What a good thing it is that I know exactly how to take this laughing, blarneying, incorrigible Irishman! What a blessing that I am not as poor little Miss Million was, who was utterly taken in by any blatantly insincere compliment that this young--well, I can say no worse than "this young Celt" chose to toss off!
So I just said lightly, "Too flattered!" and hurried away to hand the callers their wraps and umbrellas in the hall.
I"m glad I was in time to witness another rather priceless scene.
Namely, the entrance of Miss Vi Va.s.sity into the hall with the other ladies, and her recognition of the big young man in the laurel-green livery, with the handsome face so stolidly set under the peaked chauffeur"s cap.
"Jim!" exclaimed the comedienne, in a piercing treble. "Well, whatever next? If it isn"t my pal Jim Burke!"
"Just the sort of person one would expect her to have for a "pal," as she calls it," came in a not-too-soft aside from the owner of the car, then, haughtily, "Home, Burke."
"Yes, Miss," said the new chauffeur, as respectfully as I could have said it myself, and he touched his peaked cap to his mistress with a kind of side-effect of "Cheery O, Vi," to the brilliant figure standing gasping with astonishment upon the top step.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
MISS MILLION HAS AN IDEA!
"WHATEVER in the wide world is young Jim up to now!" exclaimed London"s Love, when at last the heavy hall door was closed upon the motoring ladies, the rectory party, and the two girls from across the valley.
Miss Million"s face was rather more serious than usual.
""Ere! I have an idea about that, Vi," she said. "And you, Smith, listen. It"s just occurred to me." She glanced about the darkened hall with the stags" heads and the suit of armour.
"You know I shall never be able to trust that Mr. Burke again. He let me down. Now what if he"s lettin" all of us down?
"F"rinstance, a young man like that, with heaps of friends with plenty of money, and always able to do as he likes up to now, what"s he mean by suddenly taking on a situation as a common shoveer?"
"Ar!" responded England"s Premier Comedienne, who has often made the stalls rock with laughter over the concentrated meaning which she can infuse into that one monosyllable long-drawn-out.
"Ar!" She turned upon me the wink that delights the gallery, then said dryly: "What"s _your_ idea, Nellie?"
"Why, I believe he"s no more nor less than a common robber and burglar!
A sort of Raffles, like in that play," declared Miss Million in a soft, excited whisper.
""Twouldn"t surprise me a bit if he"d disguised himself like that, and gone into service with that frosty-face, stuck-up Miss Davis that was calling just because he wanted to get his footing in a wealthy house where there was heaps of valuables, and cetrer.
"Here"s this Miss Davis got more than a bit of her own, evident! And did you notice the string o" pearls? She"ll have more of those sort of things at home, I bet you," said Million, adding with impressive hoa.r.s.eness, "I believe that"s what he"s after. Jewels!!"
"What? Jim?" Miss Vi Va.s.sity gave a slow, enjoying laugh. "Him?
Likerly!"
"Ah, he"s got round you, Vi. I believe you"ve got a soft corner for him in your heart still, however much of a rotter the man is, but I"m off, dead off.
"More than that, it wouldn"t surprise me," continued my mistress, still in her impressive tone, "if I"m not far off guessing who took the Rattenheimer ruby that me and Smith"s in this fix about!"
"Ah, go on!" said Miss Vi Va.s.sity, striking a match for her cigarette against the minnow-shaped sole of her gilt boot. "Are you goin" to go and believe that my pal Jim sneaked that and then saw you and her in trouble for it? Do you believe that, Smithie?"
"I don"t," I said, without hesitation.
Miss Million said defiantly: "Think it over! Think it over! He was always in and out of the hotel, was that Mr. Burke. He was hobn.o.bbing with the Rattenheimers and one and another all day long.
"And he wanted the money. We"ve proof of that! And he"s none too particular about how he gets it! Why, you yourself, Vi. You know he owes you pounds and pounds and pounds at this minute that he"s "borrowed,"
and goodness knows how he intends to pay you back!
"You know he"s got the cheek of the Old Gentleman himself! And,"
concluded my young mistress, with a look of shrewdness on her face that I imagine must have been inherited from the late Mr. Samuel Million, "if he isn"t the one who stole the ruby, WHO IS?"
A violent ring at the hall-door bell made the finish to this peroration.
I opened the door to a small, freckle-faced telegraph boy.
"For Miss Smith," he said in the pretty, up-and-down Welsh accent that is such a rest after c.o.c.kney. I took the wire. I wondered if it was Aunt Anastasia again.
It wasn"t.
It was something very much more exciting. The wire was signed "Reginald Brace," and it said: "I am coming down by the nine o"clock train to-night. Jewel mystery cleared up."
Oh, how can it have been cleared up? What is the solution of the mystery? To think that at least four and a half hours must elapse before we know!
Really, I do think Mr. Reginald Brace might have had pity on our burning curiosity and anxiety! I do think he might have given some hint, in this wire of his, as to who did really steal that wretched ruby!
"Well, s"long as it"s all cleared up that it wasn"t us that done it, that ought to be comfort enough to us," said my mistress philosophically, as I was fastening her into the blush-pink tea-gown for dinner. We"ve put dinner on an hour late since our visitor is coming down so late.
"Though, mark my words, Smith," she continued, "it wouldn"t surprise me one bit if that young gentleman of yours from the bank brought down that mute-of-a-funeral from Scotland Yard to tell Miss Davis"s new shoveer that _he_ was wanted by the police this time!"
"We"ll see," I said, smiling.
For the Honourable Jim"s faults may be as thick and as black as the hairs of the Honourable Jim"s head. But of this other thing I feel he could not be capable.
"It used to be me that thought you was too hard on that Mr. Burke, Smith. Now here you are turning round and won"t hear a word against the man," said my mistress, half laughing. "You"re as pigheaded as Vi about it! And, talking about Vi, here"s this packet of golden hairpins she"s left in here; she was lookin" all over for them this afternoon. Better take them in to her now."
It was on this errand that I entered the spare room that has been a.s.signed to London"s Love.
She was sitting in a cerulean-blue dressing-jacket in front of the looking-gla.s.s, drawing a tiny brush, charged with lamp-black, across her eyelashes, and using "language," as she calls it, over the absence of electric lights by which to dress.
"I shall look a perfect sketch at dinner, see if I don"t. Not that it matters a twopenny dash, me not being the bill-topper in any sense in this revue," said England"s Premier Comedienne cheerily. "It"s the pretty little lady"s-maid"s charming scena with the young bank manager.
Tell me, Smithie----" Here she turned abruptly round and looked at me sharply. "Been thinking over his proposal, have you? Going to take him, are you?"
"I--er----"
"I--er--shouldn"t if I was you!"
"You wouldn"t?" I said interestedly. "Why not?"
London"s Love put down the make-up brush and scanned her own appearance in the gla.s.s. Then she got up as if to fetch a frock out of the wardrobe. But she paused, put a small, highly manicured but capable-looking hand on each of my shoulders, and said, holding me so: "You don"t like him, Kiddy."