# Smith's Magazine/Volume 23/Issue 2/The impudent lady's maid

from Smith's Magazine, May 1916, pp. 331–352. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted
The Impudent Lady's Maid By Ben Ames Williams
ILLUSTRATED BY VICTOR PERARD
A Blithe Adventure of Mystery and Love
F. JOHNSON BLISS, A. B., A. M., Ph. D., et al, did not hesitate to admit that he was a philosopher. He would have preferred to continue his studies, but since his father insisted, and since his father held the whip hand, he was prepared to venture with the utmost resignation into more lucrative pursuits. His father's letter was not an hour old before his decision was made. He would become an author. The occupation offered, he felt, exceptional opportunities for avoiding that sex for which he acknowledged so stern an aversion. An author might still be a recluse. Furthermore, he was not without experience in his newly chosen field. Some months before, he had compiled a gripping little treatise upon “Some Anomalous Activities of Animalculæ,” and had forwarded it in turn to each of several magazines. The uniform courtesy of the replies had delighted him, and in one case the regret at returning his manuscript had been obviously so keen that he had sent a friendly and reassuring note to the editor.
He had no doubt he would succeed in the paths of literary effort. There was a young man of his acquaintance who had won laurels by his pen, and he was a distinctly commonplace young man. Encountering this acquaintance, by name Thompson, in the university library, Bliss, with the tone of one who honors an obscure profession, remarked:
“Thompson, I have decided to become an author.”
The amazement of Thompson was most gratifying. It was succeeded by delight. Bliss found his hands seized and vigorously shaken.
“Great!” ejaculated the literary light. “Immense! You're sure to make a hit! Why, I'll read your stuff myself!”
“I am planning,” Bliss explained, in a calm tone that should have sufficiently rebuked the other's exuberance, “a series of theses on the lack of a homing instinct in amœba. I have delved——”
The eyes of Thompson lighted hungrily.
“Now, now, F. J.,” he expostulated, “don't waste yourself! Fiction! There's your field! Blood, thunder, thrills, love——”
“Oh, I could never write of——”
“W-e-e-ll, the women like it.”
“Bother the women!” Bliss exploded, but he had the grace to flush. “Also, I am conscious of a lack of experience in the other matters——”
“Oh, that's easy. You just go out and have adventures, then write about them.” Thompson paused, with his mouth half open, his eyes dreamy. Then his gaze studied the calm countenance of Mr. Bliss. “I've got it, F. J.!” he cried. “You must get a job as a reporter—on the Evening Blast. Greatest sort of training for—er—literature.”
F, Johnson Bliss was perturbed.
“You know I never read newspa——”
“Fine! Better yet! Fresh, unspoiled viewpoint, and all that. Just you go to the Blast office, put up a front, be masterful, make them hire you. Here! I know! Ask the editor for a hard assignment, a sticker—interviewing a wild-eyed millionaire or something. He'll give it to you to be rid of you. Then all you have to do is go out and get the interview, and you've got your job. I've written dozens of newspaper stories, and it always works that way.”
Imperceptibly, the eye of F. Johnson Bliss began to sparkle, his back straightened, he drew a deep breath in the manner prescribed in his physical-training manual. As Thompson finished, he thrust out a sinewy hand.
“By—by—by goodness, Thompson, I'll do it!” he cried, and marched from the room.
For some little time after his departure, his friend Thompson surrendered to strenuous, but happy, tears.
It was amazingly easy to find the office of the Blast. One simply consulted the directory. F. Johnson Bliss told the elevator man that he wished to see the editor, and was presently deposited in a waiting room, before a door that bore a crudely printed sign advising all comers that this, the sanctum, was inviolate. Bliss had read the sign twice, and was starting a third perusal, when the door burst violently open and a chubby young man, with his hands full of newspapers, charged into his arms. Bliss snatched at opportunity.
“Your pardon,” he asked politely. “Is there an office boy in attendance at this door?”
The chubby young man looked over Bliss' shoulder and screamed, “Down!” with such frantic entreaty that Bliss instinctively ducked. The young man shouted, as he fled toward the elevator:
“S'posed to be, but you'd better butt right in!”
Bliss remembered the advice of Thompson. He must be masterful. He opened the door and entered, over the dead body of the “No Admittance” sign. Skirmishes with office boys—affairs from which he gained confidence by observing the awe his dignity inspired—brought him, presently, into a cubby-hole where a man sat behind a desk that foamed with newspapers.
The editor—his name was Scott—was an extremely taciturn man. A habit of looking over his spectacles had given him four deep parallel wrinkles across his forehead. He seemed to have many things to worry about.
“What is it?” he asked, when Bliss was seated.
“I wish a position.”
“Position—or job?”
“I desire to become a reporter.”
“Experience?”
“I have never done any newspaper work.”
“Sorry,” said Mr. Scott, and appeared to consider this a dismissal, for he dived into the froth of papers till only the sparsely covered top of his head was visible.
After a moment, he looked up and, seeing that Bliss was still there, snapped, “No!”
Bliss was a man of determination. He swallowed his heart.
“Er—Mr. Scott,” he began, and was surprised at the froglike croak in his voice, “is it not customary, in the case of a bothersome applicant for a position, to give him some hopeless task to—er—discourage him?”
The editor dropped his jaw.
“GoodGod!” he exclaimed, all in one word, in a tone of wonder.
“Suppose,” Bliss hurriedly suggested, “you give me a task of that nature. I will undertake to perform it.”
Mr. Scott studied the young man over his spectacles. Then, with the air of one trying an interesting experiment in a skeptical frame of mind, he inquired:
“Know the Murray case?”
“I had not heard of it,” Bliss replied. “In what jurisdiction was it tried?”
The editor made a peculiar noise through his nose, as if there was high internal pressure, then exploded in three sentences:
“Dammit, go read the papers! Go find the Murray necklace! God sake get out!”
F. Johnson Bliss found himself in a somewhat dazed condition as he reached the sidewalk. Of the Murray case, or the Murray necklace, he knew—to be explicit—nothing. But habit does grip a man. Heretofore, whenever Bliss had found himself in a quandary and far from the nearest library, he had known but one source of information. He remembered this now, and was guided by his previous experiences. He would ask a policeman. He found one at a crossing, and did so.
“Officer,” he inquired, “what is the Murray case?”
The crossing man waved along the traffic.
“Huh?” he said.
“And where, if you please, can I find the Murray necklace?”
The bluecoat grinned.
“An', if I knowed that, w'u'd I be wearin' out shoe leather here?” he exclaimed.
Bliss elucidated.
“I am a reporter,” he said. “I have been instructed to find the Murray necklace, and I don't know where it is.”
“Poor felly!” the patrolman sympathized. “Now, if I wuz in your shoes, wid nothin' better to be doin', I'd run out to Westville an' inquire aroun'. Mebbe some of the neighbors can be after tellin' ye.”
“Westville?”
Aye, that's where the Murrays lives.”
“I thank you, sir,' Bliss assured him. “I shall take your advice.”
And he did, leaving the officer with a pleased smile and a pleasant something in his palm.
