“The coin is nowhere to be found. Every one looks at every one else. First, they suspect a joke. Then it becomes serious—the coin is immensely valuable. Who has taken it?”
The owner is a gentleman—does the gentlemanly idiotic thing, of course, laughs, says he knows some one is playing a practical joke on him and that the coin will be returned tomorrow. The others refuse to leave the situation so. One man proposes that they all submit to a search. Every one gives his assent until it comes to the stranger. He refuses curtly, roughly, without giving any reason. Uncomfortable silence—the man is a guest. No one knows him particularly well—but still he is a guest. One member tries to make him understand that no offense is offered, that the suggestion was simply to clear the atmosphere, and all that sort of bally rot, you know.
“‘I refuse to allow my person to be searched,’ says the stranger, very firm, very proud, very English, you know, ‘and I refuse to give my reason for my action.’
Another silence. The men eye him and then glance at one another. What’s to be done? Nothing. There is etiquette—that magnificent inflated balloon. The visitor evidently has the coin—but he is their guest and etiquette protects him. Nice situation, eh?
“The table is cleared. A waiter removes a dish of fruit and there under the ledge of the plate where it had been pushed—is the coin. Banal explanation, eh? Of course. Solutions always should be. At once every one in profuse apologies! Whereupon the visitor rises and says:
“‘Now I can give you the reason for my refusal to be searched. There are only two known specimens of the coin in existence, and the second happens to be here in my waistcoat pocket.’”
“Of course,” said Quinny with a shrug of his shoulder, “the story is well invented, but the turn to it is very nice indeed.”
“I did know the story,” said Steingall to be disagreeable; “the ending, though, is too obvious to be invented. The visitor should have had on him not another coin, but something absolutely different, something destructive, say, of a woman’s reputation, and a great tragedy should have been threatened by the casual misplacing of the coin.”
“I have heard the same story told in a dozen different ways,” said Rankin.
“It has happened a hundred times. It must be continually happening,” said Steingall.
“I know one extraordinary instance,” said Peters, who up to the present, secure in his climax, had waited with a professional smile until the big guns had been silenced. “In fact, the most extraordinary instance of this sort I have ever heard.”
“Peters, you little rascal,” said Quinny with a sidelong glance, “I perceive you have quietly been letting us dress the stage for you.”
“It is not a story that will please every one,” said Peters, to whet their appetite.
“Why not?”
“Because you will want to know what no one can ever know.”
“It has no conclusion then?”
“Yes and no. As far as it concerns a woman, quite the most remarkable woman I have ever met, the story is complete. As for the rest, it is what it is, because it is one example where literature can do nothing better than record.”
“Do I know the woman?” asked De Gollyer, who flattered himself on passing through every class of society.
“Possibly, but no more than any one else.”
“An actress?”
“What she has been in the past I don’t know—a promoter would better describe her. Undoubtedly she has been behind the scenes in many an untold intrigue of the business world. A very feminine woman, and yet, as you shall see, with an unusual instantaneous masculine power of decision.”
“Peters,” said Quinny, waving a warning finger, “you are destroying your story. Your preface will bring an anti-climax.”
“You shall judge,” said Peters, who waited until his audience was in strained attention before opening his story. “The names are, of course, disguises.”
M
RS.
R
ITA
K
ILDAIR
inhabited a charming bachelor-girl studio, very elegant, of the duplex pattern, in one of the buildings just off Central Park West. She knew pretty nearly every one in that indescribable society in New York that is drawn from all levels, and that imposes but one audition for membership—to be amusing. She knew every one and no one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest rumors her history or her means. No one had ever heard of a Mr. Kildair. There was always about her a certain defensive reserve the moment the limits of acquaintanceship had been reached. She had a certain amount of money, she knew a certain number of men in Wall Street affairs, and her studio was furnished with taste and even distinction. She was of any age. She might have suffered everything or nothing at all. In this mingled society her invitations were eagerly sought, her dinners were spontaneous, and the discussions, though gay and usually daring, were invariably under the control of wit and good taste.
