AN UNEXPECTED INVASION!
I had scarcely been in the room ten minutes. I was putting fresh water into the tall glass jar that held the sheaf of red carnations, when there came yet another tap at the white door that I have had to open several times already to-day, but never to any messenger with tidings of my missing mistress!
This time, to my amazement, it was quite a group of men who asked for admittance to Miss Million's room!
There was first the frock-coated manager; then a very stout and black-eyed and fleshy-nosed Hebrew gentleman whom I hadn't seen before; then a quiet-looking man with a black tie whom I recognised as the one who had been pointed out to me by the telephone girl as a Scotland Yard plain-clothes detective; then the young American in the light-grey tweeds.
I wondered if I were dreaming as this quartette proceeded to walk calmly in.
Such an invasion!
What could they all want?
The manager turned to me with a smile. He spoke in quite as pleasant a voice as he had spoken before; it was, indeed, quite conciliating! But there was an order behind it!
"Now, Miss Smith, I am very sorry to have to disturb you. We're all very sorry, I'm sure," with a glance at the other three men.
The detective looked polite and blank; the Jew man seemed fussing and fuming over something; the young American glanced interestedly about the room, taking everything in, down to the carnations in my hand. He smiled at me. He had a friendly face.
"Not at all," I said, wishing my heart would not beat with such unreasonable alarm. "Is there anything—is it anything about my mistress?"
"Oh, no. Miss Smith. It's a mere formality we're asking you to submit to," said the manager. "All our own staff have complied, without raising any objection. And we think it advisable to apply the same thing to other—er—to other people employed about the place. It's as much for your own sake as for ours, you know?"
"What is?" I asked, feeling distinctly more fluttered.
"I am sure you're far too reasonable to make any demur," the manager went on soothingly. "The last young lady, our Miss Mackenzie, raised no objection at all."
Mackenzie is the sandy-haired chamber-maid.
"Objection to what?" I asked, with as much dignity as I could possibly summon up.
"Why, to having us go through her boxes, Miss Smith," said the manager with great suavity. "The fact is an article of value is missing from this hotel. The property of Mr. Rattenheimer here," with a turn towards the obese Hebrew, "and it would be a satisfaction to him and to all of us to prove that no suspicious can be attached to anybody in the place. So——"
So that was it!
They wanted to search my things to see if I were a thief!
Yes, they actually wanted to search my trunks! Just as if I were a suspected servant in a country house where one of the guests finds a diamond bar missing!
Here was a nice predicament for Aunt Anastasia's niece, and for my poor father's child, to say nothing of Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter! It was so absurd that I nearly laughed. At all events, I suppose the anxious expression must have left my face for the moment.
The manager rubbed his hands, and said in a pleased voice: "Ah, I knew you were sensible, and would make no fuss! When people have clear consciences I don't suppose they mind who goes looking through their things. I am sure I should not mind anybody in the world knowing what was inside my boxes. Now, Miss Smith, I think your room is No. 46, is it not? So if you will be kind enough to give me your keys, and——If you would not mind stepping with us across the corridor——"
Here I found voice.
"You really mean it?" I said. "You want to search my trunks?"
"Merely as a matter of form," repeated the manager a little more insistently. "I am sure a young lady like you would not mind who knew what was in her trunks."
I stood there, one hand still full of the red carnations that I was rearranging, the other gripping the end of the pink couch. I was thinking at lightning speed even as the frock-coated, shrewd-eyed, suave-voiced manager was speaking.
My trunks?
Well, as far as that went, I had only one trunk to my name! For I had given Mackenzie, the sandy-haired chamber-maid, all the luggage which had known me in Putney.
When she asked me what she was to do with it, I told her she could give it to the dustman to take away, or cut it up for lighting the fires with, or anything she liked. She had said, "Very good" in a wooden tone that I knew masked surprise and wonderment unceasing over the inhabitants of Nos. 44, 45, and 46. Consequently I had, as I say, only one single trunk in the whole wide world.