To speak of the town of Westville in prose is almost insult. It is one of nature's songs—a bewitching harmony of woodland and meadow, of beautiful homes and smoothly flowing roads. The rounded hills are the sweet, warm bosoms of Mother Earth; the fields melt into grain and all the riches of the soil. In every fence corner, gnarled apple trees drip fruit of an indescribable savor. On a sunny day, you feel Westville could never be cloudy, and on a cloudy day you do not miss the sun. It must be confessed, however, that when F. Johnson Bliss dropped off a very dusty, smoky train, and inquired his way, he was in no laudatory mood.
“Keep a-goin',” he was advised, and, by adhering strictly to this injunction, he shortly found himself in Westville Square, where a grocery store seemed to offer the most likely information bureau.
The grocer was a small, fat man, whose face was lined with horizontal wrinkles, and his neck likewise, so that at first sight one received a strong impression that at some plastic stage of his development he had been stepped upon. To carry out the illusion, his head, which was bald, was distinctly flat on top.
“You know them?” he inquired shrilly, when Bliss asked the nearest way to the Murray estate.
“I hope to, my dear sir.”
The grocer shook his head with an air of mystery.
“Queer doin's up t' that house,” he declared. “That there necklace bizness—why, our p'lice 'u'd have found it in no time, but the missis brung in them dude detectifs f'om Boston, an' they're still a-scratchin' an' a-diggin', an' hain't found nothin', neither.”
“Necklace?” Bliss repeated, a little carried off his feet.
The grocer peered at him curiously.
“Good gosh, man!” he exclaimed. “Ain't you heerd how that dimond necklace was stole two weeks ago?” Mr. Bliss evidently had not heard, andthe grocer added: “Di'monds an' pearls—wuth a hundred thousand dollars, the papers say.”
“That can hardly be possible—so much,” Bliss objected.
“I reckon you know all about it, eh?”
“No, no! I don't,” Bliss protested. “How was it stolen?”
The grocer loved an audience.
“F'om a secret drawer in Mis' Murray's boodwar,” he declared. “They wuz a big dance up t' the house. Mis' Murray didn't wear the necklace t' the dance, but when she went to look at it afterwud, it was gone.”
“Goodness!” Bliss exclaimed.
“Yassir. Mis' Murray, she like to had a fit. She claimed her maid had stole it, an' the girl quit her. Mis' Murray didn't dare have her arrested. Then they sent for Chief Perry, an' he'd ha' showed 'em somethin'; but they called in them dude detectifs, an' he quit; an' since then the detectifs has drawed their pay, an' that's all.”
“Who—who is Mr. Murray?” Bliss asked hesitantly.
The grocer knew.
“West'ner,” he said. “Made some money in Chicago, an' come East so's his wife could cut a swath. She ain't done it to hurt, though.”
Bliss winnowed the old man clean, and at last, upon his repeated inquiry, the grocer came to his door to show the road to the Murray home. As the young man started away, he heard the fat little grocer call a final warning.
“Look out for the missis!” he shrilled. “She's a ripsnorter!”
Bliss took the road to the Murray estate at a brisk gait, inhaling for five paces, then exhaling for an equal number, an exercise he had found invaluable for remedying a hollow chest. But after proceeding the better part of a mile, he rounded a turn in the road and came upon a sight that sent his careful respiration a-skittering. A dozen yards ahead, half out of the road, its right front wheel jacked clear of the ground, stood a limousine, and beside the crippled wheel knelt a girl.
Bliss did not even see the limousine. His unwilling eyes were held by the vision of the young person kneeling there, and never afterward was he able to forget the smallest detail of her bent figure. She wore the uniform of a lady's maid, the somber black of her dress relieved by a white frill of collar that framed her neck and head like the calyx of some glorious flower. Bliss had always shunned the sex of which this girl was so delightful an example, and, as he looked upon the little lady's maid, his most earnest desire was to turn, to run, to leap the ditch and vanish into the woods; in short, to flee, to escape.
Illustration: “Oh, do put on your coat, Gerald!” Mrs. Murray shrilled, as he approached. “You're positively common!”
But what he did was to stand and drink her in with all his eyes.
She had brown hair, and a great deal of it. It flowered about her small head and clustered along the nape of her slender neck. She was very intent upon the tire as she knelt there, so much so that she seemed not to have discovered Bliss. But not so the occupant of the car. A head protruded from the window, and a shrill voice called:
“Boy! Man! Come here!”
Bliss felt a hot distaste, yet, like a somnambulist, he obeyed the summons. The kneeling girl settled back upon her heels and regarded him with open hostility. He half expected she would throw the tire wrench at him.
“I don't need any help, Mrs. Murray,” she said silkily.
Hearing that name, Bliss looked with new interest at the woman in the car. Mrs. Murray was fifty, managed to look forty, dressed thirty, and acted—when she minded her manners—perhaps twenty. Just now, being annoyed, she would have passed for sixty.
“Boy,” she snapped, “do you know anything about automobiles?”
“Yes, madam,” Bliss told her frankly. “I know everything about automobiles.”
“Well, then, do something to that tire,” Mrs. Murray commanded. “That little ninny can't, and I don't want to sit here all day.”
Bliss bowed, and stepped toward the crippled wheel. The girl moved grudgingly out of his way.
“Hate yourself, don't you?” she whispered fiercely.
This was over Bliss' head, but something in her eye made him uncomfortable. He fell to work on the tire, conscious that from the limousine was issuing a steady drip of querulous conversation.
It is, at best, a hot and disordering job to change a tire, and Bliss was by nature fastidious. He was not made more comfortable by the knowledge that the girl was watching him with some amusement.
“Have you patched the tube?” he asked her.
“I—wasn't sure that was what it needed,” she told him sweetly.
So Bliss proceeded, with what resignation he could muster, to extract the tube from the shoe and examine it for a puncture. Whereupon, he plunged headforemost into a mystery that left him trembling.
“Why—what's the matter with it?” he asked hazily.
Mrs. Murray made reply.
“The car just stopped,” she fretted, “and Smith got out, and I heard a little hissing, and she said the tire was fat, or something.”
“Flat?” Bliss suggested.
“It sounded like fat,” insisted Mrs. Murray.
“There's not a thing the——” Bliss began, then stuttered into silence, for the girl, behind the car and thus hidden from Mrs. Murray, had hushed him with a peremptory downward gesture of her clenched fist.
Bliss swallowed his words and, under the bath of Mrs. Murray's laments, replaced the tube and toiled over the pump. The tire inflated perfectly. As he had been about to assert, there was nothing whatever the matter with it. Mrs. Murray's maid, for her own purposes, had delayed that lady here upon the road. Her conduct had been most deceitful. Upon the moment, he was sure she knew something of the necklace.
“It's all right now,” he told Mrs. Murray, and cast a glance of cold reproof upon the maid. He was rather disconcerted when, upon meeting his eye, she giggled.
But at that moment a man appeared, striding along the way Bliss had come. He was a short, stout man, whose face always looked as if it could be no redder, yet continually exceeded expectations in this respect. His coat was on his arm, his pipe askew in his mouth. He looked, Bliss thought, like a hod-carrier. He was, in fact, Mr. Murray.