On the Sunday night of this adventure she had, according to her invariable custom, sent away her Japanese butler and invited to an informal chafing-dish supper seven of her more congenial friends, all of whom, as much as could be said of any one, were habitués of the studio.
At seven o’clock, having finished dressing, she put in order her bedroom, which formed a sort of free passage between the studio and a small dining room to the kitchen beyond. Then, going into the studio, she lit a wax taper and was in the act of touching off the brass candlesticks that lighted the room when three knocks sounded on the door and a Mr. Flanders, a broker, compact, nervously alive, well groomed, entered with the informality of assured acquaintance.
“You are early.
“On the contrary, you are late,” said the broker, glancing at his watch.
“Then be a good boy and help me with the candles,” she said, giving him a smile and a quick pressure of her fingers.
He obeyed, asking nonchalantly:
“I say, dear lady, who’s to be here to-night?”
“The Enos Jacksons.”
“I thought they were separated?”
“Not yet.”
“Very interesting! Only you, dear lady, would have thought of serving us a couple on the verge.”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“Assuredly. Where did you know Jackson?”
“Through the Warings. Jackson’s a rather doubtful person, isn’t he?”
“Let’s call him a very sharp lawyer,” said Flanders defensively. “They tell me, though, he is on the wrong side of the market—in deep.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I? I’m a bachelor,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “and if I come a cropper it makes no difference.”
“Is that possible?” she said, looking at him quickly.
“Probable even. And who else is coming?”
“Maude Lille—you know her?”
“I think not.”
“You met her here—a journalist.”
“Quite so, a strange career.”
“Mr. Harris, a clubman, is coming, and the Stanley Cheevers.”
“The Stanley Cheevers!” said Flanders with some surprise. “Are we going to gamble?”
“You believe in that scandal about bridge?”
“Certainly not,” said Flanders, smiling. “You see I was present. The Cheevers play a good game, a well united game, and have an unusual system of makes. By-the-way, it’s Jackson who is very attentive to Mrs. Cheever, isn’t it?”
“Quite right.”
“What a charming party,” said Flanders flippantly. “And where does Maude Lille come in?”
“Don’t joke. She is in a desperate way,” said Mrs. Kildair, with a little sadness in her eyes.
“And Harris?”
“Oh, he is to make the salad and cream the chicken.”
“Ah. I see the whole party. I, of course, am to add the element of respectability.”
“Of what?”
She looked at him steadily until he turned away, dropping his glance.
“Don’t be an ass with me, my dear Flanders.”
“By George, if this were Europe I’d wager you were in the secret service, Mrs. Kildair.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled appreciatively and moved about the studio, giving the finishing touches. The Stanley Cheevers entered, a short fat man with a vacant fat face and a slow-moving eye and his wife, voluble, nervous, overdressed and pretty. Mr. Harris came with Maude Lille, a woman, straight, dark, Indian, with great masses of somber hair held in a little too loosely for neatness, with thick, quick lips and eyes that rolled away from the person who was talking to her. The Enos Jacksons were late and still agitated as they entered. His forehead had not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn. He was of the type that never lost his temper, but caused others to lose theirs, immovable in his opinions with a prowling walk, a studied antagonism in his manner and an impudent look that fastened itself unerringly on the weakness in the person to whom he spoke. Mrs. Jackson, who seemed fastened to her husband by an invisible leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate dash, which she assumed rather than felt in her attitude toward life. One looked at her curiously and wondered what such a nature would do in a crisis, with a lurking sense of a woman who carried with her her own impending tragedy.
As soon as the company had been completed and the incongruity if the selection had been perceived, a smile of malicious anticipation ran the rounds, which the hostess cut short by saying:
“Well, now that every one is here, this is the order of the night: You can quarrel all you want, you can whisper all the gossip you can think of about one another, but every one is to be amusing! Also every one is to help with the dinner—nothing formal and nothing serious. We may all be bankrupt to-morrow, divorced or dead, but to-night we will be gay—that is the invariable rule of the house!”
Immediately a nervous laughter broke out and the company, chattering, began to scatter through the rooms.
