HE Efficient Baxter prowled feverishly1 up and down the yielding carpet of the big drawing-room. His eyes gleamed behind their spectacles, his dome-like brow was corrugated2. Except for himself, the room was empty. As far as the scene of the disaster was concerned, the tumult3 and the shouting had died. It was going on vigorously in practically every other part of the house, but in the drawing-room there was stillness, if not peace.
Baxter paused, came to a decision, went to the wall and pressed the bell.
“Thomas,” he said when that footman presented himself a few moments later.
“Sir?”
“Send Susan to me.”
“Susan, sir?”
“Yes, Susan,” snapped the Efficient One, who had always a short way with the domestic staff. “Susan, Susan, Susan. . . . The new parlourmaid.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Very good, sir.”
Thomas withdrew, outwardly all grave respectfulness, inwardly piqued4, as was his wont5, at the airy manner in which the secretary flung his orders about at the castle. The domestic staff at Blandings lived in a perpetual state of smouldering discontent under Baxter’s rule.
[p. 240]“Susan,” said Thomas when he arrived in the lower regions, “you’re to go up to the drawing-room. Nosey Parker wants you.”
The pleasant-faced young woman whom he addressed laid down her knitting.
“Who?” she asked.
“Mister Blooming Baxter. When you’ve been here a little longer you’ll know that he’s the feller that owns the place. How he got it I don’t know. Found it,” said Thomas satirically, “in his Christmas stocking, I expect. Anyhow, you’re to go up.”
Thomas’s fellow-footman, Stokes, a serious-looking man with a bald forehead, shook that forehead solemnly.
“Something’s the matter,” he asserted. “You can’t tell me that wasn’t a scream we heard when them lights was out. Or,” he added weightily, for he was a man who looked at every side of a question, “a shriek6. It was a shriek or scream. I said so at the time. ‘There,’ I said, ‘listen!’ I said. ‘That’s somebody screaming,’ I said. ‘Or shrieking7.’ Something’s up.”
“Well, Baxter hasn’t been murdered, worse luck,” said Thomas. “He’s up there screaming or shrieking for Susan. ‘Send Susan to me!’” proceeded Thomas, giving an always popular imitation. “‘Susan, Susan, Susan.’ So you’d best go, my girl, and see what he wants.”
“Very well.”
“And, Susan,” said Thomas, a tender note creeping into his voice, for already, brief as had been her sojourn8 at Blandings, he had found the new parlourmaid making a deep impression on him, “if it’s a row of any kind . . .”
“Or description,” interjected Stokes.
“Or description,” continued Thomas, accepting the[p. 241] word, “if ’e’s ’arsh with you for some reason or other, you come right back to me and sob9 out your troubles on my chest, see? Lay your little ’ead on my shoulder and tell me all about it.”
The new parlourmaid, primly10 declining to reply to this alluring11 invitation, started on her journey upstairs; and Thomas, with a not unmanly sigh, resumed his interrupted game of halfpenny nap with colleague Stokes.
* * * * *
The Efficient Baxter had gone to the open window and was gazing out into the night when Susan entered the drawing-room.
“You wished to see me, Mr. Baxter?”
The secretary spun12 round. So softly had she opened the door, and so noiselessly had she moved when inside the room, that it was not until she spoke13 that he had become aware of her arrival. It was a characteristic of this girl Susan that she was always apt to be among those present some time before the latter became cognisant of the fact.
“Oh, good evening, Miss Simmons. You came in very quietly.”
“Habit,” said the parlourmaid.
“You gave me quite a start.”
“I’m sorry. What was it,” she asked, dismissing in a positively14 unfeeling manner the subject of her companion’s jarred nerves, “that you wished to see me about?”
“Shut that door.”
“I have. I always shut doors.”
“Please sit down.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Baxter. It might look odd if anyone should come in.”
[p. 242]“Of course. You think of everything.”
“I always do.”
Baxter stood for a moment, frowning.
“Miss Simmons,” he said, “when I thought it expedient15 to install a private detective in this house, I insisted on Wragge’s sending you. We had worked together before . . .”
“Sixteenth of December, 1918, to January twelve, 1919, when you were secretary to Mr. Horace Jevons, the American millionaire,” said Miss Simmons as promptly16 as if he had touched a spring. It was her hobby to remember dates with precision.
“Exactly. I insisted upon your being sent because I knew from experience that you were reliable. At that time I looked on your presence here merely as a precautionary measure. Now, I am sorry to say . . .”
“Did someone steal Lady Constance’s necklace to-night?”