“Oh, do put on your coat, Gerald!” Mrs. Murray shrilled, as he approached. “You're positively common!”
“Common as dirt,” he agreed. “Cut that 'Gerald' business. Is this what you call meeting me at the station? What's the use my having automobiles? Shoot along home. I'm hot.”
The maid, Smith, covered her costume with a raincoat from the front seat and prepared to take the wheel. But her movement drew an instant protest from Mrs. Murray:
“Smith! Smith! Don't you start this car! I won't stay in it, if you drive! I won't!”
“Where's Jenkins?” Mr. Murray demanded.
“Oh, I don't know,” his wife wailed. “I couldn't find him, and Smith offered to drive me down, and the tire burst, and this man fixed it.”
Mr. Murray seemed to see Bliss for the first time. He scrutinized the young man for a moment.
“Say,” he inquired, “can you run this thing? I can't, and my wife can't, and she won't let the girl do it.”
“I can drive any car,” said Bliss simply.
Mr. Murray grinned.
“Run us home, then,” he ordered, and seemed to consider the matter settled.
Bliss, with some hesitation, climbed to the seat; the girl dropped into place beside him. He turned the car and started toward the Murray home.
Now, Bliss did well those things that he undertook. He had made a study of the theory and practice of motor-driven vehicles, and he tooled the heavy limousine along the shaded road with a smooth precision that Jenkins had never equaled. Mr. Murray was a shrewd Irishman who had acquired a fortune by discovering what other people could do best and then setting them to work at it. When Bliss brought the car to a stop at the Murray home, and Mrs. Murray and the maid had crossed the broad veranda to the house, he caught Bliss by the shoulder.
“Young fellow,” he snapped, “want a job?”
Bliss bridled, would have spoken, but——
“Want a job—as my chauffeur?”
Bliss turned pale with rage.
“Sir!” he began, intending to scorch Mr. Murray to a cinder; but that gentleman was fireproof.
“You can do it!” he cried. “You surely can drive a car, and I'll chance your being as honest as Jenkins.”
Bliss felt like a swimmer caught by the undertow. He was getting beyond his depth. People talked too fast. He did not wish to be a chauffeur. He started to say so, but found himself thrust into his place at the wheel of the limousine.
“Wages'll be all right,” Mr. Murray ejaculated. “You're hired. Haven't time to argue now. Run that car round to the garage:”
He dashed across the veranda to the house and disappeared just as Bliss found his voice. But it was then too late. Even though he did refuse the place, Bliss reasoned, there was no one to hear him. With a helpless feeling that there was nothing else to do, he obeyed Mr. Murray's order and nosed the limousine around the drive to the garage.
With the limousine safely bestowed in its place, Bliss emerged, rather dazed, to consider his plight in the open air. His first thought was that he had been trapped; his first feeling a panicky desire to flee. Soberer consideration, however, convinced him that his present situation was the result of immense good fortune.
“It is conceivable,” he told himself, “that I may thus discover circumstances that will assist me in locating this necklace.”
The Murray house was set upon a knoll closely girt with trees, so that the branches all but brushed the weather-boards. The garage was a little below the house, a stone structure, masked in greenery like some hidden fortress. To one side were the stables, to the other a prosaic row of model chicken houses. Below these buildings spread a meadow, through the center of which threaded a chuckling little brook. A path led off across the meadow, beyond the chicken houses, a rough cart track winding away in the opposite direction, past the stables.
Bliss had halted a little above the garage to look about him at the well-kept grounds, when a voice at his shoulder caustically inquired:
“Well, does it suit you?”
He whirled, to discover a tall, calm young man in flannels, whose perfect ease of manner was somewhat belied, Bliss thought, by the shadows about his eyes.
“It is most attractive,” he assented. “The meadow——”
The other interrupted lazily:
“Never mind now. Come into the house. Dad wants to talk to you.”
Bliss, obeying, was somewhat curtly ushered into the living room, where what looked like a court of justice was assembled. As Bliss entered by one door, a tearful housemaid, with a bandage about her head, came in at the other. Mr. Murray was pacing back and forth across one end of the room, while Mrs. Murray, who expressed all emotions by hysterics, was enjoying a mild attack of them upon a divan behind her husband. Smith, the pretty maid who had malingered with the limousine, was trying to appear at ease in the corner behind Mrs. Murray. As Bliss entered the room, Mr. Murray fired a question at him, like a shot across his bows, and brought him up all standing.
“Were you ever in my wife's room?” he shouted.
Bliss flushed painfully.
“Nonsense!” he protested, and was conscious that the pretty eye of Smith, the maid, was observing his discomfiture with the keenest relish.
“I reckon you weren't,” Mr. Murray reluctantly admitted, “but I'm going to get to the bottom of this. Too much mystery here to suit me. Some one just clubbed this girl on the head.” He gestured toward the tearful housemaid. “It's got to stop! Got to stop, I say!” He bellowed this last to the world in general; then, catching sight of a new and bulky figure in the doorway, shouted: “Well, what's the matter now?”
The intruder coughed importantly.
“Mr. Murray,” he said, “I regret to say that, in spite of my precautions, your wife's necklace has been stolen.”
“Say, look here, Kearns,” howled the excitable little man, “don't you try to string me!”
“I mean to say ” began the newcomer, while Mrs. Murray kicked her heels helplessly upon the divan, “ah—that is, when I was called into this case, I at once searched Mrs. Murray's boudoir, and I discovered the necklace.”
Mrs. Murray screamed and collapsed. Mr. Murray swelled like a crimson balloon. The detective confessed awkwardly:
“It was hidden behind a picture on the wall. I saw that the thief had been surprised in his work, and had been forced to hide it there and escape. I should have restored it to you then; but, sir, I was ambitious to catch the thief when he returned for it—and so—ah—I left it there.”
For a space, Mr. Murray spoke hurriedly, and with some heat. Bliss gathered that the tearful maid had been struck down, while in Mrs. Murray's rooms, by the thief who now—according to the detective—had finally escaped with the gems. Mr. Murray stated this case plainly to the disconcerted sleuth, and that gentleman assented with so many wooden nods.
“Percy, did you hear anything?” Mr. Murray at last demanded of his son, the young man who had summoned Bliss.
“Not a sound, dad. I was in my room. Didn't hear a sound.” But his meditative eye turned upon Smith, the maid.
“Say, mother,” he asked slowly, “how about that breakdown you had? Mighty convenient it was—keeping you away while the thief ransacked your rooms.”
Mrs. Murray was still too overcome to do more than gasp and point toward Smith. All eyes turned that way, and Percy sharply inquired:
“Come! What happened to delay you an hour that way?”
Bliss, every detective nerve in him a-tingle, waited to see how the maid would save herself. To his surprise, she began to cry softly into her handkerchief. He was strangely shaken. Women should not cry in public. He thought of withdrawing, but had not ventured a step toward the door when the girl suddenly averted the spotlight to him by sobbing:
“I d-don't know. I t-tried to f-fix it, and I c-couldn't, and then he”—she pointed accusingly at the startled Bliss—“he came along and fixed it.”
They whirled with one accord on Bliss, and Mr. Murray snapped:
“Yes, that's right. You fixed it. What was the matter with it, anyway?”
