According to him, Carr, who had never been seen or heard of since the day after the accident, was a professional thief, who had probably gone to —— in India with the express design of obtaining possession of Sir John's jewels, which had, till near the time of his death, been safely stowed away in a bank in Calcutta. He and his wife usually worked together; but on this occasion she had, by means of her engaging manners and youthful appearance, struck up an acquaintance abroad with Lady Mary Cunningham, who, it will be remembered, had jewels of considerable value, with a view to those jewels. Ralph she had used as her tool, and engaged herself to him in the expectation that on her return to England she might, by means of her intimacy with the family, have an opportunity of taking them—Lady Mary having left them, while abroad, with her banker in London. The opportunity came while she was at Stoke Moreton; but in the mean while Sir John's priceless legacy had arrived, having eluded her husband's vigilance. (That certainly was true. The jewels were safe enough as long as I had anything to do with them.) Her husband, who followed them, saw that he was suspected, and threw the game into her hands, devoting himself entirely to putting his own innocence beyond a doubt; in which, with Ralph's assistance, he succeeded.
"I see now," continued Charles, "why she spilled her tea when Carr arrived. She was taken by surprise on seeing him enter the room, having had, probably, no idea that he was the friend whom you had telegraphed for. I suspect, too, that same evening, after the ball, when she and Carr went together to find the bag, it was to have a last word to enable them to play into each other's hands, being aware, if I remember rightly, that father had gone to bed in company with the key of the safe, and that, consequently, the jewels might be left within easier reach than usual. No doubt she weighed the matter in her own mind, and decided to give up all thought of Lady Mary's jewels, and to secure those which were ten times their value. She could not have taken both without drawing suspicion upon herself. Like a wise woman she left the smaller, and went in for the larger prize; a less clever one would have tried for both, and have failed. She failed, it is true, by an oversight. She could never have noticed that the piece of paper wrapped round the crescent was peculiar in any way, or she would not have left it on the table among the others. She turned it off well when Evelyn recognized it, and made the most of her time. She was within an ace of success, but fate was against her. And Carr lost no time, either, for that matter; for I have since found out that the telegram she sent was to Birmingham, where he was no doubt hiding, bidding him meet her in London earlier than had been arranged. Of course he set off for the scene of the accident directly he heard of it, having received no further communication from her. We arrived only ten minutes before him. For my part, I admired her more than I ever did before, when the truth about her came out. I considered her to be a pink-and-white nonentity, without an idea beyond a neat adjustment of pearl-powder, and then found that she possessed brains enough to outwit two minds of no mean calibre, namely, yours, Middleton, and my own. Evelyn was the only person who had the slightest suspicion of her, and that hardly amounted to more than an instinct, for she owned that she had no reason to show for it."
"I wonder Lady Mary was so completely taken in by her to start with," I said.
"I don't," replied Charles. "I have even heard of elderly men being taken in by young ones. Besides, suspicious people are always liable to distrust their own nearest relatives, especially their prepossessing nephews, and then lay themselves open to be taken in by entire strangers. She wanted to get Ralph married, and she took a fancy to this girl, who was laying herself out to be taken a fancy to. In short, she trusted to her own judgment, and it failed her, as usual. I wrote very kindly to her from abroad, telling her how sincerely I sympathized with her in her distress at finding how entirely her judgment had been at fault, how lamentably she had been deceived from first to last, and how much trouble she had been the innocent means of bringing on the family. I have had no reply. Dear Aunt Mary! That reminds me that she is in London now; and I think a call from me, and a personal expression of sympathy, might give her pleasure." And he rose to take his leave.
I had let Charles go without contradicting a word he had said, because, unfortunately, I was not in a position to do so. As I have said before, I am not given to suspecting a friend, even though appearances may be against him; and I still believed in Carr's innocence, though I must own that I was sorry that he never answered any of the numerous letters I wrote to him, or ever came to see me in London, as I had particularly asked him to do. Of course I did not believe that he was married to Aurelia, for it was only on the word of a stranger and a police-inspector, while I knew from his own lips that he was engaged to a countrywoman of his own. However, be that how it may, my own rooted conviction at the time, which has remained unshaken ever since, is that in some way he became aware that he was unjustly suspected, and being, like all Americans, of a sensitive nature, he retired to his native land. Anyhow, I have never seen or heard anything of him since. I am aware that Jane holds a different opinion, but then Charles had prejudiced her against him—so much so that it has ended by becoming a subject on which we do not converse together.
I saw Charles again a few months later on a sultry night in July. I was leaving town the next day to be present at Ralph's wedding, and Jane and I were talking it over towards ten o'clock, the first cool time in the day, when he walked in. He looked pale and jaded as he sat down wearily by us at the open window and stroked the cat, which was taking the air on the sill. He said that he felt the heat, and he certainly look very much knocked up. I do not feel heat myself, I am glad to say.
"I am going abroad to-morrow," he said, after a few remarks on other subjects. "It is not merely a question of pleasure, though I shall be glad to be out of London; but I have of late become an object of such increasing interest to those who possess my autograph that I have decided on taking change of air for a time."
"Do you mean to say you are not going down to Stoke Moreton for Ralph's wedding?" I exclaimed. "I thought we should have travelled together, as we once did six months ago."
"I can't go," said Charles, almost sharply. "I have told Ralph so."