“Everybody is waiting, Mr. McTodd,” said the Efficient Baxter. He spoke the name, as always, with a certain sardonic emphasis.
“Of course,” said Psmith affably, “of course. I was forgetting. I will get to work at once. You are quite sure you do not wish to hear a scuttleful of modern poetry, Miss Halliday?”
“Quite sure.”
“And yet even now, so our genial friend here informs us, a bevy of youth and beauty is crowding the drawing-room, agog for the treat. Well, well! It is these strange clashings of personal taste which constitute what we call Life. I think I will write a poem about it some day. Come, Comrade Baxter, let us be up and doing. I must not disappoint my public.”
For some moments after the two had left her—Baxter silent and chilly, Psmith, all debonair chumminess, kneading the other’s arm and pointing out as they went objects of interest by the wayside—Eve remained on the terrace wall, thinking. She was laughing now, but behind her amusement there was another feeling, and one that perplexed her. A good many men had proposed to her in the course of her career, but none of them had ever left her with this odd feeling of exhilaration. Psmith was different from any other man who had come her way, and difference was a quality which Eve esteemed. . . .
She had just reached the conclusion that life for whatever girl might eventually decide to risk it in Psmith’s company would never be dull, when strange doings in her immediate neighbourhood roused her from her meditations.
The thing happened as she rose from her seat on the wall and started to cross the terrace on her way to the front door. She had stopped for an instant beneath the huge open window of the drawing-room to listen to what was going on inside. Faintly, with something of the quality of a far-off phonograph, the sound of Psmith reading came to her; and even at this distance there was a composed blandness about his voice which brought a smile to her lips.
And then, with a startling abruptness, the lighted window was dark. And she was aware that all the lighted windows on that side of the castle had suddenly become dark. The lamp that shone over the great door ceased to shine. And above the hubbub of voices in the drawing-room she heard Psmith’s patient drawl.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I think the lights have gone out.”
The night air was rent by a single piercing scream. Something flashed like a shooting star and fell at her feet; and, stooping, Eve found in her hands Lady Constance Keeble’s diamond necklace.