This was Bliss' opportunity to assert himself, to show the creature he was not one to stand trifling, to denounce her trickery, and to rank himself on the side of justice and truth. Yet, somehow, his lips would not shape the words, and he heard himself brazenly reply:
“The tire was flat. The valve plunger had worked loose. It was easily repaired, but not a thing one would notice unless one happened to inspect the valve.”
He had told a lie for an impudent lady's maid. The fact burst upon him, and instantly he was quite sure that, through that filmy handkerchief, a perfectly tearless eye was mocking him.
And so the conference ended at a blank wall, and Bliss, with that lie upon his soul, returned to the garage. There, for the first time, he encountered Jenkins, a crude person, broad and solid, with a heavy, hungry chin. Bliss disliked him, and it was obvious from the first that he disapproved of Bliss. Perhaps he felt that this new chauffeur might yet displace him. Bliss ignored his hostility, inspected the quarters provided for him and Jenkins above the garage, then set off for the village, to arrange for the forwarding of necessary clothing from the city. He would have telephoned from the Murray estate, but feared thus to disclose his identity. His blood was warming to the adventure, and when his own affairs were arranged, he bethought himself of the Evening Blast, and got Mr. Scott, the editor, upon the wire.
“This is F. Johnson Bliss,” he explained, “whom you instructed to find the Murray necklace.”
“Well, what of it?” the editor snapped.
“It has been stolen again.”
Inarticulate sounds came over the wire. They expressed amazement and disbelief.
“Nevertheless,” Bliss promised, “I shall find it and deliver it to you.”
Mr. Scott's voice was an awed whisper.
“What do I want with it?” he humbly inquired.
“Would it not be a triumph for the paper?”
The editor was slow in answering, but at length remarked:
“You're quite a newspaper man.”
“Yes,” said Bliss; and, after he had told what other facts he knew, he set out on the return to the Murray estate.
Of one thing, as he meditated, he became convinced: Between the deceit by which the impudent lady's maid had delayed Mrs. Murray upon the road and the fact that at that moment—at the time when the second theft had occurred—the man Jenkins had been missing, there must be a sinister connection. Bliss did not relish the thought. Of Jenkins he could believe anything; but to connect that exquisite—though disturbing—girl and the brutal man was distasteful.
Illustration: “Don't you want to rest before you start up the hill?” she suggested.
Nevertheless, the logic of the situation was not to be denied. All women are deceitful. There was no reason to suppose that this girl was an exception. She had, Bliss decided, a mocking eye; furthermore, there was something unsettling about the manner of her laugh. As he strode along, he decided to watch her—to watch her and to watch Jenkins.
“One or the other,” he assured himself, “is sure to give me a—er—clew.”
And at that, remembering his literary friend, Thompson, he told himself complacently:
“I'll warrant Thompson himself could have done no better than I.”
Bliss, in the swift passage of the past few hours, was become a new man. Presently he would realize this, and be much abashed. Just now he was too engrossed for introspection. Jenkins and the impudent lady's maid, the maid and Jenkins—these he must watch.
Whereupon, approaching his destination, he came face to face with the girl herself. She was just emerging from the garage, and when she saw him, she halted, with a little exclamation of dismay. One hand flew to her throat, and for an instant they stared at each other, each taken by surprise. Then suddenly she tilted back her chin and laughed delightedly.
“You weren't afraid of me, were you?” she asked mischievously.
There awoke in him that distrust always inspired in the wise by a woman who seeks to charm. Jenkins and this girl, he reminded himself, were the two he must watch; for Jenkins had stolen the necklace while this impudent maid had delayed Mrs. Murray on the road.
“Where's Jenkins?” he countered.
“The Murrays are dining out. He drove them. Aren't you coming to supper?”
“Oh, supper?” He was puzzling over her errand in the garage.
She chuckled.
“Come,” she invited. “I won't bite.”
And, as he followed her toward the house, he found the answer to his unspoken question. Jenkins, of course, after purloining the gems that morning, had hidden them in an agreed place in the garage. This girl now had secured them, and he guessed that she would at once try to escape. Watch the girl! That was his cue.
Having eaten, he took up his vigil in the shadow of a hemlock behind the house. He was so sure of his conclusion that it scarce aroused a thrill when the girl actually appeared, stole stealthily across the piazza, slipped down the steps, and merged into the night.
He watched her dark figure glide down the path toward the meadow, and followed, stepping softly, listening for her footsteps ahead till he heard her break into a run. When any creature flees, it is instinct to pursue. Bliss sprinted after the girl at top speed, and in twoscore paces pulled up short in confusion. For she had halted beside a tree on the brook bank and, with her back against the tree, her hands behind her, her breast heaving with deep inhalations, was awaiting his coming.
Having overtaken her, Bliss was at a loss. Facing her there, he admitted to himself, for the first time, that in appearance she was not displeasing. Her eyes were so wide and sparkling that even in the dark they were glowingly visible. Her hair was a soft, rich shadow about her white little face. He was, of a sudden, profoundly disturbed, and remembered that a like emotion had afflicted him at each of their encounters. The thought put him upon his guard, for their first meeting had moved him to act a falsehood, and their second had impelled him to a downright lie. He had just determined that this time, at least, he would dominate the interview, when she coldly demanded:
“Well, what do you want?'
Thrust thus upon the defensive, memory of his wrongs flooded upon him.
“I want to know what you mean by making me tell lies!” he hotly responded.
She seized her advantage.
“I'm sure I never asked you to tell—lies,” she loftily disclaimed.
“About mending the car!” he blurted, confused and angry.
“Mending the car?” Her tone expressed polite surprise. “Why, I don't remember your mending the car. Or was there really something the matter with it, after all?”
He all but shouted:
“No, there was not! There was nothing the matter, and you knew it! What purpose had you in keeping Mrs. Murray there in the sun?”
“Poor Mrs. Murray!” she giggled. “It was awfully funny when she called you, though. Were you as frightened as you looked?”
In measured tones, he repeated: “Why—did—you—keep—Mrs.—Murray—there—in—the—car?”
The girl passed from mirth to anger.
“See here,” she flared, “don't you accuse me! If there was nothing wrong with that tire, you should have said so when you had the chance!” He tried to interrupt, but she overrode him. “Be still! I'm not obliged to answer your old questions. It's funny if I can't take a—walk——”
She fell silent, listening, and Bliss heard, from somewhere in the dark ahead, a low, peculiar whistle. As it ceased, she looked at him.
“Good night!” she snapped, and started along the path.
He hesitated only an instant, yet that was long enough to lose her, and when he listened for her footsteps, they were gone. In a panic of haste, he scurried along the path, crossed the brook, and ascended a little slope till the path vanished in a clump of pines. The girl was nowhere to be seen, but as he reached the pines, from somewhere beyond them came that peculiar whistle. He pushed through the waxy branches to the farther side.
Not fifty feet below him, in a narrow stretch of meadow between the pines and the road, the girl and a man stood talking. Bliss could scarcely have seen them had not the man flashed an electric lamp. The faint murmur of their voices came to him, and then he saw the girl draw from the bosom of her dress and hand to the man a flat white packet. Beyond a doubt—the Murray necklace!
