You don't suppose that I am going to risk my popularity with these Newport ladies by winning, do you? Not I, my boy. I plan too far ahead for that. For the good of our cause it is my task to lose steadily and with good grace. This establishes my credit, proves my amiability, and confirms my popularity."
"But you are very much excited by something, Henriette," said I. "You cannot deny that."
"I don't – but it is the prospect of future gain, not the reality of present losses, that has taken me off my poise," she said. "Whom do you suppose I saw at Mrs. Gaster's to-day?"
"No detectives, I hope," I replied, paling at the thought.
"No, sir," she laughed. "Mrs. Gaster's maid. We must get her, Bunny."
"Oh, tush!" I ejaculated. "All this powwow over another woman's maid!"
"You don't understand," said Henriette. "It wasn't the maid so much as the woman that startled me, Bunny. You can't guess who she was."
"How should I?" I demanded.
"She was Fiametta de Belleville, one of the most expert hands in our business. Poor old Raffles used to say that she diminished his income a good ten thousand pounds a year by getting in her fine work ahead of his," explained Henriette. "He pointed her out to me in Piccadilly once and I have never forgotten her face."
"I hope she did not recognize you," I observed.
"No, indeed – she never saw me before, so how could she? But I knew her the minute she took my cloak," said Henriette. "She's dyed her hair, but her eyes were the same as ever, and that peculiar twist of the lip that Raffles had spoken of as constituting one of her fascinations remained unchanged. Moreover, just to prove myself right, I left my lace handkerchief and a five hundred dollar bill in the cloak pocket. When I got the cloak back both were gone. Oh, she's Fiametta de Belleville all right, and we must get her."
"What for – to rob you?"
"No," returned Henrietta, "rather that we – but there, there, Bunny, I'll manage this little thing myself. It's a trifle too subtle for a man's intellect – especially when that man is you."
"What do you suppose she is doing here?" I asked.
"You silly boy," laughed Henriette.
"Doing? Why, Mrs. Gaster, of course. She is after the Gaster jewels."
"Humph!" I said, gloomily. "That cuts us out, doesn't it?"
"Does it?" asked Henriette, enigmatically.
It was about ten weeks later that the newspapers of the whole country were ringing with the startling news of the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Gaster's jewels. The lady had been robbed of three hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars worth of gems, and there was apparently no clew even to the thief. Henriette and I, of course, knew that Fiametta de Belleville had accomplished her mission, but apparently no one else knew it. True, she had been accused, and had been subjected to a most rigid examination by the Newport police and the New York Central Office, but no proof of any kind establishing her guilt could be adduced, and after a week of suspicion she was to all intents and purposes relieved of all odium.
"She'll skip now," said I.
"Not she," said Henriette. "To disappear now would be a confession of guilt. If Fiametta de Belleville is the woman I take her for she'll stay right here as if nothing had happened, but of course not at Mrs. Gaster's."
"Where then?" I asked.
"With Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles," replied Henriette. "The fact is," she added, "I have already engaged her. She has acted her part well, and has seemed so prostrated by the unjust suspicion of the world that even Mrs. Gaster is disturbed over her condition. She has asked her to remain, but Fiametta has refused. 'I couldn't, madam,' she said when Mrs. Gaster asked her to stay. 'You have accused me of a fearful crime – a crime of which I am innocent – and – I'd rather work in a factory, or become a shop-girl in a department store, than stay longer in a house where such painful things have happened.' Result, next Tuesday Fiametta de Belleville comes to me as my maid."
"Well, Henriette," said I, "I presume you know your own business, but why you lay yourself open to being robbed yourself and to having the profits of your own business diminished I can't see. Please remember that I warned you against this foolish act."
"All right, Bunny, I'll remember," smiled Mrs. Van Raffles, and there the matter was dropped for the moment.
The following Tuesday Fiametta de Belleville was installed in the Van Raffles household as the maid of Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles. To her eagle eye it was another promising field for profit, for Henriette had spared neither pains nor money to impress Fiametta with the idea that next to Mrs. Gaster she was about as lavish and financially capable a householder as could be found in the Social Capital of the United States. As for me, I was the picture of gloom. The woman's presence in our household could not be but a source of danger to our peace of mind as well as to our profits, and for the life of me I could not see why Henriette should want her there. But I was not long in finding out.
