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THE WAN SUYDEN SAPPHIRES














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THE VAN SUY DEN
SAPPHIRES
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BY /.../4 /
CHARLES CAREY
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4–C
NEW YORK
DODD MEAD AND COMPANY
&o

1905


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- As
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- " THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LICRARY |
924.72B
Asior, Lºok Axo
Tli,D.E.N. ºr, N. a. ºf
º 13 tº º
*------
CopyRIGHT, 1905
By DoDD, MEAD AND CoMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
" ***


s
;
CONTENTS
BOOK I
chapTert
I THE ACTREss AND THE RUBIES
II A DAUGHTER of Eve
III “THE Rob BERY of ME JEwBLs
IV FACING A CRISIs
V ON THE KNEEs of THE GoDs
VI A STARTLING DáNou EMENT
VII SURMISE AND CERTAINTY
99
BOOK II
I A SIGNIFICANT INTERLUDE
II AN UNINVITED GUEST
III WITH CRossED BLADEs
IV THE INTERPRETATION of A DREAM
W “THE Doug LAS IN HIS HALL’”
PAGE
13
22
34
45
61
80
105
I28
I51
163
176
VI THE CLUE IN THE PERsonAL Column 186
VII A TARGET For SUSPICION
VIII THE WEB of CIRCUMSTANCE
199
210
V


BOOK I
THE AFFAIR AT ONY X COURT


“California is no Pandora's bor of unmired blessings.
It is also the birthplace of Elida Yeats.”—From the
dinner-table conversations of Gwendolen Bramblestone.


CHAPTER I
THE ACTRESS AND THE RU BIES
THE singular jewel robbery which occurred
last Fall at Onyx Court, Mrs. Hermann Van
Suyden’s country place, near Wheaton-on-the-
Hudson, has continued such an absorbing
topic of interest, and so wildly imaginative
have been the theories advanced concerning it
by the press and others, that I have decided to
give a true and unvarnished recital of the en-
tire affair.
It is a task I would willingly forego; but the
unjustifiable manner in which the names of
several totally innocent persons have been con-
nected with the “Mystery,” renders an au-
thoritative statement an obvious duty, and
Mrs. Wan Suyden and the others concerned
have agreed that I,_who more than any
other was directly involved in the perplexing
tangle, am the one best qualified to pre-
sent it.
To begin, then. It was a foggy, rainy
afternoon in November when I arrived at
3


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
Onyx Court to remain from Friday until
Monday. The skies hung low, and an unin-
termittent drizzle washed all the landscape
into one dull monochrome.
Yet, seen even under such circumstances, the
fine old estate, situated high on a bluff which
commands a magnificent view of the river for
miles, could not fail to impress one with the
beauty of its environment. My spirits, drooping
in sympathy with the gray, autumnal day, rose
in spite of myself, as we swept up the avenue
toward the imposing, Colonial entrance.
I had timed my arrival so nicely that I was just
in season for a cup of hot tea, and the oppor-
tunity of scanning, “off parade,” as it were, the
companions of my week’s end.
Really, it was a delightful change from the
cold and mists without to enter the wide, glowing
hall with its great fire of logs flickering over the
panelled walls, and casting dancing lights and
shadows on the men and women scattered about,
chattering and drinking tea.
I was greeted cordially, although for a moment
mistakenly, by dear near-sighted Mrs. Van Suy-
den, the most impracticable Philistine who ever
dreamed of an Arcadian and impossible Bohemia.
4.


THE WAN SU Y DE N S AP PHIRES
The effort of her life has been to realise a millen-
nial salon, where Society and Art (both capital-
ized) shall lie down in harmony and she shall
lead them. So far she has only succeeded in fill-
ing her house with incongruous groups of the
gifted and ungrateful; yet with the perseverance
and enthusiasm of those who espouse a lost cause,
she still pursues her dream.
Having corrected the error of her faulty vision,
and made clear my identity, I nodded to one or
two men near me, accepted a cup of tea, and was
about to sink into a chair, when across the wide
hall, trailing yards of chiffon and lace tea-gown
behind her, rushed Elida Yeats, the California
actress who made such a furore in London last
season. I have known her since she was a child;
but I recognise quite philosophically that she
only makes much of me in order to emphasise on
this side of the water her acquaintance with my
cousin, Lady Southsea.
My English connections, I may remark in pass-
ing, are very grand, indeed. It is by virtue of
my blue blood that I am able to maintain my
position as a “Little Sister to the Rich,” and
earn a precarious living by painting fans, for
I haven’t a trace of an income.
5


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
But, to return to Elida Yeats. Say what you
will about her acting, and I might pass a criti-
cism or so upon that score, if I were minded,—
her prettiness is undeniable; of that uncompro-
mising, obvious variety which admits of neither
cavil nor faint praise. She has, too, an engag-
ing, caressing way with her, which makes it al-
most impossible to refuse her anything upon
which she has set her heart.
It struck me now that her welcome was un-
usually cooing; and my suspicions were con-
firmed when, an hour or so later, as I was dress-
ing for dinner, there came a low tap on my door
and Elida entered, effusive and smiling.
“You dear thing,” she gushed, brushing her
cheek against mine, “I was never quite so glad
to see any one in all my life. The Lord has cer-
tainly sent you in answer to my prayers.”
Then, without waiting for comment or reply,
she began impressively: “Were you aware, my
dear, that this is the opportunity of a lifetime,
the tide in my affairs which taken at the flood will
lead to my everlasting fortune? And if you will
just lend me a helping hand, Gwendolen Eustacia
Bramblestone, it shall mean a lot to you, too.
Promise me that you will, there’s a dear, benevo-
lent, old girl.” 6


THE W A N S U Y DE N S APP HIRES
She threw her arms about me. “It’s such a
chance,” she pleaded in tones of eager entreaty;
“one doesn’t get invited to an Onyx Court every
day in the week!”
“Perhaps it is just as well,” I interpolated
drily; “since a single visit seems to have been
enough to turn your head.” I was tugging at a
refractory hook at the time, and there may have
been a touch of asperity in my voice.
“Oh, you don’t understand,” pouted Elida;
“you can get a bid to these places any time, be-
cause, if you are as poor as Job’s turkey, and
not radiantly beautiful,”—the impudence of
her!—“nevertheless, you’ve got a lot of swell
relations, and you’re considered the cleverest
talker in all New York. You amuse them,” she
continued shrewdly, “and they don’t care a tin-
ker’s dam that you have graced all their dinners
for the past ten years in that same rusty,
tattered, old black lace gown you’re dragging
at. But it’s different with me. Occasions of this
sort are as scarce as hens’ teeth in my calendar,
and I’ve got to make hay while the sun shines.
Why, the very fact that Mrs. ‘Wan’ has taken
me up ought to be good for a month added to my
Broadway engagement, when I decide to give it
7


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
out. Eh, what?” for an exclamation betrayed my
astonishment.
“Is it possible that your press agent has not al-
ready blazoned the intelligence to a waiting
world?” I asked incredulously. “Then by all
means have him do so at once. Waste no time in
letting the multitudes know that Elida Yeats, the
beautiful Californian who took London by storm,
is spending a fortnight, say a fortnight, it
sounds more intimate, you know; quite as if you
were one of the family,–is spending a fortnight
at Onyx Court, the guest of Mrs. Hermann Van
Suyden, who has conceived a warm friendship
and admiration for ‘the American Bernhardt.”
There ought to be enough beating of tom-toms
in such a statement to satisfy even the most
exacting of managers.”
Elida gazed at me enigmatically. “My press
agent,” she said slowly and distinctly, “following
my strict instructions, has not yet even mentioned
my whereabouts.”
I let my hooks go in my amazement. What
could possibly account for this most unprofes-
sional reserve?
“I have a far greater coup than that in pros-
pect,” she cried, a note of triumph in her voice.
8


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
Then, glancing cautiously about, she drew from
her bosom a small, flat parcel, which I rightly
took to be a jewel-box.
“Look at this!” with an exultant thrill in her
tone. She pressed a spring, the lid flew open,
and there against a velvet background sparkled
the most magnificent ruby necklace I have ever
Seen.
Elida lifted it lightly, and clasped it about her
white throat, while I stood gasping in astonish-
ment and blinking my dazzled eyes. Such
stones! Great, flashing, gleaming drops of
blood, held in an oddly fashioned, Eastern set-
ting of dull gold! They enthralled and fas-
cinated me, mesmerised me by the spell of their
beauty
Elida smiled complacently at my moon-struck
admiration. “Rented them from Sonnenthal,
the jeweller,” she explained, “at the cost of a
month's salary; but they will earn it back for me,
and more too, before I am done with them,” with
a decided nod.
“Elida,” I sternly broke in, suddenly finding
enlightenment, “surely, you are not going to
attempt that threadbare old game of having your
jewels stolen? Why, even in the most provincial
9


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
and credulous mind it arouses nothing but deri-
sive mirth. My child! My child! I thought
you cleverer than that!”
The actress cocked her eyes at me. “Teach
your grandmother to suck eggs,” she remarked
vulgarly. “What you say is all very true; but
there is another side to the question. The great
public is very conservative, you must remember,
and it likes to have the jewels of its favourite
actresses stolen. That is what it expects—nay,
almost demands. And if one can only add a
spice of novelty to the story, it will be swallowed
as readily as it was in the days before the Ark.
“Now, in this little affair of mine,” she went on
enthusiastically, “I propose to offer several new
and interesting features. In the first place, these
rubies are worth a king’s ransom.—Oh, they are
real,” intercepting a sceptical gleam in my eye;
“I took no chances of detection on that score.—
And in addition to that, every stone of them has
a delicious history—Indian intrigue, and plun-
der, and loot, and all that sort of thing, you
know. Sonnenthal has the facts, and at the
proper time he stands ready to divulge them in
the way that will be most effective. Then, too,
the verything of having them stolen here, while I
--
10


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
safe. But, and this is something that she does
not know, while she was fooling with the knob
to open it, I crept up softly behind her, and read
over her shoulder every figure of the combination.
Now, and here is where you come in, Gwen, LI
propose—”
At this moment a maid tapped on the door to
ask if she could assist me with my toilet and to
inform me that the dinner hour was at hand.
I welcomed the distraction. “Yes,” I cried
eagerly; “you can help me very much. Fix this
aigrette in my hair.” I turned my back squarely
on Elida; but she was not to be snubbed.
“I will see you again at bedtime,” she whis-
pered, affectionately squeezing my arm.
“You need not bother; I am not at all inter-
ested,” I replied shortly; but my heart sank, for
in spite of my icy resolutions, some sure intuition
warned me that in the end Elida would have her
way.
12


CHAPTER II
A DAUGHTER OF EVE
If my serenity was a bit ruffled by Elida Yeats's
evident intention to involve me in one of her
tricky schemes for self-advertisement, I flatter
myself that I allowed no trace of it to appear in
my manner. I sparkled quite as was expected
of me at the table, better than usual in fact, and
certainly more spontaneously; for on my right
was one of the best, the most appreciative and at-
tentive listeners, it has ever been my good fortune
to meet.
He was a British officer just down from Canada,
a Scotchman, Captain McCracken by name.
There was nothing particularly striking about
him either in looks or manner; he was just a de-
lightful, silent, middle-aged man with a charm-
ing voice, and kind, pleasant eyes behind his
glasses.
On my left was an entirely different type, a
raw, assertive troglodyte with bristling, red hair,
cold, shrewd eyes, a tawny moustache like a
13


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
brigand's, and big, hairy hands. I addressed a
word or two to him, as in duty bound; but his
reception of my advances was so cavalier that I
quickly turned my shoulder on him, and there-
after devoted myself exclusively to the Captain.
Not that the other man appeared in the least
cast down by this evidence of my disapproval.
On the contrary, he was manifestly content to
confine his attentions to Elida, who sat just be-
yond him, and with whom he seemed to have no
difficulty in discovering congenial topics.
How she endured him for a moment I could not
comprehend; but she apparently found him even
interesting. Occasionally, in the pauses of my
own conversation, I could catch snatches of
theirs; and it struck me as surprisingly personal
and intimate,_mutual confidences, interspersed
with rough chaff and a smoking-room quality of
repartee.
I will confess I was puzzled by this latest ca-
price on the part of the actress. She always has
a lot of men around her; but she usually prefers
them nicely veneered and polished. However, I
had neither the time nor inclination to bother my
head over her vagaries. I was too thoroughly en-
joying myself in the stimulating companionship
14


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPPHIRES
of the Captain, while he gave me very definitely
to understand that he was no less agreeably en-
tertained.
After dinner, he sought me out in the drawing-
room for a continuation of our chat; and when he
finally bade me good-night, he plainly intimated
that, so far as he was concerned, he meant our fu-
ture acquaintance to be a protracted serial, rather
than a brief and episodical storiette.
As a consequence of this pleasing interlude,
perhaps, I did not promptly send Elida Yeats
about her business, as I should have done, when
at midnight she again presented herself at my
door. Indeed, I shall have to admit that I was
more pleased than annoyed by her good-natured
teasing.
“Talk about love at first sight,” she exclaimed
boisterously. “Why, Gwendolen Eustacia, you
have simply captured that old fossil, body, soul
and breeches. He followed you about all even-
ing like a cat asking for cream. And they tell
me he’s rich as Croesus, too. Got an ancestral
castle somewhere in the Highlands, and all that
sort of thing.”
“If you are referring to Captain McCracken,
Elida,” I cried indignantly, my cheeks flushing
15


THE VAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
though. If you notice, he talks a lot, but he
never seems really to tell you anything; although
he is awfully clever at drawing you out.” She
added this last a bit ruefully. “But nobody
knows for sure what he does, or who he is, or
where he comes from. It is the very mystery
about him which fascinates me, a sort of a Blue-
beard’s-closet idea, don’t you know?”
“Yes; and you will remember the fate of the
unfortunate ladies who took it on themselves to
pry into that closet. You would do well to avoid
this man, Elida. Instinct, intuition, whatever
one may call it, warned me against him the
minute I saw him. I felt as if there was some-
thing sinister about him, and what you have told
me only confirms my impression. Where on earth
did Mrs. Wan Suyden pick him up?”
“Oh, we both got to know him on the other side,”
carelessly. “He came back to England with a lot
of the officers from the Boer War; had been fight-
ing down there with them, and had performed
prodigies of valour, I believe. That of course
gave him an entrée, and afterward his very
gaucheries made him a sort of a fad. They
thought him deliciously ‘American.’” *
“A soldier of fortune, eh?” I commented; “and,
17


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
like all the rest of them, scamps and scalawags
when they are not in the field.”
“He claims to be a Californian,” continued
Elida; “but when I asked him about people and
things out there, he shied off with the excuse
that he had not been back for nearly fifteen
years. Said he left the country when he was
scarcely more than a mere boy.”
“Probably left it for the country’s good,” I
hinted darkly. “The fellow is evidently a thor-
oughly bad lot.” Then, because in spite of all
her silliness and affectations I really have a very
warm spot in my heart for Elida, I began to point
out to her the folly and the danger of becoming
entangled with a person of that sort.
I actually waxed eloquent over the enormous
mistake she was making in giving encouragement
to such a man; but she rather petulantly inter-
rupted me in the midst of my counsels.
“Oh, drop Baggerly,” frowning. “I did not
steal this half hour from my beauty sleep to dis-
cuss men with you like a couple of schoogirls
after their first ball, nor to listen to any old-
maid-auntie advice from you, either. I guess
when it comes to the pinch that little Elida can be
trusted to look out for herself; and, besides, if all
18


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
you imagine about the poor fellow should turn
out to be true, just think what a sensation would
be created by my marriage to him.
“Now,” flinging out her hands as if to dismiss
the subject, and adopting a business-like tone,
“let’s get down to practicalities.” She had
thrown herself into an easy chair with her feet
stretched out to the fire, and was looking up
at me with eager eyes. “What I want to know
is can I depend upon you to help me out with
this affair of the rubies?”
“You certainly cannot,” I returned decidedly;
“and if you are wise, you will give up the idea
yourself. Nobody will be deceived for a moment;
you will simply turn yourself into a laughing
stock.”
“I will risk that part of it,” she averred con-
fidently; “and, as for you, I would advise you not
to make up your mind too quickly. It is not
much I shall ask of you; but, between ourselves,
I am willing to pay high for the accommodation.
That may be putting it a bit bluntly; but you un-
derstand? We might as well be frank about it.
You need the money; and although, as I say, it’s
nothing but the merest trifle I want of you, I am
ready to show a very substantial appreciation.”
19


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
She named a figure which, steel myself against
her as I would, could scarcely fail to shake my
resolution.
Unconsciously I found myself calculating the
cost of a decent Winter wardrobe, and mentally
debating the respective merits of a cloth or velvet
gown.
“No, I could never consider it,” I repeated, less
firmly, however. “Such a thing is simply out
of the question.”—Yet, some way, I knew that I
was destined to see more, much more of the Cap-
tain, and the thought of appearing constantly
before him in my rusty black lace was decidedly
painful. “What is your plan, Elida?” I falt-
ered.
“Why, a very simple one,” eagerly; “and, as far
as your part of it is concerned, absolutely free
from risk. You will be leaving here about three
o'clock Monday afternoon, will you not? Yes?
Well, just after luncheon, when no one is around,
I shall creep into Mrs. ‘Wan’s’ room, open the
safe, take out the rubies, and hand them over to
you. All that I shall then ask, dearest Gwendolen
Eustacia, is that you put the box in your bag,
and turn it over to Sonnenthal on Tuesday morn-
ing. That is the whole scheme in a nutshell; not
20


THE WAN SU Y DEN SAPP HIRES
so terribly hazardous, nor such a very extreme
test of friendship after all, is it?”
Yet apparently simple as the plan was, and
slight as was to be my connection with it, I felt a
strong repugnance to the whole enterprise.
“I do not like it, Elida,” I protested. “I do not
like it at all. I do not wish to be mixed up in any
such queer business.”
But the girl had slipped to the floor, thrown her
arms about me, and was rubbing her peachy
cheek against my sleeve.
“Ah, think of the Captain, Gwen,” she be-
sought with wily entreaty. “He’ll be asking you
to dine, or to do a play with him on every oc-
casion; and I assure you that the black lace and
that faded blue rag of yours will not stand the
pace. They deserve honourable retirement; and
you know that a charming woman like you can-
not go about with a stunning man and enjoy
herself, if she looks like a scarecrow.”
“Perfectly true,” I admitted with a slightly
hollow laugh at her vehement presentation of the
case. But it decided me. It seemed after all a
small enough service, and—well, I planned out
the velvet gown before I slept.
21


CHAPTER III
“THE ROBB ERY OF ME JEWELS”
NEveRTHELEss, my distaste for the project suf-
fered no abatement. When I awoke in the morn-
ing after an uneasy slumber, it was to find my
premonitions of evil as strong, or stronger than
before.
It was not of course that I objected to assisting
in the exploitation of Elida, although a bit less
notice would do her no harm; but when to do so
I was called upon to abet the commission of a
felony, even though only a make-believe one,—
I was quite willing to see her star sink into dark-
ness and oblivion.
When I thought of what I might be letting my-
self in for, I positively wondered at my weakness
in ever consenting to countenance such a crazy
scheme; still,—the velvet gown loomed entic-
ingly ahead, and I had given a definite promise.
One might as well be philosophical, I reflected,
and at any rate hope for the best. So, with this
22


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
decision I put the matter from my mind and
turned my thoughts to more pleasant channels.
And, really, I do not believe I ever enjoyed two
single days in all my life so much as that Satur-
day and Sunday. The sun shone with the mild,
hazy radiance of the late Fall; and the Captain
and I walked, and drove, and talked, and dis-
covered a thousand tastes and inclinations in com-
mon to cement and strengthen our friendship.
He lost no time, I may observe, in winning from
me my far from reluctant consent to allow him to
call at my apartment within the week.
I remember we had been roaming across the
grounds, and halted for a moment in the centre of
a little clump of beeches, where the afternoon
sunlight, streaming through the bare branches,
rested warm and mellow upon a carpet of dead,
brown leaves, and opening burrs.
I pointed out to my companion a circular orifice
about half way up the smooth, mottled trunk of a
big tree beside which we stood.
“Look,” I cried, “a woodpecker’s nest,” and
added jestingly: “Now you can see for yourself
how restricted your welcome must be when you
come to visit me. My quarters are scarcely any
larger than that.”
23


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
While I was speaking he had thrown aside his
hat, and with the instinct of a boy had swarmed
up the tree to investigate our discovery.
“Well, I trust I shall at least have better luck
when I come to visit you,” he laughed down at
me from his perch. “There is nobody at home.”
“Yes,” I explained; “the woodpecker has gone
South for the Winter; but,” with a sigh, “I am
afraid there is no such flitting for me. After
this little holiday I shall have to settle down in
New York and drudge harder than ever.”
He had rejoined me on the ground by this time,
and was dusting off his hands from the climb.
At my words of discontent, however, he glanced
up with quick sympathy, and a declaration of
some kind seemed to be trembling on his lips.
But he restrained the impulse, whatever it was,
and merely suggested that we continue our stroll.
Soon he was chatting away to me in his usual
friendly, impersonal fashion; but I noticed there
was a set to his lips, a gleam of quiet determina-
tion in his eye, which bespoke his having reached
a decision upon some point he had been revolving
in his mind.
Ah, what a visit was that week’s end at Onyx
Court, and what a charming comrade the Cap-
24


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
tain proved himself! Indeed, the only cloud
which flecked my skies on those perfect days was
a brief, whispered communication from Elida,
who drew me aside just before dinner on Sunday
evening to inform me that she had seen Sonnen-
thal, and that all the arrangements for her coup
were completed.
“Sonnenthal is so nervous about those bloomin’
old rubies of his,” she explained, “that he took a
special run up here in his ‘bubble’ this morning,
and sent word for me to meet him down the road.
He seemed much better satisfied when I let him
know that they were in Mrs. ‘Wan’s’ safe and de-
scribed how securely it was guarded. But after
that he chose to get cranky about you; and I had
to read your full pedigree, and let him know who
you were, and where you lived, and all the rest of
it before I could bring him to regard you as a
trustworthy messenger. Finally, however, I
smoothed him out, and now,” with a gleeful
laugh, “it is all arranged. He is to call in person
at your rooms on Tuesday morning and give you
a receipt for the stones, which will relieve you of
all further responsibility.”
“I tell you I don’t like it, Elida,” I muttered.
“Suppose some one should break into my apart-
25


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
ment on Monday night and rob me of the neck-
lace?”
“Nonsense,” she scoffed lightly. “Who would
ever suspect that you had anything worth steal-
ing?”
At luncheon on Monday, Elida made an especial
request to drive me to the station; but it was not
until we had whirled out of sight of the house
that she permitted herself to give vent to her evi-
dent exultation. Then she burst into peal after
peal of delighted laughter.
When she had finally checked her mirth some-
what, she drew from her jacket a flat, carefully
tied box, and unfastening the catches of my trav-
elling bag, thrust the parcel within.
“There,” she cried gaily, “the ‘robbery of me
jewels’ is successfully accomplished, and no one
the wiser. To-morrow, my press agent will have
every newspaper in New York blazing with it.”
“Are you quite sure that no one saw you?” I
questioned anxiously, “that no officious servant is
going to come forward to explode the fiction and
render us all ridiculous?”
“Positive,” she confidently averred. “Estelle,
Mrs. ‘Wan’s’ maid you know, was sewing in the
lady’s dressing-room, when I first made the
26


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
*
attempt, so I went on unconcernedly down into
the billiard-room; but on the second try she nor
any one else was in sight. I met her away around
on the far side of the corridor after the stunt
was all over. But, anyway, she is too stupid to
catch on to what I was doing, even if she had been
right in the room.”
“Well, perhaps,” I granted doubtfully. Then,
another disquieting reflection coming to me, as I
thought of Elida’s unruly tongue: “Of course,
you have told no one of this project of yours?”
She laughed a trifle uneasily. “I have told you
and I have told Sonnenthal,” she said; “that
makes two.”
The evasion was too palpable, and a feeling of
quick apprehension swept over me. “Elida,” I
said sternly, “do you mean that you have been
idiot enough to confide in that odious Baggerly
man?”
Her averted eyes, the wave of guilty colour
which suffused her face, was sufficient answer.
“For Heaven's sake!” I ejaculated. “What
ever induced you?”
“Well,” excusingly, “he came upon me talk-
ing to Sonnenthal down the road yesterday, and
he kept bothering me to know what it was about,
27


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
and then he's always blowing so over his own
clever exploits that I thought I’d show him I
wasn’t so slow myself.-But,” hastening to add
virtuously, “he is really the only one I have told.
Not a word have I breathed to another living
soul.”
I made no reply, save to lift the travelling bag
to my lap, and start to unfasten the clasps.
Elida saw my intention in the firm set of my lips.
“Oh, don’t do that,” she besought, heedlessly
dropping the reins, and casting herself tempest-
uously upon me in an effort to withhold my
hands from their purpose. A storm of expostu-
lation and entreaty followed, and I finally
yielded once more, and consented to carry the
thing through, even if Baggerly were in the
secret.
I could not forbear, however, letting her see
how annoyed I was by her indiscretion, and I
gave her plainly to understand that if harm re-
sulted from it, she would have to extricate herself
as best she might. For my part, I should simply
deny any complicity in the transaction, and as-
sert my ignorance of the character of the parcel
she had entrusted to me.
But now that her point was gained, she smiled
28


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
with easy assurance at my forebodings. “Oh,
‘Baggy’ is safe as a church,” she declared. “He
would never dare get himself in my bad books
by peaching.”
“H'm,” I sniffed. “Perhaps so; but if he does
not, I’m willing to wager that he makes you pay
well for his silence. He’s just the sort that would
attempt blackmail,” with dark distrust.
Elida laughed outright in her amusement.
“Don’t be silly, Gwendolen, simply because you
happen to have conceived a prejudice against
the man. I will admit,” with a show of frank-
ness, “that perhaps it would have been better not
to have told him; but the mischief’s done, and
there’s an “end on’t.”
“Everything will go like clockwork,” she
added light-heartedly; “you see if it don’t? You
will turn the necklace over to Sonnenthal, and in
a week or so he will have it discovered in some
weird, out-of-the-way place, with the settings
broken and the fastenings wrenched off, but with
the stones intact. Then there will be a big ado,
and all sorts of false clues will be sprung, until
the nine days’ wonder wears out, and the only
thing that will be remembered is that Elida
Yeats is the greatest actress in America!”
29


