“No fear,” I told him. “Are you going down to dinner, or aren’t you? Tell them to send me up a bit; I’m getting better. I rather think you and I are going to have a busy day tomorrow, Marky.”
We had. I got up a bit before daylight and had a dozen natives helping me to search the tennis ground before the sun was well up. We hunted for a good hour and I came to the conclusion that if the diamond had ever been on the tennis court it certainly was not there now. I came back and reported the result of my labors to the Marquis. He was sitting in our room and looked very gorgeous in a marvelous pink silk kimono embroidered with green and gold dragons; but his hair had not been brushed up into its usual fierce bristles; his mustache was as limp as a walrus’ and his general aspect suggested a pink cockatoo that has been out in the rain.
“Don’t lose heart,” I told him. “The stone is somewhere. It’s been picked up, you take my word for it. It must be in Port Moresby, and you can leave me to find out where.”
It was in my mind, and I could not get it out, that if I wanted to know where the Sorcerer’s Stone had gone to, I had better keep as much in Mrs. Vandaleur’s company as possible. So, without giving vent to any suspicions I had or guessed at, I allowed the Marquis to think that I had got the better of my prejudices against the little widow. I even accompanied him to tea with her when he went there to call a day or two after the loss of the stone.
It did not strike me that “Daisie” was overjoyed to see me, but she greeted me prettily and made tea for both of us. I don’t know whether it was by accident or design that she made mine cold and weak and left out the sugar; if so, she did a foolish thing, for it set me wondering just why the little lady disliked me as much as she did. In spite of the Marquis’ accusation, I am not, and never have been, unhappy in women’s society; nor have I had occasion to observe that they are unhappy in mine—to take a leaf out of my companion’s books.
But Daisie didn’t want me, didn’t like me, was more or less afraid of me.
Why?
I watched her, sitting on the sheltered veranda, with the southeaster roaring ceaselessly outside, slamming at the blinds and lifting the long mats nailed on the floor. It was a wild day; a day to make any one restless. Most Port Moresby folk find the southeast season trying to the nerves, by reason of the unending uproar of the persistent “trade,” and I judged that the wind—or something—was affecting Mrs. Vandaleur’s nerves. She dropped a cup. She snapped at the boy who was bringing the tray. She started when one spoke to her suddenly—as I confess I did. Her color did not pale, but there may have been reasons for that. She looked pretty enough, with her floating black draperies and her wicked little scarlet shoes, and her daintily-dressed red-brown hair, to have turned almost any man’s head, and I was not surprised to see the Marquis more devoted than ever. But as for me, I mistrusted her from the crown of her expensive curls to the sole of her little red shoe. I drank my ill-tasting tea in silence, listened to the roar of the wind and watched the lady and her lover. And I thought.
She could not have picked up the stone on the court—by what the Marquis said, it was clear she had not known of the loss until he told her. It seemed that she had questioned him shrewdly then concerning what it was that he had lost, and had managed to extract from him a pretty accurate description of the gem. He had not actually said it was a diamond, but—from what he told me—he must have allowed her to guess what it was.