When I heard him splashing up the drive I turned on Sir George like a hurricane. It took him some time to understand; I had to go over the part about the pearls several times, and when he finally made out that they were very valuable he still could not understand how I came to throw them at the other man. Then I told him about the theft of the picture, and that we had the thief in our grasp if we could get him. Sir George"s face was very queer. When he got it all finally, however, he wakened up at once. He asked me what the collar was worth, and said young English girls did not wear such costly jewels, but that he would see that they were recovered. And the plan was simple enough. The greatest things in life are simple. I said to him that I could easily see how he became Premier.
The shutters of the inner room were bolted on the outside. We would coax our gentleman in there and lock the door. He would be there, as I said with enthusiasm to Sir George, like a ripe apple on a tree, ready for picking at any time.
It worked to a charm, although the result was not what we had expected.
Very far from it, indeed. The Unknown, which is shorter than saying "The Man in Tweeds" or "The Sociable Highwayman," came back in about half an hour, with his cap missing and mud up to his knees.
"Jove," he said, shaking himself, "this is Paradise compared to that up there. The lower floor is a wreck: two of them are asleep, three of them are standing on chairs and talking at once, and a tall, fair woman in green satin is having ladylike hysterics by herself in a corner."
"The tall, fair woman in green," I said coldly, "is Mrs.
Harcourt-Standish. It is strange you did not know her."
He whistled and then looked at me with one of his slow, boyish smiles.
"Well, as to that," he observed, opening the hamper, "I--you see, I never saw her in hysterics. It"s supposed to make a great difference."
"We need a box from the other room," I said, inwardly trembling. "We have used one for firewood." We had, purposely, and it threatened to fire the chimney. I don"t mind saying that I had a horrid guilty feeling when I said it, like Delilah cutting Samson"s hair, or the place where Blanche Bates took the card out of her stocking in The Girl of the Golden West. The Unknown glanced at the box on the hearth, at the Prime Minister, who was getting out the salad, and at me, feeling as I have just said. Then he turned on his heel, whistling softly, and went into the inner room.
Sir George dropped the salad on the instant, with a crash, and had the door slammed and locked immediately. His sandy moustache stood out quite straight, and he looked very military (or is it militant?). There was silence from the inner room, and then my gentleman found the door and rattled the crazy latch.
"The lock has sprung in some way," he said politely from the other side.
"I will have to trouble you to open it."
The band around my throat began to loosen, and, anyhow, if he had been little and ugly I would not have cared. Why should I condone a crime because Nature had given him a handsome body to hold an ign.o.ble spirit?
I went over to the door and called through it triumphantly:
"We are not going to unlock the door, and when Bagsby comes we are going to send for the police."
(That was the Premier"s plan. He would waylay Bagsby at the point of his revolver--Sir George"s--and make him take him to the nearest constable.
Then Sir George would get a conveyance and make his escape after sending me on to Ivry. I would not stay in the lodge alone with a desperate criminal, and I did not wish to face Daphne and the rest in their present condition.)
I was not hungry, after all. Everything I ate stuck somewhere in my throat and brought tears to my eyes, and Sir George was not hungry, either. He kept walking around the room and eying the door, and once he got out his revolver and put it on the box. Finally, he went to the doorway.
"If you will pa.s.s this young woman"s jewelry out under the door," he said, "we will see that you are not molested by the police."
"On our honour!" I called eagerly. For, after all, he had been gentle with me when he thought I was stealing the forks. (Although, after all, why should he not have been? They were not his.)
"I"ll see you in perdition first!" came the sulky answer. I hoped it was meant for Sir George. And after that there was nothing to do but wait for Bagsby.
VI
We did not talk. Sir George watched the door to the inner room and sneezed frequently. Part of the time he examined his revolver, which he put on the keg in front of him. He was very clumsy with it; I suppose a Prime Minister has an armour-bearer usually, or something of that sort.
Once we heard an automobile far off, and Sir George ran out to the gates and closed them. But the machine went past, and from the voices it seemed to be filled with men. I saw it again later.
While Sir George was outside in the rain I emptied his revolver. It is one thing to have a man arrested for stealing one"s jewels, and quite a different one to murder him in cold blood. I had the cartridges in my hand when Sir George opened the door, and in my excitement I threw them into the fire. From that moment until we left I stood behind one of the packing-cases and waited for the hearth to open fire on us. But for some reason the cartridges did not explode. Perhaps they fell too far back in the chimney.
(I. E. This would make a good plot for a detective story. Some time I shall try it. Writing is much easier than I had thought it would be, especially conversation. The villain could put a row of sh.e.l.ls on a fire-log, pointing toward the hero"s easy-chair. The hero comes home and lights the fire, and then the heroine, whom the villain loves, comes on some agonised errand to the hero"s room at night, sits in his chair and is murdered. Of course, the hero is suspected, or perhaps the villain jumps from behind a curtain to save the lady, kneels on the hearthrug and gets a broadside that finishes him. You can see the possibilities.)
Sir George was growing distinctly less agreeable. He made another appeal to the prisoner to give up the necklace and put it out under the door, but the prisoner did not make any reply.
At three o"clock Bagsby came. We hurried out to the little porch and watched him stop the car just beside us, with its nose at the gates. As he was getting out, muttering, to open them, Sir George caught him by the shoulder and held the revolver under his nose.