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
I still felt very much like throwing up the whole
thing once and for ever; but the promise I had
given and the prospect of my velvet gown con-
strained me, and I did no more than express my
scorn for this optimistic presentment by an elo-
quent curl of my lip.
Elida went into fits of senseless laughter every
time she looked at my gloomy face, and chris-
tened me the “Mask of Tragedy” on the spot.
When we finally arrived at the station, we found
of course that the train was half an hour late;
and as my young friend with her customary self-
ishness declined to wait with me on the plea that
she objected to driving back alone over the coun-
try roads at so late an hour, I had to sit an inter-
minable time in that dreary, draughty place with
no other companionship than a few gaping
yokels and a party of maids and footmen,
brought down as extra servants to Onyx Court,
and now, since the house party was thinning out,
on their way back to the city.
At last, however, the belated train steamed in.
There was no chair car; so I had consequently
to huddle myself and my bags into one of the
ordinary coaches and prepare to endure as best
I might the close, over-heated atmosphere, reek-
+
30


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
even if I did almost kill one of Van Suyden’s best
horses getting here. But I felt that at any haz-
ard I must overtake you and acquaint you with
a knowledge of the unfortunate affair at Onyx
Court which transpired immediately after your
departure.”
“What is that?” I cried, endeavouring to ap-
pear surprised, although, as may be inferred, I
felt that I could very accurately predict what
was coming.
“You could scarcely have left the house”—his
manner showed evident excitement—“when Mrs.
Van Suyden, having occasion to go to her private
sitting-room, was astonished to find wide open
a window she herself had closed only a short
time before.”
“Clever Elida!” I commented in a mental paren-
thesis. “Not a detail overlooked!”
“Her maid was unable to account for it,” con-
tinued the Captain; “and Mrs. Van Suyden
thereupon becoming alarmed, rushed to a secret
safe which, it seems, is concealed in the room, and
opened it to find missing—”
“The rubies!” I cried, forgetting myself.
“No, no, not rubies; but a necklace and tiara of
sapphires!”
32


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
“Sapphires?” I gasped incredulously. “Not
the Wan Suyden sapphires?”
He bowed a grave assent.
“And they were considered the finest in Amer-
ica!” I groaned. “But it is all a mistake; they
are not really gone—” I broke off quickly,
realising how much I might be revealing.
“Gone, beyond peradventure,” he insisted.
“The safe was thoroughly searched!”
33


CHAPTER IV
FA CING A CRISIS
My heart absolutely stopped beating. My
head fell back nervelessly upon the cushions.
How, how could Elida have made such a stupid
blunder? With sickening clearness, I foresaw
the explanations which would have to be made.
The cynical whispers which would circulate con-
cerning my share in the transaction buzzed in
my ears; the big, black headlines of the news-
papers danced before my eyes!
In a sort of daze I heard Captain McCracken
proceeding with his story. If he noted my agi-
tation, he evidently ascribed it to the natural
consequence of his tidings.
“I was not at the house at the time of the dis-
covery,” he was saying in his calm, English
tones; “but, according to accounts, the place
must at once have been thrown into a panic.
Finally, however, order of a sort was restored
and the local police were summoned. They natu-
34


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
rally, and no doubt rightly, concluded that one
of the extra servants must have been the thief,
and advised that the entire lot be detained until
a thorough investigation could be made. But it
was then after train time, and, as every one sup-
posed, impossible to overtake them,-the tele-
phone went on a strike this morning, you will
remember;-so it was decided to have them held
and searched on their arrival in New York.
“Baggerly, it seems, volunteered to ride over to
the village with the message, and it was from
him I learned these facts. I had taken some let-
ters to the post office, and was riding slowly back,
when we met. He gave me a hurried account of
the robbery, and showed me the telegram he was
sending to the New York “Bobbies.” In it he
asked them to detain and investigate every pas-
senger who had taken the train at Wheaton.
“I tried,” continued the Captain with a slight
embarrassment in his manner, “to explain to the
chap that it would never do to send a wire of that
sort, that you were on the train. But, but—”
he stammered angrily under stress of an evident
unwillingness to tell me just what had happened.
“He refused to change his message,” I quietly
supplied.
35


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
The Captain’s eyes gave me a glance of admir-
ing relief for my quick perceptions.
“Ye-es,” he admitted, “that was about it. He
said, but I will not repeat what he said, Miss
Bramblestone. Only,” his face growing dark,
while he tugged vigorously at his moustache, “if
there had been time, don’t you know, I should
have fetched the bounder here by the scruff of
his neck, and made him get down on his knees
to beg your pardon, by Jove!”
I laughed in the midst of my woe. I couldn’t
help it.
“I have a shrewd suspicion that Miss Yeats may
have repeated some rather unflattering comments
I recently passed upon Mr. Baggerly,” I said:
“and perhaps he cherishes a spice of malice.
That may explain his manifest eagerness to
have me included among the suspected maids
and footmen.”
Why, I wonder, does Mrs. Grundy, or rather,
Mrs. Grundy’s husband,-frown upon the use of
profanity in the presence of ladies? A thou-
sand pretty speeches could not have so tickled
my ears as that one explosive “Damned cad!”
which broke from my companion’s close-pressed
lips at my elucidating statement. It was
36


THE WAN SU Y DE N S APP HIRES
“grateful and comforting,” like the sympathetic
clasp of a strong hand to one who walks in dark-
neSS.
He looked so sheepish and distressed over his
involuntary lapse, however, that I hurriedly in-
terposed to question him how the idea of playing
Paul Revere to my unlucky plight had suggested
itself to him?
“Why,” he said simply, “there was nothing
else to do. You had to be saved some way from
running into such an ordeal unprepared. I had
learned in the village, by good fortune, that the
train was a bit late; and, unless Van Suyden’s
‘Sultan’ came a bad cropper, I thought there
was a chance that I could make it. If not, I had
determined to charter a special engine and over-
haul you at one of the intermediate stations. A
wire, I fancied, would only needlessly alarm and
disconcert you.”
Dear, kind, noble gentleman! What considera-
tion! What chivalry ! My heart glowed at his
thought for me, and my eyes filled with sudden
tears.
And then, as full realisation of my situation
came to me, sheer terror seized me in its grip.
I strove to throw it off. Of course, Elida would
37


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
found in my bag! I would be charged with the
theft! And what then?
Imprisonment? My heart stopped beating
again. Absurd; and yet I could not deny the
sapphires. They were there in my bag—Sup-
pose the Wan Suydens chose to be nasty, as
rich people sometimes will, averring that they do
it for the sake of principle; and suppose Elida,
rather than pillory herself for the mocking gibes
of the public, should deny any part in the tran-
saction, P “Oh, suppose—? Suppose a hun-
dred things?” I cried impatiently, almost aloud.
A wild suggestion came to me of leaving the
train at one of its stopping places; but I dis-
missed it almost as soon as formed. Such a pro-
ceeding on my part, being without shadow of
excuse, would be reported by the conductor, and
would only result in directing suspicion toward
me. Captain McCracken could scarcely doubt
that I had acted in consequence of his tidings.
No, I must remain on the train; but I must con-
coct some feasible plan for concealing those
damning stones. And how? My shoes? My
hair? The hem of my skirt? I ruefully shook
my head.
Oh, how I longed to confess the whole thing to
39


THE WAN SU Y DEN SAP PHIRES
my companion! And yet I shrank instinctively
from the very idea. He would be kindness and
consideration itself; but our friendship was so
brief and so delightful, that I could not bear to
destroy the steadily growing regard in which
he plainly showed he held me. All other ques-
tions aside, would he not, to himself at least, con-
demn my flagrant breach of the laws of hospi-
tality? Was it not natural to suppose that he
would view the matter from the Wan Suydens’
standpoint rather than from mine? Being rich
himself, how could he be expected to sympathise
with the temptations of my poverty?
I dare say that he fancied my protracted silence
meant a disinclination for conversation; for he
presently made an excuse of going to the smok-
ing-car, and left me to my thoughts.
Alone! I leaned back in a corner of the seat
and tried to think. My head was in a whirl; it
felt on fire, and my hands were like ice. What
was to be done? We were drawing nearer the
Grand Central Station every minute. Time was
flying fast. Oh, I must, must, discover some
way out of the predicament!
I might open the window, and drop the jewels
out?—But how could I dare do that with such
40


THE WAN SU Y DE N S AP PHIRES
valuable property as Mrs. Van Suyden’s sap-
phires? Beside, would not the young men op-
posite, when they saw me in the clutches of the
law, remember the circumstance and comment
upon it?
Still, cast about as I would, I could formulate
no better plan. This was the one solution which
seemed to offer itself. Dallying with temptation,
I told myself that by choosing an unfrequented
spot, and marking the place where the discarded
gems fell, I might reasonably expect to return
later and recover them.
Of course, it was the project of absolute des-
peration; but, on looking back, I realise that I
was so appalled by the way things had turned
out, I was probably not quite myself. I glanced
at the two young men across from me. They
were sitting with their hats pulled down over
their eyes, apparently lost in a bucolic slumber.
The rest of the people in the coach were mani-
festly absorbed in their own affairs.
Acting on my first impulse, I slipped Elida’s
parcel from my bag, rolled it securely in the
newspaper which lay in my lap, and turned to
the window.
But the sash stuck. Tug and push at it as I
41


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
would, the thing refused to budge; and the noise
I made over it was enough to attract the atten-
tion of the entire car. I was almost in tears, as
I stubbornly continued my futile effort to raise
it.
One of the young farmers opposite had opened
his eyes, and leaning forward had watched with
keen interest my unavailing struggles. Then,
with awkward courtesy, he arose to help me.
As he bent over me, he muttered quickly under
his breath: “Don’t do it, ma'am. It ain’t safe.
Try the gent’s fur coat.”
For a moment I was paralysed. Who was this
man and what did he know? Then a tremendous
wave of relief swept over me. Here was assist-
ance, no matter from what quarter; and coming
too at the moment of despair! Why I followed
his suggestion, I cannot tell. Perhaps it was the
note of decision in his voice, or the impelling
glance of his bold, keen eyes? Perhaps I felt
instinctively the sincerity of his desire to aid me.
Beside me on the seat lay Captain McCracken’s
great fur overcoat, a reminder of his recent stay
in Canada. Hastily I thrust my hand into its
folds, and discovered that it had innumerable
pockets.
42


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Why not?” I asked myself. “He will not be
searched. Afterward I can demand my parcel
from him and pass the matter off with a
jest.”
“Better try it, ma'am,” again came the tense
whisper of my unknown counsellor. “It’s your
last chance.”
There was indeed need for haste, if anything
was to be done. The train was rattling through
the tunnel, and the passengers were gathering
up their wraps and bundles. I looked up; the
tall form of the Captain blocked the door, he was
making his way toward me.
Now or never was the time for action. The two
countrymen rose to their feet, shielding me from
the view of the others in the car; and with a
quick motion I slipped the jewel-box into one of
the most obscure pockets of the furry coat. A
moment later I was smiling gaily, if a bit hyster-
ically, into the face of its owner.
There was time for a few indifferent remarks,
the sort of banalities people exchange when in
the immediate presence of a crisis; and then the
train drew into the station and stopped.
The Captain threw his coat over his arm. “And
now for our ordeal,” he cried. Keep up your
43


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
courage. It will probably not be very dreadful.”
He smiled cheerily down upon me.
“Our ordeal?” I faltered, recoiling with a shock
of sickening comprehension. “Do you mean to
say that they will search you?”
“Of course,” he laughed. “I also took the
train at Wheaton. Are you not glad to have a
companion in misery?”
44


CHAPTER V
O N THE KNEES OF THE GO DS
I shall never forget my sensations as I fol-
lowed the Captain from that car. My facul-
ties could not have been more numbed had some
one dealt me a stunning blow across the temples.
I suffered as one in a nightmare, longing to cry
out, to protest, and yet unable to utter a sound.
I knew dully that I must demand the parcel
from him, regain it at any hazard; but how in
the brief moment allowed me could I bring him
to comprehend, how explain the legerdemain by
which it had passed from my keeping into his.
While my tongue was still struggling vainly to
find the words I wanted, I felt a sharp tug at my
skirt, and the low, commanding voice of the mys-
terious unknown again sounded in my ear.
“Keep cool,” he adjured. “Don’t worry. I tell
you it'll turn out all right!”
Whoever this singular person might be, he pos-
sessed in some subtle manner the gift of carrying
assurance. His quick, whispered message braced
45


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
me now like a draught of some invigorating
cordial. He had helped me before; he would
again. At least, that was the thought which
sprang to my brain. I stopped not to question
nor debate; but with a childlike trust confided my
destiny to his hands. With no further effort to
attract Captain McCracken’s attention I quietly
made my way from the car.
The scene rises before me, vivid as ever, the
crowded station, the puffing trains, the white
flare of the electric lights. At the steps stood
the conductor, flanked on either side by two
burly, moustachioed individuals, whom I rightly
judged to be “plain clothes men.” As we
emerged and were pointed out by the conductor,
one of these would step forward, and with quiet
authority direct us to stand to one side.
The contingent of footmen and maids, alarm
and bewilderment written on their faces, had al-
ready been segregated in a huddled group, and
the man who accosted us curtly motioned the
Captain and myself to join them.
We were submitting readily enough; but the
two rustics just behind us showed a disposition to
argue the point. Their voices rose high and
disputatious, and the departing passengers
46


T H E W A N SU Y DE N S APP HIRES
turned back curiously to learn the cause of the
altercation.
The detectives, however, were in no mood to
brook objections, and one of them, seizing the
more truculent of the two countrymen, started
to shove him back into the waiting line. The
fellow instantly resisted, pouring out a flood of
indignant “I swans,” and “By Goshes;” and the
craning crowd surged forward and back with
the struggling combatants. The Captain had
quickly drawn me to the edge of our group; but
in the height of the confusion I felt him sud-
denly let go the protecting grip with which he
held my arm.
“Hi, there!” he called excitedly. “Where are
you going with that coat? It’s mine! Stop
thief Stop thief!”
I caught one fleeting glimpse of a small, wiry
individual worming his way swiftly through the
crowd with the Captain’s fur coat thrown over
his shoulder, and of its excited owner pushing
one of the detectives aside to start in hot pursuit.
But the next moment the officer had recovered
himself, and bounding toward the Captain
dragged him violently back.
“No, you don’t,” he declared threateningly.
47


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
“You’re pretty foxy all right; but you don’t get
away as easy as that.”
“But, but,” stuttered the Englishman, very
red-faced, and indignantly trying to explain,
“my coat has been stolen. I must catch the chap
who took it. After him, before he gets away!”
“Oh, yes,” scoffed the other cynically, “I’ve
heard that gag before. But it don’t go now.
You’ll have plenty of time to look up your coat
later on,” with a wink. “Just now, you’ll be
good, and pay attention to us.”
All the time he was talking he was steadily
pushing his prisoner back; and the Captain,
fume and protest as he might, was perforce com-
pelled to yield.
Meanwhile, the other two rebels had also been
overpowered, and with torn and dishevelled gar-
ments were now sullenly taking their places in the
group under surveillance.
The one who had acted as my counsellor was
especially loud in his complaints. “Wa’al, ef
this is the way they treat folks 't come to Noo
York,” he asserted, “I’m a-goin’ to take the next
'commodation back to Wheaton.”
I glanced covertly toward him. His cheek was
scratched, and one eye was half-closed as a result
48


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
of his altercation with the officers; but under the
swelling Ifancied I could detect a faint and sig-
nificant flutter of the lid, and, if I was not mis-
taken, the corners of his mouth were upcurved
in the suspicion of a smile.
The conductor rapidly checked us off, and we
were then marshalled under guard to another
part of the station to be interrogated and
searched. It was a humiliating experience, that
march through the gaping crowds, encounter-
ing on every side curious eyes, and hearing com-
ments startlingly frank; but this was soon over,
and the succeeding ordeal was not so difficult
as I had feared.
A brusque, business-like police sergeant began
to question me rather sharply; but when I had
satisfied him as to who I was, and upon what
footing I had visited Onyx Court, he became
markedly more deferential, and even apologised
for the inconvenience to which I had been put.
“It is of course unnecessary in your case,” he
said; “but merely as a matter of form, and indeed
for your own protection, I hope you will not
object to being searched?”
I assured him that I had not the faintest objec-
tion; in fact, since the matter had gone so far,
49


THE WAN SU Y DEN SAPP HIRES
insisted upon it. He, therefore, turned me over
to a brisk, motherly woman, who performed the
duty, commiserating and petting me all the time
she was at work.
When I was at last released, Captain Mc-
Cracken was waiting for me; but he, poor man,
had gone through quite a different experience,
and was correspondingly vehement in his denun-
ciations of American police methods, for he had
been badgered and hectored almost beyond the
limit of endurance.
“They could not have handled me worse if I
had been a convicted pickpocket,” he as-
severated. “I told them about my fur coat, and
they simply laughed in my face. I shall lay the
matter before the British consul the first thing in
the morning.”
But he calmed down somewhat when he learned
that my treatment had been reasonably courte-
ous, and reconsidered his intention to make the
matter an international affair. By the time he
had escorted me to a cab he was almost himself
again.
“May I not stop in after dinner and see how
you are?” he asked eagerly, holding my hand
in a firm clasp.
50


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Not to-night, I beg,” I replied. “I am utterly
done up by all this excitement, and I shall try
to get a long night's rest. But,” seeing his look
of disappointment, “will you not come some time
to-morrow, either in the morning or afternoon?
There are many things about this affair I wish
to discuss, and I shall be so glad to see you.”
“How stupid of me to think of intruding,” he
returned compunctiously. “I might have known
you would be awfully upset by all this. But you
will surely see me to-morrow, will you not?”
There was almost a note of pleading in his voice.
My smile must have reassured him, however,
for he added half-shyly but in a tone of intense
admiration: “I think you are the bravest, as
well as the most charming woman I have ever
known P
I drew back in a sudden confusion at the ardour
in his manner; but as he closed the door of the
cab, I leaned forward again to nod good-by.
And there, beside him on the curb, listening in-
tently to the directions given to the cabby, I saw
once more the figure of my rustic acquaintance
of the train.
Our eyes met for but a second, and then I was
being whirled across Forty-second Street, and
51


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
up the avenue; but there was a something in
the man’s attitude, a hint of mutual understand-
ing in his glance, which told me that he had not
stationed himself there without a definite pur-
pose, and that I had by no means seen the last of
him.
Did it mean that he was seeking my address in
order to restore the sapphires? For I had no
doubt but that the theft of the coat was merely
a ruse planned and directed by him to pass the
jewels beyond the reach of the police.
My brain had been in such a whirl; the swift
transitions from abject, grovelling fear to a
reawakened hope so dizzying; so intense had
been my relief at the final outcome, that—can
it be believed?—I had for the time actually for-
gotten the original cause of my predicament.
The sapphires! Where were they? By mistake
or not, yet had they been entrusted to my keep-
ing; and I had proven an unfaithful steward!
With the force of a sudden revelation, I
grasped at last the true significance of all that
had occurred. The men aboard the train had
of course overheard the Captain’s story of the
robbery, and noting my subsequent anxiety to
rid myself of the parcel in my bag, had been
52


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPP HIRES
shrewd enough to put two and two together, and
guess pretty closely at the contents of that flat,
carefully tied box.
No wonder my mentor of the car had been so
ready in his suggestions. He probably knew
that a confederate was to meet him at the station,
and that a wink or nod would be all sufficient to
convey the purport of his scheme.
Risky? Yes; but the prize was the finest set of
sapphires in America. And I had shown myself
so pitifully easy. Why, I had fairly hurled my-
self into the trap they laid for me.
The men were thieves; that was plain to me now
upon the face of it. By sheer ill-luck, and
through the force of an overwhelming terror, I
had blundered into an association with a band of
clever criminals, the disguised farmer whose ad-
vice I had accepted with such fatuous docility, in
all likelihood the leader of their gang. The
sequence of events, his emphatic assurances to
me, followed by his struggle with the officers, so
manifestly a diversion to permit the coup on the
part of his waiting accomplice, all pointed to this
as the only solution.
Dared I then harbour any optimistic belief in
the return of the jewels from such a source?
53


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
Hardly. And yet why had the man followed
me from the station, placed himself in a position
to overhear my address? Did he fancy I might
be of further use to him?
It was an uncomfortable and disturbing
thought, and served effectually to dispel the
happy glow which the Captain's last words had
kindled in my heart.
My mind became engrossed once more with the
hideous tangle in which I had become involved.
Above all, I reproached myself for my lack of
courage and common-sense in not acquainting
Captain McCracken with the true facts when he
first informed me of the loss of the sapphires.
An explanation would have been so easy then,
so obvious; the only burden some consequent
ridicule and gossip.
But now, look to what my temporising, my
efforts at evasion, had brought me. In order to
save myself some trifling annoyance, I had
voluntarily relinquished the almost priceless'
possession of another to the guardianship of
outlaws.-Good Heavens! I was guilty of a
felony!
That drive home through the city streets seemed
interminable. The ways were alight, the car-
54


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
riages were rolling up and down. New York was
putting on her diamonds. All was life and
gayety; and I felt like a blot of gloom on the
brightness. For hours I had been keyed up by
the excitement, the strain; and consequently I
but gave way the more completely in the moment
of inevitable reaction.
I am free to admit, too, that just then neither
the abstract question of my measure of responsi-
bility for the loss nor even the distress accru-
ing from it to Mrs. Van Suyden weighed so
heavily upon my spirit as did the possible conse-
quences to myself.
On that score, a thousand doubts and appre-
hensions thronged my mind. Would not Elida,
seeing the anxiety of her hostess, and believing
of course that the sapphires were in my pos-
session, attempt to repair the wrong by ex-
plaining the mistake which had been made, and
assure the easy recovery of the stones? Cheer-
ing thought! What could I say, if Mrs. Van
Suyden, backed by the actress, should appear
before me the following morning, and demand
the restitution of her property?
Or, even though I escaped that contingency,
and Elida held her peace, was it not a likely
55


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
thing that the police would capture the thief
who had stolen Captain McCracken’s coat and
with it the jewels? A hundred people, more or
less, must have observed the man as he made his
way out of the crowded station; surely, it was
fair to suppose that some one had recognised
him.
The Captain too had left a fairly accurate de-
scription of the fellow with the authorities; and,
beyond all that, any attempt to dispose of the
sapphires must certainly betray him.
Yes; it seemed inconceivable that he could es-
cape arrest. And under arrest, would he not
in all probability divulge the method by which
the jewels had fallen into his hands? In that
event, could Captain McCracken, could any
reasonable man, credit another theory than that
I had designedly attempted to make him my
scapegoat? Oh, what a miserable sneak I would
appear to him, a thief and a coward!
When we finally drew up before the apartment
house where I lived, I was so shaken and unnerved
by my reflections I could scarcely totter from
the cab to the door, and in the elevator my knees
trembled so that I thought they would give way
under me; but once within my own rooms, and
56


T H E W A N SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
ter misgivings to which I had earlier fallen prey
would still occasionally obtrude themselves. My
mind insisted on reverting to the young farmer
of the train and to the vexing question: What
further use or employment could he possibly have
for me?
Did he fancy perchance that I might be a likely
subject for blackmail? I smiled at the idea.
That at least was one peril from which I was im-
mune. Or perhaps, he-f
But all my guesses seemed so wildly improbable
and fantastic, that I could not but dismiss them.
Nevertheless, the recollection of his peculiar
actions filled me with a vague foreboding of evil.
Involuntarily I shivered; and once more a dark
tide of doubts and apprehensions rolled down
upon my spirit like an engulfing flood.
And then the Captain’s last words recurred to
me: “You are the bravest as well as the most
charming woman I have ever known P”
It was like the inspiration of a trumpet call.
I straightened up in my chair and threw back
my head with a gesture of defiance.
“I will not weakly yield,” I cried. “There must
be some way out of this labyrinth into which I
have strayed. There must be some way, and I
58


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
will find it!” Half unconsciously, Henley's
stirring lines sprang to my lips:
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul.
“In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud ;
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll;
I am the master of my fate—
I am the captain of my soul.”
In some way the ringing phrases soothed and
comforted me. “‘I am the master of my fate,’”
I repeated aloud. “‘I am the captain of my
soul.” I will fret myself no further, give way
no more to my coward imaginings. In intention
at least I am innocent of any wrongdoing, and
there is no reason why I should scourge myself
with these vain regrets. I shall do my best to
recover Mrs. Van Suyden’s sapphires for her;
but if I fail, I shall not let myself sink into the
slough of despond.”
Fortified by my resolution, I straightway
sought my bed, for I must confess that by this
59


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
time I was completely exhausted; but my rest was
broken by a strange and troubled dream.
The early part of the night I slept heavily;
and then it seemed to me that all at once I awoke
with the consciousness that there was some one in
the room'
My bed-chamber was perfectly dark; but in
my sitting-room there shone a dim light from
the electric lamp on the street corner below, and
by this faint reflection I could see the curtains
at the door between the two rooms shaking as
though some one had just passed through.
I lay there in agonised suspense, straining my
eyes and ears, my heart beating so tumultuously
that I could not have screamed even had I dared.
There was no further manifestation to my
great relief, and I was just about to relax my
tense vigilance, when the form of a man outlined
itself distinctly at my bedside. At the same
moment a cloth was pressed down over my face,
and the sweet, pungent odour of chloroform as-
sailed my nostrils. I struggled and fought, but
in vain. The hand which held me down was
strong, the influence of the drug potent.
Weaker and weaker became my purpose, fainter
and fainter my struggles, and then—I knew no
more! 60


CHAPTER WI
A STARTLING D # NOU E MENT
I slept late the next morning; but when I at
last awoke, the memory of my dream was still
so vivid, so startling, that upon opening my eyes
I looked fearfully around, and then cowered
down under the covers, trembling with terror.
Reassured at length by the stillness of the
apartment, and by the broad bars of sunlight
which lay across the floor, I finally ventured to
sit up in bed and more boldly glance about me.
But now a sudden dizziness as of vertigo as-
sailed me. I felt strangely sluggish and heavy,
disinclined to stir from my comfortable couch.
This so revived my waning belief in the reality
of my dream, that, shaking off my languor, I
sprang up resolutely and made a complete in-
vestigation of my chambers.
Everything was in perfect order; not even the
position of a chair was changed. The closets
and shelves were exactly as I had left them. I
61