In another moment, Bliss would have sprung toward them, but a long pine needle tickled his nostril, and he sneezed—a terrific sneeze. The two sprang apart like surprised lovers, looking all ways at once. As for Bliss, he went stark mad, and bounded down the slope, running in great strides toward the two, whispering threats as he ran. He heard the girl's shrill warning: “Run! Run! Get away!”' And he saw the man, without parley, turn tail and sprint in one direction while the girl ran in the other.
Bliss, berserk, started after the man. He swore to catch him and recover the necklace, though it prove necessary to tear the fugitive to bits to accomplish the feat. And perhaps he might have done it, but, from somewhere behind him, the girl screamed, a gasping, choking cry of supreme pain.
It was as if a rope had dropped about Bliss' shoulders. With scarce a regretful glance for the fleeing man, he turned back to the girl. She was a fluttering black heap upon the ground, twitching, and moaning aloud; but as he approached, she twisted herself up to face him.
“What is it?” he demanded crossly. “What have you done?”
“You!” she snapped. “I might have known!” Then she seemed to realize that her words were ungracious, and wept: “I've sprained my ankle—dreadfully!”
He knelt briskly before her.
“Which?” he commanded. “Quick! Let me see it!”
In the manner of a physician, he laid a hand upon the hem of her dress. She thrust it viciously away.
“Don't you dare touch me!” she protested hysterically.
“But you must let me attend it, else it will become all the more painful and dangerous.”
She buried her face in her hands.
“Don't you touch me!” she miserably insisted. “I won't let you touch my ankle!”
“You idiotic child!” he scolded.
She dried her tears and pulled herself painfully to her feet. He heard her teeth grit at the pain. She took one forward step, then collapsed in a shaking little heap, and her weeping broke out afresh,
“W-why d-don't you d-d-do something?” she demanded.
“You are ridiculous,” he told her, with dignity, “to put false modesty before the possibility of a permanently injured joint. What do you desire me to do?”
“If you would h-h-h-help me, I m-might be able to w-w-walk.”
“If you put an ounce of weight on that ankle,” he assured her, “it may cripple you for life! Let me carry you to the house.”
She studied him curiously, head bent.
“Could you?” she asked. “You're very—slender.”
“I can carry you as far as you like, Miss Smith,” he stiffly assured her.
“I'll tell you,” she decided. “You let me try to walk—with your arm—and if I can't, you may carry me.”
In dignified silence, he lifted her to her feet. She clung to his arm. It was the first time they had touched each other. As he helped her up the slope, she moaned once, and he could see that she was near to tears. She was very little. He could look down on the top of her head. The fragrance of her brown hair clouded up into his face. He felt a little dizzy. A decidedly interesting experience. They reached the pines, moving more and more slowly.
“I'm doing finely—am I not?” she quavered.
“Finely,” he assured her, then blamed himself; for, at his word, she looked up and tried to smile, and her foot caught in some unheeded root in the path. She gasped with pain, and hung upon his arm so that he felt the full, sweet weight of her. Before he realized his own action, he had swept her up into his arms.
After that first exclamation, when she had tripped, the girl had made no sound. She lay so close against his breast he thought she must have fainted. But as he looked down, in sudden alarm at her silence, she opened her eyes and smiled up at him.
Bliss knew, upon the instant, that no man can afford to miss the experience of holding a lovely girl in his arms and looking down into her smiling face. The next moment, he was sternly reminding himself that she was at best a lady's maid, and at worst a thief; while he, though masquerading, was a scholar and a gentleman.
At the end of a hundred paces, he felt perspiration on his brow, and his breath came short. Not for anything would he have admitted his distress, but it was with profound relief that he saw the brook ahead.
“I must set you down here,” he explained, “while I find a spot sufficiently narrow so that I can lift you across.”
“My, but you are strong!” she praised. And when he returned, after finding such a spot as he sought, she volunteered: “My ankle doesn't hurt nearly so much now.”
“It's only that the pain is deadened,” he warned her; then lifted her again, an arm beneath her knees, another beneath her shoulders. She hung limply now, and it was so awkward that he was forced to suggest:
“If you hold on to me, it will be easier.”
“Oh!” she gasped, a smothered little ejaculation, and stirred in his arms as if she would have drawn away from him. But this was only momentary. Then she reached up her arms and twined them around his neck. He found it difficult to breathe, but was content to plod ahead till they reached the last ascent below the house.
“Don't you want to rest before you start up the hill?” she suggested.
He found a patch of smooth turf and lowered her to the ground. A full moon had risen, and its radiance dimly illuminated the meadow and set the night mists twisting into strange, fairylike shapes.
“My ankle's better now,” she whispered, when he did not speak.
She was leaning on one arm, smiling gloriously, eyes dewy with those so recent tears. He was conscious of a delightful peace and happiness that had never been his before in woman's presence. He was not only content to be here with this girl—he was enjoying the sensation. He understood, for the first time, that moon witchery of which poets love to sing. Sitting there beside her, Bliss gave himself utterly to these pleasant reflections, with no premonition that they were soon to become wormwood in his mouth. It was she who first moved to go.
“I think——” she began.
“Oh, I'm sorry!” he cried. “I should have remembered!”
She shook with a sob, or a spasm of pain, as he lifted her; and, while she nestled against his breast, he began that last steep ascent. He was tired, and made hard work of it, so that by the time he reached the top he was panting and shaking with fatigue. Then, while they were still in the shadow of the trees, the girl stirred in his arms. He looked down and saw in her eyes a new light that chilled and angered him, even before she spoke.
“I think,” she said coldly, “I think I might as well walk from here.”
“Nonsense!” he protested, for at first he did not understand. “You can't——”
“Let me down!” she insisted sharply. “Let me down!”
She thrust with her hands against his chest, and, confused and uncertain, he allowed his arms to relax so that she gained her feet, then pulled herself erect and turned to face him.
There was no trace of weakness about her now. She was smiling faintly, and Bliss went suddenly sick with humiliation to think how she had tricked him. She made him a grave little bow and softly laughed:
“I thank you for a very pleasant ride, kind sir!”
And then she turned and walked—steadily, and without a trace of a limp—up the slope to the kitchen.
Bliss hated the girl, the world, the moon, the necklace, and himself. Arms aching, heart pounding, muscles fairly cracking from their labor, he watched her disappear into the house, then turned to the garage. He was raging, and in the garage his rage found an outlet.
For Jenkins was there, at the telephone, and the demeanor of Jenkins was most remarkable. Bliss had just perceived this when Jenkins heard his footsteps and whirled from the instrument to shout:
“What are you snooping around for, you snipe?”
Bliss removed his spectacles and bestowed them in their case. Outwardly calm, he was inwardly ablaze, and the possibility of manhandling Jenkins, by way of revenge upon the lady's maid, was not unpleasant.
“Your tone and your language are insulting, my friend,” he said.
Jenkins gasped with amazement.
“You—you——” he choked. “I'll—I'll——”
“Quite so,” Bliss responded. “Please do.”