And that was the brand-new masterpiece of the trunkmaker's art, bought in Bond Street, and handed over to me for my use by Miss Million on the ill-fated day when we first arrived at the Cecil.
As for what was in it——
Well, in one of Miss Million's own idioms, "It was full of emptiness"!
There was not a thing in it but the incorporate air and the expensive-smelling perfume of very good new leather!
As the luggage of a modest lady's-maid it was really too eccentric-looking to display to the suspicious eyes of the four men who waited there in Miss Million's sitting-room confronting me. I protested incoherently: "Oh, I don't think I can let you——"
"Ah!" said the stout Jewish gentleman, with a vicious glance from me to the Scotland Yard detective, "this don't seem a case of a very clear conscience!"
The manager put up a deprecating hand.
"A little quietly, sir, if you please. I am sure Miss Smith will see that it is quite as much for her own benefit to let us just give a bit of a look through her things."
Her "things!" There, again, was something rather embarrassing. The fact was I had so ridiculously few things. No dress at all but the well-cut, brand-new gown that I stood up in; one hat, one jacket, and two pairs of expensive shoes, three changes of underclothes, and silk stockings. All were good, but all so obviously just out of the shop! There was absolutely nothing about them to link their owner to any past before she came to the hotel!
For the fact is that when I sent my boxes and hold-all away I had also repudiated every stitch of the very shabby clothing that had been mine while I was not Miss Million's maid, but her mistress. The ne'er-do-well serge skirts, the makeshift "Jap" silk blouses with no "cut" about them, the underclothes, all darned and patched, the much-mended stockings, once black cashmere but now faded to a kind of myrtle-green—all, all had gone to swell two bulky parcels which I had put up and sent off to The Little Sisters of the Poor!
I had heaved a sigh of delight as I had handed those parcels over the post-office counter. It had been the fulfilment of the wish of years!
I expect every hard-up girl knows that impulse, that mad longing that she could make a perfectly clean sweep of every single stitch she possesses to wear! How rapturously she would send it all, all away! Oh, her joy if she might make an entirely new start—with all fresh clothes; good ones, pretty ones, becoming ones! Clothes that she would enjoy wearing, even if there were only so very few of them!
In my case they were so few that I really did not feel that they could support any sort of kit-inspection. Especially under the eyes of mere male men, who never do understand anything that has to do with our attire.
There I stood, in the only frock I had got, in the only other apron and cap (all exquisite of their kind, mind you!), and I said falteringly: "I am very sorry to be disobliging! But I cannot consent to let you search my things, or open my boxes."
"Looks very bad, indeed, that's all I can say," broke out the stout Hebrew gentleman excitedly. "Afraid we shall be obliged to do so, officer, whether this young woman wants to let us or not."
"You can't," I protested. "Nobody can search a person's box against their will!"
I remember hearing from Million, in the old days of heart-to-heart confidences about her "other situations," that this was "The law of the land."
No mistress had the right of opening the trunk of a reluctant maid on her, the mistress's, own responsibility!
"We might find ourselves obliged to do so, Madam," put in the Scotland Yard man in a quiet, expressionless voice. "We might take steps to enable us to examine this young lady's belongings, if we find it necessary."
"Very well, then, charge me! Get an order, or whatever it's called," I said quietly but firmly. I meditated swiftly. "Getting an order" might take time, quite a lot of time! Anything to do with "the law" seems to take such ages before it happens! In that time Miss Million would, I hope to goodness! have turned up again. If she were here I should not feel so helpless as I do now—a girl absolutely "on her own," with all her visible means of support (notably her heiress-mistress) taken from her!
"Oh, we hope that it will not be found necessary," persisted the manager, who, I suspect, thought he was being very nice about the affair. "I am sure Miss Smith will only have to think the matter over to see the reasonableness of what is being asked her. Here we are, in this big hotel, all sorts of people coming and going——"
"Coming and going" rather described my absent mistress's procedure. "And we find suddenly that a piece of very valuable jewellery is missing."