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
was at last forced to admit that the apparent
evidence of my senses was not to be relied upon;
and that my midnight visitation had been merely
a sleeping fantasy, arising from a brain over-
excited by the events of the afternoon.
While completing my tour of inspection, a long
box was brought up to me, which I opened to find
full of the dewyest, most fragrant roses. The
Captain's card lay among them with a line pen-
cilled on #44 the effect that he trusted I had
passed a restful night, and that he would do him-
self the pleasure of calling during the morning.
I buried my face in the velvety petals; they
smelled of June and of summer. I hummed a
gay little song as I filled my vases with them
and placed them about the rooms. The Captain
would soon be here bringing me good news, I
felt sure. Yesterday’s tangle would be easily
unravelled. Oh, the world was far from being
the vale of tears it had seemed a few hours be-
fore, but was instead a glad, joyous world,—
the best of all possible worlds!
I made a very careful toilet, and was sipping
my morning coffee when a card was brought up
to me. I took it with a smile, thinking that the
Captain had indeed followed hard upon his
62


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
flowers, when, glancing at it, I saw the name of
Sonnenthal, the jeweller.
Frowning, I stood a moment, tapping the card
irresolutely with my fingers. It was decidedly
embarrassing, to say the least, to go into the de-
tails of my dilemma with this man. And why
was he here? It seemed incredible that Elida
had not wired him of her mistake.—Still, there
was nothing to do but see him.
“Show Mr. Sonnenthal up,” I said shortly; and
then began to move restlessly about the room,
striving to decide just what attitude to take,
how much or how little to let him know of the
real circumstances. Our subsequent interview
proved that I might have spared myself the
trouble.
A few moments later he entered, unctuous,
smiling. He was of the second generation,-it
was his father and uncle who had established the
famous jewellery house;—and I somehow gained
the impression that what in them was far-sighted
business acumen had in him degenerated to
trickery and craft. He was of the dark Teuton
type with a smooth-shaven, rather heavy face,
and very light eyes, shifty and evasive, under the
thick, opaque lids he held habitually half-closed.
63


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
I had heard his name linked with that of one of
the new stars of musical comedy, and involun-
tarily I felt a pang of pity for her. It was said
that he was wasting his patrimony on her ca-
prices; but if she had to consult the ugly moods
and humours of such a man, she paid dear for the
reckless extravagance accredited to her.
“Miss Bramblestone?” he said, advancing with
a smile which he evidently designed to be
engaging.
I merely bowed.
“I believe we are neighbours,” he observed, dis-
regarding the formality of my greeting. “I
have the apartment just above yours.”
Ah! I recognised him now. From the moment
he entered the door I had known that his face
was familiar to me; but I had not been able to
place him. With his explanation, however, I
remembered that I had often passed him in
the halls, and I murmured something to that
effect.
“That must be my excuse for such an early
call,” he went on; “I thought I might as well
drop in on my way down town. Although,”
with a significant lift to his eyebrows, “I will
not deny that I am anxious enough to have the
64


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
woman. But this morning I have no time to jest.
The rubies, if you please.”
I shrank instinctively from letting Sonnenthal
know any more than was absolutely necessary.
The one thing I most desired to avoid was pub-
licity; and this dealer, like Elida, might easily
regard the affair simply as an excellent advertise-
ment. His rubies were safe; why, then, was it
necessary to acquaint him with the loss of the
sapphires? Still an explanation of some sort
was due him.
“But, I assure you, it is no joke,” I replied
earnestly. “The rubies are not in my pos-
session.”
“Not in your possession?” he cried incredu-
lously. “Where are they, then? Who has them?
You were the person selected by Miss Yeats to
bring them to me?”
In his quick alarm and excitement he fired his
questions at me with the rapidity of a maga-
zine rifle.
“I do not know where they are,” I affirmed stub-
bornly; “you will have to ask Miss Yeats in
regard to that.”
He looked at me with a puzzled scowl, his hands
thrust deep into his pockets,
66


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
“Was it not the arrangement,” he queried
“that you should return the stones?”
“Yes,” non-committally, “I believe there was
originally some plan of the kind.”
“Then what is the meaning of this?” he de-
manded. “Look here,” almost threateningly, “I
want a straight answer to my question. Where
are those stones?”
“And again I tell you that you will have to ask
Miss Yeats,” I replied haughtily. “As I have
already indicated, I have not now, nor, to the best
of my belief, have I at any time had your rubies
in my charge.—That is your only business with
me, I believe. Good-morning.”
At my cool dismissal his manner changed at
once and he became almost suppliant.
“But, Miss Bramblestone,” he expostulated,
rubbing his hands together nervously, “it is not
fair of you to take such an attitude. I may
have been a little emphatic in expressing myself;
but remember this is a serious matter to me. I
was solemnly promised that my necklace should
be returned to me by you; yet, when I come after
it, I find that you neither have it, nor will give me
any information in regard to it. And here,”
dragging a morning paper from his pocket, and
67


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
pointing to the headlines, “is an account of a big
jewel robbery at Onyx Court. “The Loss of
Elida Yeats's Rubies? That’s all right; that
was on the card. But here is: ‘Mrs. Van Suy-
den’s Sapphires Gone? If that is on the level,
how do I know that some professional crook
didn’t beat Elida to the safe and bag the whole
haul?”
His fingers shook, the beads of sweat were
standing out upon his brow. The man’s distress
was so genuine that I could not restrain a feel-
ing of pity.
“I would not allow myself to worry over that,
Mr. Sonnenthal,” I returned, unbending slightly.
“I am very certain that your rubies have not been
stolen; in fact, that nothing has been stolen at
Onyx Court. Miss Yeats simply made a mistake,
that was all; and I think you will find your miss-
ing necklace safe in her hands.”
His face relaxed and he gave a quick sigh of
relief. “Ah, only a mistake?” he cried. “Well,
I am glad; but,” with a sudden qualm of anxiety,
“I’ve got to make sure of those stones. I am
going to send a telegram to Miss Yeats at once.”
He seized his hat, and was starting pell-mell
for the door, when suddenly a burst of familiar
68


THE W A N SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
laughter floated in from the hallway; and a
second later Elida herself appeared.
She looked as bright as the morning, untroubled
and unharassed by the events which it seemed to
me had piled years upon my head. Her velvet
dress and the rich furs about her shoulders
were fitting accessories to her lovely face, as
fresh and glowing as the roses which bloomed
about my room.
She stopped short in surprise when she saw my
visitor, and then went off into ringing peals of
mirth.
“Oh, Louis,” she cried banteringly to Sonnen-
thal. “My, but you are in a rush to get those
precious rubies back into your clutches. It is
a wonder you did not come after them before
daylight.”
He smiled perfunctorily; but his eyes were still
anxious. “You brought them back with you?”
eagerly, stretching out long, curving fingers as
if to seize them.
“I brought them back?” The laughter faded
suddenly from Elida’s face, leaving only aston-
ishment. “I brought them? Why, what do you
mean? Hasn’t Miss Bramblestone given them to
you yet?” turning to me with quick inquiry.
69


T H E W A N SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
Sonnenthal grew actually livid at her words,
and I hope never again to see such an expression
in a human eye. He glanced from one to the
other of us, striving to speak; but the very inten-
sity of his feelings choked him.
Elida caught nervously at my hand. “Don’t
carry the joke any farther, Gwendolen. He
doesn’t understand that kind of thing. Give him
his necklace and let him go.”
What on earth did she mean? “I am not joking
as you very well know, Elida,” I cried, jerking
my hand away. “I have not got his rubies,
and never had them!”
Elida’s cheek paled; but it was more from be-
wilderment than fright. “Gwendolen? Are you
mad? I gave them to you myself!”
“It is you who are mad,” I retorted, tired of her
play-acting. “You gave me Mrs. Wan Suyden’s
sapphires.”
“Nothing of the sort,” in quick protest. “The
sapphires were still in the safe when I took the
rubies out. I saw them with my own eyes; and
after the robbery thanked my lucky stars that I
had been ahead of the thief. Had I waited only
a little longer, the rubies might have been stolen
too. Then, just before I tied up the package,
70


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
preparatory to giving it to you, Gwendolen, I
looked at them again. Even a color-blind person
can tell rubies from sapphires.”
I felt as though I were turning to stone. There
I stood, staring at Elida, who in turn stared back
at me with wide, frightened eyes, while Sonnen-
thal, shaking and tremulous, gazed wildly from
one to the other.
“Oh!” I cried. “Oh I never dreamed of this!
You cannot—”
I suppose I must have staggered, for Elida
pushed me into a chair and then poured a
glass of water which she held to my stiffened
lips.
“What is it, Gwendolen?” she begged. “What
has happened? For Heaven’s sake explain
yourself.”
“Captain McCracken got on the train,” I
faltered. “He told me of the robbery, and that
I was to be searched the moment we arrived in
New York. I thought you had made a mistake,
and taken the sapphires, and that they would be
found on me. I thrust the parcel into a pocket
of the Captain's fur coat, and—and—” in-
voluntarily I bowed my head, “it was stolen in
the station.”
71


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Ah!” There was a world of meaning in the
syllable which Sonnenthal breathed.
It stung me like a whip-lash. “How dare you
do that?” I cried, springing to my feet and fac-
ing him. “If you employed a messenger so un-
fortunate as to lose the package entrusted to her,
you and,” including Elida in my glance, “you
too have only yourselves to blame!”
“And do you think you can get out of it by
choking any such cock-and-bull story as that
down my throat?” broke in Sonnenthal menac-
ingly.
I turned proudly from him with a gesture of
contempt; but he did not seem to observe my
action. He was plainly pondering the situation,
and there was a moment of silence, while he
gnawed at a finger nail and glanced question-
ingly from Elida to myself. The colour had not
yet returned to his face, and his light eyes still
held a baleful fire; but he was manifestly strug-
gling to control the vehemence of his spleen.
When he finally spoke, his voice was husky, but
he had managed to reduce its pitch to the tone
of his normal conversation. -
“See here, young ladies,” he said sharply, “this
is not the first time I have been called on to deal
72


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
with this sort of thing in my experience. We
jewellers are well aware of the peculiar propen-
sity which rented goods have for disappearing
in such mysterious fashion, and we have learned
to take small stock in the more or less flimsy ex-
planations tendered us. People of a certain posi-
tion in society seem to imagine that we will accept
any kind of a fairy tale, and calmly pocket the
accruing loss; but,” grimly, “they usually dis-
cover their mistake before we get through with
them.
“Still,” he went on, “I do not believe it will be
necessary to resort to extreme measures in this
case. Both of you are too sharp-witted, I am
sure, to permit the matter to go any farther than
just between us three. Let there be no misunder-
standing, though,” he added quickly, bringing
his heavy fist down on the table: “I propose to
have those rubies of mine back, and I propose to
have them back da— almighty quick.
“Now, as I see it,” concentrating his malevolent
gaze upon me, “the thing is up to you. You
admit that you got a package of jewels from
Miss Yeats here, which she says was rubies, but
you claim was Mrs. Van Suyden’s sapphires.
The only way to prove which of you is telling
73


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
the truth, if either of you,” he interpolated
cynically, “is to get the package. If you can
show me the sapphires, it lets you out and places
the responsibility on her. If you can't—?” He
stopped short, but the hiatus was more signifi-
cant than words.
“But how can I show you the parcel?” I cried.
“I have already told you that it was stolen from
me.”
Sonnenthal threw back his head with a gesture
of angry impatience. “Good Lord, woman,
can’t you see that the game is up? I’ve tried to
give you a chance, and to straighten the affair
out without fuss or notoriety; but if you will
have it the other way, you can thank your own
fool obstinacy for it.”
Then the last shred of his self-restraint seemed
to give way. “Now you can understand, once
and for all,” stepping forward, and viciously
grasping my wrist, “that I’m not here to be bam-
boozled. By God, I want those rubies, and you’ll
get them for me, or—”
“Drop her arm this instant!” ordered a sharp,
imperative voice behind him, and a firm hand,
seizing the jeweller by the collar, jerked him
back and flung him to the other side of the room.
74


THE W A N SU Y DE N S AP PHIRES
“You will pardon my intrusion, Miss Bramble-
stone,” said the Captain, turning to me; “but I
seemed unable to make any of you hear my ring,
and the sound of the dispute within caused me
to enter unannounced, fearing that my presence
might be needed.
“Shall I throw this person out?” with a grim
jerk of his head in the direction of Sonnenthal;
“or would you rather have me withdraw until
you have finished your conference?—on the un-
derstanding, of course, that I shall be within call,
should he attempt any more demonstrations.”
Sonnenthal had by this time recovered from his
surprise at the Captain’s unexpected inter-
ference; and, feeling double cause for rage, now
stood glaring at us and muttering imprecations.
“Throw me out, will you?” he blustered. “You
just lay a finger on me, and I’ll put you where
your fine lady friends are going. I’ve given
them a chance to dig up those rubies, and now
I’m going to see what a warrant will do for both
of them P
He gave a short nod, full of vindictive
triumph, first at me and then at Elida; and, seiz-
ing his hat and gloves, started for the door.
“Wait, Louis,” cried Elida in frantic appeal;
75


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
but Sonnenthal paid no heed to her, and was half
across the room, when Captain McCracken’s
broad shoulders barred the way.
“Stop!” he commanded, and so peremptory was
his tone that Sonnenthal involuntarily halted.
The Captain looked over his head, and into my
eyes. “Miss Bramblestone,” he said in his usual,
even voice, although I fancied I could detect a
note of anxiety in it, “I can see that you are in
serious trouble, and that this man has it in his
power to annoy you. I do not wish to pry into
your affairs; but I do ask the privilege of aiding
and protecting you.”
“Oh, Gwendolen,” implored Elida in a whisper,
as she dragged at my sleeve, “do tell him. Per-
haps he can help us.”
There was nothing else to do. The bitter
moment had arrived when I must make my con-
fession; not as I had hoped, oh, not as I had
hoped. I had dreamed that he would sit in my
little, sunshiny parlour among the roses he had
sent, and that I could set forth in detail the vari-
ous steps which had led to my various actions;
but now, without warning, in the presence of the
two who had already convicted me upon the evi-
dence, I must rehearse to him the circumstances
76


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
under which I had lost the rubies. Shame-
facedly, with lowered eyes, plucking nervously
at my handkerchief, I stammered out my story.
The Captain merely bowed when I had finished.
Then he addressed Sonnenthal.
“What value do you put on this necklace?” he
asked curtly.
“It was practically priceless,” muttered Son-
nenthal sullenly. “At the lowest estimate, those
stones were worth $50,000.”
“Very well,” the Captain's tone was brusquely
business-like. He had drawn a note-book from
his pocket, and was jotting down some rapid
memoranda. “There, Mr.—er—Sonnenthal,”
he said, tearing out the pencilled leaf, and toss-
ing it across the table, “is the address of my law-
yers, and also of my bankers, Messrs. Schonberg
& Co., of Exchange Place, who I think can fully
satisfy you as to my financial standing. I may
state to you that I shall put the best detective
talent in New York on this case at once; but
should all efforts to trace up the necklace prove
unavailing, I shall instruct my attorneys, after a
reasonable time has elapsed, to compensate you to
whatever extent Miss Bramblestone is legally
responsible for your loss.
77


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Make no mistake, though,” he continued
sharply, as Sonnenthal showed evidence of an
intention to haggle for his full pound of flesh.
“I understand as well as you do the absurdity of
your talk about making this a criminal charge;
and although I am willing to do the decent thing
by you, you might as well know that it is merely
to save Miss Bramblestone from any such further
scenes as that of this morning. If I hear of her
suffering any future annoyance or inconvenience
at your hands, you will get just nothing at all.”
He paused a moment, then added distinctly: “She
is my affianced wife!”
Elida gave a startled exclamation, and I half
rose from my chair to be pushed gently back by
the Captain’s firm hand on my shoulder. Son-
menthal, manifestly impressed, interposed no
more objections, but merely waiting to possess
himself of the memorandum, slunk toward the
door.
“Wait, Louis; I am coming with you,” called
Miss Yeats after him, with a surprising display
of tact. “There are some points about this thing
I want to explain to you.” The Captain and I
were at last alone together.
“Oh,” I cried impetuously, “you should not
78


T H E W A N SU Y DE N S A PP HIRES
have done it. It was beautiful, noble of you, and
I shall never forget it; but you must not allow
your sense of chivalry to enmesh you in this mis-
erable affair. I beg of you, rescind your offer to
Sonnenthal and let events take their course. I
am innocent, I do not fear publicity, only shrink
from it; and I cannot accept your sacrifices on
my behalf.”
He smiled gravely. “There is no sacrifice,” he
said; “only the delight of being able to assist
you. I came here this morning with the definite
purpose of asking you to be my wife; it is you
who must forgive my premature announcement.
It seemed the only thing to do under the cir-
cumstances; but you can,” with an unsteady
laugh, “break the engagement, if you care to,
after this jewel matter is all settled.”
“And you really care for me?” I whispered.
“From the first moment I met you.” He
stretched out his hand and clasped mine.
Shabby “little Sister of the Rich P’ Obscure
painter of fans! For the first time since child-
hood, I knew the joy of life!
79


CHAPTER VII
SU R MISE AND CERTAINT Y
For a season the Captain and I forgot the
“yellow journal” world into which Fate seemed
so ruthlessly to have pitchforked us, and jour-
neyed hand-in-hand into a far country, a coun-
try of bright hopes and glad dreams, the Land
o’ Love.
But not for long could we loiter a-down the
sunny paths and over the rose-strewn pleas-
aunces. The claims of the present were assertive,
and loth as we might be to return, they insist-
ently recalled us to the domain of the practical
and pressing.
There was a problem to be solved, and that
quickly; and, as I explained to Duncan with
great emphasis, we could not afford to spend
time in planning a delightful to-morrow when
every wasted moment of to-day counted against
the recovery of the stolen jewels.
I was also very firm upon another point, and
all his protestations and pleadings failed to shake
80


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
me in this determination. There should be no
formal announcement of our engagement, and
no question of a marriage until I was able ef-
fectually to prove my innocence to Sonnenthal
and, if need were, to the whole world.
We argued this decision long and earnestly,
for the Captain, generous heart, was set upon
making me a bride out of hand and at once, and
was plainly vexed when I declined to put on my
“bonnet,” as he expressed it, and accompany him
to the nearest church. He pointed out, and I will
admit not without some show of reason, that such
a step would stamp out more quickly than any-
thing else any unkind gossip which might be set
in circulation; but although he waxed subtle as
the serpent in Eden, and his eager persuasions
fairly enchanted my soul, I am glad to say I
withstood the temptation and held my ground.
“No, no, no!” I cried at last, clapping my
hands over my ears. “I admit the truth of all
you say. I agree that it is the part of common-
sense, and in addition, believe me the prospect is
most alluring. But I am not a coward, Duncan;
I will not weakly load my burden on your
shoulders. When you know me better, dear, you
will find that I am a very obstinate woman; and
81


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
in this matter, at least, I intend to humour my
pride.”
“You are not only obstinate, but distinctly self-
ish,” broke in the Captain half-fondly, half in
irritation.
“But look here, Duncan,” I wheedled, “I care
too much for you to saddle you with myself just
now, when at any moment we may hear the news-
boys calling:
“‘Wuxtray! Wuxtray! Society lady relieves
her friends of a fortune in jewels' Miss Gwen-
dolen Bramblestone, feminine Raffles in the great
Onyx Court robbery!’
“Don’t you see,” following up my opportunity,
for there was an appreciative twinkle in his eye,
“how a newly made bride would feel at hearing
such a nuptial chorus ringing in her ears? De-
lightful accompaniment to the opening of a
honeymoon, wouldn’t it be?”
“But knowing it was lies, what would we care?”
he still argued. “I can understand how a silly
girl might be a bit sensitive over it; but in a
woman of your age, Gwendolen, it strikes me as
nothing more nor less than mawkish.”
A woman of my age, indeed! And I am only
twenty-eight! For a moment I was ready to say
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T H E W A N SU Y DE N S AP PHIRES
good-bye to him forever; then I caught sight of
his sober, ingenuous face, and I went off into
shrieks of laughter. I could not help it.
“Dear Duncan,” I explained, as he looked up
in puzzled amazement at my mirth, “you are so
deliciously English. No gilded flowers of speech
for you; in your lexicon, the spade remains sim-
ply and for ever a spade. But mawkish or not,
you may understand once and for all that I am
not going to marry you until I can read my title
clear as a respectable member of society.”
“Have your way then, for the present at
least,” he finally consented in a tone whose vivid
disappointment filled me with an irrational de-
light; “but I give you fair warning, if that
necklace doesn’t turn up inside of a fortnight,
I’ll have you in front of a clergyman, if I have
to drag you there by main force.”
“If the necklace doesn’t turn up inside of a
fortnight?” I repeated desperately, recalled by
his words to the exigencies of my position. “A
fortnight? Good Heavens, why not say a cen-
tury? It must turn up before that. Why,
a week more of this sort of a strain would have
me in a mad-house.”
“Well, then, see here,” he returned in the cool,
83


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
matter-of-fact tone which was the best thing in
the world to allay my nervous tremblings, “there
is an old saying that two heads are better than
one; and although I suppose both of us have
puzzled ourselves dizzy over this muddle, perhaps
by putting a united effort on it we can get some-
where near the truth.
“There is no use, either, in shooting wildly into
the air, or guessing at this or that; so I propose
that we take up the case from the beginning,
weigh carefully every fact in our possession, and
see if between us we cannot evolve some sort of
a theory which will hold water.
“Here,” he went on, drawing a newspaper from
his pocket, and unfolding it in his lap, “is the
journalistic account of the affair, which we may
assume to be reasonably accurate, and which will
at least give us a groundwork for our de-
ductions.”
He skipped an opening paragraph or so which
detailed merely Mrs. Van Suyden’s discovery of
the robbery; and then commenced to read:
“The rifled safe was in Mrs. Wan Suyden’s bed-
chamber on the second floor of the extreme left
wing, and was concealed behind a panel in the
wainscoting which in response to pressure upon
84


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
a hidden spring, opened, and revealed the steel
door of the receptacle.
“The facts that neither this ingenious contriv-
ance, nor the combination itself, showed any
signs of having been tampered with points
strongly to the thief as some one well acquainted
with the modus operandi of effecting an en-
trance. Yet, on the other hand, there are fresh
scratches on the highly lacquered inner surface
of the safe door, and on the edge of the shelf
where the sapphires lay, which indicate the pres-
ence of a steel tool, although of what character
or how employed, the police are at a loss to deter-
mine. It seems, however, in no way to have been
used for forcing the lock or prying at the door;
so the authorities are disinclined to attach much
importance to the existence of the scratches, ar-
guing that they may well have been there previ-
ously, but simply remained unnoticed.
“Leaving this feature out of consideration,
then, and accepting Mrs. Van Suyden’s emphatic
statement that no person save herself and her
husband knew the combination, one is forced to
the conclusion that the job was the work of some
cracksman, expert enough to decipher the figures
required from the click of the knob as he turned
85


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
it around. His knowledge of the location of the
safe and of the mechanism of the secret panel
must in such a case have been gleaned either
through personal observation, or by information
acquired from the servants.
“A theory that Mrs. Van Suyden might inad-
vertently have left the safe open is dispelled by
the testimony of herself and her husband, both of
whom unhesitatingly declare that her last visit
to it was about ten o’clock that morning, and
that Mr. Van Suyden tried the door after she had
closed and locked it, an assertion of considerable
value, in that it definitely fixes the time of the
robbery as between ten and four o’clock, for it
was just at the latter hour that the loss of the
sapphires was discovered.
“The mystery in this phase of the episode, how-
ever, is dwarfed by the total lack of any reason-
able explanation as to how the robber made his
entrance and exit from the room without de-
tection.
“The only method of access to the chamber was
from the hall which extends through that part of
the house terminating in a flight of stairs leading
down to the billiard-room below, and by passing
through a small ante-room in which Estelle La-
86


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
velle, Mrs. Wan Suyden’s maid, was seated sew-
ing.
“From her position, since the doors were par-
tially open, this girl could command a view of
the hall, and also of that part of Mrs. Van Suy-
den's chamber containing the safe. Being
deeply engrossed in her task, she had her
luncheon served in the room, and asserts that she
did not once leave her place during the entire
period, except for a space not to exceed ten
minutes and about two o'clock, when she hurried
to her own apartment to procure a spool of
thread.
“She furthermore avers that she is positive no
one could have been in the bed-chamber while she
was present, and that the only persons who
passed through the hall were members of the
house party on their way to and from the billiard-
room. Estelle, it may be added, has been with
Mrs. Van Suyden for over eight years, and is
regarded as above suspicion.
“This practically leaves the window as the only
mode of entrance, and suggests that the robbery
must have been accomplished during the ten
minutes of the maid’s absence. Such a supposi-
tion would, indeed, seem amply demonstrated by
87


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
the open sash which Mrs. Van Suyden declares
she herself had closed only a short time before.
“Yet, once again insuperable obstacles present
themselves. The window, a good fifteen feet
from the ground, has below and above it only
the smooth brick wall with no projections or
cornices to afford a foothold, save only a narrow
ledge of stone along which a cat could scarcely
tread in safety.
“Moreover, even granting that a venturesome
climber might have traversed this perilous pas-
sage, access to it must have been gained from
one of the rooms in the left wing; and it is stated
that none of the apartments opening upon this
ledge were occupied, except only those of Mrs.
Van Suyden. The doors to the others were all
securely locked, and the keys in the possession of
the housekeeper.”
“Oh, but that is a mistake,” I interrupted im-
pulsively. “They have forgotten that they
transferred me to one of those wing rooms on
Sunday night. The one I had been occupying
was wanted for that Mr. Gresham who arrived
so unexpectedly.”
The Captain shook his finger at me with mock
caution. “Sh-h,” he warned with portentous
88


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
of rare selective ability; for he took with him
only the chief treasures of the glittering hoard,
—the famous sapphires and a necklace of su-
perb rubies belonging to Miss Elida Yeats, the
actress, and which had been deposited with Mrs.
Van Suyden’s jewels for safe-keeping.
“Miss Yeats is naturally inconsolable over her
loss, not only on account of the intrinsic worth
of the faultlessly matched gems, but also by
reason of the disappointment to the public, since
the necklace was to have served as a notable fea-
ture of her costume in the great third act of “A
Crimson Rambler, the new play in which she
opens at the Gaiety immediately after the holi-
days.”
“The trail of the serpent,” I murmured com-
prehendingly. “Elida’s press agent has evi-
dently not neglected his opportunity.”
“As to the identity of the clever purloiner of the
jewels,” continued the Captain, paying no heed
to my irrelevant comment, “the extra servants
brought down for the week’s end occasion have
naturally fallen under suspicion, and are being
kept under strict surveillance; but the police
themselves confess that there is not a shred of
evidence against any of them, either in the way
90