Jenkins tried. Credit him with that. But his swing was slow in starting. In other words, he telegraphed his punch. Bliss had numbered boxing among the sciences in his curriculum, and, by a sweet coordination of the muscles of calf, thigh, side, shoulder, and arm, he brought home his fist upon the chin of Jenkins with such smart precision that Jenkins was taken aback. In fact, he was taken some two yards back, there colliding with the wall and slumping limply to the floor.
Through the safety valve of that blow, the fury of Bliss was translated into perfect peace; and so he left Jenkins, who was slowly and experimentally waggling his head between his hands, and proceeded up the stairs to the quarters above the garage. He had some thought of retiring, for the day had been long and strenuous, but an instinct of caution prompted him to wait the coming of Jenkins.
Jenkins, however, did not come. Bliss heard him moving about below for a time, then his footsteps were gone, and Bliss realized that he had left the garage. His determination to watch Jenkins and the girl returned to his mind. He leaped to the stairs, and in a moment was upon the trail. It had become cloudy, and the moonlight was so obscured that objects were but dimly visible. Immediately about the house, in the shadow of the trees, there was all the gloom and mystery of a cave. But Bliss, from the garage door, caught a glimpse of Jenkins' skulking figure and pursued.
Jenkins went stealthily around the house, and finally crouched beside a rhododendron at the veranda steps. Bliss crept as close as he dared and waited to see what was to happen. He was perhaps ten yards from the crouching figure when the house door opened and a man appeared and came briskly toward the steps.
To Bliss, this man was a stranger; but Jenkins rose to confront him, and Bliss heard his eager question:
“It's me—Jenkins! Did you get it, Jim?”
Illustration: Bliss' warning cry was drowned by the stuttering discharge of Percy's pistol before the lamp crashed against his head.
It? The necklace, inevitably! The shock of this certainty held Bliss petrified for as long as it took the men to vanish in the shadow of the trees toward the garage. Bliss, with too much caution, crept that way. He was so slow that when he came in sight of the garage, the men were not to be seen. Crouching in the shadow of the trees, he watched.
There were to the garage four doors, two large ones for the cars, and two smaller, one at either end, that led to a cellar beneath the building. Bliss had not, during his day as a chauffeur, invaded that cellar. Now, however, he saw that one of the small doors was open, and, while he looked, there flashed in the black rectangle a pale oval, the oval of a face that appeared and disappeared. Listening, Bliss thought he heard the step of one descending the cellar stair.
He stole across the driveway to that open door, leaned in, and strove to pierce with his eyes the blackness below. After a moment, he heard a faint shuffling sound from the farther end of the cellar. While he was thus intent, there came a step behind him, a sharp thrust between his shoulder blades, and he toppled, spinning, down the narrow stair.
It seemed an eternity that he fell, clutching vainly for a handrail to save himself. He heard the slam of the door through which he had been thrust, heard a stifled exclamation in a feminine voice from somewhere within the cellar, and then he reached the cement floor. His head arrived there first, and it seemed that the clouds had cleared away, that the heavens were ablaze with stars, and that every one of them was falling straight in his direction.
The stars, one after another, impacted squarely between his eyes and scattered into a myriad of new and remarkably brilliant constellations; after which he slept, and presently awoke to find himself holding desperately to an ankle. The ankle was his first contact with returning consciousness, and he held it firmly lest it escape. Its remarkable slenderness and firmness and general dainty charm impressed themselves upon him long before a voice pleaded from somewhere in the void above his head:
“Oh, aren't you ever going to come to?”
Soft and gentle hands, dipped in water of a grateful coolness, chafed his forehead. He opened his eyes, but could see nothing at all. It was all most confusing, and, to bring matters to a plain, terra-firma basis, he confidently remarked:
“I am 'to,' thank you.”
The chafing stopped, the ankle stirred tentatively.
“Will you please let go of—me, then?” said the same voice.
Though he thought he recognized that voice, he begged:
“Oh—who is 'me,' please?”
“Jo—Miss Smith—the maid,” came the meek reply.
“Ah, yes,” he murmured dreamily. “And how is your—er—ankle?” He stroked that member gently. “It seems to have mended with remarkable speed.” He was dreamily deciding that “Jo” was just the name he would have chosen for her, and, so dreaming, made no move to stir from where he lay, head cradled in her lap. But she was less complaisant, and swiftly shifted her position so that his head bumped a second time upon the floor. He scrambled shakily to his feet, and in the darkness heard her brushing at her clothing and making the minor repairs in her personal appearance that are a woman's first thought in moments of disturbance. Bliss ventured to put into words his curiosity as to their situation.
“We're locked in the garage cellar,” the girl explained.
“The last chapter, so far as I am concerned,” he said, “saw me trailing Jenkins and another toward this garage. I saw some one in the cellar door, peered in, and some one—one of them, I presume—did the rest.”
He heard her stirring nervously.
“I did the same thing,” she admitted. “I saw them meet at the front steps. I had seen the man that came out up in Percy's room. There's a tree from which you can look right in his window.” Her voice was tinged with embarrassment. “I followed them. Jenkins went in the garage, and Jim came down here. I came after him. It was perfectly foolish of me. Then I saw him go up the other stairs with some one who must have been waiting down here. I peeped out of the door, saw you under the trees, thought you were one of them, dodged back——”
“And I dropped in on you,” Bliss concluded. “How long was I under your ministrations?”
“Hours,” she replied despairingly. “I had two matches, and one went out. Then I struck the other, and saw who you were. I fixed your head, and then you came to.”
“How are we going to get out and find them?” he asked. “Are the doors locked?”
“Yes; but there must be a window or something.”
“We'll have to explore. Have you a match?”
“I had two—but I used them. Have you none?” Her tone was a bit scornful. “I thought men carried matches.”
“Do they?” he asked, perhaps a little plaintively.
His head had begun to throb like the crescendo of an approaching locomotive, and at the tone of his voice she gave a little sympathetic cry and caught at his arm.
“Does your head hurt?” she begged.
“For an ordinary head—yes,” he admitted. “Though it's not bad for a head that has argued with the floor.”
“You glanced. It's all scraped,” she lucidly explained. “If I had a light, I could bandage it.”
“There must be electric lights,” he suggested, not averse to being bandaged. “We'll find them.”
But he was first to find other things. There was, for instance, the coal bin. Bliss discovered that with his head, and at the same time discovered how sweet are the uses of profanity. From across the cellar came the girl's call of sympathy.
“It's nothing,” he assured her, “but the furnace is right here, and there must be a light near the furnace.”
He began swinging his arms, hoping to strike the cord by which the light was probably suspended. He did, but with a little too much vigor. It was as if the garage had been dynamited about their ears. The electric globe had swung against the furnace and exploded.
The girl shrieked, Bliss bit himself, and then the girl exclaimed:
“Oh, I've found a light!” Then she added hopelessly: “But it won't light!”
“Bother!” said Bliss.
The girl giggled, then suggested:
“Let's find the coal bins and get out by the coal chute.”
“That's right,” Bliss agreed. “The coal bin is over here. I found it once—with my head.”
He stepped confidently forward, and tripped over something that clattered wetly across the floor. The girl tardily warned:
“Oh, that's the tin cup I got water for your head in.”