A week after Fiametta's arrival Mrs. Raffles rang hurriedly for me.
"Yes, madam," I said, responding immediately to her call.
"Bunny," she said, her hand trembling a little, "the hour for action has arrived. I have just sent Fiametta on an errand to Providence. She will be gone three hours."
"Yes!" said I. "What of it?"
"I want you during her absence to go with me to her room – "
The situation began to dawn on me.
"Yes!" I cried, breathlessly. "And search her trunks?"
"No, Bunny, no – the eaves," whispered Henriette. "I gave her that room in the wing because it has so many odd cubby-holes where she could conceal things. I am inclined to think – well, the moment she leaves the city let me know. Follow her to the station, and don't return till you know she is safely out of town and on her way to Providence. Then our turn will come."
Oh, that woman! If I had not adored her before I – but enough. This is no place for sentiment. The story is the thing, and I must tell it briefly.
I followed out Henriette's instructions to the letter, and an hour later returned with the information that Fiametta was, indeed, safely on her way.
"Good," said Mrs. Raffles. "And now, Bunny, for the Gaster jewels."
Mounting the stairs rapidly, taking care, of course, that there were none of the other servants about to spy upon us, we came to the maid's room. Everything in it betokened a high mind and a good character. There were religious pictures upon the bureau, prayer-books, and some volumes of essays of a spiritual nature were scattered about – nothing was there to indicate that the occupant was anything but a simple, sweet child of innocence except —
Well, Henriette was right – except the Gaster jewels. Even as my mistress had suspected, they were cached under the eaves, snuggled close against the huge dormer-window looking out upon the gardens; laid by for a convenient moment to get them out of Newport, and then – back to England for Fiametta. And what a gorgeous collection they were! Dog-collars of diamonds, yards of pearl rope, necklaces of rubies of the most lustrous color and of the size of pigeons' eggs, rings, brooches, tiaras – everything in the way of jewelled ornament the soul of woman could desire – all packed closely away in a tin box that I now remembered Fiametta had brought with her in her hand the day of her arrival. And now all these things were ours – Henriette's and mine – without our having had to stir out-of-doors to get them. An hour later they were in the safety-deposit vault of Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles in the sturdy cellars of the Tiverton Trust Company, as secure against intrusion as though they were locked in the heart of Gibraltar itself.
And Fiametta? Well – a week later she left Newport suddenly, her eyes red with weeping and her slight little figure convulsed with grief. Her favorite aunt had just died, she said, and she was going back to England to bury her.
IV
THE PEARL ROPE OF MRS. GUSHINGTON-ANDREWS
"Bunny," said Henrietta one morning, shortly after we had come into possession of the Gaster jewels, "how is your nerve? Are you ready for a coup requiring a lot of it?"
"Well," I replied, pluming myself a bit, "I don't wish to boast, Henriette, but I think it is pretty good. I managed to raise twenty-seven hundred dollars on my own account by the use of it last night."
"Indeed?" said Henriette, with a slight frown. "How, Bunny? You know you are likely to complicate matters for all of us if you work on the side. What, pray, did you do last night?"
And then I unfolded to her the incidents of the night before when, by assuming at a moment's notice the position of valet to young Robertson de Pelt, the frisky young favorite of the inner set, I had relieved that high-flying young bachelor of fifteen hundred dollars in cash and some twelve hundred dollars worth of jewels as well.