THE W A N SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
of direct connection, or by reason of previous
criminal record.
“Indeed, there seems throughout the entire
affair no foundation on which to base a satisfac-
tory hypothesis, nor any promise of such being
unearthed; so that the case, like many which ap-
pear simple at first blush, bids fair to rank with
the most baffling and inexplicable in the annals
of crime.”
Captain McCracken laid aside the paper.
“That,” he observed meditatively, “is of course
the merely superficial view of the occurrence. We
fortunately are in possession of details unknown
to the police.”
“Yes,” I assented eagerly; “for instance the
opening of the safe, which they profess to regard
as so mysterious. It was unquestionably during
the maid’s brief absence that Elida visited it.
Perhaps,” I hazarded, struck by a sudden
thought, “she may have left the door open, and
when Estelle came back—?”
“That is a possibility, certainly,” agreed the
Captain, evidently more from politeness than
conviction, however; “but the question imme-
diately arises: Why, since in her years of service
under Mrs. Wan Suyden she must have had in-
91


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
numerable opportunities to steal the jewels, did
Estelle wait until now to succumb to the tempta-
tion. It does not look reasonable, don’t you
know; not ‘in character,’ as the writing chaps
say,” with a smile.
“A more likely theory to my mind”—he hesi-
tated and shifted uneasily in his seat. “I hate
to put such a suspicion into words; but I sup-
pose, if one is going to play detective, one must
lay aside the finer scruples. Miss Yeats, now;
eh? Do you not think she might have—er—
might have become fascinated in a way?—that is,
yielded to a sudden impulse, or something of the
sort, or—oh, you know what I mean?”
“No,” I shook my head decidedly; “you are
wrong. I will admit that to me, too, that was
the first solution to present itself; but I am posi-
tive it is doing her an injustice. I have known
Elida, you must understand, since childhood,
known her under varying conditions, and seen
many phases of her character; and I feel certain
that any idea of the kind is far wide of the
mark.
“She is quite capable of taking desperate and
reckless chances to further her own interests, as
witness this very enterprise; but I do not believe
92


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
that any temptation could lead her to commit an
actually dishonourable act. No, Duncan, I am
convinced that everything happened just as she
describes it, that she opened the safe, and took
only her own, or rather Sonnenthal’s, property;
but I also believe that with her usual heedless-
ness, and in her haste to get away, she neglected
to close the door, and that some later visitant,
taking advantage of her precipitancy, stole the
sapphires.”
“You are probably right,” he acquiesced after
a moment’s reflection. “She struck me, too, as
being merely uncontrolled and selfish, not in the
least as deceitful or underhanded. I am glad to
have you, with your wider knowledge, confirm my
reading of her character.—So,” he went on,
heaving a little sigh of relief, “having eliminated
Miss Yeats and the maid from our calculations,
let us determine now who did take the jewels. It
looks very much as though the open window was
merely a ruse, and that in view of the presence
of the gardeners on the lawn, entrance was not
effected from the outside. The circle of possi-
bilities, therefore, narrows down to the people
within the house.
“All of the regular servants,” picking up the
93


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
paper again, and glancing over its concluding
paragraphs, “seem to have been at Onyx Court
for years and to be thoroughly trustworthy,
while those brought out from New York were not
employed in that part of the house, and would
probably have been marked and rebuked by some
of the regular corps had they strayed thither on
any idle pretext.
“Moreover, we have very definite assurance,
since Estelle had the hall under espionage all
day, that no one passed that way except mem-
bers of the house party going to or coming
from the billiard-room.
“Does it not strike you, then,” appealing to
me, “that it might be wise for us to run over a
list of the guests? A beastly thing to do,” with
a frown; “but thieves have cropped up in strange
company before now, you know, and we owe it
to you to regard each man of us with suspicion,
so long as the real culprit remains undiscovered.
And, by the way,” struck by a sudden conjec-
ture, “do you suppose it could have been possible
that Miss Yeats confided her purpose to any one
besides yourself?”
I sat up stiffly in my chair, gripped by the
force of an overmastering conviction. “Why,
94


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
of course she did,” I cried. “She confided the
whole thing to Baggerly P’
“To Baggerly?” he echoed in astonishment.
For a moment or two he seemed completely
floored by my intelligence. Then his eyes nar-
rowed and his face grew stern.
“And the chap was jolly hard up, too,” he mut-
tered darkly, tugging at his moustache. “He
struck me for a loan in the smoking-room on Sun-
day. Still—?” his voice trailed off into an in-
credulous silence.
But I had leaped woman-like from a conclusion
to a certainty. It was Baggerly, Baggerly,
Baggerly My intuitions had bade me distrust
the man from the first. Had I not warned Elida
against him? Did I not tell her she would live to
rue the encouragement she had accorded him?
“What does anybody know about this man?” I
demanded pointedly. “Who he is, where he
comes from, what is his business?”
The Captain only tugged harder than ever at
his moustache. “Well, nothing much,” he ad-
mitted unwillingly. “Oh, Gwendolen,” with the
first note of impatience I had ever heard in his
voice, “don’t look so deucedly pleased. I will
confess, I never took to the fellow; and it cer-
95


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
tainly does show black for him, knowing about it
beforehand, and all that; but—oh, hang it,” he
broke off with a gesture of refusal, “I can’t be-
lieve that of him.
“Why, Gwendolen,” eagerly, “he was with
Baden-Powell at Mafeking, and once in a sortie,
when one of the lads fell,—only a ‘Tommy’ it was
too, mind you, -he rode back alone in a very
storm of bullets, and brought the chap off. B.-P.
himself told me that it was one of the bravest
single actions he had ever seen.”
“What does that prove?” I asked scornfully.
“Thieves and scoundrels have always made the
most dare-devil soldiers. Look at the French
Commune, for example, and the heroism dis-
played by the very scum of Paris in those battles
at the barricades. No, what you have told me
only assures me more certainly than ever that I
am right. It took a man reckless to the point of
desperation to steal those jewels. You say that
he was hard up?”
“He said so,” granted the Captain grudgingly.
“Then, what stronger evidence do we require?”
I asked. “He knew of Elida’s undertaking, and
about the time that she intended to attempt it.
Who can say; perhaps she had even confided to
96


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
him the secret of the combination? All he had to
do then was to watch her that afternoon and
when he saw her start for Mrs. Wan Suyden's
apartments to follow. Or it may be, he pre-
ceded her and concealed himself within the room
where he could observe all her movements? In
either event, it would have been easy for him to
remain behind after her hurried departure and
rifle the safe at his leisure. Whether in her haste,
Elida left the door open, or whether she had
previously acquainted him with the combination,
or whether from some hiding place he read it over
her shoulder, as she had read it over Mrs. Wan
Suyden’s, matters not. Those are mere details.
But are not the salient features of the case, the
facts which stand out, perfectly clear? The
motive, for instance, is plain; the character of
the man such as to impel him to the risk;
the method of operation feasible. What other
hypothesis is there which so absolutely fits the
circumstances?”
The Captain did not answer me directly. With
bent head and furrowed brow, he sat idly tracing
the figures in the rug before him with his walking
stick. Finally he shook his head with a sigh of
surrender.
97


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
“There is a great deal in what you say,” he con-
ceded. “Men have been hanged on far weaker
proof.”
“Yes,” I added, and mentally seized upon an-
other link in the chain of evidence I was forging
against Baggerly; “and do you recall his insis-
tence upon sending that telegram which included
me in the order for a search? Does not that
look as though, knowing that the rubies would
be found in my possession, he thought he could
thus direct toward me the suspicion of having
also stolen the sapphires?”
The lines about Captain McCracken’s mouth
grew tense as I recalled the incident to his mind;
and his eyes sparkled with aroused indigna-
tion.
“The blackguard!” he ejaculated. “Thank
God that his plan failed, even if it did cost me
the loss of my fur coat.—But, see here,” he broke
in with a sudden new perplexity, “we are forget-
ting your friend of the railway carriage. Where
does he fit into the puzzle?”
Ah-h! In my eagerness to demonstrate Bag-
gerly’s culpability, I had indeed quite over-
looked the later episode.
“Do you imagine that these pseudo-farmers
98


THE WAN SU Y DE N S A PP HIRES
were confederates of Baggerly’s?” queried the
Captain doubtfully; “and that the plan arranged
among them was to get possession of the rubies
as well as the sapphires?”
I was willing enough to take this view, for after
one has carefully built up a satisfactory theory,
one doesn’t like to see it dispelled by a breath;
but common sense forbade.
“Why, er—no,” I admitted after a moment’s
thought. “Baggerly may be shrewd; but such
an arrangement as that, working out with clock-
like precision, would smack of a superhuman in-
telligence. How could he foretell that you would
be able to catch that train and warn me of my
danger; that I would contemplate throwing away
the jewels rather than face the music; above all,
that I would accept the advice of an utter
stranger, and consent to escape from my predica-
ment by casting suspicion on you?”
“But you had no idea that I was to be subjected
to a search,” interrupted the Captain, warmly
defending me from my own reproaches.
“That is true; but would Baggerly have
dreamed that I could be so dull-witted? No,
Duncan, to have deliberately planned such a
sequence of events, such an incredible comedy of
2472B
99


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
errors, and to have realised in advance how a
human being, especially a woman, would decide
on the questions of casuistry involved, implies
a degree of sagacity transcending the powers of
genius.
“We must rather, I think,” I went on reflec-
tively, “regard the two occurrences as absolutely
distinct and separate incidents: the robbery of
the sapphires complete when Mr. Baggerly sent
off the telegram by which he hoped to divert sus-
picion toward me; my further experiences as
merely the outcome of a series of unfortunate
and chance situations.
“In other words, I am inclined to believe that
the trip of these thieves in the guise of country-
men was not arranged at all in reference to the
affair at Onyx Court; but that ill-luck threw me
into their orbit, so to speak, and that having
overheard our conversation concerning the rob-
bery, and having concluded that the stolen jewels
were in my possession, they laid their plans to
secure them, entirely on the spur of the mo-
ment.”
“What a wise little head,” said the Captain
admiringly. “You put it all very convincingly,
Gwen; but I’ll swear that the one following
100


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
right on the heels of the other makes it look a bit
too pat for me to consider it all chance. Still,
it really makes small difference; for at present
we will have to follow two trails anyway, one on
the track of the rubies, the other in pursuit of
the sapphires. If both converge at the end, why,
then,_so much the worse for Baggerly. That’s
all.
“And, now,” rising, “I must investigate the
question of detectives, and get hold of a reason-
ably honest one. You understand, of course,” he
said a little doubtfully, but with extreme firm-
ness, “that I insist on defraying all the expense
in this matter? For both our sakes, it must be
cleared up with as little delay as possible, and
that will mean a free hand at the purse strings.
So, you see, you must not retard events by any
absurd scruples.”
He seemed pleased beyond measure that I did
not advance any such. To tell the truth, I saw
at once the reasonableness of his position, and
felt only a most devout gratitude for his gen-
erous assistance.
He had said that the solution of this mystery
“meant much to both of us.” Of course, it did;
but only myself knew just what it meant to me.
I01


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPPHIRES
For beyond the horrible gulf which had so unex-
pectedly opened at my feet the night before, I
now could discern upon the other side green pas-
tures and sunshine. If I could but discover a
way to cross, I would find—Happiness!
102


BOOK II
THE PART THE CHAUFFEUR PLAYED


“A motor-car and a woman have several points in
common.”—From the roadside reflections of Harry Glenn.


CHAPTER I
A SIGNIFICANT INTER L U DE
AFTER the Captain had spent some little time at
the telephone, arranging for the services of a
first-class detective, he and I repaired for
luncheon to one of the quieter restaurants on a
side street.
I knew that if we went to any of the places
where the world congregates, it would be our fate
to encounter everyone we had ever met, and that
we should be simply overwhelmed with questions
about the robbery, the one thing I particularly
desired to avoid.
So we sought a remote little retreat, nearly
empty, but charmingly clean and peaceful, and
where we might feel reasonably secure from the
interruption of curious friends.
It struck me as we took our places that Duncan
looked a trifle too preoccupied and worried for a
man in the first stages of his betrothal; so I con-
sequently resolved to divert his mind from this
105


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
annoying business, which was so largely absorb-
ing his thoughts.
“I will allow you a wide range of topics with
which to entertain me,” I said decidedly as I un-
folded my serviette, “everything in the heavens
above, or the earth beneath, or in the waters
under the earth; but one subject must be
strictly tabooed between us, and that is the
robbery.”
“By all means,” he agreed heartily. “I shall be
glad when we need never mention the hateful
affair again.”—His glance fell on my hands rest-
ing on the edge of the tablecloth. “Gwen,” he
broke out irrelevantly, “do you mean to tell me
that you put in day after day painting fans for
a lot of idle, stupid people?”
“Commend them that they are idle and stupid,”
I laughed; or “perhaps they wouldn’t buy my
fans.”
He frowned momentarily; then, heedless of the
waiter hovering near, he reached across the table
and caught my bread-winning member in a ten-
derly protecting clasp. “But those pretty
fingers shall soon be so stiff with rings that they
will not be able to hold the brushes,” he an-
nounced triumphantly.
106


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
with? Do decide to see them at once, dear; do
it, to please me.”
I sighed heavily. Those hateful jewels spoiled
everything. Try as we might, we could not
banish them from our thoughts. The pleasure
of our luncheon was over.
I declined to let Duncan order a cab and send
me home. “I have gone through so much
these last two days,” I pleaded, “that I want
to be alone. I need the tonic of a brisk tramp
through the busy streets, and the opportunity
for meditation afforded by the solitude of a
crowd.”
The day was fine, the air fresh and bracing, the
avenue all life and motion. It was a typical New
York afternoon of the late Fall. I walked on
and on, heedless of the passing show, engrossed
in my thoughts, until suddenly I felt a hand
slipped through my arm, a familiar, laughing
voice sounded in my ear, and I turned sharply
to find Elida Yeats and Mr. Baggerly at my
elbow.
“‘Baggy’ and I are going to the Waldorf for
a cup of tea,” cried Elida; “and we have been
chasing you for two blocks to get you to join
us.-Oh, do say you will,” as I began to murmur
108


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
some excuses. “I want you to cheer me up, and
help me forget things for a little while anyway.
Just think,” she rattled on, “here am I rehearsing
for my new part, and every one congratulating
me on my luck in getting such an advertise-
ment; and all the time I am in a perfect wax,
dreading what may be the dénouement!”
“Just so,” I acquiesced sympathisingly, “some-
thing like walking over a concealed mine, know-
ing that at any moment it may explode and blow
one into smithereens.”
Baggerly gave a quick, loud laugh and shot a
glance of amused appreciation at me out of the
corner of his eye.
“But you will go with us, all the same, will
you not, Gwendolen?” pleaded Elida. “Say you
will. ‘Baggy' has been making valiant efforts
to keep up my spirits, but he does not understand
me as you do.”
I did not wish to go, and for the same reason
that I had induced the Captain to seek an ob-
scure restaurant in which to lunch,-in order to
avoid the questioners; yet, on the other hand,
here was a heaven-sent opportunity to study
Baggerly at close quarters, perhaps in an unsus-
pecting moment to catch him off his guard, and
109


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
surprise him into an incriminating avowal. In
the end I consented.
We took a little table on the Fifth Avenue side
of the hotel, near a window; and Elida imme-
diately began to inveigh against Sonnenthal’s
brutality. “Really, Gwen, he would have
clapped us both into jail without the slightest
compunction if it had not been for the Captain.
What a lucky girl you are, dear. He is—”
I kicked her violently under the table, and she
had cleverness enough to take the hint.
The topic of conversation naturally for our
three-cornered discussion was solely and simply
the jewel robbery; but in spite of all the leads I
offered him, Baggerly sedulously refused to be
drawn.
Playing idly with a flower he had pulled from
the vase, he seemed to be absorbed in some
speculation entirely apart from us or our con-
cerns, scarcely taking the trouble to display even
the interest of a sneer at the opinions advanced
by Elida and myself; yet, oddly enough, I felt
myself from time to time the object of an intense
and enveloping scrutiny on his part.
He was sitting opposite me at the table, both of
us looking out upon the avenue, although from
110


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
manner in which he carried his head; I could not
tell. I only knew that I had seen him somewhere
before, and under peculiar circumstances, al-
though when or where I could not for the
moment remember.
My speculations were interrupted by Elida,
who leaned over to pinch me on the arm, exclaim-
ing in a stage whisper:
“Look, look . There comes Louis Sonnenthal
with the girl they talk so much about, Evelyn
Arliss. See, she is wearing the famous opals he
gave her.”
My feminine curiosity was hardly proof
against taking a brief, hurried inspection of the
pair, the jeweller making his way among the
tables accompanied by this blonde, radiant
beauty, her sables thrown back to disclose the
opals and diamonds which sparkled at her throat;
but the perplexing conundrum in the street was
of far greater interest to me just then, and my
gaze quickly strayed back to the window.
The man in the motor-car had evidently over-
come a temporary difficulty with his starting ap-
paratus, and had leaned over to throw a lever.
I was just about to give up my effort to establish
his identity, and had half turned away, when to
112


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
my infinite amazement I saw Baggerly hastening
up to hail him from the sidewalk with what
seemed to me an imperative sharpness.
The chauffeur started violently, threw a hasty
glance about him, and seized the steering-rod as
though to take flight; but an evident command
from the other plainly caused him to forego his
intention.
Somewhat sullenly he moved over in his seat,
and bent an ear to what Baggerly had to say.
Aroused now to a tremendous curiosity, I
twisted my head about in every direction in an
endeavour to catch a glimpse of the chauffeur's
face, or to gather from the attitudes and gestures
of the two men something of the drift of their
colloquy; but in vain. Baggerly’s brick-dust
poll interposed in my line of vision so as just to
hide the other’s features; and to have deduced
anything of the import of their speech from the
manner of either of them would have taxed the
powers of divination of a Sherlock Holmes.
The interview was but a brief one at any rate,
merely four or five quick sentences on either side.
If one were able to attach any meaning at all to
their several actions, I should have said that the
conversation began with a keen, searching in-
113


THE WAN SU Y DE N S A PPHIRES
terrogation from Baggerly, followed by a more
or less grudging response on the part of the
chauffeur. Baggerly issued a command, accom-
panied, if I was not mistaken, by a threat. The
man in the car protested, and presented certain
arguments to show the inadvisability of the
course proposed. Baggerly answered his objec-
tions with a curt repetition of the mandate, and
the chauffeur, shrugging his shoulders, ac-
quiesced as if to the inevitable.
With a final nod, as though to indicate his full
comprehension of directions, the chauffeur once
more bestowed his attention upon his machine,
and Baggerly turned back toward the hotel.
But the incident was not yet closed for me; for
as the man I had been watching slewed his car
about, he turned his face toward me full and
fair. It was but a glimpse, a single flash of vi-
sion; but it was enough for me to recognise him.
Smart, well set-up in his chauffeur's coat and
cap, he was, nevertheless, beyond the shadow of
a doubt the slouching, masterful countryman of
my railroad journey.
I gave an involuntary exclamation of surprise,
and Elida looked up, startled. She had been
rattling on, so absorbed in her chatter about her
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T H E W A N SUY DE N S APP HIRES
part in the new play, her gowns, the possible
effect of the robbery upon her career, or what-
ever subject it was that for the moment claimed
her attention, that she had been entirely oblivious
to my wandering interest.
Halted in full swing by my cry of astonish-
ment, she paused now and surveyed me with evi-
dent suspicion. “What on earth is the matter?”
she demanded curiously.
“Nothing,” hurriedly; “nothing at all. I
merely fancied I saw some one out there whom I
used to know,” with an indefinite nod of my head
toward the window.
“I do not believe you have been listening to one
word I was saying,” accused Elida with an air
of injury.
Baggerly was approaching; I could already see
him navigating a passage toward us. It would
never do to have him realise that I had been an
eager spectator of his rather equivocal per-
formance.
“Indeed, I have been listening, Elida,” I has-
tened to assure her; “and it was all most inter-
esting. You were telling me how that jealous
cat had attempted to undermine you in the com-
pany, and how you proposed to turn the tables
on her.” 115


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPP HIRES
It was an eminently safe hazard. Strike in any
where on an actress's conversation with a sug-
gestion of like tenor, and one is almost certain to
score a bull’s eye. The only variant is the recital
of personal triumphs.
“Well, it was just as I was saying,” resumed
Elida, mollified by my hypocritical show of at-
tention; “she is determined to have the part, but
I took occasion to drop in on Haussman this af-
ternoon, and I told him—”
But what dread spell against this uncatalogued
rival Miss Yeats had wrought by means of the
complaisant Haussman, I was destined never to
know; for Baggerly rejoined us at that moment,
and Elida interrupted her narrative to chaff with
him.
Our cavalier's manner seemed completely al-
tered by his brief absence from us. Whereas he
had been moody and taciturn before, he now re-
sponded gaily to Elida’s lively banter, and when
he had resumed his seat waxed talkative to a
degree, reeling off amusing stories for our bene-
fit in a seemingly endless succession.
Indeed, despite my active distrust and repug-
nance for the man, I am bound to admit I found
him decidedly entertaining. He had consider-
53
116


THE WAN SU Y DE N S A PP HIRES
able skill as a raconteur when he chose to exert
it; and although he laughed consumedly at his
own jokes, and on one or two occasions grew
rather broad in his allusions, his tales were in
most instances so distinctly funny that an iron
woman could not have forborne to smile.
Yet beneath all the man’s mirth and flippancy
I fancied I could detect a serious, if hidden,
purpose. His efforts to entertain were a trifle
feverish, there was a glint of suppressed anxiety
in his eye.
And, strangely enough, this underlying con-
cern seemed to be directed toward me. Instead
of playing gooseberry between Elida and him-
self, I was made subtly, but surely, to feel my-
self the centre of attraction. He laid himself
out to interest me, consulted my opinions, de-
ferred to my judgment, endeavoured in every
way to feed the flame of my vanity.
As his bearing toward me at Onyx Court, and
even when I had first met him that afternoon,
had been exactly the reverse, I was naturally
puzzled and perplexed to explain this entire
change of front. Nor could I justly ascribe it to
the fact that I myself had unbent a trifle and had
shown him a more gracious spirit. Baggerly was
117


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
not the type to be affected by delicate shades and
nuances of manner; his abounding conceit ren-
dered him impervious to any less overt symptom
of disapproval than a knock-down blow between
the eyes.
No; my intuitions,—those monitors to which a
woman yields so unfaltering a trust,-warned me
that the man had a fixed and definite object in
view, and bade me walk warily for fear of a pit-
fall. It was like a duel with cloak and lantern
between us, each groping wildly in the dark, and
only an occasional muffled gleam to indicate the
position of his opponent.
The excitement of the thing laid hold of me. I
determined to draw my antagonist out into the
open and unmask this concealed purpose of his.
Perhaps in the clash of our sword-play I might
locate the weak spot in his armour.
“Really, Mr. Baggerly, you are making us very
gay,” I interposed at the end of one of his anec-
dotes; “but don’t you think we are rather rudely
ignoring the fourth guest at the board?”
“The fourth guest?” cried he and Elida in con-
cert, gazing at me as if I had suddenly gone in-
Sane.
“Yes,” I waved my hand as though toward an-
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T H E W A N SUY DE N S APP HIRES
other member of our party; “the skeleton at the
feast who keeps our laughter from ringing quite
true.”
Baggerly was on guard in an instant. His eyes
showed caution. “Shall we toast him?” he asked
with affected unconcern.
“Oh, no,” I replied earnestly. “Do not make
him feel welcome under any circumstances. Let
us exorcise him rather by stripping him of his
cloak of mystery; any apparition must vanish
when confronted by the daylight. Seriously,
Mr. Baggerly, what theory do you hold in regard
to this robbery P You have listened to Elida and
myself; but I have not yet heard you advance
your own opinion.”
Every muscle of his face was under perfect con-
trol; but there was a tiny flicker in his eyes. Did
it express amusement or surprise? He was smok-
ing, and he stopped to flick the ashes from his
cigarette before he answered. For all his ap-
parent heedlessness of speech, how sedulously he
kept ward over his tongue.
“Theories?” he observed with a slight lifting
of his eyebrows. “Oh, I have fashioned a half
dozen, only to discard them one by one, and
build up new ones. I really scarcely know myself
119


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
just which of them holds the boards at present.
But, believe me, I am far more interested in the
theories which you—and Miss Yeats, of course,”
manifestly including Elida as an afterthought,
“may see fit to construct. A woman’s intuitions,
you know, often put to shame our more laborious
logic.”
“I don’t know but that I agree with you, Mr.
Baggerly. My grandmother used to have a pas-
sion for making patch-work quilts; and some of
my friends fancy that I have inherited from her
a faculty for putting two and two together.
Perhaps, as you say, I–and Elida,” with the
same stress, “may be the ones to solve this
tangle.”
A faint, cynical grin curled up the corners of
Baggerly’s mouth. “I hardly think so, Miss
Bramblestone,” he rejoined. “You are undoubt-
edly very shrewd and very clever, more
clever than I should ever have dreamed when
I first met you at Onyx Court. But I do not be-
lieve you will be the one to reveal the truth in this
affair; although,” he paused a moment, “it might
be well if you did.”
There was a note of sternness, almost of ex-
hortation, in his voice. What consummate assur-
120


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
ance the man had. He was actually insinuating
once more that I was the criminal; and that to my
very teeth. He, the thief, blandly sat there, and
told me in so many words that I would better con-
fess. My blood boiled at his impudence, I half
gave lip to a scorching retort; and then I realised
the folly of attempting to match my wits against
so wily a scoundrel in my present mood. Better
grant him the honours of this first encounter and
retire from the field. Let him deem me worsted,
if he wanted to.
“He who fights and runs away
Will live to fight another day.”—
My face was pale, my lip trembling; but I
managed to control myself sufficiently to give
fair semblance to a careless laugh.
“Oh, ‘à bas’ the skeleton at the feast !” I cried.
“He proves boresome; let us discuss pleasanter
themes. Tell us of some of your experiences in
South Africa, Mr. Baggerly.”
He shrugged his shoulders with a half-quizzi-
cal, half-admiring glance at me. It was plain
that he was unwilling so easily to relinquish the
advantage he had gained. Still, he finally ac-
ceded to my request, and, resuming his former
-*
121


