“That was why I had to run away!” she cried, a sudden passion in her tones. “That was why I had to get away. Because it was I who saw him take them, and if they made me tell he would have to go to jail.”
She was leaning across the table, resting on her elbows, her fingers twisting together; and she watched Jeff anxiously, hungrily, as though to be sure he understood.
Jeff considered what she had said for a moment, and at length asked slowly, “Saw him steal them?”
“It’s a necklace,” she explained desperately. “Pearls, and a pendant set with diamonds, very beautifully. Mr. Viles used to boast how much he paid for it. He was ever so proud of it, you see. He wanted to show it to a man who is on the yacht with him, and that’s why he asked me to go down to the cabin and get it from the safe.”
Jeff was trying to fill out the gaps in her story. “That’s when you found out the necklace was gone, eh?” he inquired.
She nodded. Her words came in a rush:
“I saw Mr. Gardner come out of my cabin door, with the leather case in his hand. He dodged away; and I suppose he thought I had not seen him. And when I opened the little safe in my cabin the necklace was gone.”
Jeff grinned a little at that. “So your husband didn’t get to show it off, and brag about it, after all?”
His antipathy toward this husband of hers was increasing.
The woman shook her head. “I had to go back and tell him it was gone,” she assented. “And he went into one of his terrible rages. I was frightened. The doctors have warned him. So I tried to reassure him, told him that Mr. Gardner had the necklace.” Her hands were tightly clasped, the knuckles white. “Oh, I shouldn’t have let him know!” she cried wearily. “But I thought he must have asked Mr. Gardner to get it, must have given him the combination of the safe. Only he and I had it.”