"I was spending the evening at the Gentlemen's Gentlemen's Club," I explained, "when word came over the telephone to Digby, Mr. de Pelt's valet, that Mr. de Pelt was at the Rockerbilts' and in no condition to go home alone. It happened that it was I who took the message, and observing that Digby was engaged in a game of billiards, and likely to remain so for some time to come, I decided to go after the gentleman myself without saying anything to Digby about it. Muffling myself up so that no one could recognize me, I hired a cab and drove out to the Rockerbilt mansion, sent in word that Mr. de Pelt's man was waiting for him, and in ten minutes had the young gentleman in my possession. I took him to his apartment, dismissed the cab, and, letting ourselves into his room with his own latch-key, put him to bed. His clothes I took, as a well-ordered valet should, from his bed-chamber into an adjoining room, where, after removing the contents of his pockets, I hung them neatly over a chair and departed, taking with me, of course, everything of value the young gentleman had about him, even down to the two brilliant rubies he wore in his garter buckles. This consisted of two handfuls of crumpled twenty-dollar bills from his trousers, three rolls of one-hundred-dollar bills from his waistcoat, and sundry other lots of currency, both paper and specie, that I found stowed away in his overcoat and dinner-coat pockets. There were also ten twenty-dollar gold pieces in a little silver chain-bag he carried on his wrist. As I say, there was about fifteen hundred dollars of this loose change, and I reckon up the value of his studs, garter rubies, and finger-rings at about twelve hundred dollars more, or a twenty-seven hundred dollars pull in all. Eh?"
"Mercy, Bunny, that was a terribly risky thing. Suppose he had recognized you?" cried Henriette.
"Oh, he did – or at least he thought he did," I replied, smiling broadly at the recollection. "On the way home in the cab he wept on my shoulder and said I was the best friend he ever had, and told me he loved me like a brother. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me, and if ever I wanted an automobile or a grand-piano all I had to do was to ask him for it. He was very genial."
"Well, Bunny," said Henriette, "you are very clever at times, but do be careful. I am delighted to have you show your nerve now and then, but please don't take any serious chances. If Mr. de Pelt ever recognizes you – and he dines here next Wednesday – you'll get us both into awful trouble."
Again I laughed. "He won't," said I, with a conviction born of experience. "His geniality was of the kind that leaves the mind a blank the following morning. I don't believe Mr. de Pelt remembers now that he was at the Rockerbilts' last night, and even if he does, you know that I was in this house at eleven o'clock."
"I, Bunny? Why, I haven't seen you since dinner," she demurred.
"Nevertheless, Henriette, you know that I was in the house at eleven o'clock last night – or, rather, you will know it if you are ever questioned on the subject, which you won't be," said I. "So, now that I have shown you in just what shape my nerve is, what is the demand you are going to put upon it?"
"You will have to bring to the enterprise all that ability which used to characterize your efforts as an amateur actor, Bunny," she replied. "Summon all your sang-froid to your aid; act with deliberation, courtesy, and, above all, without the slightest manifestation of nervousness, and we should win, not a petty little twenty-seven hundred dollars, but as many thousands. You know Mrs. Gushington-Andrews?"
"Yes," said I. "She is the lady who asked me for the olives at your last dinner."
"Precisely," observed Henriette. "You possibly observed also that wherever she goes she wears about sixty-nine yards of pearl rope upon her person."
"Rope?" I laughed. "I shouldn't call that rope. Cable, yes – frankly, when she came into the dining-room the other night I thought it was a feather-boa she had on."
"All pearls, Bunny, of the finest water," said Henriette, enthusiastically. "There isn't one of the thousands that isn't worth anywhere from five hundred to twenty-five hundred."
"And I am to land a yard or two of the stuff for you in some mysterious way?" I demanded. "How is it to be – by kidnapping the lady, the snatch and run game, or how?"
"Sarcasm does not suit your complexion, Bunny," retorted Henriette. "Your best method is to follow implicitly the directions of wiser brains. You are a first-class tool, but as a principal – well – well, never mind. You do what I tell you and some of those pearls will be ours. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, as you may have noticed, is one of those exceedingly effusive ladies who go into ecstasies over everything and everybody. She is what Raffles used to call a palaverer. Where most people nod she describes a complete circle with her head. When a cold, formal handshake is necessary she perpetrates an embrace, and that is where we come in. At my next Tuesday tea she will be present. She will wear her pearls – she'll be strung with them from head to foot. A rope-walk won't be in it with her, and every single little jewel will be worth a small fortune. You, Bunny, will be in the room to announce her when she arrives. She will rush to my arms, throw her own about my neck, the ornaments of my corsage will catch the rope at two or more points, sever the thread in several places, pearls will rain down upon the floor by dozens, and then – "
"I'm to snatch 'em and dive through the window, eh?" I interrupted.