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
manner, rattled off into a number of thrilling
narratives from his army career.
He had been in the secret service, he told us;
and although I doubt not that he coloured his ad-
ventures for us to the point of actual mendacity,
nevertheless those stories of lonely scout duty,
and of dangerous single-handed journeys into
the lines of the enemy, where the slightest slip of
the tongue meant the shameful death of a spy,
held us spellbound with an avid attention.
At length he drifted into the relation of an es-
cape he had once made from certain capture by
scaling the wall of an almost sheer precipice; and
dwelt somewhat vauntingly upon the agility he
had there displayed.
“I doubt if there is another person in existence
who could have accomplished the feat,” he de-
clared with vainglorious triumph.
“Do not be too sure of that,” I scoffed, think-
ing to lower his conceit a peg. “I, too, belong
to the chamois family.” And then I likewise fell
to boasting of my prowess in climbing; for in my
girlhood I was noted on account of my sure-foot-
edness, and once when out after hours mounted
to the roof of St. Anne’s convent, and thence
gained my room with no other support than a
122


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
shaky lightning-rod. I also, as I laughingly ex-
plained, used to frighten the girls at school
nearly out of their wits by suddenly appearing
at their windows, having arrived thither by way
of the outside coping.
Baggerly grew tremendously interested in this
recital, and kept pressing me for further details
concerning my pranks.
“That was long ago, however,” he insisted ban-
teringly; “you would never dare undertake such
risks nowadays.”
“Would I not?” I rejoined. “Well,—although
I suppose I ought to be ashamed to tell of it, L
not more than two weeks ago, I inadvertently
shut myself up in my bath-room, and since the
door is fitted with a spring lock, and the key was
on the other side, it was a case of literal imprison-
ment. There was no way of summoning assist-
ance except to shriek down seven stories, with the
probability even then of not being heard; so, as
I was not desirous of creating a scene, I quietly
stepped out of the window, slipped along the
outside ledge of the building, flattening myself
against the wall as I went, and thus regained my
bed-chamber, effecting my rescue without fuss,
flurry, or recourse to either the fire department
or police.” 123


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
Baggerly’s questions now became absolutely
eager. He wanted to know the distance I had
traversed in my journey, the width of the ledge,
every slightest circumstance; while I, spurred on
by that unaccountable vanity we all feel over our
athletic triumphs, far more indeed than is en-
gendered by any victory of our brains,—dilated
and expatiated upon my exploit in fullest
measure.
Elida suddenly interrupted me, however, by an-
nouncing in agitated fashion that she must go
at once. I glanced around to seek the reason for
this decision. The room was full of little groups
about the tables, and most of the people were cast-
ing curious glances toward Elida and whisper-
ing her name. Still, this was not calculated to
disconcert her, as she was used to it, and it was
in fact to her the very breath of life. It was,
rather, the sight of a well-known newspaper
woman slowly advancing toward us through
the maze of tables which was the cause of her
panic.
“She is heading right for us, Gwen; and before
I know it I will be telling her all sorts of things,
I would rather cut my tongue out than have her
know,” she whispered almost tearfully,
124


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Oh, do not go yet, Miss Yeats,” pleaded Bag-
gerly. “We have not half finished our discus-
sion. Miss Bramblestone and I must get this
question of the climbing championship settled,
don’t you know? I'll tell you,” eagerly; “why
not stay here and take dinner?”
“Oh, impossible!” Elida was fidgeting visibly.
“Look, Gwen,” clutching at my arm, “Louis
Sonnenthal is simply glaring at us, and that
woman will pounce on me in another minute. Do
hurry.”
By a clever flank movement we eluded the news-
paper woman and reached the corridor in safety.
Elida breathed easier, although she still cast ap-
prehensive glances behind her.
“Shall you take a surface car up town, or the
“L’?” questioned Baggerly of me, as the three of
us passed out the entrance.
“Oh, a trolley, I think. It may be a little
slower; but then one avoids the toiling up and
down stairs, and there is really not so much dif-
ference in time.”
“How long does the trip generally take you?”
with what seemed to me a very exaggerated curi-
osity.
“About forty minutes,” carelessly; “but at this
125


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
time of day, with the imminent possibility of a
block, it is hard to say. Heaven alone
knows.”
He laughed, a little relievedly I thought, and
expressing a hope that we might soon meet again,
went off up the avenue with Elida; while I has-
tened across Thirty-fourth Street in the direction
of Broadway. -
Fortune favoured me, however, and I was
spared the discomfort of a crowded trolley that
night; for I had not walked more than half a
block before I was hailed by Fred and Minna
Lozier, who had whirled up to the sidewalk in an
automobile.
“Jump in,” they insisted cordially; “and we will
take you wherever you are going.”
“Home, eh?” added Fred, as I gladly accepted
the invitation. “You’d better let me spin you
about the park a turn or so before you desert us.
We'll be at your door so quick that you won’t
have a chance to tell Minna a quarter of your ex-
periences at Onyx Court. She is dying to know
all about the jewel robbery up there.”
But I was obdurate. I had lingered longer at
the Waldorf than I had realised, and as I was ex-
pecting the Captain later in the evening, I felt
126


T H E W A N SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
that I must hurry home and put some finishing
touches on my gown.
So I laughingly told Minna that she would have
to curb her curiosity until a more convenient
season, and besought Fred to land me at home as
soon as his machine could get there.
He took me at my word, and the way we flew up
town fairly brought my heart into my mouth.
But all’s well that ends well, and we arrived safe
and sound, having by some miracle escaped ar-
rest and broken bones, although I must confess
I was a bit surprised to find that I was still in-
tact, all except my veil, which, having been in-
securely fastened, was whisked away by the wind.
“Four minutes,” announced Fred proudly,
snapping open his watch. “How is that for a
solution of the rapid transit problem?”
127


CHAPTER II
AN UNINVITED GUEST
I HAD noted with a sense of surprise as I came
out of the Waldorf how rapidly it was growing
dusk. The increasing shortness of the days
struck me with a little shock, as it occasionally
does to all of us on some particular evening at
the time of the change of seasons.
As I waved my hand in adieu to the Loziers, and
hurried up the steps of my lodgings, I turned to
glance at the big, illuminated dial of the church
clock across the way. Half past five? And it
seemed only a week or so back, that one could see
to read a newspaper until long after dinner.
Yet there could be no mistake; the clock was a
marvel of accuracy, and it was certainly night.
The stretch of sky above me, brilliantly clear
and studded with stars, had lost its last ves-
tige of blue. The street lights on the corners
marched away in a long perspective of radiant
points. The great yellow eye of a trolley car
gliding toward me six or seven blocks up the ave-
128


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
nue, the rest of its bulk shadowy and indistinct
in the gloom, gave to its advance a sinister as-
pect, like the stealthy approach of some Titanic
monster. In marked contrast to it was the bril-
liant, white reflection from the headlight of a
motor-car stationed near by along the curb.
All this was of course merely the impression of
a moment; for, believe me, I was wasting no time
in getting to my room. I mention it simply to
emphasize the fact that daylight had completely
faded, and to explain my surprise at finding, as I
stepped from the elevator at my floor, that the
hall lights had not yet been turned on.
I stepped back to the shaft, intending to call
the attention of the elevator boy to the derelic-
tion; but his car had already descended, and
reflecting that I could just as easily report
the matter to the office from my room, I went
groping and stumbling along through the dark-
neSS.
But, when I turned into the passage which led
to my own door, I stopped short with a sharp
gasp of amazement; for there, fumbling at my
lock, and outlined against the window behind him
which gives out upon a court, was the stooping
figure of a man.
129


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
Strange as it may appear, I did not scream nor
cry out. Some quick instinct seemed to warn me
that it would be more to my advantage to deal
with this intruder in person than to call for assist-
ance; and, furthermore, I do not remember that
after the first shock I felt the slightest fear. My
only sentiment, as I recall it now, was a sort of
puzzled wonder that any burglar should consider
me worthy prey.
There was a wall bracket, containing two in-
candescent lamps, just behind me at the turn of
the corridor; and stepping lightly back to it, I
snapped on the current.
As the light flashed out, the man at my door
straightened up with a sudden ejaculation; and
quickly turning about, faced me full. It was
the smart chauffeur I had seen in front of the
Waldorf, the awkward countryman of the rail-
way train.
Curiously enough, the revelation caused me no
particular astonishment. It seemed to me as
though I had in some way known all the time that
it must be he. Indeed, he was immeasurably the
more disconcerted of the two; although, even so,
it took him but a moment to recover his com-
posure.
I30


T H E W A N SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“What are you doing there at my door?” I de-
manded sternly.
He had himself well in hand by this time, and
gave a start of well-simulated surprise.
“Your door?” he repeated in a puzzled tone.
“Is not this Mr. Sonnenthal’s apartment?”
His voice had just the requisite shading of apol-
ogetic chagrin for one who has made a pardon-
able mistake, and his eyes met mine with the
blank stare he might have accorded to an utter
stranger.
Such cool effrontery was too much for my tem-
per. I grew indignant that he should deem me
capable of being taken in by bait for gudgeons.
“Mr. Sonnenthal’s apartment is on the floor
above,” I returned with dry sarcasm. “It is curi-
ous that you should have made such an
error!”
“Quite so,” he gave ready acquiescence. “Aw-
fully stupid of me, I’m sure. I beg your pardon
a hundred times over, madam. On the next floor,
you say?” He started forward with the evident
intention of brushing by me.
But I interposed a decided veto. “Not so fast,”
I cried, and I spoke calmly, although my heart
was thumping an excited tattoo against my ribs.
131


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
“Oh, I do not anticipate anything of the kind,”
I assured him; “still, to make the situation clear,
I want you to understand that Mr. Seymour's
apartment is right across the hall, and the slight-
est outcry on my part or any sound of a
struggle would instantly summon him to my as-
sistance.”
He delayed no longer; but, stepping inside,
stood waiting until I had flashed on the light in
my little sitting-room. In the fuller illumina-
tion he showed no more sign of trepidation than
he had on the outside. The nonchalant smile
upon his lips was not assumed, nor was the hu-
morous sparkle of admiration in his eyes. In-
voluntarily I lowered my own glance before that
bold tribute of approval.
“You certainly are a cool one,” he commented.
“Most women would have had a conniption fit
under the circumstances. Aren’t you afraid?”
There was a swagger and a dash about the fel-
low, a touch of reckless audacity which was sim-
ply irresistible. Against my will, I felt my heart
soften toward him.
“Afraid? No,” I scoffed, striving to outvie
him in the indifference of my pose. “On the con-
trary, it strikes me that you should be the one to
133


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
be quaking in your shoes. How do you know
that I am not going to hand you over to the
police?”
As I spoke, I motioned him to a seat in my big
Morris chair. “You may smoke, if you care to,”
I added.
Verily, I was going far these last few days. A
passage from Isaiah which I had heard in church
a Sunday or two before recurred to my mind with
a distinctly irreverent application: “Thy princes
are rebellious and companions of thieves.” I
could not help wondering what Mrs. Van Suyden
or some of my other associates in the fashionable
set would think if they could see me now tete-à-
tête in my little sitting-room with a desperate
outlaw; nay even urging him to make himself at
home, to smoke, to be completely at his ease.
But I had in all this a very accurate and well-
defined purpose. I wanted the scamp to talk;
and a long and varied experience has taught me
that a man is never so communicative as when
ensconced in a comfortable chair and with a
lighted cigar between his lips.
His eye twinkled an appreciation of my sang
froid; but he made no comment, merely laying
his cap and gloves upon the table, and unbut-
134


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
toning his coat to take a cigar from an inner
pocket.
As he pulled out the cigar, a little slip of paper
came with it, and, unnoticed by him, fluttered
lightly to the floor. Under pretence of supply-
ing him with an ash-tray, I swept this behind his
chair with the tail of my gown, and quickly se-
curing it, tucked it away in my bosom.
I did not then have an opportunity to examine
my find; for, although I stepped into my dress-
ing-room a moment to remove my hat and jacket,
and give a touch or so to my hair, I left the door
open between us as a measure of precaution, and
I knew that he could observe my every movement.
When I returned, I took a low rocking-chair
opposite him. He was lazily blowing smoke
rings at the plaster Cupid perched above my por-
tieres, as unaffectedly at home as though he had
been coming there for years.
I waited for him to begin. He regarded me
thoughtfully over the glowing tip of his cigar,
and then reverted with a smile to my hypotheti-
cal question.
“How do I know that you aren’t going to turn
me over to the police, eh?” he repeated argu-
mentatively. His accent, I may mention here,
135


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
was not unrefined, and his language was as a rule
well chosen; but he had a trick of talking out of
the corner of his mouth, and there was a peculiar
slurring of final syllables which gave an unculti-
vated turn to his speech. Here, as in his address,
he seemed like one who had been bred a gentleman,
but who by long association with inferiors had
permitted himself to deteriorate. The underly-
ing metal showed but dimly sometimes through
the tarnishings upon the surface.
“Well, how do you know that I am not going to
hand you over to the police?”
“Why,” with an ironical little bow, “partly be-
cause your charming hospitality kills off any
fear of the sort; but chiefly for the reason that
you couldn’t if you wanted to. As the kids say,
‘I haven’t done nothing naughty.’”
I gasped at his colossal impudence; then
laughed derisively. “You do not then consider
the theft of $50,000 worth of rubies as some-
thing rendering you subject to arrest, eh?”
“Sure, I do,” he admitted promptly “pro-
vided it could be shown I took 'em. Say, for in-
stance,” with a twinkle of fun in his eyes, “that
I’d had those rubies in my hand-bag, and sud-
denly got tipped off that the bulls, beg pardon,
136


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
the police,—were going to search me? Then,
suppose I’d framed it up with myself to sling the
stones out of the window, but afterward thought
better of it, and poked them instead into somebody
else’s fur coat which was providentially,–orshall
we say, unfortunately?—nipped? Why then,”
reflectively, “I might be a trifle uneasy. But as
my conscience is clear of anything of the kind,
I’m not losing very much sleep over the fate of
those rubies.”
“All the same,” I retorted hotly, “it was you
that persuaded me to hide them in the coat.”
He threw up his eyes in mock apostrophe. “And
to think they used to teach me at Sunday school,”
he murmured, “that it was poor old Adam who
welched on that apple proposition! I suppose,
Miss Bramblestone,” with withering sarcasm,
“that if I told you to go jump off of Brooklyn
Bridge you couldn’t help yourself from doing
it? I’ll swear,” shaking his head regretfully,
“I thought you were gamer than that.”
Must I confess it? I actually blushed and
hung my head before this rascal's disapprobation.
Hurriedly I changed the subject.
“Where are the rubies now?” I asked abruptly.
He shrugged his shoulders. “How should I
137


THE WAN SU YDEN SAPPHIRES
know?" scorically, as he blew a straight shaft of
smoke toward the ceiling. “Probably, if you
were to ask the man who cribbed the Captain's
coat he could tell you.”
I almost stamped my foot in my irritation. “But
he was of course a confederate of yours,” I cried.
*Was he not now?”
“I decline to answer.” He drew himself up with
a comical air of judicial pomposity as he
mouthed the legal phrase, “on the ground that
it might tend to incriminate or degrade me.”
I resigned the unequal struggle. “Well, will
you not at least tell me,” I asked, “why you were
trying to break into my apartment?”
The mockery died from his face, and his tone
was frank and sincere. “That was a mistake,” he
asserted quickly. “I really thought it was Son-
nenthal’s room. Hope I may die, if I didn't.”
I let my disbelief show in my expression.
“Why, then, was Baggerly so anxious to keep
me down town?” I demanded.
I had pierced his armour at last. His cigar
dropped from his hand where it rested on the arm
of his chair, and fell unheeded to the carpet.
“Baggerly?” he exclaimed.
“Exactly,” pursuing my advantage; “Bag-
138


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
gerly. He sent you up here from the Waldorf,
and tried to delay me, so as to give you time.”
“Ah?” he leaned over to recover his fallen
cigar. “You think then that Baggerly?”—
I nodded. “I do not think; I know,” I an-
swered.
A slow grin stole over his features, and he
rubbed his hand thoughtfully across his chin.
Then he tossed the remainder of his cigar into
the ash-receiver, and rising to his feet, took two
or three quick turns up and down the room.
Suddenly he stopped short in front of me.
“Look here,” brusquely, “let’s cut out this shilly-
shallying. What is it you want?”
I was as blunt as himself. “The ruby neck-
lace,” I said.
Without asking my permission, or craving my
pardon for the liberty, he stepped quickly to the
adjoining room and drew back the curtains.
He surveyed my bath-room and opened the closet.
Then, returning to the outer door, he threw it
wide, and glanced up and down the corridor.
Satisfied at last that no eavesdropper lurked
within hearing, he came back to me.
“Now, supposing,” sinking his voice to a muf-
fled growl, and accentuating that trick of speak-
139


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
ing from the corner of his mouth “but only
supposing, mind, that the thing could be man-
aged, what would you be willing to give up for
those stones?”
“Why,” I hesitated, “I might possibly arrange
to have you paid a reward, that is, if your de-
mands were not too unreasonable. I do not know
now just what”—
“No, no; you don’t catch my idea,” he broke in
impatiently. “I mean what would you person-
ally give?”
Was the man trying to infuse a note of senti-
ment into the conversation? I put by the sus-
picion as unworthy of consideration. “My eter-
nal gratitude, I suppose,” I rejoined sarcasti-
cally; “and ‘no questions asked,” as the newspa-
pers put it. Anything else,” with a significant
glance about the room, “would be manifestly be-
yond me.”
A faint hope was stirring at my heart that per-
haps he was simply amusing himself at my ex-
pense, and that he would eventually restore to me
the stolen jewels; but his next words dispelled
any such altruistic dream.
“You are wrong,” he said, drawing up a chair
close to mine, and settling himself to a persuasive
140


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
argument. “I can show you where you have
something to give that is worth more than a ton
of ruby necklaces, and, what's more, will make
you no poorer by the giving, but will earn you
bigger money than you ever dreamed of in all
your life.”
“A bit paradoxical, isn’t it?” I remarked.
“Probably you know at what you are driving;
but I must confess I fail to understand.”
“No?” he grinned. “Then, I’ll have to explain.
Let us look at things in the face,” speaking
rapidly, but earnestly. “Here you are, as foxy a
little woman as they make 'em, and, more than
that, you’ve got a drag with the Fifth Avenue
push that half the millionairesses in this country
would give their back hair to ring in on. You
don’t have to scheme and plan to stand in; you
belong.
“But what good does it all do you?” he de-
manded sharply. “You’re on your uppers for
fair, and painting dinky fans for a living isn’t,
I guess, the most lucrative graft in the world.
You see,” with his ready smile, “I’ve made my-
self wise to a thing or two about you since I met
you on the train.
“And I don’t believe, either,” he went on, “that
141


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
you’re foolishly honest. You’re too smart and
too poor to indulge in any such luxury; but be-
sides that, I saw you were ready enough to pitch
that ballast overboard the other night when you
thought it was going to swamp you.
“I can use a woman like you, Miss Bramble-
stone,” impressively, “and I can make a fortune
for her, too!” He paused tentatively.
“What do you mean?” I faltered. “I still fail
to grasp your idea.”
“Simply this. You, as I say, have the run of all
these swell houses. Now, what’s the harm in your
letting me know a thing or two about them, too,
—the lay of the rooms for instance, how many
servants they have, what the burglar-alarm sys-
tem is like, where they keep the stuff that’s worth
while? A few little points like that you can pick
up in half a dozen offhand questions, where it
might take me six weeks to find out, and then run
a big chance of being wrong. I’m deeply in-
terested in the “400, you see.”
“No, no,” I shrank back a little from him. “I
could not think of such a thing. I have already
betrayed the hospitality of friends to my bitter
shame; and you see what has come of it.”
“Piffle,” he snapped his fingers contemptuously.
142


THE WAN SU Y DE N S AP PHIRES
“That was rough work, crude and amateurish;
still, even at that, you’d have pulled it off all
right if you hadn’t been so new to the game.
What you want is a business manager.
“Now, I can show you how to work these tricks
without ever putting yourself in the slightest
danger. You’re afraid of getting found out;
that’s all that’s the matter with you. But sup-
pose that to-morrow afternoon you'd tell the
clerk here in the hotel to 'phone over to a garage
that I can give you the number of and order
you a ‘bubble’ for an hour or two; and that when
it came whizzing up to the door to get you I was
sitting in the chauffeur's seat. Would there be
anything particularly suspicious in that?”
“No-o,” I had to admit. “Not in that.”
“Well, then, supposing that while we were spin-
ning through the park, or up along Riverside,
you should see fit to unburden your soul to me in
the line of conversation that I’ve indicated.
Who could guess what we were talking about;
or what reason would even you have to connect
your innocent prattle with the cracking of some
crib up on the avenue that night?
“All that you would ever know would be that a
day or so later a messenger boy would come skat-
143


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
ing up here with a sealed package, and that when
you opened it you’d find it full of the ‘flimsy,’—
bills,” he gloated, thrusting his face close to
mine, and holding me with his bright, glittering
eyes, “not any stingy ‘fives’ and “tens; but the
yellow boys, “Ls” and “Cs’ and maybe “Ds P
“How is any one going to get into trouble over
a deal like that?” he asked scornfully. “There
is no reason to hinder you from riding in the
park, is there; or no law requiring you to wear a
muzzle while you’re there? As for the rest, you
see nothing, you know nothing, all you do is to
rake in the profits. Would anybody ever suspect
Miss Gwendolen Bramblestone? Not in a thou-
sand years. Why, it’s as cinchy as coffee for
breakfast!”
“Did Baggerly bid you come to me with this
proposition?” I broke in upon his eager entreaty.
Again that curious smile flitted across his face.
“Baggerly? No,” he answered. “The less I
have to do with Baggerly in the future, the
better it will suit me. This affair is between you
and me.”
“But Baggerly is your leader; it was he who
sent you up here this afternoon?” I persisted.
“I can give only one answer to such a question,
144


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
Miss Bramblestone,” he responded quickly; “and
that is, no. In the profession that I belong to,
there is but one unpardonable sin, and that is to
round on a pal. Now, you can make as much or
as little out of that as you please. I shall tell you
nothing more.”
“Ah,” I replied, sinking back into my seat, “it
is quite enough. Perhaps,” I added shrewdly,
“I might piece out another conjecture and hit
as near the mark. Might it not be that Mr. Bag-
gerly, as captain of your band, has been at times
a trifle overbearing in his manner; and that you
would all willingly depose him, but that you fear
you would thus cut yourselves off from the in-
formation you require?”
He gave a quick start and eyed me narrowly
from beneath his brows. “Well,” he said cau-
tiously; “and if so, what of it?”
“Why, for one thing, it would explain your de-
sire to add a Maid Marian to your company.
That would almost induce me to accept your
offer,” I said musingly, “the chance to humble
Baggerly.”
“Then you will consent?” he cried eagerly.
“You are willing to go into this scheme?”
I shook my head, but not so decidedly as before.
145


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
I was endeavouring to temporise. Perhaps, by
pretending to acquiesce, I could discover the
whereabouts of the missing jewels, or gain tan-
gible proof of Baggerly's complicity.
My companion noticed my wavering, and
pounced upon the point like a cat upon a mouse.
“Don’t be a lobster,” he urged. “Talk about
captains and leaders, you’d be a queen. And
with a graft that many a real queen might envy.
This is no piking play, I can tell you. This is
going to be for the big money, the kind that
gets diamonds, and yachts, and automobiles, and
clothes from Paris, and—and—everything,” he
waved his hand indefinitely, as though to express
a wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
“And if I agree, you’ll bring me back the
rubies and the sapphires?”
“Sure,” cheerfully. “We can steal them again
a little later on, and not have you mixed up in
the deal, like you are in this one.”
“Well, then, bring them here with you to-mor-
row afternoon,” I cried. I was promising noth-
ing, it will be observed; but he was too crafty to
be snared so easily.
“Not just yet,” he returned significantly.
“You must earn your pay first.”
146


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Oh, very well,” I replied with such indifference
as I could muster; “whose house do you wish me
to describe for you?”
“Nor that, either. It would be nice and easy to
steer an unsuspecting little mouse into a baited
trap, wouldn’t it? But this old rat wants to
smell at the cheese a bit before he goes after it.
You'll just go out in the motor with me for a
week or two and chatter about all your friends’
houses. I’ll piece together what I want out of
your talk, and you need know nothing of my in-
tentions until the job is pulled off, see?”
I bit my lip. “And you call this being a queen,
do you?” I asked with a pique that was not
wholly assumed.
He laughed indulgently. “All queens have to
yield somewhat to their prime ministers,” he said.
“But don’t be downhearted. Later on, when I’ve
found out that I can trust you, I'll take you more
into my confidence.”
I will confess that I have never felt myself in
quite such a quandary. It seemed as though by
a feigned assent and a pretended alliance with
these criminals lay my best chance of recovering,
or at least getting upon the track of the stolen
jewels. Surely, here, if ever, the end justified
the means. 147


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
Yet some strange, indefinable impulse held me
back. It was no sentiment of personal fear,
either. I had not lost my nerve; nor, despite his
cleverness, did I misdoubt my strategic skill suc-
cessfully to cope with this Dick Turpin, Fate
had thrown upon my hands. On the contrary,
my impulse arose from a disinclination to engage
in any double-dealing with him. Bandit though
he was, there was something about him which
made me shrink from incurring the contempt I
knew I should read in his eyes when he discovered
that I had played him false.
He evidently regarded my hesitation as natural
under the circumstances, or misunderstood its
cause; for he chose to regard the question as
settled.
“Well, that being arranged,” he said cheerily,
“I suppose, your Majesty, we can consider our-
selves partners now. If it’s a nice day to-morrow
I’ll be around with the machine about three, and
then”—
We were interrupted by the jangling whirr of
the telephone bell. I arose to answer it, feeling
sure that it was Captain McCracken; but I al-
most dropped the receiver on hearing the name
that was announced.
148


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“It’s Baggerly,” I cried, astonished, clapping
my hand over the mouth-piece, and turning to
my guest. “He’s down stairs, and wishes to see
me at once on very important business.”
“Then I’ll be making myself scarce,” he said,
catching up cap and gloves and starting for the
door. “I can hang out down the corridor until
he gets safe in the room.” He paused a second
with his hand on the knob. “Not a word of my
having been here, though,” he adjured. “That
is a matter strictly between ourselves.” He
vanished.
I turned to the telephone. “Ask Mr. Baggerly
to come up,” I said evenly. Then, in the interval
before he could appear I busied myself in setting
the room to rights.
But first I snatched from my bosom the scrap
of paper I had picked from the floor and held it
eagerly to the light.
“Pshaw!” I exclaimed disappointedly. It was
nothing but a clipping from the personal column
of a newspaper, one of those vulgar attempts at
an affaire which in a certain class seem to afford
an outlet for the yearnings of over-susceptible
souls.
“WILL lady with opal brooch in Fifth Ave. stage about
149