“That's all right,” he assured her. “I'm used to falling now.” And they both giggled.
Then, spurred by fear of what Jenkins and the others might be accomplishing outside, he fumbled ahead on his way.
Eventually they found the bin, and, while Bliss sought a way out, the coal dust picked out a wet pattern on his face, hands, and clothes in delightfully whimsical style. But the coal chute, he discovered, ran down through the garage floor, and was bolted from above. Bliss gave up.
“We're wasting time,” he decided. “Let's pick the lock.”
“Do you know how to pick locks?” she asked, in awe. “I have a hairpin. Isn't that what they always do it with?”
“Who does what?”
“People pick locks—on the spur of the moment, this way.”
“They say it's easy,” Bliss explained. “Give me the hairpin.”
She obeyed, and followed him up the stairs to the door. He thrust the pin into the vitals of the lock and tortured the thing for five minutes, without success. The girl was just a step below, and he could feel the warmth of her. He caught himself wondering whether the moon had come through the clouds. But that accursed lock would not yield.
“Whew!” He drew his coat sleeve across his brow, which helped the mural decorations of water and coal dust and blood. “I give up!”
“Can't you pick it?”
“I might—with a pickax. This lock would be worth a fortune on a burglar-proof safe.”
She pressed up on the narrow step beside him.
“Let me try it.” Her voice was just at his ear. “I might have better luck—not that I ever picked a lock before.”
Seeking the hairpin, her groping fingers found his. Bliss could have sworn that they lingered in the most fleeting of caresses. It was the culmination of a full, full day—that flood of tingling joy that poured from her fingers up his arm and down to his vitals in a riotous roundelay of capture and possession. He withstood the impulse, and drew aside while she bent above the lock.
And then, of a sudden, she cried: “Oh, there goes the pin!” And Bliss felt something drop beside his feet.
He stooped to get it. So did she. They became entangled there on the narrow stair, and, as they rose, breathless, her soft hair brushed his face. Instinctively, he kissed it.
The kiss was audible, Bliss being a novice at kissing.
She heard, and stopped very still. He could almost see her standing rigid beside him. Hot waves and cold swept him. Her silence seemed to speak volumes. He sensed an expectant something in her attitude. She was waiting, he decided, for him to do something.
So he did it.
After a little, when she was free to meditate, she meditated:
“What a joke on me, that I must get a man into a dark cellar to get myself proposed to!”
Proposed to? Bliss felt qualms. That was undoubtedly what she had said, and he had merely—well, he blushed to think what he had merely done. And then there surged over him the feeling of a captive. He brushed past her, broke down the door with one thrust of his braced shoulder, and together they emerged.
Bliss noticed at once that the moon had come through the clouds.
For a moment after they had burst forth from the cellar, the two stood looking irresolutely about them, the girl thrusting her tumbled hair into place with deft fingers. Then a chuckle rippled from her curving lips down the soft lines of her body to her feet.
“Have you forgiven me for making you carry me across the meadows?” she inquired laughingly.
Her attitude, Bliss thought, was again expectant, and, in spite of himself, he came up to expectations; at which she seemed content, and remembered their mission.
“I just know Jenkins has gone to Percy's room!” she exclaimed.
“Percy's? Why——”
“I'll explain later,” she promised briskly, and by the swift energy of her tone Bliss was borne into confused obedience. “Come! You can see in his window from an elm outside. Come!”
He tried, as he followed her, to revive his old distrust of her. He had coupled her with Jenkins in his suspicions. Might she not be duping him now? His cheeks hot with memory of what had passed upon the cellar stair, his very self-respect told him that she could not be a thief. But Bliss hated to surrender. When she had led him to the foot of the elm, and pointed upward, he whispered:
“Where are you going?”
“I can't very well climb the tree,” she reminded him. “Not with spectators, anyway.”
Bliss climbed, quietly as a ghost, till he could look in through Percy's unshaded window. Up to that minute, his suspicions of the girl had clung to life, but at what he saw they swiftly and painlessly died, and he knew that the mystery of the necklace was near the end of its course. For Percy sat near the window, in his right hand an automatic pistol and in his left a flat white box that must contain the necklace; while facing him and the pistol stood two men—Jenkins and another. Bliss saw that they were pleading or threatening; saw that Percy was denying their appeal; and saw, without understanding, that the man with Jenkins was moving sidewise, a little at a time, toward a stand that supported a heavy unlighted lamp.
The argument in the room grew heated. Jenkins gesticulated, Percy made a sharp reply, and then the other figure wheeled like a flash and caught up the lamp, awkwardly, in both hands. Bliss' warning cry was drowned by the stuttering discharge of Percy's pistol before the lamp crashed against his head and he toppled forward in his chair. Jenkins wavered to the floor, while the smaller figure that had hurled the lamp snatched the precious white box from Percy's hand and leaped, apparently, straight through the window. The next instant, Bliss was crashing from branch to branch, falling, jumping—anything to get to the ground.
As he landed, tumult arose in the shadow beneath the window. He raced that way, and the voice that greeted him was the voice of the maid, Smith:
“Two of them! Watch them! I've a revolver! Shoot, if you have to!” She was so brisk and resolute that, even in that moment, he thrilled with pride at her. He launched himself into the darkness toward her voice, felt the jar of a fist, and the next moment had a soft throat beneath his fingers and worried it till his antagonist crumpled and collapsed. Turning, he saw two other figures in a puny struggle, and gathered them both into the grip of his arms. One—it was Smith—cried:
“All right, I've got the necklace! Hold her!” And, as Bliss released her, he saw that his remaining captive was a girl, though garbed as a man. Then came Kearns, and many others, to his aid.
It was not till morning that they rounded up the tangled ends. Their captives were three—Jenkins, with a bullet in his shoulder; the man called Jim, who had waited beneath the window; and the girl—it was she who had thrown the lamp—slender and pretty, yet with a hard calculation in her eye.They were held overnight in the custody of Kearns, but in the morning Mr. Murray summoned the detective.
“I tell you,” he explained. “We've got the necklace, and court business is foolishness. Better just let the three of them go.”
Kearns protested, but that Mr. Murray should have his way was inevitable. It was his necklace and his grievance, and if he proposed to drop the matter, that was his affair. But the disconsolate Kearns confided in Bliss, and left that young man more deeply puzzled than ever. It was not, he felt sure, characteristic of Mr. Murray to forgive an injury. He was still wondering when the delectable lady's maid came down the path from the house, wearing hat and jacket, a suit case in one hand and a parasol in the other.
“What——” Bliss began, in amazement. “Wha——”
“I've resigned,” she explained, chuckling. “I've—quit.”
“Why—why, so have I, then,” he promptly decided, and with an assurance to which, two days before, he would have thought himself a stranger, he took her suit case from her hand.
She laughed aloud.
“Aren't you going to tell Mr. Murray you're going—funny man?”
He shook his head.
“I didn't ask for the position. I never formally accepted it. When he discovers I have departed, he will, no doubt, infer my resignation. Where are you going?”
“To the station,” she admitted, dimpling. “Let's walk. I know a path through the woods.”
