Though I had no evidence against him, the idea that Milbourne was the thief had little by little fixed1 itself in my mind. It was largely a process of elimination2. All the others had proved to my satisfaction one way or another that they couldn't have committed the robbery. With the exception of Quarles, none of them had the brains to conceive of such a plan, or to hide it afterwards. I didn't know if Milbourne had the brains, indeed the more I went with him the less I knew. Yet he did not seem to have a guard over himself. I laid several ingenious little traps to get a sight of his bank-book, but did not succeed in finding out even if he possessed3 such a thing.
Milbourne was a pasty, hatchet-faced individual, very precise and conscientious4 in his manner, and exceedingly talkative. That was what put me off. He talked all the time, but I learned nothing from it. With his sharp, foxy features and narrow-set eyes he had the look of a crook5 right enough, but after all looks are not so important as disposition6, and this heavy, dull-witted, verbose7 fellow was the epitome8 of respectability. He was not at all popular in the company, principally, I fancy, because of his over-nicety. He bragged9 of the number of baths he took. He was not "a good fellow." He never joked nor carried on with the crowd. In the play he took the part of a brutal10 thug, a sort of Bill Sykes, and played it well though there was nothing in his appearance to suggest the part. He was the fox, not the bull-dog. Imagine a man with the appearance of a fox and the voice of a sheep and you have Milbourne.
Shortly after I joined the company I was allotted11 to share his dressing-room. He told me that he had requested the stage-manager to make the change, because he objected to the personal habits of his former roommate. So I had every opportunity to observe him. A lot of good it did me. He talked me to sleep. He would recite all the news of the day which I had just read for myself, and commented on it like a country newspaper. You couldn't stop him.
Roland Quarles I cultivated for a different reason. I did not suspect him. As a popular leading juvenile12 his life for years had been lived in the public eye and there was no reason in the world save pure cussedness why he should be a thief. I liked him. I was working hard, but one can't be a detective every waking minute. I sought out Roland to forget my work. I had started disinterestedly13 with the whole company, but I gradually came to feel an affection for Roland, principally because, much to my surprise, he seemed to like me.
I have said he was a morose14 young man. Such was my first impression. He did not make friends easily. He was hated by all the men of the company, because he despised their foolish conceit15, and took no pains to hide it. But the women liked him, I may say all women were attracted to him. He did not plume16 himself on this, it was a matter of great embarrassment17 to him. He avoided them no less than the men.
He was exceedingly good-looking and graceful18, and there was not the slightest consciousness of it in his bearing. In that among young actors he stood alone. He had a sort of proud, reserved, bitter air, or as a novelist would say, he seemed to cherish a secret sorrow. His mail at the theatre was enormous. He used to stuff it in his pocket without looking at it.
I got my first insight into his character from his treatment of me. Of the entire company he and Milbourne were the only members who never made my meek19 insignificance20 a target for unkind wit. Of them all only this high and mighty21 young man never tried to make me feel my insignificance. For a while he ignored me, but it seemed to strike him at last that I was being put upon by the others, whereupon in an unassuming way he began to make little overtures22 of friendship. I was charmed.
One night after the show he offered me a cigar at the stage door, and we walked down the street smoking and chatting until our ways parted. He was not on during the second act, and after my brief scene I got in the habit of stopping a while in his room before I went up to change. He had good sense. It was worth while talking to him. We became very friendly. He was only a year or two younger than I, but to me he seemed like a mere23 kid.
One night in the middle of our talk he said: "You're not like an actor. You're human."
"Don't you like actors?" I asked curiously24.
"It's a rotten business for men," he said bitterly. "It unsexes them. But here I am! What am I to do about it?"
I learned as I knew him better that the popular young actor, notwithstanding the adulation of women—or perhaps because of it, led an exemplary life. The dazzling palaces of the Great White Way knew him not. It was his custom to go home after the show, have a bite to eat in solitude25, and read until he turned in.
One night he invited me to accompany him home. He had a modest flat in the Gramercy Square neighbourhood with an adoring old woman to look after him. The cheerful fire, the shaded lamp, the capacious easy chair, gave me a new conception of bachelor comfort. Books were a feature of the place.