THE WAN SUY DE N SAPP HIRES
ten o'clock Tuesday morning meet gent. in brown derby
who sat opposite. Object matrimony. Address, AUTO-
MOBILE 472.”
So this was the kind of a fellow he was. I was
about to crumple up the slip and toss it into the
waste-basket; but, on second thought, decided to
preserve it. One can never tell just what may
turn out to be a clue; and perhaps by rallying
my chauffeur over his unknown inamorata of the
Fifth Avenue stage I might tease him into
divulging something more important.
The same cautious spirit also withheld my hand
when I picked up the ash-tray to empty it. Fol-
lowing this leading, although laughing at myself
the while, I carefully shook its contents into an
envelope, which I laid away in my desk.
Did not Conan Doyle's sagacious hero once
deduce the entire structure of a complicated case
from the half-smoked butt of a “Trichinopoly”?
150


º
CHAPTER III
WITH C R OSSED BLADES
BAGGERLY's face wore an unwontedly serious
expression as he entered the room. “Please don’t
look so surprised,” he said, greeting me; “but I
must have a few moments’ private conversation,
and I seemed unable to manufacture the oppor-
tunity this afternoon.”
Those shrewd, light eyes of his were darting
everywhere. “Ah, I trust I have not disturbed
you,” his nostrils dilating in an unmistakable
sniff; “you have had visitors?” -
“Because of the tobacco smoke? It is unkind
of you to discover me. We lonely women, you
know, are apt to pick up that rather solacing
habit.” -
As I spoke, partly to bear out my words, and
partly to conceal a confusion I could not over-
come, I took up a cigarette from the table and
pushed the box toward him. But, truth to tell,
I really loathe tobacco, and for all my efforts
151


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
I could not repress a slight grimace of disgust
as I drew in the smoke.
“I am afraid, like myself, you prefer a cigar,”
said Baggerly in the most evenly matter-of-fact
tone and without the suspicion of a smile. He
drew a case from his pocket and offered me one
of his own stock.
I drew myself up indignantly; but the rebuke
I was about to administer died on my lips. Fol-
lowing his satirical and slightly amused gaze,
my eye fell on a little cone of ashes upon the
carpet, inadvertently deposited there by my late
caller.
“You fancy the ashes refute me?”—in my con-
fusion I made the mistake of attempting to
explain. “They are a reminder of Captain
McCracken’s presence here this morning.”
Baggerly laid a tentative finger-tip on the little
heap of gray flakes. “Just so,” he assented re-
flectively. “Odd how long ashes retain heat,
isn’t it?”
I could have struck him, so great was my anger.
“Really, Mr. Baggerly,” I replied, in as cool a
tone as I could command, “for some reason I find
it impossible to fathom, you seem determined to
make a disagreeable point of a very trifling
152


THE VAN SUYDEN SAPPHIRE's
matter. I am going to ask you, therefore, to
state your ‘important business’ just as briefly as
possible.”
“You are right, Miss Bramblestone,” he said,
his manner changing at once to a more placating
tone; “I have been insufferably inquisitive. Put
it down, I pray you, to a cursed faculty I have
for noticing discrepancies generally overlooked.
Most people,” he added abstractly, “find it to
their advantage to be frank with me.”
Was there the hint of a threat in his words? If
so, he did not enlarge upon it.
“I have come to see you,” he went on rapidly,
“in peace, and out of a sincere friendship for
McCracken, who is one of the best fellows that
ever breathed. You must believe that?”
I raised my eyebrows a shade, but said nothing.
“To be brief, the reason I have called this after-
noon,” he continued, paying no heed to my
hostile attitude, “is because I have heard that
McCracken has engaged Jerry Bender to trace
up those stolen rubies. Now, Bender is that
rara avis among detectives, an absolutely incor-
ruptible man. If he locates those stones, there
will be no compromises or no hushings up. Do
you follow me?”
153


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
“Not exactly, I am afraid,” I said, really
puzzled. “Pray explain more fully.”
“Certainly. This is what I mean: Bender will
not be content with the mere return of the neck-
lace. If his name is connected with the case he
will stand for nothing less than a full exposé and
the arrest of the thief, whoever he or,” with a
peculiar emphasis, “she may be.”
I looked him steadily in the eye. At last I be-
gan to catch a glimmer of his purpose.
“But that,” I said quietly, “is precisely what we
want.”
For once I had scored. The somewhat bump-
tious confidence of his manner was broken; his
glance shifted before mine.
“Of course,” he assented hastily, “if one could
be sure that no mistake would be made. But
these detectives are far from infallible, and in
their eagerness to prove their theories they are
prone to twist circumstances and distort evi-
dence until they actually make black appear
white. Suppose, for instance, that Bender
should trace this crime to some person whom, for
many reasons, it would be unwise, impossible, to
connect with the matter?”
Was the man pleading for his own skin? It
154


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
certainly looked it. For a moment I sympathised
with him; the Captain had said he confessed to
being dreadfully hard up. Then I remembered
the fellow’s contemptible effort to cast me under
the ban of suspicion, and my heart hardened.
“Your apprehensions seem to me a bit far
fetched,” I derided. “If one were to be swayed
by such contingencies, most of the real criminals
would go scot free.”
“Still, it might be possible to engage a more
pliable agent than Bender,” he urged. “There
are other good detectives in New York.”
“No,” I shook my head decidedly. “Captain
McCracken and I are both agreed that the best
talent must be employed. For my part, I think
we are fortunate in securing a man who can-
not be reached by outside influences.”
He drew back baffled for an instant; then he
returned to the attack. “But suppose,” he in-
sisted, leaning across the table and fixing his eyes
steadily on me, “suppose that Bender, in his pig-
headed fashion, should conclude that you your-
self were the thief—if not of the rubies, then of
the sapphires P’
My heart leaped triumphantly. I had drawn
him at last. Threats are the final resort of a
155


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
desperate coward. I vouchsafed him no other
answer than a contemptuous laugh.
“Oh, it is not so ridiculous as you seem to im-
agine,” he blustered. “One might very easily
build up a theory against you out of the circum-
stances.”
“Or against you,” it was on the tip of my
tongue to retort; but discretion restrained me.
“See here, Mr. Baggerly,” I said instead, “you
suggested a few moments since that frankness
was a desideratum in dealing with you. I, too,
am a votary of candour. Do you not think, then,
that perhaps we might achieve more satisfactory
results if we should cut out this shilly-shally-
ing”—I smiled involuntarily as I repeated the
expressive phrase of my late visitor—“and
you should tell me openly just what it is you
Want?”
He again seemed disconcerted by my methods
and stammered rather uncertainly in his reply.
“Why, Miss Bramblestone,” he hesitated, “I was
simply counselling you for your own sake not to
employ Jerry Bender. You see, unless the sap-
phires are returned”—he laid a significant stress
upon the proviso, as though to inform me there
was small likelihood of such a consummation—
156


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“the facts might appear rather damaging against
you.”
I bore the thrust with unruffled equanimity.
“So?” I observed airily. “I confess it had not
struck me in that light. And, by the way, since
we are discussing theories, you have not yet told
me who you think stole the jewels. You will
remember I asked you the same question this
afternoon; but then you evaded an answer.”
The point-blank query staggered him for a
second, such an odd expression passed over his
face; then his gift for repartee came to his aid.
“Which jewels?” he asked glibly. “If you
mean the rubies, why, of course, I,” with a little
bow, “accept your story of the unknown thief
on the train.”
“And the sapphires?”
“Well, that is a more complicated matter. The
evening papers intimate that the police now be-
lieve the robber to have been one of the guests
in the house; and loth as I am to accept any
such hypothesis, it would seem that they have
fairly good grounds for their conclusions. For
one thing, the servants, both of the regular and
extra staffs, have succeeded in completely prov-
ing their innocence; and, for another, the de-
157


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
tectives have satisfied themselves that the theory
of an entrance from the outside is untenable.”
“That is what the police “consider,’ ‘intimate,”
and “say,’” I persisted; “but what do you
think?”
“I?” laughing carelessly; he had himself well in
hand again by this time. “What difference does
it make what a layman like myself thinks?”
“Why not? You were on the ground at the
time of the robbery 99
“No ; I beg your pardon,” he interrupted
hastily. “I was over at the village.”
“Well, you were on the ground very shortly
afterward, at any rate,” I corrected impatiently,
“and consequently had the advantage of a first
impression. Having been one of the house party,
too, you possess an intimate knowledge of the
conditions; and, like the rest of us, have a strong
personal interest in discovering the thief. It is
incredible that you should have failed to give
much anxious thought to the solution of the mys-
tery. Why, then, should not your conjectures be
as valuable as those of some thick-headed detec-
tive?”
He reflected a second or two. “Well, since you
press me,” he said slowly, “I will confess that
I58


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
I have speculated over the matter a good bit. I
hardly agree with the police that 35
“That it was one of the guests?” I broke in
eagerly.
“No ; that the open window played no part in
the episode. You see,” pointedly, “there is a curi-
ous discrepancy in the evidence bearing upon
that phase of the affair. I told you I had a sharp
eye for discrepancies.”
“And this one?”
“Why, you will remember that the chief objec-
tion to a belief that the robber might have
entered through that window has been the testi-
mony of two gardeners working upon the lawn,
and who assert that they had the window in plain
view during the entire period?”
“Yes p”
“Well, when I was returning from my ride after
luncheon I met both those men a good half-mile
down the road. The stupid yokels probably lied
under stress of their fears.”
“What time was that?” I asked sharply, struck
by a sudden idea.
“Precisely a quarter after one. I happened to
glance at my watch as I passed the fellows and
afterward remembered the incident.”
159


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Then the fact avails you but little,” I cried
unthinkingly, “for I was seated in my own room
in the angle of the left wing at exactly that time,
and had Mrs. Van Suyden’s window under com-
plete observation.”
“Thank you,” he answered drily. “That is just
what I have been trying to find out. The ledge
on the outside of the building, I believe, extends
unbroken around that angle.”
There was no mistaking his implication. I
shrank back stunned. There was a noise like
thunder in my ears. While I had been labouring,
and, as I thought, with excellent prospect of
success, to cast the net over his shoulders, he had
been simply biding his time. Now, by a single
throw he had me safely enmeshed and stood aside
laughing at my plight.
I grew sick to my soul as I thought of the silly
boastings in which I had indulged over my ath-
letic prowess as we sipped our tea in the Waldorf.
Surely, I had delivered myself to the enemy with
cords of my own binding.
He leaned over the table with a triumphant
smile. “Now you understand why I told you that
it was unwise for McCracken to employ Bender P’
The very insinuation that he had me in his
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THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
power and could dictate terms as to what I should
or should not do, if it was his purpose to frighten
me into compliance with his wishes, defeated its
own object.
“Was I, an innocent woman,” I asked myself
with righteous indignation, “to be threatened and
coerced by the thief himself?” I threw back my
head with a gesture of defiance.
But before I had a chance to reply to him, and
while we still stood glaring at each other across
the table, there came a sharp ring at the bell. I
stepped back and threw open the door to admit—
Captain McCracken.
“Captain McCracken,” I cried, “Mr. Baggerly
has just dared to insinuate that I am responsible
for the theft of Mrs. Van Suyden’s sapphires.
His theory, based upon my gymnastic powers, is
that I climbed in through the window !”
The Captain threw a glance of immeasurable
contempt toward Baggerly. “But that would
have been quite impossible, my dear Gwendolen,”
he said quietly; “the two gardeners were on the
lawn during the entire time.”
“Mr. Baggerly says not,” I returned. “He
insists that at a quarter after one he saw them
fully half a mile away down the road.”
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THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Mr. Baggerly is mistaken,” observed my
champion decidedly. “Happening to be sitting
in the window of the smoking-room from twelve
until two, I saw them there the entire time my-
self. Or,” with a rather haughty inclination of
his head toward Baggerly, the first notice he had
given of the latter’s presence, “if my unsup-
ported word be deemed insufficient I think Frank
Crosby will corroborate the statement.”
162


CHAPTER IV
THE INTER PRETATION OF A DREAM
THE Captain left early and I retired at once to
bed, but it was only to pass another troubled and
uneasy night. Nor was it the open hostility of
Baggerly, with his threats and his scheming,
which so effectually banished sleep from my pil-
low. The problem agitating me was rather what
attitude I proposed to adopt in my future deal-
ings with my new-made friend the burglar.
The more I considered it, the more my spirit re-
volted at the thought of playing Sisera to his
Jael. If only the jewels could be recovered some
other way than by my having to drive the nail of
betrayal into his temples!
With the first peep of dawn I was astir, and
running to my window pulled aside the curtain
and peered eagerly out at the sky and over the
adjacent roofs. I did not attempt to repress
a sigh of heartfelt satisfaction. The day was
raw and blustery, the heavens overcast with
163


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
clouds, and even as I stood there a flurry of snow
powdered the house-tops. Good! There could
be no question of automobiling to-day; I was not
yet called upon to make my decision.
But even with the sense of relief at my respite,
came a sinking at the pit of my stomach as I re-
called that there was another ordeal which had to
be faced that day, weather or no weather. For
I had heroically promised Duncan the night be-
fore that I would not let another twenty-four
hours pass over my head without confessing to
Mr. and Mrs. Wan Suyden the part I had borne
in the robbery of their jewels; and as I did not
wish to bring Elida into the matter without giv-
ing her some warning, had sent a special delivery
letter to her the night before apprising her of my
intentions and asking her to accompany me on
my mission.
Familiar with her habits, I did not dare expect
her much before noon, and so after breakfast I sat
dawdling over my paper striving to put in the
time.
The Onyx Court robbery still occupied the
chief place of prominence in the news of the day,
but a hasty glance over the matter presented as-
sured me that there were no new developments to
164:


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
require my attention, the account given being
merely a “second-day” rehash of the facts.
As my eye strayed to another column, however,
I did find something to excite my interest, in the
report of a sensational scene which had taken
place the evening before at one of the Broadway
restaurants, and in which a so-called “prominent
club man” and two women had been the partici-
pants.
The names were carefully suppressed, but I had
small difficulty in identifying Sonnenthal as the
man involved, and with equal ease recognised one
of the women as Evelyn Arliss, the actress.
These two had been taking dinner together at
the resort, it seemed, when suddenly there des-
cended upon them, like a tornado in full action,
a small, plainly gowned woman, unobtrusive
enough in appearance, but, to judge from re-
sults, endowed with an electric force which might
have put a forty-ton dynamo to shame.
She had commenced to berate the man in un-
measured terms, pouring out upon him a flood
of vitriolic abuse; but before the other patrons
of the place could fairly gather what it was all
about, or any one could discover who the woman
was, the man arose quickly, calmed her with a few
165


THE WAN SU YDEN SAPP HIRES
quiet words, and induced her to leave the place
with him. They had then driven rapidly away
together in a cab.
Indeed, so speedily was the incident over that
it is doubtful if it would have excited more than
passing comment, had not the deserted actress
seen fit to improve the occasion by indulging in
a violent fit of hysterics, which required the ser-
vices of half a dozen physicians to subdue, and
created a commotion all the way down the Rialto.
It was this which had drawn attention to the
occurrence, for there had been a persistent
rumour afloat that a split was imminent between
Sonnenthal and the lady, some even asserting
that he had demanded back the costly gifts he
had poured out on her in such profusion,-and it
was consequently inferred that this affair at the
restaurant would mark a climax.
The one question which nobody seemed able to
answer was, who the strange woman might be?
I confess I meditated a little on this point, too—
not that I had any particular interest in such a
vulgar disturbance; but merely because I had
seen Sonnenthal and the beauty together at the
Waldorf the afternoon before. I had observed
no one there approaching the description of this
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T H E W A N SUY DE N S APP HIRES
second woman, but then, as I reflected, that had
been hours previous to the altercation and at
quite another place.
I had not long to speculate upon the matter at
any rate, for while I was idly forming conjec-
tures in regard to it my solitude was broken in
upon by a visit from Jerry Bender, the detective.
An insignificant little fellow with a shrewd,
hickory-nut face and the alert perkiness of a
bantam rooster, he was a veritable Hop-o'-my-
thumb, diminutive in every way, from his tiny
hands and feet to his wisps of limbs and his
twenty-eight-inch chest; yet somehow he inspired
confidence.
He listened intently to my story, throwing in
an occasional brisk comment or pointed question,
but for the most part he chewed meditatively on
a straw.
In his younger days, so he informed me, he had
been a jockey, having drifted into his present
vocation through his success in ferreting out and
preventing a mammoth turf scandal, whereby,
through a projected “ringer,” it had been pro-
posed to dump the betting public to the extent
of thousands of dollars.
He showed this early association now and again
167


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
by a certain racy tinge to his conversation, as, for
instance, when I mentioned Mrs. Wan Suyden’s
maid and told of the confidence which her mis-
tress reposed in her.
“One of those French-bred fillies, eh?” he broke
in sharply. “What does eight years of running
true count to that sort? They’re born tricky,
I tell you; and the minute you ease up on the bit
they’ll swerve whether or no.”
“You think, then, that possibly?”—
“No, ma’am; I don’t think anything yet. I
am just casting my eye over the bunch in a gen-
eral way to ‘dope out” possibilities. The fact
that this little party comes of bad stock, as you
might say, don’t want to count against her, if
she’s sound and gentle on individual perform-
ance. You go on with your story, ma'am.
When you’re through I can tell you better just
who I am going to take over the jumps.”
He made no further observation, until I reached
that part of my narrative relating to my ex-
perience on the train and my subsequent visit
from the chauffeur; then he gave a quick affirm-
atory nod.
“Harry Glenn, for a thousand,” he announced
in tones of calm certainty. “That fool’s love for
168


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
a grand-stand play will get him ruled off for
good one of these days.”
“Harry Glenn?” I said inquiringly.
“Yes; or Harry Grimes, or Harold Gunn, or
Herbert Gaines, which ever you please. He’s got
more aliases than a broken-down stretch-runner
on an outlaw track. But there's one mark on him
that he never can get away from ; he always in-
troduces the latest fad. When wheeling was in
vogue, he was the famous “Bicycle Cracksman,”
that cut such a swath up through the Bronx.
Then later he was the ‘Kodak Fiend, leaving a
snap-shot as a souvenir at every place he visited,
and once even taking a flash-light of an old
couple that were snoozing away while he cleaned
out the ranch. That came pretty near landing
him, though; for the old man woke up and gave
him the liveliest kind of a scrimmage before he
could get away.”
“Then, it is the automobile which convinces
you, eh?”
“Sure. Glenn has been playing that “puff-
wagon' gag lately, as I happen to know. See,
here’s his latest work-out.” He picked up the
morning paper from the table and pointed to an
article detailing the raiding of an actress's flat
169


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
by burglars the evening before. I gave a start
of surprise, as I noted that the victim of this epi-
sode was also Miss Evelyn Arliss.
“She is quite monopolising the paper to-day,” I
murmured. “Yesterday certainly looms large
with events upon her horizon.”
According to the account, the robbery was con-
ducted with ridiculous ease, a well-dressed elderly
man having driven up to her lodgings in an auto-
mobile while she was absent at the theatre, and
with the statement that he was a friend of Miss
Arliss's, presented an order for several articles in
her room, which he said she had forgotten, and
which were necessary concomitants to her toilet
in the last act, among them the famous opals pre-
sented to her by Sonnenthal.
No question was raised at the request, as it
seemed the young woman, being of a forgetful
temperament, was in the custom of sending such
emissaries, and consequently the jewels were
handed over and the messenger, stepping into
his waiting automobile, was rapidly whirled
away.
Later it developed that the order had been
forged and that the demand had been merely the
clever ruse of a nervy thief.
170


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
“That was no one else than Harry Glenn,” com-
mented Bender decidedly.
“But the man is described here as elderly,” I
objected. “My chauffeur was a young fellow,
not over thirty-five years old.”
The detective shrugged his shoulders. “He
made a pretty good country-jake, too, didn’t
hef” he asked. “A little thing like changing his
age wouldn’t bother Harry Glenn very much.
Any one that tries to back him on “form’ two
days in succession is going to find himself up
against it for fair. But it’s him all right,” he
asserted confidently. “I only wish I could prove
it.”
“And can’t you?”
“No; as usual he has a perfect alibi. The only
sign he left of his presence was a half-smoked
cigar lying on the table in her room.”
I had been listening unconcernedly to his re-
marks, but now I suddenly awoke to a vivid in-
terest.
“A cigar?” I cried. “Did you preserve it?
Have you it with you?”
“No,” he said, smiling at my eagerness. “This
is real detective work I am doing, Miss Bramble-
stone; not story writing. Those sort of clues
171


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
are all right in a novel, but they don’t go for
much in front of a court.”
“But did you notice the brand?” still clinging
to my idea.
“Why, yes; as it happened, I did. It was a
“Mannuel Panatela.’ Why do you ask?”
“Oh, nothing,” carelessly. “I merely thought
that the next time I saw Mr. Harry Glenn I
might observe what brand of cigars he was smok-
ing. But of course you would not care to know;
that would smack too much of the methods of
fiction.”
He laughed good-humouredly at my fling, but
instantly became thoughtful. “Say, that isn’t
a bad idea,” he granted. “You do that. We
may be able to overhaul the gentleman after all.”
“You would advise me then to accept this prop-
osition of his, and pretend to tell him about the
houses of my friends?”
“By all means. You will have to be pretty
smooth to tout him wrong, for he's no yearling,
remember; but if you do win his confidence, you
can probably ride him on the snaffle. He'll tell
you everything he knows.”
“And Baggerly?” I questioned.
“Well, Baggerly is a difficult entry to figure
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THE WAN SU Y DEN SAPP HIRES
look here,” laying his finger on some scratches in
the woodwork just above it. “Those are the
marks of a wire used to manipulate the fastening.
Somebody has been visiting you when you were
not at home.”
My memory awakened by his words, I told him
of the peculiarly vivid dream I had experienced
on the first night of my return from Onyx Court,
that strong hallucination of a midnight intruder
in my chamber, and of the stifling fumes of chlo-
roform held to my nostrils.
While I was speaking he had thrown open the
pane and was eagerly examining the sill and the
adjacent stretch of wall on either side.
“Who stables over there?” he asked in his
shrewd, incisive way, pointing to an opposite
hotel across the narrow court upon which my
windows opened.
“No one,” I answered, catching the purpose of
his question. “That apartment on a level with
mine has been vacant for over a month past.”
“H’m,” he meditated, measuring the distance
with his eye. “Not over fifteen feet, I should say.
Yes, it could have been done with a stout plank.”
I gazed down into the intervening chasm, a
sheer descent of seven stories to the ground.
174


CHAPTER W
“THE DOUGLAS IN HIS HALL’”
BENDER had scarcely taken his departure when,
to my amazement, Elida put in an appearance.
As I have already remarked, I did not dream of
looking for her before noon, and it now was not
yet eleven o’clock.
Still, a single glance at her costume elucidated
the mystery. This was to be an occasion of de-
corous self-sacrifice and it were meet that she
should crucify the sluggard flesh. She showed
it by the manner in which she had dressed for
the part, Elida would dress for the part if she
were going to the guillotine. Her gown was a
study of chastened repentance in demure gray,
a suggestion of deeper grief being typified by a
plain purple toque.
“Oh, Gwendolen,” she wailed as she cast herself
into my arms, “I would rather be scalped. I
dare say it is the only thing to do, but it is terri-
ble. ‘Baggy' has put in his time for the last two
176


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
days urging me to tell the Wan Suydens; but I
never would have had the courage if you were not
simply dragging me to it. I know that I shall
faint or have hysterics.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” I reassured her de-
terminedly, pinning on my veil. “It is like
having a tooth pulled or a finger amputated.
It has got to be done; and the sooner it is over
the better for everybody concerned. Let us just
make up our minds to face the music.”
“It will be a whole brass band in this case,” mur-
mured Elida dejectedly.
I had learned that the Wan Suydens were in
town for the day, and it was consequently to their
old brown stone residence on Gramercy Park that
our mission led us.
“Drive fast,” Elida directed the cabman as we
started, explaining to me while we flew along at
breakneck speed: “I do not want any more time
for the pleasures of anticipation than is abso-
lutely necessary.”
Seeing that the poor girl was really almost over-
come by her terrors, I strove to talk on all sorts
of extraneous subjects, and she made a feeble
effort to respond; but I fully realised how farc-
ical our attempts at light heartedness had been
177


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
when we at last stood before the grim portal of
the Wan Suydens. Elida, indeed, grew so pale
that I feared she was going to collapse then and
there.
“Listen to me,” I said, giving her a little shake,
and grasping her firmly by the wrist; “you must
pull yourself together. Regard this as a first
night, where you’ve got to make an impression
and carry the day. If you cannot keep up as
yourself, act, child, act!”
The few ghastly moments in the subdued splen-
dour of the drawing-room, prior to the entrance
of our host and hostess, was the most difficult
part of the whole ordeal. Anything is better
than waiting for the blow to fall.
It seemed age-long centuries, but was of course
only a fleeting moment or so before the sound of
their coming, the rustle of Mrs. Van Suyden’s
gown preceding the heavier footsteps of her lord,
smote upon our ears and we rose to greet them.
Never before had they appeared to me so rich,
so respectable, so fastidiously remote from the
world of struggle, which through the interven-
tion of the Evil One includes such baneful hap-
penings as robberies and mysteries.
“My dear girls,” said Mrs. Van Suyden kindly,
178


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
ought to know, as they have a direct bearing
on the case; and so we have come to make con-
fession.”
Mrs. Van Suyden fumbled wildly for her eye-
glasses. “Why, why, my dears, what can either
of you possibly know about this distressing mat-
ter?”
“Oh, Mrs. Van Suyden, I am ashamed to tell
you how much we know,” cried Elida with a sob;
“but—but I’ve abused your hospitality and de-
ceived you shamefully. When you invited me up
to Onyx Court I had just been cast for my part
in ‘A Crimson Rambler,” and of course I wanted
all the advance advertising I could get, and it
looked like such a splendid chance, so"—she
brought it out with a rush,_*I rented those
rubies from Sonnenthal with the sole end in view
of having them apparently stolen while I was at
your house.”
Then in broken, disjointed sentences, with an
occasional interpolation or explanation from me,
she poured forth the whole story.
It was evident that Mrs. Van Suyden was terri-
bly perturbed. “This is awful, awful,” she
moaned. “I don’t know what to say, what to
think. Hermann, advise me.”
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THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
Mr. Van Suyden, who had been shaking his
head and frowning fiercely to himself, now ad-
vanced solemnly to the centre of the room and in
a heavily judicial manner began to cross-question
Elida. -
“How did you know the combination of the
safe?” he asked.
“I peeped over Mrs. Van Suyden’s shoulder, the
first night she put my rubies away,” replied
Elida in a small voice.
“Aha!” thundered Mr. Van Suyden. “And so
you knew the combination? The sapphires as
well as the rubies were open to you? You hear
her admit it, Laura: This exposes all of the so-
called mystery!”
Elida’s pallor vanished as by magic and her eyes
were fairly emitting sparks as she turned furi-
ously on him. “You are a wicked old man,” she
gasped. “I was very penitent when I came here,
sorry that I had caused you so much annoyance
and loss, but now I am glad that your old sap-
phires are gone. The idea of insinuating that I
am the thief! Come, Gwendolen, let us get out of
here!”
“Not so fast!” exclaimed Mr. Van Suyden,
waddling between us and the door. “Not so fast!
181