Mrs. Kildair, stopping in her bedroom, donned a Watteau-like cooking apron, and slipping her rings from her fingers fixed the three on her pincushion with a hatpin.
“Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful!” said the low voice of Maude Lille, who, with Harris and Mrs. Cheever, was in the room.
“There’s only one that is very valuable,” said Mrs. Kildair, touching with her thin fingers the ring that lay uppermost, two large diamonds, flanking a magnificent sapphire.
“It is beautiful—very beautiful,” said the journalist, her eyes fastened to it with an uncontrollable fascination. She put out her fingers and let them rest caressingly on the sapphire, withdrawing them quickly as though the contact had burned them.
“It must be very valuable,” she said, her breath catching a little. Mrs. Cheever moving forward, suddenly looked at the ring.
“It cost five thousand six years ago,” said Mrs. Kildair, glancing down at it. “It has been my talisman ever since. For the moment, however, I am cook; Maude Lille, you are scullery maid: Harris is the chef, and we are under his orders. Mrs. Cheever, did you ever peel onions?”
“Good Heavens, no!” said Mrs. Cheever, recoiling.
“Well, there are no onions to peel,” said Mrs. Kildair, laughing. “All you’ll have to do is to help set the table. On to the kitchen!”
Under their hostess’s gay guidance the seven guests began to circulate busily through the rooms, laying the table, grouping the chairs, opening bottles, and preparing the material for the chafing dishes. Mrs. Kildair, in the kitchen, ransacked the ice box, and with her own hands chopped the
fines herbes
, shredded the chicken and measured the cream.
“Flanders, carry this in carefully,” she said, her hands in a towel. “Cheever, stop watching your wife and put the salad bowl on the table. Everything ready, Harris? All right. Every one sit down. I’ll be right in.”
She went into her bedroom, and divesting herself of her apron hung it in the closet. Then going to her dressing table she drew the hatpin from the pincushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her fingers. All at once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand. Only two rings were there, the third ring, the one with the sapphire and the two diamonds, was missing.
“Stupid,” she said to herself, and returned to her dressing table. All at once she stopped. She remembered quite clearly putting the pin through the three rings.
She made no attempt to search further, but remained without moving, her fingers drumming slowly on the table, her head to one side, her lip drawn in a little between her teeth, listening with a frown to the babble from the outer room. Who had taken the ring? Each of her guests had had a dozen opportunities in the course of the time she had been busy in the kitchen.
“Too much time before the mirror, dear lady,” called out Flanders gaily, who from where he was seated could see her.
“It is not he,” she said quickly. Then she reconsidered. “Why not? He is clever—who knows? Let me think.”
To gain time she walked back slowly into the kitchen, her head bowed, her thumb between her teeth, “Who has taken it?”
She ran over the characters of her guests and their situations as she knew them. Strangely enough, at each her mind stopped upon some reason that might explain a sudden temptation.
“I shall find out nothing this way,” she said to herself after a moment deliberation; “that is not the important thing to me just now. The important thing is to get the ring back.”
And slowly, deliberately, she began to walk back and forth, her clenched hand beating the deliberate rhythmic measure of her journey.
Five minutes later, as Harris, installed
en maître
over the chafing dish, was giving directions, spoon in the air, Mrs. Kildair came into the room like a lengthening shadow. Her entrance had been made with scarcely a perceptible sound, and yet each guest was aware of it at the same moment, with a little nervous start.
“Heavens, dear lady,” exclaimed Flanders, “you come in on us like a Greek tragedy! What is it you have for us, a surprise?”
As he spoke she turned her swift glance on him, drawing her forehead together until the eyebrows ran in a straight line.
“I have something to say to you,” she said in a sharp, businesslike manner, watching the company with penetrating eagerness.
There was no mistaking the seriousness of her voice. Mr. Harris extinguished the oil lamp, covering the chafing dish clumsily with a discordant, disagreeable sound. Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Enos Jackson swung about abruptly, Maude Lille rose a little from her seat, while the men imitated these movements of expectancy with a clumsy shuffling of the feet.