I knew Erciston Square very well. It had been rather a favourite place with me in my wanderings. I liked to see the arrivals and departures at dinners, dances and receptions. Sometimes great people were pointed out to me.
“That’s the Spanish Ambassador,” I heard one ragged boy say to another. I have not the least conception how he knew, but I am quite certain he was right. That was at No. 14, and it was to No. 14 that the pearl necklace, if found, was to be restored. It struck me that the reward offered was unusually large. I had seen pearl necklaces in shop windows which could be bought for less. Still, undoubtedly their value might mount to almost any figure.
A paragraph in the paper threw a little more light on the subject. Lady Meskell was a fashionable woman, and was always taking stalls at bazaars, or acting in amateur theatricals on behalf of different charities. She affected to treat her loss lightly. “The necklace was not really very valuable,” she said, “but I prized it for its associations. It was given me by my husband. On Wednesday night I was walking in the garden of the Square, as I often do on fine summer evenings. I believe,” she added, “that I am the only resident who makes any use of the garden at all, except perhaps a few children in the afternoon. My necklace must have dropped either in the garden or the street. As soon as I discovered my loss I had the garden, which of course is not accessible to the public, thoroughly searched from end to end, and nothing was found. I’m afraid it must have dropped in the street, where, of course, it would have been snapped up at once.” She had communicated with the police and was quite hopeful that the necklace would be recovered. “You see,” she added, “I am offering a reward which is really more than a thief would be able to get for it.”
There were one or two points about her statements which seemed to me rather curious. I turned up a very rough and abbreviated diary that I was in the habit of keeping, and found, as I had expected, that on the evening of Wednesday the 20th I had walked through Erciston Square. The time must have been between six and seven. I lay back in my chair and closed my eyes and conjured up a picture of Erciston Square garden as seen by the public from outside. It was much like any other of the square gardens. Masses of sooty evergreens gave it a decent privacy. Geraniums and blue lobelias struggled for life in a prim bed that skirted a formal and shaven lawn. There were a few big plane trees, and in the middle of the garden there was a kind of summer-house or shelter. What had I seen in Erciston Square on Wednesday evening which would throw any light on the matter? I had seen something; I had seen somebody leave the garden, and that somebody was most certainly not Lady Meskell. A faint idea came to me—it was hardly a theory as yet.
I went to the public reading-room next day and looked over those papers which purvey fashionable intelligence and personal paragraphs, and as Lady Meskell had been brought into the public eye by the loss of her pearls I found a good deal about her. Her present age was not given, but she was spoken of as being young. And there were the usual rhapsodies about her beauty. She was of mixed parentage, her mother having been Spanish and her father English. She had inherited fortunes both from her father and her husband. The latter had been dead about three years, and she had not re-married. She had one daughter, a girl of nine. She was generous, particularly to her favourite charities, and her dramatic abilities were spoken of in terms that the Press do not often spare for amateurs. Well, there was nothing here to contradict the idea that I had already formed. Indeed, there was one detail that confirmed it.
For a week I hesitated. Every day I saw in the paper Lady Meskell’s announcement of the reward of four hundred pounds. I wanted those four hundred pounds rather badly. Suppose I called at No. 14 Erciston Square? If my guess was wrong as it might very easily be, I should make Lady Meskell exceedingly angry. Need that concern me very much? If I were right, then the possibilities were great.
That afternoon I bought a new hat, which suited me. That always gives me courage. And I took a hansom. Nothing keeps one’s nerves steadier and raises one’s self-respect more than a little extravagance, and I could not afford either the hat or the hansom. I drove to No. 14, and demanded in a clear and unfaltering voice if I could see Lady Meskell.
“Her ladyship is not at home,” said the butler. And I own that it was some relief to me to hear it.
“Will you tell her ladyship,” I said, as I handed him my card, “that I called with reference to her pearl necklace?”
The man hesitated. “It is just possible that I may be mistaken,” he said. “If you will wait for one minute I will inquire.”