THE WAN SU Y DE N S AP PHIRES
Laura, while I detain these young women you
telephone for the police.”
“Oh!” screamed Elida, tottering toward me, her
face as gray as her gown, and “Oh!” wailed Mrs.
Wan Suyden, collapsing upon a sofa.
It was plain that Mr. Wan Suyden was enjoying
himself hugely. Although neither Elida nor my-
self made the slightest attempt to escape, he in-
sisted upon standing before the door with
his arms dramatically extended.
“Go at once, Laura,” he commanded. “Tele-
phone for the police!”
“Hermann,” cautioned Mrs. Wan Suyden, “re-
member your weak heart and do not permit your-
self to become so violent. Do not over-excite
yourself, Hermann, I beg of you.”
In spite of the embarassment, the general mis-
ery and mortification the scene was causing, it
was with difficulty that I could restrain my
laughter. I wanted to fling myself down on the
couch beside Mrs. Van Suyden and simply roll
in my mirth. Hermann was so irresistibly funny.
Fortunately, however, I succeeded in curbing my
vagrant impulses.
“Brace up, Elida, it's all right,” I whispered
to reassure my fellow-sufferer, and then I
182


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
can call him up at his club and verify my state-
ment,” I rejoined with dignity.
“Oh, my dear Hermann,” broke in Mrs. Van
Suyden, who upon hearing my announcement had
immediately sat up and begun to take notice. “My
dear Hermann, you have been very rash.-Her-
mann’s temperament,” turning to us in explana-
tion, “is so very excitable, so impulsive.—Now,
Hermann, Hermann dear, you must remember
your heart and take no further steps in this
matter until we have conferred with Mr.
Baggerly. Mr. Baggerly is acting as our
adviser, Miss Bramblestone, in regard to the
robbery.”
At this remarkable statement I almost swooned
from sheer astonishment. My head seemed to be
whirling around and around, my knees threat-
ened to give way beneath me, I gaped incredu-
lously at my informant. Baggerly? That as-
tute villain? This was certainly the boldest move
of all his startlingly audacious game!
But it was plain to be seen Elida did not share
my sentiments. An expression of ardent relief
swept over her face. The colour came back to
her cheeks, the lustre to her eye.
“Oh, it’s all right then,” she whispered joy-
184


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
ously to me. “‘Baggy’, will not let them harm
us.”
Then, as she observed Mr. Wan Suyden’s still
dubious frown: “Hurry, Gwendolen, before Her-
mann changes his mind and becomes violent
again.”
We shot past the hesitating master of the house
and out of the front door without the decency
of an adieu.
“Drive like the dickens,” commanded Elida to
the driver as we jumped into our waiting cab.
She lay back for a moment or two apparently ex-
hausted by the excitements of our recent
“crowded hour,” but at last she roused herself
sufficiently to poke open the shutter in the roof
of the hansom.
“To Maillard's,” she ordered. “Gwendolen, we
will drown our sorrows in chocolate ice-cream.”
185


CHAPTER WI
THE CLUE IN THE PERSONAL
COLUMN
ELIDA asked me to go on to a rehearsal with her;
but the whirlpool of real melodrama in which I
had been so giddily circling for the past forty-
eight hours had about used me up, and I wanted
a brief season to myself to get the blur out of my
eyes and the dizziness from my brain.
I needed to readjust myself to changed condi-
tions, to focus my vision according to my new
lights, and I required a period of solitude and
self-communion to accomplish it.
In comfortable negligée and curled up upon
the big couch in my sitting-room, imperative in-
structions issued forbidding my disturbance on
any pretext less than a fire in the house, I closed
my eyes and gave myself over to a contempla-
tion of this perplexing tangle in which I had
become so involved. I sought to marshal before
my mind in logical sequence the various dilemmas
which pressed upon me, demanding my decision.
186


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
First, there was the Captain to be considered.
Should I accede to his request and marry him at
once, as he so steadfastly urged, or should I hold
to my determination and decline until I had re-
habilitated my good name? But that one was
easy of solution. Prudence, common sense, my
pride, all bade me wait.
Yet insensibly I fell to dreaming of the ease,
the luxury, the sweet, protecting care which
would be mine if I but consented to say the
word. No need for me to worry or fret myself
over any problems then. I could bid defiance to
Baggerly, and tell Sonnenthal and the Wan Suy-
dens to find their stolen jewels as best they might.
All my burdens would be borne for me and the
tongue of slander silenced by the potent influence
of my husband's wealth.
Yes, it was a delightful, an enchanting pros-
pect, but I put the temptation from me with no
more than a passing sigh of regret. For, in
spite of the anxieties and apprehensions which
had been mine, I must confess I had found my
recent experience enlivening. There must be a
strain of Berserker blood somewhere in my
veins, for this fighting dash into the valley
of real happenings roused and thrilled my ener-
187


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
gies as nothing had ever done before. Out of a
humdrum round of dinners and teas and things
as artificial as the “dinky fans” I painted I had
suddenly been flung into a strife of elemental
passions, where neither sex, nor position, nor con-
vention availed a whit, but where one’s own craft
and skill was the only dependence and the sur-
vival of the fittest the prevailing law. And
I enjoyed it, delighted to match my wits against
the wily trickery of Baggerly, harboured a
sneaking admiration for the arrant roguery of
Harry Glenn.
All of us muse, Maud Müller-like, upon the im-
possible contingencies at times, I suppose, and if
I permitted myself now to dwell with an indul-
gent smile upon this knave's fantastic suggestion
that I should link myself to his band of Ishmael-
ites, it is not therefore to be inferred that I really
gave serious consideration to the offer.
Still, I could picture a worse fate for a woman
than to be a robber queen. There would at least
be more zest to the game, more of the actual joie
de vivre in such a career than to play household
drudge or even than to sit like a stuffed, white
rabbit decked out in jewels night after night in
the “diamond horseshoe” at the Metropolitan
Opera House. 188


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
Heigh ho! But...I was getting away from my
dilemmas; for surely the choice between Duncan
McCracken and outlawry did not constitute one
of them. That was res adjudicata. And yet the
thought of Harry Glenn did raise in my mind the
most vexing and troublesome query of them all.
Should I cajole him to his ruin, or should I not?
He was a thief, frankly and avowedly so.
Why, then, should I, a respectable and law-abid-
ing member of society, hesitate to give him up to
the justice he so richly merited? Because it
would be through treachery and deceit, eh?
Pish He had declared war against my kind,
and in war all things are fair.
Thus with pharisaical argument my judgment
sought to over-ride my sentimental scruples, but
my inner nature rebelled.
“Judas, no doubt, pursued a similar reasoning,”
it cried contemptuously. “You hold no commis-
sion from society. You are no sworn officer of
the law. If you entrap him, you do it solely and
simply for your own benefit.”
And yet I cherished no such qualms in regard to
Baggerly. Him I was quite willing to see ex-
posed, convicted, occupying a felon’s cell. Per-
haps, the inspiration came to me, perhaps
189


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
through Glenn I might be able to secure definite
proof of Baggerly’s connection with the robber
band.
This latest exploit of theirs for instance,—the
stealing of Evelyn Arliss's opals? Bender had
said that Glenn had a perfect defence, but was
Baggerly so well protected? Might there not be
some little shred of incriminating evidence hang-
ing loose to demonstrate his complicity?
I picked up the paper and re-read the account.
The flaring headline caught my eye: “Gorgeous
Opals Stolen!”
Opals' Where had I read or heard of opals re-
cently? I sat up with a start, gazing fixedly
at my image in the mirror across the room, struck
dumb by an amazing idea.
Running hurriedly to my desk, I took from a
pigeon-hole the newspaper clipping Glenn had
dropped on the occasion of his visit and scanned
with a new interest the commonplace lines:
“WILL lady with opal brooch in Fifth Ave. stage about
ten o'clock Tuesday morning meet gent. in brown derby
who sat opposite. Object matrimony. Address, AUTO-
MOBILE, 472.”
“Lady with opal brooch.” How readily that
might apply to the victim of last night's inci-
dent. 190


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
But there was a stronger coincidence still.
“Fifth Ave. stage.” “Automobile 472.” It was
the figures which especially caught my glance,
for the apartment hotel at which Evelyn Arliss
lodged—I sought the printed account once more
to make sure, yes, it was 472 Fifth Avenue!
Sometimes the mind leaps direct to a conclusion
without being conscious of the intermediate steps.
I suppose in a way I had always attributed a
greater measure of importance to Glenn's lost
personal than was apparent on its face. Per-
haps, too, I had heard somewhere that this
column is often used for purposes more sinister
than the broadcasting of “agony notices” and
the perplexities of the lovelorn. But, above all,
it must be remembered I was frantically seeking
light from any quarter.
So, now, whatever may have been the process
of my deductions, I grasped as with a single flash
of comprehension the real significance of the slip
of paper in my hands.
This was no ordinary personal, but a cipher
message to the members of Glenn’s band, arrang-
ing for the larceny of Miss Arliss’s gems.
Moreover, cryptograms having always exercised
a considerable fascination for me, I have de-
191


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
veloped some skill at solving them. And with the
key I held this one was ridiculously easy.
“Ten o’clock Tuesday,” said the notice, and ten
o'clock Tuesday was the hour at which the affair
had occurred. True, the word “morning” fol-
lowed, but that was manifestly a flimsy decep-
tion, used, as contraries often are in these com-
munications, to veil the intended meaning.
No, I could not be mistaken. The time, the
place, the manner of the proposed robbery were
all plainly foretold, even the booty expected.
Why, I gasped at the realisation of it, I held
in my hand a bomb which, if exploded, would
blow that “perfect alibi” of Harry Glenn's into
flinders!
And then the quick thought came, how shall I
use this knowledge I have acquired? Shall I
turn it over to Bender to assist him in running
his man to earth?
My eyes narrowed and I slowly shook my head.
Not so. Since he was employed on both cases, the
recovery of Miss Arliss's opals counted with Ben-
der as strongly as the restoration of my rubies.
Strengthened by this evidence, and on the prin-
ciple that a bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush, he would bend all his energies to pressing
192


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
the former charge regardless of consequences to
the latter. And if he were successful in his ef-
forts, then good-bye to all hope of a return for
the rubies or sapphires. For Glenn, learning
that it was I who had effected his conviction,
would be likely to divulge anything rather than
the whereabouts of the property in which I was
interested.
Should I then deal directly with the man him-
self, offering him a quid pro quo, my silence in
exchange for Elida’s necklace? I could almost
see his frank amusement were I to broach such a
proposition to him.
“Why, Miss Bramblestone,” he would laugh
derisively, “do you really think you can scare me
with an old cigar stump and a newspaper per-
sonal which you have twisted into meaning
something never intended?”
And then disgusted with my double-dealing,
he would turn scornfully upon his heel, and
again farewell to a chance of getting back the
rubies.
Moreover, even were he to consent to the ar-
rangement, there was a nasty flavour of criminal-
ity to such a transaction which was far from
appealing to me. It smacked of blackmail to my
193


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
mind. Was there not even a specific name for
dealings of the sort? Yes; I remembered it now,
—it is called “compounding a felony.” Some-
how that sonorous term struck me as infinitely
more dreadful than simple stealing. I am afraid
I would not have been a success as a “robber
queen” after all. Like Tom Sawyer, I was will-
ing to be only a moral pirate.
Yet was there no way in which I could take ad-
vantage of this windfall of information that had
come my way? While I sat pondering over it
the answer came. A phrase I had inadvertently
used in my cogitations a moment or so before
recurred to me and instantly illuminated my
course.
“This is a cipher message to the members of
Harry Glenn’s band,” I had said to myself. Was
it not a natural inference, therefore, that there
had been previous communications and would be
others later whenever any fresh foray was
planned?
And who would issue these veiled commands?
Who else but the leader, the master mind,-in
brief, Baggerly?
Ah! The solution lay before me now, plain as
a pikestaff. I had but to bide my time, to wait,
194


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
to watch the newspapers, for I held beneath my
fingers a cord which must in time surely lead me
to my wily opponent.
I had the key by which to read his mandates to
his inferiors. The when, the where, the how of
each successive raid would be revealed to me in
advance as fully as though I were a member of
the band.
What easier, then, than to have a trusty man
stationed at the appointed scene of operations to
note events and shadow the cracksmen from their
work until such time as they turned over their
spoils to their captain? Why, indeed, might I
not undertake this task myself?
Thrilled by the magnitude, the simplicity of
the scheme, I snatched up the paper once more
and ran my eye hastily down the personal
column.
There were messages, appointments, requests
for meetings galore, but none which by any
stretch of the imagination could be assigned to
the category of cipher communications. It was
evident that Baggerly had no enterprise on the
tapis for that night at least.
Desiring to verify my theory, however, I sent
out for a file of papers for the preceding month,
195


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
and searching through them, speedily found all
the confirmation I required.
Almost every robbery or burglary reported,—
and there had been not a few of them,-had its
corresponding personal a day or two before, sum-
moning the band to action. I could not help
wondering, as I read, how the police had allowed
such an obvious clue to escape them.
Two of these notices in the issue of the previous
Monday were full of meat to me. One was a
request for the acquaintanceship of a lady de-
scribed as on a trip from Albany to New York,
and mentioned as an identifying circumstance
that she had dropped a sapphire ring on the car
floor while the train stopped at Wheaton. This,
of course, was a distinct prophecy of the affair
at Onyx Court.
The other, signed by “Country Jake,” stipu-
lated for a meeting with “Blue-eyed Girl” at the
Grand Central Station that evening and mani-
festly arranged for the presence of the confeder-
ate to whom Glenn had trusted for the safe dis-
posal of that unexpected but none the less
welcome haul to his net, Elida’s rubies.
Anticipating the possibility of an arrest and
search at New York as a consequence of the Wan
196


THE WAN SU Y DE N S A PP HIRES
Suyden incident, he had taken the precaution of
having an associate on hand to relieve him of his
tell-tale plunder, and naturally had employed the
same method to sequester the rubies when I so
confidingly submitted to his counsels. Thus the
stealing of Sonnenthal’s necklace was shown to
be, as I had maintained from the first, no part of
the original plan, but merely an adventitious out-
cropping from it promptly turned to advantage.
These conclusions reached I cast aside the pa-
pers over which I had been engaged, and gave
myself up to a pleased contemplation of my suc-
cess in unravelling this latest clue. Yes, there
could be no doubt that the game was now in my
own hands. Baggerly lay at my mercy; I had
but to make my projected moves across the
board and he was checkmated, routed, undone!
Even should he be warier than I thought and
hold no personal communication with his sub-
ordinates, still did I not despair. With the toils
closely gathered about the lesser members of the
band, some one of them would be found to admit
his leadership.
Harry Glenn, it is true, might abide by his creed
of “Honour among thieves,” but I did not credit
all his associates with such rigid loyalty. Bag-
197


CHAPTER VII
A TARGET FOR SU SPICION
“Gw ENDoIEN, I want you to come out with me at
once and get married,” quoth the Captain as he
entered my room that evening. Moreover, he
said it as though he were issuing a command “to
charge the guns.” His brows were drawn into a
portentous frown; his voice was tense, sharp, dic-
tatorial.
Now, no maiden—not even one of twenty-eight
summers—likes to be ordered to the altar. Be-
side, as a second cause of complaint, “Sir
Romeo” was inexcusably late in putting in his
appearance. It was evident that a wholesome
touch of discipline was needed here. Captain
Duncan McCracken must learn that it was a free
American woman with whom he was mating, not
one of his meek and docile compatriots.
Therefore I received his suggestion in a dis-
tinctly mutinous spirit. “My dear Duncan,” I
railed, “you forget your prayer book. Matri-
mony is a state to be entered into soberly, dis-
199


THE WAN SU Y DE N S APP HIRES
“The fact of the matter is, Gwen,” hurriedly
and averting his eyes, “there are important
reasons that I should return home immediately,–
er—some things a bit out of fix on the estate, you
understand.” He gulped over that and his face
became as red as a boiled lobster. “So I thought
we could hunt up a padre and get married to-
night, and sail the first thing in the morning on
the Campania. I have already booked our pas-
sage; that was what made me so late in getting
here.
“You’ll do this for me, won’t you, Gwen?” he
pleaded earnestly. “I know it’s a bit rough on
you, my girl, dragging you off in this way with-
out any toggery or anything of the sort, but I’ll
make it all up to you when we get to the other
side. Say you’ll consent, dear; it is really neces-
sary that I should go.”
“And what about the stolen jewels?” I asked.
“Oh, bother the jewels P’ he broke in impa-
tiently. “Are we to waste our lives and wreck
our happiness hunting up a lot of other people's
trumpery? Let the detectives attend to that,
that’s what they are paid for. We’ll sail away
and forget that the Wan Suydens and Elida
Yeats and the whole rotten lot ever existed!”
201


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPP HIRES
“See here, Duncan McCracken,” I said, lay-
ing my hand on his arm and forcing him to look
me squarely in the eye, “if you were in a pretty
tight place, where the enemy was pressing you
close, but which honour dictated you should hold
at any cost, would you turn your back and run
away?”
“But this is entirely different,” he protested
hastily. “You have no call to sacrifice your-
self”—
“Ah, I have trapped you,” I broke in triumph-
antly. “Will you never learn, Duncan, that it is
useless to try to deceive me? Confess that it is
on my account and not by reason of ‘er—some
things a bit out of fix on the estate,' you are
urging this step. Let me share the knowledge
with you, Duncan. Tell me what has happened
to set you so aflutter in regard to me?”
Despite the gravity of the situation, for I
realised that it was no small danger menacing me
which could so alarm my lover, I could not re-
strain a smile at the dear fellow’s confusion. He
scarcely knew whether to admire or be provoked
at the promptness with which I had punctured his
laboured diplomacy.
Nevertheless, he still tried to evade me, to put
202


THE WAN SU Y DE N S A PPHIRES
me off with deceptions so thin that a baby could
have seen through them. On only one point was
he frank and open, like himself—and that, his
eager desire that we should be married without
further delay and sail for England the follow-
ing morning.
Learning that I could find out nothing from
direct examination, I resorted to guile; and leav-
ing the question of our marriage in abeyance for
the moment, began to scold him for his desertion
of me throughout the entire day. He swallowed
the bait like a hungry trout and finally in the
course of his defence let slip the information that
he had spent the afternoon at Onyx Court.
I began to see daylight ahead, but I allowed no
hint of my interest to become manifest.
“With whom did you run up there?” I asked
carelessly.
He gave me a quick glance out of the corner
of his eye, but my assumption of indifference
laid his suspicions. “With Van Suyden,” he an-
swered contrainedly; then added in an off-hand
fashion: “That Bender chap was up there too.”
“Ah,” I cried eagerly, forgetting for a moment
the pose I had adopted, “and what does he think
of the affair now that he has looked over the
ground?” 203


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
A savage gleam came into the Captain's eye.
“Small odds it makes what that idiot thinks,”
he growled disgustedly. “I wish I had never
heard of him. He’s like all the rest of his
kind, ready with any amount of promises and
able to put on a deal of mysterious ‘side, but
precious slim when it comes to actual accomplish-
ment.”
“Has he not yet been able to evolve any
theory?” I asked cautiously, wondering in just
what way Bender had managed to rumple the
Captain's fur.
“Theory?” viciously. “Oh, yes, he has more
theories than the War Office in full swing. And
the rottenest, flimsiest one of the whole lot he
sticks to as though it were a revelation straight
from Heaven. Why,” with rising anger, “I laid
myself out to prove to him how foolish his idea
was, that the trifling coincidences he was so keen
on might have happened to anybody, but I made
no more impression on his stupid obstinacy than
if I hadn’t spoken. I’d give him his walking pa-
pers, get him out of the case in short order,” he
grumbled, “if it were not that Van Suyden has
also hired him—he trains in with every fresh de-
tective that comes along, you know. So now I
204


THE WAN SU Y DE N S A PP HIRES
have to stay by the game in order to find out what
this Bender fellow may be up to.”
“But what is this solution of his you find so ob-
jectionable?” I probed.
Duncan caught himself together with a jerk,
twisting uncomfortably in his chair and looking
frightened at the indiscretion with which he had
permitted his tongue to wag.
“Oh, nothing at all,” he muttered shortly, “just
a lot of bally rot, really too imbecile to repeat.
Let us not talk of the blithering ass any more. I
get so annoyed when I think of him I can
scarcely control myself. Let us decide instead
what we are going to do. Listen to reason,
Gwen. Come out and get married, dearest, and
sail away with me in the morning?” Again there
was that note of almost impassioned appeal in
his voice as he harked back to the unsettled ques-
tion.
But I was merciless. It was evident that he was
trying to keep something from me, and curiosity,
if nothing else, demanded that I should be en-
lightened. Moreover, I had a very shrewd sus-
picion as to the cause of his reticence.
“No, I am interested in this theory of Ben-
der's,” I declared perversely. “I don’t share
205


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
your prejudice against him; on the contrary, he
struck me as a very canny individual. I
should really like to know whom he has fixed
upon as the thief.”
The Captain braced himself back in his chair
and lied nobly. “Oh, he hasn’t got nearly that
far along yet,” he asserted. “He doesn’t name
any one in particular, or even intimate, don’t you
know? It was simply that I objected to-er—
his crazy explanation for the manner in which
the robbery was accom.plished.”
“And what is his explanation?”
He glanced pleadingly at me, but I was obdu-
rate. “Well,” he hesitated, “I believe he agrees
with Baggerly that the entrance was effected
from the outside.”
“Then Beggarly was right, after all, and the
gardeners were not at work upon the lawn?” I
questioned excitedly.
A puzzled frown contracted his brow. “That’s
what Bender asserts,” he granted, “and what’s
more, he has induced the men themselves to con-
fess it. Nevertheless, I’d be willing to make my
affidavit that I saw them out there with my own
eyes during the very hour it is claimed they were
away. Crosby saw them too, but he is not so
206


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
positive as I in regard to the time. It is really
a most extraordinary thing,” he added ruefully.
“I’ll swear I hadn’t had more than two drinks,
and I don’t think I have taken to seeing visions.”
“What do the gardeners have to say about it?”
I asked, equally bewildered. “How do they ex-
plain their previous statement that they were
there all the time?”
“Oh, their story is straight enough as far as
that goes. Van Suyden and Bender and I all
took turns at cross-questioning them, but they
never wavered from it a hair's breadth. They in-
sist that about one o’clock a man whom neither
of them knew, nor whom they are able satisfac-
torily to describe, came running up out of breath
and told them that the little daughter of one of
them had fallen down a well and been drowned.
They dropped their work at once, of course, and
raced off to the scene of the accident, only to find
when they arrived that they had been cruelly
hoaxed, and that the child was safe and well play-
ing about under its mother’s eye.
“They admit, moreover, that they were absent
for fully an hour, and explain their denial of the
fact in the first instance owing to a fear that they
might be docked in their wages, saying they
207


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPPHIRES
stuck to it afterward when they learned the truth,
lest a change in their story might serve to cast
suspicion upon them?”
“And why may they not have done it? How is
one to be certain that this appearance of candour
is not all pretence?”
Even Duncan’s sombre countenance had to
relax into a smile at that. “Good Lord, no,” he
rejoined emphatically. “If you once saw them,
Gwen, you’d never need to ask the question.
They are the very limit of stupid simplicity. No ;
Bender’s idea,” he hesitated a moment, “is that
the job was engineered at least by a professional,
some chap he calls Harry Glenn.—Did you
speak?” for I had drawn in my breath sharply at
this piece of intelligence.
“No; go on,” I cried excitedly. “What reason
has he for suspecting this Harry Glenn?”
The Captain's lip curled a bit scornfully. “A
no end silly one, to my notion. All he has to go
on is a half-smoked cigar he found down by the
old hollow tree at the edge of the lawn, and which
he says is the same brand that Glenn is used to
smoking. A trifle far-fetched, don’t you think?”
I only smiled and murmured, “Perhaps,” but in-
wardly I was rather cynically reflecting that Mr.
208


CHAPTER VIII
THE WEB OF CIRCU MSTANCE
THE Captain gave a quick, suppressed exclama-
tion of annoyance at having betrayed himself,
but refused to confirm my conclusion in words.
In a stubborn silence he paced up and down the
room, chewing savagely on an unlighted cigar.
“See here, Duncan,” I said at last, rising to my
feet and placing myself directly in his path, “I
am the person most vitally interested in this mat-
ter, and I think I have a right to insist upon
frankness. If I am to be made the target for
these detectives’ animadversions, or if any facts
have cropped out in the investigation which ap-
pear prejudicial to me, is it not far better that I
should know them? I am neither a child nor an
imbecile, but a woman capable of defending her-
self, and I do not propose to fight longer in the
dark. Now if Bender has accused me of being
the thief”—
“He’d better not do so openly,” interrupted the
Captain fiercely, “or I’ll break the insignificant
210


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“But she was not here, Duncan,” I protested.
“Where did Bender ever get the notion she had
been? There is absolutely no foundation for it,
no reason which could have caused her to seek me
out. I have not set eyes on her since the time I
left Onyx Court.”
But the bewildered expression only deepened in
his eyes. “Most extraordinary ! Really, most
extraordinary P’ he kept repeating to himself.
“What is so extraordinary?” I demanded
sharply, his reiterated strain commencing to get
on my nerves. “Do you mean to imply that you
doubt my word on so simple a matter?”
“Oh, no,” he disclaimed hastily. “It is only that
the police are so positive in their statements.
The two things are a bit difficult to reconcile,
don’t you know?”
“The police?” quickly. “You are not trying to
tell me that the police accuse me of having had
dealings with Estelle?”
“Well, something like that,” he admitted un-
willingly. “It seems,” consenting at last to make
himself plain, “that this girl took umbrage at
some of the questions Van Suyden and the police
were putting to her, and threw up her billet yes-
terday morning without a moment’s warning.
212