"The Rattenheimer ruby! Not another like it in the world!" cried the stout and excited Jew. "I won't tell you how much I gave for that stone! My wife wears it as a pendant, unmounted, just pierced so as to hold on a gold chain.... I won't let that be lost, I can tell you! I will search everywhere, everything, everybody. I tell you, young woman, you need not imagine that you can get out of having your boxes overhauled, if it takes all Scotland Yard to do it!"
Here the pleasant, rather slow voice of the American with the unfamiliar note in boots and clothes and thick, mouse-coloured hair broke in upon the other man's yapping. "Ca'm yourself, Rats. Ca'm yourself. You keep quite ca'm and easy. You won't get anything out of a young lady like this by your film-acting and your shouts!"
"I tell her I'll have her searched."
"Not with my consent," I said, feeling absolutely determined now. "And to do it without my consent you have to wait."
"I shall go through the other girl's things, then, first," snorted the excited Jew. "What's the name of the girl this one's alleged to be working for?" In every look and tone the man voiced his conviction that poor little Million and I were two notorious, practised jewel thieves in a new disguise.
"This woman who calls herself Million, I will go through her things."
"You will not," I said stiffly. "My mistress is out. I will not allow any of her things to be touched during her absence. That is my duty."
"That's so," said the young American softly.
The excited Jew man almost grimaced with rage. Loudly he demanded: "Out, is she? 'Out'? Where may that be?"
How ardently I wished that I knew, myself!
But all I said was: "I fail to see that it has got anything to do with you."
"Probably," said the manager soothingly, "probably when Miss Million returns she will persuade Miss Smith to be more reasonable."
"They are in league together! It is a put-up job! These two girls ... Half the hotel's talking about them.... There is something fishy about them. I will find out what it is," the fat Jew was bubbling, while the young American took him by the arm and walked him quietly towards the door. The Scotland Yard man had already unobtrusively disappeared. Last of all the manager went, with quite a pleasant nod and quite a friendly, "Well, Miss Smith, I expect you will think better of it presently."
I know that all four of them suspects me! They think that Million and I know something about this wretched Rattenheimer ruby, or whatever it is. Perhaps they think that we are in communication with gangs of jewellery thieves all over Europe? Perhaps they imagine that I am left here to mount guard over some other loot while Million has gone over for a trip to Hamburg or Rotterdam, or wherever it is that people do go with stolen jewels?
And for all I know she may be doing something just as idiotic—the silly girl, getting her head turned and her hair decorated by moon-calves of young lords!... Oh! I wish there was any one to whom I could turn for advice! There is not a soul.
That nice, sensible, reliable Mr. Brace is by this time in Paris. Out of reach! As for Mr. Burke, he is gallivanting at Brighton, and, of course, one could not depend upon him, anyhow!
I feel I must go out.
It's evening, which means that Million has been away from the hotel for twenty-four hours. I have not left it except for that flying visit to the "Thousand and One" Club.
Get a breath of fresh air before dinner I simply must. My head seems whirling round and round, and my nerves feel as if something in them has snapped with a loud twang like a violin string. I shall go out—if they will let me, but I should not be at all surprised if the manager of the hotel and the Rattenheimer creature between them did not mean to let me stir out of their sight.
Still, I shall try. I shall take a little turn on the Embankment, and watch the barges on the river. That ought to have a soothing influence.
How perfectly terrible if I am stopped in the vestibule!...
I was not stopped.
Nobody seemed to see me go out.
But when I got out into the Strand, with its summer evening crowds of people, I happened to glance across the street, and beheld some one that I had just seen in my room—namely, the quiet-faced man from Scotland Yard. How awful! I was being shadowed! It was a horrible feeling. So horrible that I am sure it could not have been any worse if I had really taken the Rattenheimer ruby, and had it fastened securely inside my black coat at the moment!
I felt as if I had. I wondered if the man would come across and dog my footsteps!
I turned down one of the little quiet streets on the right that lead to the river, and then I did hear footsteps behind me. They were following—positively following—me!
"Good evening!" said a quite friendly but un-English voice. It was not the Scotland Yard detective, then, after all. I turned. It was the young American.