The Brass Bowl

by Louis Joseph Vance

Maitland was young enough to believe, and to extract a melancholy satisfaction from this.

Puzzled and saddened, his mind harked back for ever to that carking question: Why had she returned? What had brought her back to the flat? If she and Anisty were confederates, as one was inclined at times to believe,—if such were the case, Anisty had the jewels, and there was nothing else of any particular value so persistently to entice such expert and accomplished burglars back to his flat. What else had they required of him? His peace of mind was nothing that they could turn into cash; and they seemed to have reaved him of nothing else.

But they had that; unquestionably they had taken that.

And still the riddle haunted him: Why had she come back that night? And, whatever her reason, had she come in Anisty's company, or alone? One minute it seemed patent beyond dispute that the girl and the great plunderer were hand-in-glove; the next minute Maitland was positively assured that their recent meeting had been altogether an accident. From what he had heard over the telephone, he had believed them to be quarreling, although at the time he had assigned to O'Hagan the masculine side to the dispute. But certainly there must have arisen some difference of opinion between Anisty and the girl, to have drawn from her that frantic negative Maitland had heard, to have been responsible for the overturning of the chair,—an accident that seemed to argue something in the nature of a physical struggle; the chair itself still lay upon its side, mute witness to a hasty and careless movement on somebody's part….

But it was all inexplicable. Eventually Maitland shook his head, to signify that he gave it up. There was but one thing to do,—to put it out of mind. He would read a bit, compose himself, go to bed.

Preliminary to doing so, he would take steps to insure the flat against further burglarizing, for that night, at least. The draught moving through the hall stirred the portière and reminded him that the window in the trunk-room was still open, an invitation to any enterprising sneak-thief or second-story man. So Maitland went to close and make it fast.

As he shut down the window-sash and clamped the catch he trod on something soft and yielding. Wondering, he stooped and picked it up, and carried it back to the light. It proved to be the girl's hand-bag.

"Now," admitted Maitland in a tone of absolute candor, "I am damned. How the dickens did this thing get there, anyway? What was she doing in my trunk-closet?"

Was it possible that she had followed Anisty out of the flat by that route? A very much mystified young man sat himself down again in front of his desk, and turned the bag over and over in his hands, keenly scrutinizing every inch of it, and whistling softly.

That year the fashion in purses was for capacious receptacles of grained leather, nearly square in shape, and furnished with a chain handle. This which Maitland held was conspicuously of the mode,—neither too large, nor too small, constructed of fine soft leather of a gun-metal shade, with a framework and chain of gun-metal itself. It was new and seemed well-filled, weighing a trifle heavy in the hand. One face was adorned with a monogram of cut gun-metal, the initials "S" and "G" and "L" interlaced. But beyond this the bag was irritatingly non-committal.