"Pretty snug26, eh?" he said, following my admiring eyes.
"Well, you're not like an actor either," said I.
He laughed. "After the theatre this is like Heaven!"
"Why don't you chuck it?" I asked. "You're young."
He shrugged27. "Who wants to give an actor a regular job?"
We had scrambled28 eggs and sausages. I stayed for a couple of hours talking about the abstract questions that young men loved to discuss. When I left he was as much of an enigma29 to me as when I arrived. He was willing to talk about anything under the sun—except himself. Without appearing to, he foiled all my attempts to draw him out.
Hard upon this growing friendship it was a shock to learn from Sadie as a result of her work during the days, that it was Roland Quarles who had deposited forty thousand dollars in his bank.
"Impossible!" I said in my first surprise.
"I got it direct from the bank," she said. "It was the Second National. He deposited forty thousand in cash on April Sixth."
My heart sunk.
"But that doesn't prove that he stole the pearls," said Sadie. She shared my liking30 for the young fellow.
"I hope not," I said gloomily. "But if it wasn't he then our promising31 clue is no good."
"Maybe he won it on the Stock Exchange."
"That doesn't explain the cash. No broker32 pays in cash."
"Well I can think of ten good reasons why he couldn't have done it," Sadie said obstinately33. She had too warm a heart, perhaps, to make an ideal investigator34.
That night Roland asked me home to supper again. This was about a week after the first occasion. The old woman had gone to bed and he cooked creamed oysters35 in a chafing-dish, while I looked at the paper.
"Wouldn't it be nice to have white hands waiting at home to do that for you?" I suggested teasingly.
"Never for me!" he said with a bitter smile.
"Why not?"
"What I can have I don't want. What I want I can never have."
"You never can tell," I said encouragingly. I was thinking what a superb couple the handsome young pair made on the stage. It seemed low to cross-examine him while he was preparing to feed me, but there was no help for it.
"The market is off again," I said carelessly. "Chance for somebody to make money."
"How can you make money when the market is going down," he said innocently.
If the innocence36 was assumed it was mighty well done. However, I told myself his business was acting37.
"By selling short," I said.
"I never understood that operation."
I explained it.
"Too complicated for me," he said. "I consider the whole business immoral38."
I agreed, and switched to talk of solid, permanent investments. He immediately looked interested.
"You seem to know something about such matters," he said. "Suppose a man had a little money to invest, what would you advise?"
"Your savings39?" I asked with a smile.
"Lord! I couldn't save anything. No, I have a friend who has a few thousand surplus."
Being anxious to believe well of him I snatched at this straw. Maybe a friend had entrusted40 him with money to invest. Hardly likely though, and still more unlikely that it would be handed over in cash. I gave him some good advice, and the subject was dropped.
Later we got to talking about acting again. He said in his bitter way:
"I shall soon be out of it now, one way or the other."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean to leave the stage at the close of this engagement or before."
"What are you going to do?"
"God knows!" he said with his laugh. "Go to the devil, I expect."
I couldn't get anything else out of him. It was all mysterious enough. He sounded utterly41 reckless when you got below the surface, but somehow it was not the recklessness of a crook.
Worse was to follow.
First, however, I must put down how the situation stood with Milbourne, because I shall not return to him for some time. Kenton Milbourne! I have to smile every time I write it, the fancy appellation42 was so unsuitable to the tallow-cheeked, hatchet-faced talker who bore it. I believed Milbourne had stolen the pearls, and I worked hard to justify43 my belief, but without being able to lay anything bare against him.
Every night he talked me to a standstill. He seemed to be a man totally devoid44 of individuality, temperament45, a mere windbag46. But I told myself that dullness is the favourite and most effective disguise of a sharper. His talk was a little too dull to be natural, and once in a while I received an impression that he was anything but dull.
One night I said to him as Roland had said to me: "You don't seem like an actor. How did you get into this business?"