And so they set off, she jabbing with her parasol at the flowers along their way. The trees were just in full leaf; the world was alive and a-tingle. Bliss knew that he was deliriously happy, knew that he was trembling with some strange emotion, knew that there was something he should do—but knew not what.
Illustration: “Jo,” he announced severely, “I've three questions to ask you. Promise to answer?”
Their path lay across the meadow and through those pines from which he had watched her rendezvous, and where his nasal explosion had betrayed him. Among the pines, she paused, turned to smile at him, wrinkled her delightful nose, and sneezed. He grinned in uneasy realization that there was something, he knew not what, that he should do. She waited, eyed him questioningly, and sneezed again. Then suddenly he knew, for he had always been quick to learn. The trees sheltered them from view on every side.
By and by, they collected the suit case and parasol and proceeded. Emerging from the pines, he remembered his previous visit to the spot, and asked:
“Who was it you met here last night?”
“Green-eyed! Green-eyed!” she chanted. “Jealous old thing!”
“Who was it?” he stubbornly insisted.
She countered:
“You're a regular question box. Tell me—are you really just a chauffeur?”
“Of course not,” reprovingly. “My name is Bliss—F. Johnson Bliss. 'F.' is for Frank. My home is in New York. I am an author.”
“Oh, goody! Are you?” She clapped her hands. “What have you written?”
He flushed faintly.
“I'm just in training,” he admitted. “I'm a reporter at present. I started reporting to learn how to write——”
“Golly! Are you a reporter, too?” Then, dimpling: “Well, I—I'm married!”
He turned faintly pale.
“Who——”
“I'm just in training,” she teased, mimicking him. “I started being engaged to learn how to be married.” Then, while he recovered breath and color, “When did you first love me?” she inquired, without relevance. She pursed her lips over the question, and once again that suit case bit the dust.
“When I found there was nothing wrong with that tire,” he replied, when it was convenient.
“I was sure,” she decided, “as soon you didn't give me away.”
“Why did you keep Mrs. Murray sitting in the sun that way?”
She became serious.
“So that Barton—Janet Barton, the maid who got hit on the head—could search the boudoir. Janet is a detective.”
“Did she find the necklace?”
“Yes; but just as she found it, Percy came in and hit her with something and took it.”
“Percy? But he fought them off last night!”
“I know. He didn't take it in the beginning. But he took it from Barton. He thought she didn't see him. She saw him in a mirror, as he hit her from behind.”
“What a——”
“Oh, he wasn't to blame. Jenkins and the others were after him.”
“How? Why? He didn't need the money.”
“Barton told me. Her agency traced Percy back. That girl we caught last night—Percy had married her, actually, at Princeton.”
“The idiot! Think of marrying any one but you!”
“It was such a fool thing as boys do,” she said gently. “But afterward he was sick and sorry and afraid of what his father would do.”
“She wasn't nice to look at,” Bliss remarked.
“She was worse than she looked,” Jo snapped, with the bitterness of women toward an erring sister. “Jim was her brother. She was a little sneak, and Jim was a thief, and they wanted to get Percy into their class.”
“Jenkins—what about him?”
“He was a friend of Jim's. They all three came here, and they hung to Percy like leeches. They wanted the necklace, but he wouldn't steal it.”
“But he did, in the end.”
“No, no! He didn't take it! But when it was stolen, and the newspapers printed the story, Jenkins and the others thought Percy had done it. He denied it, and they threatened to come and tell his father about his marriage if he didn't give it to them.”
“But how do you know all this——”
She laughed.
“Some of it Janet told me, some I guessed—and the rest I heard, listening from that elm outside Percy's window when Jenkins was up in his room one night.”
“And when he did get the thing, why didn't he give it to them?”
“They came to get it last night. Percy is a decent boy, and he was afraid Kearns suspected him. He wouldn't give it to them.”
“And we saw the rest—and you caught the girl yourself! You're remarkably brave, are you not?”
“Do you think so?”
They halted while he gave her assurances of his esteem, assurances that she received with frank delight.
So that's all settled,” she laughed at last. “And now we're both out of a job. Can you—support us?” Her eyes were twinkling.
“I think we'll manage,” he said seriously. “My father is 'W. K.'”
“W. K. Bliss?” Her tone was dim with awe. “Glory be to goodness, Sue, look what you've done! The Bliss Biscuits man?”
He nodded.
“But is Susan your name?”
“Uh-huh!”
“I like 'Jo' better.”
She cried, with pretended fierceness: “You must just always love Jo best of all!” Then, with mock humility, half to herself: “Bliss Biscuits! Susan Bradlee, you've gone and hooked a catch!”
They emerged from the woodland and approached the station, and Bliss left her with the suit case while he undertook to purchase tickets. When he returned, his face was crimson.
“Jo, I haven't a cent! I've lost my bill book!”
She laughed joyously.
“Oh, you millionaire!” she taunted. “I thought you were rich!” Then, with a pretty pretense of business, she loaned him the money for their tickets. The train would not be along for half an hour. They established squatter sovereignty over a baggage truck. And Bliss, meditating upon the past twenty-four hours, discovering within himself a new confidence, turned at last to the girl.
“Jo,” he announced severely, “I've three questions to ask you. Promise to answer?”
Ever so meekly she nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who are you, Jo?” That was his first. “You—aren't a bit like a real lady's maid, you know.”
She giggled shamedly.
“It's an awful joke on me, Frank,” she told him. “Once upon a time, there was a girl who didn't want to come out. Her mamma and her papa wanted her to make a good match, and she wouldn't, and she fought and kicked and screamed till they let her have her way; and she got a job on a newspaper—as a reporter—and made good. And she was so tickled with herself! And then she—she was a Beacon Street Bradlee, Frank—she fell in love with a man, and decided to marry him, and then found out that, after all her dodging, she had gone and hooked a catch.” She hesitated, in faint embarrassment. “And that's me, Frank,” she admitted.
It was too much for him, and he chewed it for a while.
“Well, how extraordinary!” he murmured at length. “And so your paper sent you out here—just as mine sent me!”
“I thought the game was up last night, when you caught me giving my report to the man my paper sent out to get it. That was why I was so anxious to throw you off the track.”
“You certainly succeeded! And to think of your ferreting out all the details! Do you know who stole that necklace in the beginning, before Percy?”
“Gracious! I should think you'd see that!” she exclaimed. “There are folks, you know, who think getting into society and getting into the papers are the same thing; and, outside of murders and divorces—and they're mussy—jewels will get you into the papers quicker than anything else, especially if they're stolen. Mrs. Murray, Frank—she hid the necklace, then said it was stolen. It almost killed her when it really did disappear from where she had hidden it.” She eyed him with shy foreknowledge. “What's your third question, Frank?”
“Third?” he repeated, and instantly forgot his surprise at Mrs. Murray's exploit. “Third? Oh, just this, Jo: When will you marry me?”
She drew away.
“By advice of counsel,” she replied, “I refuse to answer. Being engaged's such fun, I want to do it for a while.” Then, at his woeful face: “But not for long, Frank.”
The station platform was deserted; none could observe them, and her attitude, he saw, was again expectant.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1953, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 71 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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