"No, Bunny – you will behave like a gentleman, that is all," she responded, haughtily; "or rather like a butler with the instincts of a gentleman. At my cry of dismay over the accident – "
"Better call it the incident," I put in.
"Hush! At my cry of dismay over the accident," Henriette repeated, "you will spring forward, go down upon your knees, and gather up the jewels by the handful. You will pour them back into Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's hands and retire. Now, do you see?"
"H'm – yes," said I. "But how do you get the pearls if I pour them back into her hands? Am I to slide some of them under the rugs, or flick them with my thumb-nail under the piano – or what?"
"Nothing of the sort, Bunny; just do as I tell you – only bring your gloves to me just before the guests arrive, that is all," said Henriette. "Instinct will carry you through the rest of it."
And then the conspiracy stopped for the moment.
The following Tuesday at five the second of Mrs. Van Raffles's Tuesday afternoons began. Fortune favored us in that it was a beautiful day and the number of guests was large. Henriette was charming in her new gown specially imported from Paris – a gown of Oriental design with row upon row of brilliantly shining, crescent-shaped ornaments firmly affixed to the front of it and every one of them as sharp as a steel knife. I could see at a glance that even if so little as one of these fastened its talons upon the pearl rope of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews nothing under heaven could save it from laceration.
What a marvellous mind there lay behind those exquisite, childlike eyes of the wonderful Henriette!
"Remember, Bunny – calm deliberation – your gloves now," were her last words to me.
"Count on me, Henriette; but I still don't see – " I began.
"Hush! Just watch me," she replied.
Whereupon this wonderful creature, taking my white gloves, deliberately smeared their palms and inner sides of the fingers with a milk-hued paste of her own making, composed of talcum powder and liquid honey. Nothing more innocent-appearing yet more villainously sticky have I ever before encountered.
"There!" she said – and at last I understood.
An hour later our victim arrived and scarce an inch of her but shone like a snow-clad hill with the pearls she wore. I stood at the portière and announced Mrs. Gushington-Andrews in my most blasé but butlerian tones. The lady fairly rushed by me, and in a moment her arms were about Henriette's neck.
"You dear, sweet thing!" cried Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. "And you look so exquisitely charming to-day – "
And then there came a ripping sound. The two women started to draw away from each other; five of the crescents catching in the rope, in the impulsive jerking back of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews in order that she might gaze into Henrietta's eyes, cut through the marvellous cords of the exquisite jewels. There was a cry of dismay both from Henriette and her guest, and the rug beneath their feet was simply white with riches. In a moment I was upon my knees scooping them up by the handful.
"Oh, dear, how very unfortunate!" cried Henriette. "Here, dear," she added, holding out a pair of teacups. "Let James pour them into this," and James, otherwise myself, did so to the extent of five teacups full of them and then he discreetly retired.
"Well, Bunny," said Henriette, breathlessly, two hours later when her last guest had gone. "Tell me quickly – what was the result?"
"These, madam," said I, handing her a small plush bag into which I had poured the "salvage" taken from my sticky palms. "A good afternoon's work," I added.
And, egad, it was: seventeen pearls of a value of twelve hundred dollars each, fifteen worth scarcely less than nine hundred dollars apiece, and some twenty-seven or eight smaller ones that we held to be worth in the neighborhood of five hundred dollars each.
"Splendid!" cried Henrietta "Roughly speaking, Bunny, we've pulled in between forty and fifty thousand dollars to-day."
"About that," said I, with an inward chuckle, for I, of course, did not tell Henriette of eight beauties I had kept out of the returns for myself. "But what are we going to do when Mrs. Gushington-Andrews finds out that they are gone?"
"I shall provide for that," said this wonderful woman. "I shall throw her off the scent by sending you over to her at once with sixteen of these assorted. I hate to give them up, but I think it advisable to pay that much as a sort of insurance against suspicion. Even then we'll be thirty-five thousand dollars to the good. And, by-the-way, Bunny, I want to congratulate you on one thing."
"Ah! What's that – my sang-froid, my nerve?" I asked, airily.
"No, the size of your hands," said Henriette. "The superficial area of those palms of yours has been worth ten thousand dollars to us to-day."