"Drifted into it," he said. "Always knew I could act, but was too busy with other things. I had an attack of typhoid in Sydney four years ago which shattered my health. When I was getting better a friend gave me the part of a human monster to play, just to help me pass the time. I made a wonderful hit in it. They wouldn't let me stop. Since then I've never been idle. I haven't any conceit, so they offer me the horrible parts."
"Sydney?" I said.
"I was raised in Australia. I came to America last Fall because there was a wider field for my art."
I put this down in my mind as a lie. I do not know Australia but I suppose they have their own peculiarities47 of speech, and this man talked good New York.
I asked idly what parts he had played in Australia. He named three or four and I made careful mental notes of them. I thought I had him there.
The next day I consulted old files of an Australian stage paper in the rooms of the Actors' Society. To my chagrin49 I found his name, Kenton Milbourne listed in the casts of the very plays he had mentioned. I was far from being convinced of his genuineness, however. I wrote to Australia for further information.
Under cover of my meek and gentle air, I continued to watch him close. I could have sworn he was not aware of it, which shows how you may fool yourself. His apparent stupidity still blocked me. But one night when he lifted the tray of his trunk I saw the edge of a book underneath50.
"Anything good to read?" I said, picking it up before he could stop me.
A peculiar48 look chased across his face, which was anything but stupidity. The title of the book was: "The World's Famous Jewels."
"Aha! my man!" I thought. I dropped it, saying: "That's not in my line."
This was how matters stood when things began to happen which drove all thought of Kenton Milbourne out of my mind.
The next day Sadie came into the office to report, looking so confoundedly pretty that it drove the detective business clean out of my mind for the moment. What with her thirty dollars a week from the theatre and her additional salary as operative (which Miss Hamerton insisted on her taking) Sadie was in affluent51 circumstances, and for the first time in her life she was able to dress as a pretty girl ought. With her Spring hat and suit, her dainty gloves and boots, all from the best shops, she was as smart a little lady as you'd find from one end of the Avenue to the other.
"You look sweet enough to eat!" I said, grinning at her like a Cheshire cat.
"Cut it out!" she said with her high and mighty air. "It's business hours. I'm operative S.F."
"What's that for, swell52 figure?"
"Wait till after the whistle blows."
"After hours you're Miss Covington the actress, and I'm not allowed to know you."
"Well, there's Sunday."
"But this is only Tuesday."
"I've got to respect my boss, haven't I?"
"What if I kissed you anyhow?"
"I'd box your ears!" she said quick as lightning.
And she would. I sighed, and came back to earth. It was not that I was afraid of the box on the ears, but she was right, and I knew it. As soon as I started that line of talk I resigned my proper place as the boss of the establishment.
"What's new?" I asked.
"I found out something interesting to-day," she said. "Miss Hamerton's in love with Roland Quarles."
"I guessed that long ago," I said calmly.
Sadie was much taken aback. Evidently she had expected to stun53 me. "You never said anything about it," she said pouting54.
"I left it for you to find out for yourself."
"She never believed he had anything to do with the robbery," Sadie said with a touch of defiance55.
"Then why was she so distressed56 in the beginning?"
"Well, there was something that would have looked like evidence to a man," said Sadie scornfully. "So naturally she didn't want to tell you."
"Did she tell you?" I asked, a little huffed at the thought that Sadie was getting deeper in the confidence of my client than I.
"Yes, to-day. She didn't tell me about her feelings, of course. I guessed that part."
"What is this mysterious thing?"
"She only told me because since she saw the cryptogram57 she knows there couldn't be anything in it."
This was getting denser58 instead of more clear. "What was there about the cryptogram that eased her mind?" I asked.
"She knows that it couldn't have been written to Roland Quarles because he has no idea of leaving the company."
"Oh, hasn't he!" I thought to myself. How strangely loving women reason. Aloud I said: "Now for the thing that a mere man would have considered evidence."
"Don't try to be sarcastic," said Sadie. "It doesn't suit you."
"Who's forgetting that I'm the boss now?" I said severely59.
She made a face at me and went on: "It seems that Miss Hamerton and Roland Quarles had a bet on about the pearls."
This was something new. I pricked60 up my ears.