"Get back into the car," he commanded, "and take this young woman and myself to Newbury. And mind you do it. No nonsense. Do you know the road?"
Bagsby muttered sullenly that he did, and then, just when I was safely in the tonneau and had drawn a long breath, Sir George stopped with his foot on the step and--I think he swore. Then he put the revolver in my hand and pointed it at Bagsby"s neck.
"Do you know how to shoot?" he demanded.
"Ye--yes."
"I have forgotten my mackintosh," he explained curtly. "Shoot him if he attempts to start the car." He turned in the doorway to say: "Don"t take your finger off the trigger." I might just as well have been pointing the automobile wrench, for there was nothing in the revolver.
Then he went into the cottage, and was gone fully a minute. But the strange thing was that as he went into the house a lightning flash lit up his figure, and he had his mackintosh over his arm! However, he might have meant his goloshes, which is English for overshoes and sounds like mackintosh. (I know at home I always confuse Wabash and Oshkosh.) While he was in the house the second strange thing happened. Bagsby squirmed in his seat in front of me and said in a m.u.f.fled voice: "Be easy with that trigger, Miss!"
It was not Bagsby at all! _It was the prisoner we had locked in the inner room!_
"Oh!" I said limply, and the revolver slid out of my lap. He turned cautiously and bent over the back of the driver"s seat.
"Everything"s all right," he said quickly. "You are perfectly safe; I am going to take you home. Unload that revolver, won"t you, before he gets back? Or let me do it."
"It is unloaded," I quavered. "I did it myself. But why----?"
"Sh! Hold out your hand."
I did, slowly, and I felt my necklace drop into it. He caught my fingers and held them.
"Now, will you trust me?" he whispered. We could hear Sir George falling over boxes in the house and talking to himself. "I have been fair with _you_, haven"t I?"
"I--yes!" I couldn"t say less, could I, with the pearls in my hand?
"I--I suppose I can trust you. I only want to go home and have a cup of weak tea and go to bed."
"Good girl!" he said. "Of course you can trust me." And leaning over, without any warning, he kissed my palm, while the necklace slid to the floor of the tonneau beside the revolver. It was all most amazing. "Not a word to Sir George, please. He is upset enough as it is. It is my turn to trust you."
"But I don"t understand," I was beginning, when Sir George came to the door of the cottage. At that moment one of the cartridges in the fire exploded, and without looking back he leaped off the porch and into the car. I had only time to pick up the revolver and to point its harmless barrel at the chauffeur"s back. I have no doubt that to this minute Sir George thinks that a desperate attempt was made that night on his life.
For reasons that I am coming to, I never explained. I am very vague about the next thirty minutes. We pa.s.sed a man, I recall, some distance down the lane, a man who turned and yelled at us through the storm, and I rather thought that it was Bagsby. I couldn"t be quite certain. And after we had gone perhaps a mile we met the automobile we had heard earlier coming back through the mud. We made a detour which almost ditched us, and pa.s.sed them without slackening speed.
The pace was terrific. Sir George and I rattled about in the tonneau, now jammed together at one side and now at another. I was much too busy trying to stay in the car to have time to wonder what it all meant. But I found out soon enough.
The other car had turned and was following us! It was coming very fast, too; and they had taken off the m.u.f.fler, which made it even more alarming. When Sir George saw that we were being pursued he became frantic. After threatening the supposed Bagsby he began to offer bribes.
For, of course, one could understand that the position was an ignominious one for any Prime Minister, and that his dignity would be sure to suffer if we were overtaken and the story came out. How many times at home I have sat in a theatre and seen cinematograph pictures of people in a motor being followed at top speed, with perhaps an angry father shaking his fist from the pursuing car. But never had I expected to be playing castanets with the Premier of Great Britain in the tonneau of a machine driven by a highwayman, and flying from unknown pursuers who were chasing us for Heaven knows what reason. Even at the time I remember thinking what a cinematograph picture we would make.
Up to this point the story has been mild enough. Now it becomes tragic.
For at the place where the car should have kept straight on to go to Newbury it turned suddenly, putting me in Sir George"s lap for a moment, and jounced along over mud and ruts, through a narrow lane. Sir George threw me off ungallantly and yelled. Then he leaned over and held the revolver against the driver"s neck.
"What do you mean?" he almost shrieked. "Where are you going, sir? This is not the road to Newbury!" But the car kept on. Sir George was frantic. He demanded that the car be stopped, so he could get out and hide in the hedge. He snapped the trigger, regardless of the fact that had it been loaded we would have gone crashing into eternity and a tree at forty miles an hour.
Then he commanded our chauffeur to turn around and ram the pursuing car to destruction, although he put it differently. And then, finding he made no impression on the hooded and goggled figure in the driver"s seat, he stood up frantically and poised the revolver to brain the man at the wheel.
He was quite mad. It was not courage on my part that made me leap and catch his arm. It was sheer self-preservation. The revolver hurtled into the road. (I cannot find the dictionary, but I"m sure "hurtled" is correct, and certainly it is forceful.) The revolver hurtled into the road, and Sir George collapsed, with me on top of him. Afterwards, of course, I had chills, because, being the Prime Minister, no doubt he could have me put in the Tower or beheaded, or something dreadful. And would it be "lese-majeste" to knock over the King"s representative?