“Yes!”
“When the lights went out just now?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, why couldn’t you say so at once? Good gracious, man, you don’t have to break the thing gently to me.”
The Efficient Baxter, though he strongly objected to being addressed as “man,” decided17 to overlook the solecism.
“The lights suddenly went out,” he said. “There was a certain amount of laughter and confusion. Then a piercing shriek . . .”
“I heard it.”
“And immediately after Lady Constance’s voice crying that her jewels had been snatched from her neck.”
“Then what happened?”
“Still greater confusion, which lasted until one of[p. 243] the maids arrived with a candle. Eventually the lights went on again, but of the necklace there was no sign whatever.”
“Well? Were you expecting the thief to wear it as a watch-chain or hang it from his teeth?”
Baxter was finding his companion’s manner more trying every minute, but he preserved his calm.
“Naturally the doors were barred and a complete search instituted. And extremely embarrassing it was. With the single exception of the scoundrel who has been palming himself off as McTodd, all those present were well-known members of Society.”
“Well-known members of Society might not object to getting hold of a twenty-thousand pound necklace. But still, with the McTodd fellow there, you oughtn’t to have had far to look. What had he to say about it?”
“He was among the first to empty his pockets.”
“Well, then, he must have hidden the thing somewhere.”
“Not in this room. I have searched assiduously.”
“H’m.”
There was a silence.
“It is baffling,” said Baxter, “baffling.”
“It is nothing of the kind,” replied Miss Simmons tartly18. “This wasn’t a one-man job. How could it have been? I should be inclined to call it a three-man job. One to switch off the lights, one to snatch the necklace, and one to—was that window open all the time? I thought so—and one to pick up the necklace when the second fellow threw it out on to the terrace.”
“Terrace!”
“Thought of something?”
[p. 244]“Miss Simmons,” said the Efficient One impressively, “everybody was assembled in here waiting for the reading to begin, but the pseudo-McTodd was nowhere to be found. I discovered him eventually on the terrace in close talk with the Halliday girl.”
“His partner,” said Miss Simmons, nodding. “We thought so all along. And let me add my little bit. There’s a fellow down in the servants’ hall that calls himself a valet, and I’ll bet he didn’t know what a valet was till he came here. I thought he was a crook20 the moment I set eyes on him. I can tell ’em in the dark. Now, do you know whose valet he is? This McTodd fellow’s!”
Baxter bounded to and fro like a caged tiger.
“And with my own ears,” he cried excitedly, “I heard the Halliday girl refuse to come to the drawing-room to listen to the reading. She was out on the terrace throughout the whole affair. Miss Simmons, we must act! We must act!”
“Yes, but not like idiots,” replied the detective frostily.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you can’t charge out, as you looked as if you wanted to just then, and denounce these crooks21 where they sit. We’ve got to go carefully.”
“They won’t smuggle any necklace away, not while I’m around. Suspicion’s no good. We’ve made out a nice little case against the three of them, but it’s no use unless we catch them with the goods. The first thing we have to do is to find out where they’ve hidden the stuff. And that’ll take patience. I’ll start by searching that girl’s room. Then I’ll search the valet fellow’s room. And if the stuff isn’t there, it’ll mean they’ve hidden it out in the open somewhere.”
[p. 245]“But this McTodd fellow. This fellow who poses as McTodd. He may have it all the while.”
“No. I’ll search his room, too, but the stuff won’t be there. He’s the fellow who’s going to get it in the end, because he’s got that place out in the woods to hide it in. But they wouldn’t have had time to slip it to him yet. That necklace is somewhere right here. And if,” said Miss Simmons with grim facetiousness23, “they can hide it from me, they may keep it as a birthday present.”
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1
feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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2
corrugated
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| adj.波纹的；缩成皱纹的；波纹面的；波纹状的v.（使某物）起皱褶(corrugate的过去式和过去分词) | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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piqued
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| v.伤害…的自尊心( pique的过去式和过去分词 )；激起（好奇心） | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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6
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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7
shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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8
sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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primly
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| adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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11
alluring
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| adj.吸引人的，迷人的 | |
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12
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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13
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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14
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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16
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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18
tartly
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| adv.辛辣地，刻薄地 | |
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19
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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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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crooks
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| n.骗子( crook的名词复数 )；罪犯；弯曲部分；（牧羊人或主教用的）弯拐杖v.弯成钩形( crook的第三人称单数 ) | |
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22
smuggle
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| vt.私运；vi.走私 | |
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23
facetiousness
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| n.滑稽 | |
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