"She laughed at him because he thought he knew something about jewels, and she says he scarcely knows a pearl from an opal. They argued about it, and she finally bet him a box of cigars against a box of gloves that he wouldn't be able to tell when she wore the genuine pearls. That is how she came to wear them the night they were stolen."
"The devil!" I exclaimed.
"But he has never spoken about it since. She believes that he has forgotten all about the bet."
I walked up and down the room considering what this meant.
"You needn't look like that," said Sadie. "We know he didn't do it. Wouldn't he have paid his bet if he had?"
"It seems so," I said. I didn't know what to believe.
"There's another reason," said Sadie, "sufficient for a woman."
"What's that?"
"He's in love with her. He's making love to her now. He couldn't do that if he had robbed her."
"I don't know," I said grimly. "If he could rob her, I suspect he could make love to her."
That night at the theatre I devoted61 my attention pretty exclusively to Quarles. God knows I was not anxious to ruin the young fellow, but Sadie's communication taken in connection with the cryptogram and that mysterious cash deposit was beginning to look like pretty strong evidence. This being my first case, I attached more importance to "evidence" than I would now.
I was in his dressing-room when he left to go on for the third act. He had only a short scene at the beginning, and as he went out, he asked me to wait till he came off.
I watched him go with a sinking heart for I hated to do what I had to do. He was so handsome, so graceful, and with that burden on his breast, so invariably kind to me, I felt like a wretch62. Nevertheless, I told myself for the sake of all of us I had to discover the painful secret he was hiding.
I knew exactly how long I had before he would return. I swung the door almost shut, as if the wind had blown it, and made a rapid, thorough search. There was a pile of letters on his dressing-table as yet unopened. Nothing suspicious there. Nothing in the drawers of his dressing-table. There was no trunk in the room. His street coat was on a form hanging from a hook. I frisked the pockets. There was a handful of letters, papers in the breast pocket. Shuffling63 them over I came upon a sheet of "dimity" note-paper without an envelope. Opening it I beheld64 a communication in cryptogram exactly like the other.
I could hear the voices on the stage. Roland was about to come off. I hastily returned all the papers to his pocket as I had found them,—except the cryptogram. That I put in my own pocket.
When he came in we picked up our conversation where we had dropped it.
As soon as I got home I made haste to translate my find. I had saved the numerical key I used before. I instantly found that it fitted this communication also. This is what I got:
"I. has known of her loss for a couple of weeks. She has put two detectives in the company. Faxon and the girl Covington. I have this straight. Watch yourself. J."
So this is why Quarles cultivated my friendship! I thought, feeling all the bitterness of finding myself betrayed. I could no longer doubt my evidence. My friendly feelings for the young fellow were curdled65.
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1
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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elimination
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| n.排除，消除，消灭 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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verbose
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| adj.用字多的；冗长的；累赘的 | |
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epitome
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| n.典型，梗概 | |
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bragged
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| v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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disinterestedly
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morose
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| adj.脾气坏的，不高兴的 | |
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conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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plume
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| n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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overtures
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| n.主动的表示，提议；（向某人做出的）友好表示、姿态或提议( overture的名词复数 )；（歌剧、芭蕾舞、音乐剧等的）序曲，前奏曲 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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broker
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| n.中间人，经纪人；v.作为中间人来安排 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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investigator
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| n.研究者，调查者，审查者 | |
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oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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appellation
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| n.名称，称呼 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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windbag
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| n.风囊，饶舌之人，好说话的人 | |
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peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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chagrin
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| n.懊恼；气愤；委屈 | |
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50
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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affluent
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| adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的 | |
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52
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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53
stun
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| vt.打昏，使昏迷，使震惊，使惊叹 | |
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54
pouting
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| v.撅（嘴）( pout的现在分词 ) | |
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55
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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56
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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cryptogram
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| n.密码 | |
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denser
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| adj. 不易看透的, 密集的, 浓厚的, 愚钝的 | |
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59
severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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60
pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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62
wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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63
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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64
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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65
curdled
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| v.（使）凝结( curdle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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