THE WAN SU Y DE N S AP PHIRES
This was regarded as a shade suspicious by the
“bobbies, seeing that they had let her off in the
investigation rather lightly than otherwise, so
they decided to shadow her and find out what she
might be up to. According to their report, she
took the noon train to town, and came direct
from the station here, remaining with you from a
half to three-quarters of an hour. Then”—
“What a wicked, malicious lie!” I broke in in-
dignantly. “I was out all yesterday afternoon,
as I can easily prove, so that part of their story
is stamped as false to begin with. Nor do I be-
lieve Estelle ever came near the place. The whole
thing is simply a fabrication trumped up by the
police to conceal their own shortcomings.-
Still,” stepping quickly to the telephone, “it is
not very difficult to make certain.”
Calling up the office, I asked if a young woman
had inquired for me the previous afternoon; and
to my discomfiture received an answer in the af-
firmative, the clerk remarking that since my visi-
tor had gone directly to my apartment without
waiting to be announced, and had remained there
some time, he had naturally inferred that I had
been at home and had received her.
“I hope nothing is wrong, Miss Bramblestone?”
213


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
he added anxiously. “A Central Office man came
in while the woman was here, and seemed to be
pretty inquisitive in regard to her, but I told
him,” virtuously, “that he must be off his base.
Anybody that came to see you had to be all right.
Still, if you weren’t at home—”
“Oh, no,” I hastened to assure him, “there was
nothing out of the way about the circumstance.
I simply heard that some one had called to see
me and was wondering whom it could have been.
The girl probably rang my bell until she got
tired waiting and then went away. How long
was she upstairs; do you remember?”
“Well, I should say from a half to three-quar-
ters of an hour,” he computed. “I know that I
had just started to check off the dinner menus
when she came in, and I had them all well finished
before she left. And that is a job that gener-
ally takes me from twenty-five to thirty min-
utes.”
I hung up the receiver and faced Captain Mc-
Cracken with dilated eyes. “Now what do you
think of that?” I demanded wonderingly of him,
although I must confess I had small expectation
of an enlightening response from that quarter.
He tugged gloomily at his moustache and fretted
214


THE WAN SU Y DE N S A PPHIRES
his brow into creased lines; but the riddle was evi-
dently as far beyond his comprehension as it was
of mine.
“Why in the world,” I pondered, “that “French-
bred filly,” as Bender calls her, should have
hunted me up or what she could have been doing
in that half to three-quarters of an hour that she
was upstairs are things that distinctly stump
me.”
The Captain gave over jerking at his mous-
tache and offered a suggestion. “Perhaps,” he
said, “she was trying to get your help in obtain-
another situation?”
But I scoffed at any such explanation as that.
There were a score of women who had visited fre-
quently at Onyx Court to whom Estelle would
apply sooner than to me. They were women of
wealth and position, on whom she might consider
she had a certain claim by reason of extra ser-
vices rendered them from time to time, very differ-
ent from an insignificant person like myself, who
had never received from her more than the scant-
est attention.
“And yet,” I mused, “she must have been ex-
tremely anxious to see me, lingering all that time
in the corridor, waiting for me to return.-
215


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPPHIRES
Where did she go after she left here?” I asked,
turning to Duncan.
“That was what I was going on to tell you,” he
returned, “when you interrupted me. Why,” re-
suming his narrative, “it seems that in some un-
accountable way the detectives blundered in their
work. She was seen to leave the house and to
take a south-bound Columbus Avenue car, but
somewhere on the way down town she managed
to lose her pursuers as completely as though she
had been swallowed up in the earth, nor have they
been able to set eyes on her since.”
Again I broke in. “And is this,” I cried con-
temptuously, “the wonderful discovery Bender
has made which appears to threaten me? Sim-
ply, that a maid threw up her position, and com-
ing to town, called, for some inexplicable reason,
at my hotel? No wonder you considered the man
insane, Duncan, if he attaches any importance to
so slight a set of circumstances as these.”
“Well, there is something more,” hesitated the
Captain ruefully. “You see, they have practi-
cally made certain that Estelle had the sapphires
with her when she left this house!”
“What?” I must have jumped a foot out of my
chair in my astonishment. “Do you mean to tell
216


THE WAN SU Y DE N S A PPHIRES
“Of course not,” agreed Duncan, “but it is,
nevertheless, a deuced unfortunate circumstance.
I wish to Heaven,” he scowled, “the baggage
had kept herself to herself and not have brought
you into it at all.”
“Brought me into it?” I gasped. “But how?
Why? What do you mean?”
“Why, don’t you see, dear, it gives Bender and
all the rest of them, indeed, some sort of a peg on
which to hang their fool theories? They are
quite at sea over the case, don’t you understand;
and, by Jove, they’ve got to offer some kind of
a solution, if only to save their own faces.”
I had shrunk back aghast and trembling when
the full purport of this latest development first
broke upon me, but I rise bravely to an emer-
gency, and as he paused I was myself again,_to
outward seeming at least cool and self-possessed.
“Still, even with their eagerness to find a scape-
goat,” I argued thoughtfully, “I fail to see why
the actions of this maid should serve to prejudice
me. I was not at home when she called, I saw
nothing of her.”
“No,” he assented; “and it is chiefly due to that
fact that you owe your immunity from arrest, or
at any rate an examination by the police. They
218


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
the girl has attempted to pawn only the tiara,
whereas had she the full set in her hands, he
thinks she would inevitably have tried first to dis-
pose of the necklace, since it would be more
readily saleable and also less likely to attract
comment.”
“Let me understand you,” I interrupted, for I
was just a little bewildered by the suddenness
with which this chain of allegations had been
thrust upon me. “If I have followed you cor-
rectly, Bender asserts that through the con-
nivance of Harry Glenn I committed the robbery
and carried off the sapphires; but being sur-
prised by Estelle, was forced to purchase her si-
lence with a promise to give her the tiara. In
accordance with this agreement, she is supposed
to have called here yesterday, obtained her share
of the plunder and then disappeared?”
“Yes,” he supplemented, “and he thinks her
reason for throwing up her position and en-
deavouring to get rid of the stones so quickly is
that she had overheard your name mentioned with
suspicion in a talk between Mr. and Mrs. Van
Suyden and became frightened. And he puts
down to the same cause your visit of confession to
the Van Suydens this morning and your ostensi-
221


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
bly frank exposition to him of the dealings you
have had with Harry Glenn.”
“But there is one point,” I cried triumphantly,
my mind aroused to my peril now working at
double-quick time, “which this astute gentleman
has completely overlooked. How, with the rigor-
ous search which was conducted, did I succeed
in smuggling these gems out under the very
noses of the officers at the Grand Central Sta-
tion?”
“Bender says by means of my fur coat, which
all of them now agree must have been stolen by a
confederate of Glenn’s, posted on the platform
for just such an emergency.”
“Well, it seems to me a very laboured explana-
tion,” I sneered, “for the jewels must in some
way have been restored to my keeping, if their
theory is to hold that Estelle secured the tiara on
the occasion of her visit to my rooms. Does Ben-
der fancy that these thieves would give back the
plunder to me after they once had it in their own
clutches?”
“Yes,” said Duncan slowly, and the troubled
expression deepened in his eyes. “He regards
this as the safest cache which they could find,
and declares that one of the band did visit you
222


T H E W A N SUY DE N SAPP HIRES
that night for exactly such a purpose. His au-
thority for this statement, I believe, is once more
our good friend Baggerly, who asserts he saw the
man with his own eyes in your rooms at two o'-
clock in the morning P” He added this last drily
and without a note of passion in his voice, but I
could note a quick set to his firm jaw, a gleam in
his eye, which told me that there was going to
be a day of reckoning for some one.
“Baggerly?” I exclaimed, completely dumb-
founded by this latest display of audacity.
“Baggerly? Why, it was he himself who came
stealing in here while I slept. Where does he
claim to have been that he could see so much?”
I demanded sarcastically.
“He says at his window. Did you not know
that he has an apartment just across the court
from yours? He took possession of it, I under-
stand, on his return from Onyx Court, late the
night of the robbery, and according to his story,
had just come in when his attention was attracted
by a moving light in your chamber, and
he distinctly saw there the figure of a man
who seemed to be making himself very much at
home.
“He paid little heed to the circumstance at the
223


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
excitement, “that the intruder could have come
only from the apartment across the way.
“I have always believed that Baggerly was that
burglar,” I went on. “Everything pointed to it.
He alone, beside Elida, Sonnenthal and myself,
knew of the plan in regard to the rubies. He
could have had no other idea that night than
that the necklace was still in my keeping. As I
say, I have always suspected that it was he, but
now, since you tell me that those are his apart-
ments, I know it!”
But the harassed frown did not lift from his
brow as I had hoped. “Unfortunately,” he said
in the same tense fashion, “Baggerly had a com-
panion with him who will vouch for the truth
of the story and whose own word is unimpeach- .
able. And Bender,” he added, “jeers at the evi-
dences of a burglary as details which could easily
have been arranged after the event.
“Oh, my love, my love,” he broke out, his con-
straint at last giving way and his agony reveal-
ing itself in his broken tones, “don’t you realise
how hopeless is the struggle? God knows, I be-
lieve in you, but there seems a cabal here deter-
mined to hound you down to ignominy and dis-
grace. Why,” with a sudden burst of pent-up
225


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
threw back my head defiantly and stamped my
foot. “They will find I am like John Paul
Jones,” I declared. “I have just commenced to
fight!”
It was a touch of melodrama, I admit; yet some-
how the ringing sentiment fitted the surcharged
atmosphere of the moment and struck a respon-
sive chord in my companion’s breast. His eye
kindled, and springing forward, he gripped my
hand in a hearty clasp.
“By Jove, little woman,” he cried, “you show
a spirit that makes me ashamed of myself.
You’re right, Gwen, stick to your colours no mat-
ter what they say. And what’s more, I’ll back
you to win!”
227





BOOK III
BY W O M A N’S WIT


“It’s brains that wins horse races,<-brains and gameness.
And, weight for sex, I generally prefer to back a filly.
They may be flighty, but they're seldom yellow.”—From the
paddock philosophy of J. Bender, jockey.


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
tain any real misgivings as to my ability ulti-
mately to do so, provided I were allowed sufficient
time to carry out the plan of campaign I had
formulated. But, alas, in that proviso lay a very
disturbing rub.
And, by the way, what a jangled, topsy-turvy
world this would become, if each of us had it in
his power to regulate the clocks according to his
own liking. To one person the hours drag along
on leaden foot, and it seems as though the longed-
for morrow would never come; while to another
the minutes go fairly whizzing past, and the
vesper bell sounds upon a task scarcely yet com-
menced.
“Time! Time!” was now the frenzied prayer
of my soul, as I paced restlessly up and down my
chamber that night after the Captain left. Give
me but time, and with the clues in my hand I
could easily loose myself from the Laocoon-like
coils with which Fate was endeavouring to
throttle me. Free to work out the hypothesis I
had conceived, to trace those cipher personals
back to their author, I had no doubt of eventually
solving the entire mystery of the robbery, nor of
demonstrating Baggerly’s guilty responsibility.
But in the meantime, by a sort of mocking per-
232


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
burglar into my domicile; the acquaintanceship
I had ingenuously enough struck up with my
debonnair chevalier d’industrie; and finally this
unexplained visit to my house from the maid who
was known to have a part of the stolen jewels in
her possession, all of them events beyond my
power to control, or, if directed by me, under-
taken in entire singleness of purpose,_now, re-
viewed as a whole, and tinged and coloured by my
adversary’s malice, stood out against me as a
damning arraignment.
Yet, even so, if I had but time, I could still
thwart and overmaster the plotting schemer. If
I had but time! For I could not conceal from
myself that while I waited and watched for the
appearance of another cipher personal, the pub-
licity which I so dreaded might at any moment
break upon me.
The story of the robbery with its apparently
unsolvable problems had aroused a tremendous
public interest; and I was well aware that the
reporters of the saffron press were investigating
the case as diligently as the police and detectives.
Let but a suggestion of my unhappy connection
with the affair reach one of these sensation
seekers, and with so many apprised of the true
234


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
facts, that could not long be delayed, and an
accusation more or less specific must surely come.
I would be pilloried before the cruel millions, dis-
graced, probably subjected to arrest.
Oh, I could not bear it! Up and down the room
I swept, wringing my hands, shaken by a storm
of revolt against such bitter injustice, my stiff
lips framed in the reiterated cry: “Time! Time!
Give me but a little time!”
Unconsciously, in my passings to and fro, I
observed that a calendar standing upon my table
still presented the date of the previous day; and
stepping over to it mechanically, as one will at
such times, started to tear off the erroneous leaf.
Quite by accident, my eye caught the sentiment
inscribed upon it; but it calmed and soothed my
fierce unrest as though it had been a message
of inspiration straight from heaven.
It was a line from Lowell: “One day with life
and heart is more than time enough to find a
world!”
One day? I had that at least. Why, then,
should I sit supinely by and bow my head before
the storm? It was true that time was required
to follow out the clue which I had discovered in
the “personal column;” but might there not be
235


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
other loose ends left by Baggerly which would
as inevitably lead me to the proof of his knavery,
and which could be unravelled without delay?
Inspired by this fresh hope, I sat down, and
strove calmly and dispassionately to reason out
the case against my bâte noire, presenting the
existing facts to myself as a lawyer for the prose-
cution might have argued them to a jury. But it
was of no avail. Even I, prejudiced tribunal
though I was, had to admit that upon the evi-
dence the prisoner must go acquit. To every
point I could make against him, he was able to
interpose a valid and complete defence.
Plainly I had erred in my method of procedure.
If I was to expound the riddle, I must approach
my case with unbiassed mind, and assume every
one connected with it, even to Baggerly, as
absolutely innocent until I had proven him
guilty.
What, then, were the premises from which I must
draw my deductions? First, that the sapphires
were stolen shortly after Elida had visited the
safe in quest of her rubies; second, that the gar-
deners upon the lawn had been absent during the
period that the robbery was committed; third,
that Estelle, the maid, or some woman closely re-
236


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
sembling her, had endeavoured to pawn the tiara
the previous evening.
These were the well-established and salient
features of the case, as distinguished from the
mass of suspicion and inference which had
led the detectives so far astray; and upon
these I must rely in constructing a tenable
hypothesis.
Then was it Estelle who had been the thief, I
asked myself? Against her could be advanced
the one piece of direct testimony in the whole
complication; for she, to employ an expressive
phrase of Harry Glenn’s, had been “caught with
the goods.” Yet, somehow, that theory dis-
tinctly failed to satisfy me. Setting aside her
eight years of loyal service, there was still the
absence of the men upon the lawn to be taken
into account.
The stratagem whereby they had been with-
drawn from the scene must certainly have had
some relation to the occurrence within the house;
yet it could have rendered no assistance to her. Of
course, it might be urged that she had shrewdly
arranged it in advance, in order to bear out the
idea that the thief had come and gone by way of
the window; but if so, it was certainly an odd
237


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
coincidence that she should have selected for her
enterprise the very time that Elida chose in which
to abstract the rubies.
It struck me, indeed, as a far more reasonable
conception, that the suggestion I had offered
when the Captain and I first discussed the affair
was nearer the mark; and that on returning to
the room and finding the safe door open, with the
rubies missing, the maid had been seized with an
uncontrollable temptation to take the sapphires,
and had yielded to it. Elida, it is true, insisted
that after removing the rubies she had closed the
safe; but then Elida’s assertions on any point
might fairly be open to question.
Still, neither did this explanation dispose of the
trick which had been used to decoy the gardeners
from the lawn. “I suppose they were really ab-
sent,” I meditated to myself, endeavouring to
fully test every fact before employing it in the
structure I was building. “The Captain, of
course, declares that he saw them; but they would
hardly—
“Why? I sat up hard and gripped my knees.
In a flash of comprehension the whole plot had
revealed itself to me. The story of the garden-
ers was simple truth in every particular; but
238


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
more convinced was I that I was right. And
the thief, this daring and resourceful cracks-
man, this dramatic scamp who insisted on play-
ing his perilous enterprises as farces? It was
not hard for me to put my finger down with a
definite “Ecce, homo!” Beyond peradventure or
question, it was Harry Glenn.
A dozen things proved it to me, if proof had
been necessary, the manner and method of the
exploit; his foreknowledge of Elida’s project,
through his connection with Baggerly; further,
his presence at Wheaton in a rustic disguise on
the day of the robbery; and finally, the half-
smoked Manuel Panatela discovered by Bender
on the grounds.
In brief, as I now reasoned it out, there had
been three separate and distinct transactions to
the affair at Onyx Court, or four, if my sub-
sequent loss of the rubies was to be included.
The first, Elida’s innocent, though indiscreet,
visit to the safe; the second, Glenn’s croupier
play from the window; and the third, Estelle's
seizure of the remaining sapphires as the
result of a sudden and overwhelming tempta-
tion.
What I could not understand, though, and it
241


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
perplexed me not a little, was the maid’s subse-
quent behaviour. Why had she so abruptly
thrown up her position and fled; and why had
a woman so clever as she had shown herself to
be attempted to dispose of her plunder in so
bungling a fashion?
Remorse, or a sudden panic, I decided, must
have occasioned her hurried departure from Onyx
Court; and her imprudent visit to the pawnshop,
I ascribed to that fatality which pursues even
the wiliest criminals, causing them ever to make
just the one misstep which will result in their
apprehension. But there still remained a poser,
which, debate it as I might, left me in a quan-
dary.
Why had she sought me out? There was no
possible bond of union between us, no advantage
which she could hope to gain at my hands.
In the end, I could do no more than shake my
head, and put her visit down to a chance shot,
directed by that malign influence which had been
so persistently dogging my footsteps.
There was, too, another question, less impor-
tant, perhaps, but almost equally vexing, because
I was similarly at a loss to answer it; and that
was, how had Harry Glenn been able to transport
242


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
his share of the stolen sapphires undiscovered
past the rigorous search which had been accorded
us at the Grand Central Station?
The suggestion that he might either have
slipped them to his waiting confederate direct,
or have followed my example, and employed the
Captain’s fur coat as a vehicle, did occur to me;
but I was forced to negative both solutions. I
had observed Glenn very closely during those
trying moments when we were disembarking from
the train, and I was positive that he had adopted
neither expedient.
But these were minor and more or less trivial
features, at any rate. The great point was that
I had mastered the problem, elucidated the mys-
tery. So I had, in a way; and yet I was far
from being satisfied, for the kernel of the scheme,
the one thing I had set out to prove, still baf-
fled and eluded me. I was as far removed as ever
from being able to demonstrate complicity on
the part of Baggerly.
Not one thread could I find in all the skein I
had so painstakingly unravelled which seemed to
lead to him. Yet I was no less firmly convinced
that his was the cunning brain which had planned
and plotted all, his the hand behind the scenes
243


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
Remember the cigar butt, which had revealed
the fact of his presence on the grounds; and re-
member where it was found, at the foot of the
hollow tree, beside which the Captain and I had
paused in our Sunday afternoon stroll. Put
these two circumstances together, and you will
scarcely fail to arrive at the same conclusion I
did.
It had been the cracksman's original purpose,
no doubt, in case of interference at the station,
to slip his booty to the waiting confederate, as
foreshadowed in the personal signed “Country
Jake;” but the evidence pointed to a change in
these details.
Reconstructing the incident at Onyx Court in
the light of my latest hypothesis, then, it was
plain that when Glenn and the assistant who had
accompanied him thither had been forced by Es-
telle’s inopportune appearance to abandon their
operations at the window, and to flee with what
spoil they had, their natural impulse would be to
seek the nearest shelter, and that, as it happened,
was the little copse wherein stood the hollow tree.
There they had probably halted to take an ob-
servation and discuss their future movements.
In this interval, and seeing no signs of imme-
246


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
action,-another of Baggerly's masked com-
munications.
I could hardly repress the shout of exultation
which rose to my lips. My coffee cooled untasted
in my cup, my sizzling bacon and eggs dete-
riorated into a leathery mass, while I sat almost
gloating over this presage of victory.
Only three blurred, black lines on the front
page of a daily newspaper; but they meant to
me all the difference between Hades and Olympus,
between an unmerited shame and disgrace and a
triumphant vindication. Can I be blamed if,
to my eyes, instead of the printed words, the
notice read: “I, Duncan, take thee, Gwendolen,
to have and to hold, from this day forth, for
richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sick-
ness and health, to love, honour and cherish, until
death us do part.”
But to the ordinary vision, the paragraph was
simply:
“WILL lady with ruby and sapphire bracelet, who no-
ticed gent. in Central Park West car last Thursday morn-
ing, about ten o'clock, kindly grant interview P. Address,
“AUTOMOBILE,” Box 527.”
Thursday? Why, that was to-day. And at
250


THE WAN SU Y DE N S AP PHIRES
ten o’clock? Oh, yes; never fret, Mr. Baggerly.
I would be there promptly.
Rubies and sapphires, eh? Your taste seems
to run to those stones. Perhaps, you wish to
add to the collection you have already acquired
from Miss Yeats and Mrs. Van Suyden?
But, let me see, where have you fixed your ren-
dezvous? “Central Park West,” yes; and at-
I gave a gasp of startled amazement, and let
the paper fall from my hands in sheer stupefac-
tion.
No. 527. The man was actually planning to
rob some one in the very apartment-house where
I resided !
I fathomed his purpose in an instant. This
was not merely an ordinary foray in quest of
spoils; but held for him the additional incentive
of possibly bringing me into deeper suspicion,
and thereby rendering his own position in re-
gard to the Onyx Court affair doubly secure.
Oh, the crafty rogue! Oh, the malignity of
that inventive brain' But he would find that
for once he would have an opponent to meet
him upon his tortuous road. Turn for turn,
I would match him, and scheme for scheme;
and we would see who should win!—
251


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
I was being dogged by officers of the law would
have been sufficient to send me into a cold sweat
of shuddering terror; now I felt only a sense of
amused contempt over the ease with which I had
been able to evade my pursuers. It was a jolly
game of hare and hounds, and I almost laughed
aloud as I pictured to myself the rage and dis-
appointment which must be consuming the poor
“hounds” at their present predicament.
Without further incident, we arrived in due
time at the confines of Onyx Court, where, direct-
ing Cyrus to await my return, I passed through
the lodge gate, and sped swiftly across the
grounds to the copse which sheltered the hollow
tree.
My vaunted climbing abilities again had to
come into play, for the aperture was considerably
above my head; but I swung myself easily up
on one of the lower branches, and at last thrust
my hand into the hole.
A moment of agonised suspense followed, as I
groped blindly about without encountering any-
thing; and then a great spasm of relieved thank-
fulness swept over me, for my searching fingers
closed upon a paper packet, and I knew that my
quest had ended.
255


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
Then I did a foolish thing. Had I kept my
wits about me, I should have turned to greet
him, and have offered some casual excuse for
my presence at Wheaton; for I might have
known from the direction in which he came that
he could not possibly have been a witness to my
recovery of the jewels.
I suppose, though, the nervous strain under
which I had been labouring must have been
greater than I realised; for at his hail I was
overcome with a swift, unreasoning panic, and
picking up my skirts I took to my heels like
a frightened hare.
It was the very move to inflame his suspicion,
already aroused by my presence there, and he
promptly gave chase, shouting at me meanwhile
to halt. But I was filled with the fright of the
hunted animal; and his calls only spurred me on
to fiercer endeavour. -
Over the spongy, rain-sodden turf I scudded,
with Bender sprinting gallantly behind; but we
had not progressed far before a hasty glimpse
backward told me that the pace I had set was
beginning to tell upon him. More at home in
the saddle than on foot at the best, and no longer
in his first youth, he had small chance of over-
257


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
was prepared to take advantage of it. While
the men uncertainly debated, seeking one an-
other's opinion with their eyes, there came a
shout from behind, and Bender burst through
the hedge beside the lodge.
Both detectives turned their heads at the in-
terruption. This was my opportunity. With a
sudden tug at the lines, I brought my whip
down, crack! across the backs of Cyrus's steeds.
They lunged forward, broke into a run; and the
next moment our rickety, old turn-out was jolt-
ing and swaying behind them down the road.
Taken by surprise, the detectives allowed us to
gain a good hundred yards before they ever re-
alised what had happened. Even then they were
town-bred policemen, and equestrianism a prac-
tically unknown art to them. By the time that
they could get turned around and ready to pur-
sue us, I had argued that we would have a lead
which such manifestly unskilful horsemen could
never hope to overcome.
But I had reckoned without Bender. The little
ex-jockey leaped out to one of the officers, who
was vainly striving to throw a leg over his horse;
and snatching the bridle from the other's hand,
was up in the saddle and away after us before
260


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
the astounded tyro hardly grasped what was tak-
ing place.
The tables were turned with a vengeance. I
drew in my breath with a sharp exclamation of
chagrin. Willing I had been to try conclusions
with these clumsy policemen; but Jerry Bender,
winner of a half-dozen Suburbans, was a very
different proposition.
Nevertheless, in very desperation, I lashed on
my staggering old crowbaits. Standing up in
the seat, and with one foot on the dashboard, I
shouted and called to them, jerked the reins, and
laid on the whip with unsparing vigour. My
hat had fallen off, and my hair coming loose,
streamed out behind me on the wind like the tail
of a runaway comet.
But it was a hopeless struggle from the start.
Gallop old Cyrus's team as I would, threaten
the creaking carry-all with shipwreck and de-
struction at every jump, Bender steadily gained.
We had been easily a quarter of a mile ahead
at the start; now, not a third of that distance
intervened, and just before us rose a long, steep
hill, which must serve to effectually check our
speed.
Bitter as the knowledge was, I had to confess
261


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
that I was beaten; and was just about to draw
up my horses and surrender with the best grace
I could, when suddenly hope revived with a
bound.
Over the brow of the hill ahead appeared a
flaming scarlet motor-car which, even at that
distance, I recognised with a throb of rapture.
Down the slope it coasted easily; but as it neared
us, its driver, noting our charging onset, checked
its descent, and stood up in his seat to watch
the unequal race.
“Turn around,” I shrieked to him, casting the
reins to Cyrus, and making a speaking trumpet
of my hands. “Turn around. You must take
me in.”
Whether he heard my words, or whether his
quick intelligence grasped my purpose from a
comprehension of the situation, I cannot say. It
is sufficient that he did what I desired.
With a twist of the steering rod, he sent his
big machine whirling about; then held it sta-
tionary until we had raced alongside.
I gave one glance back to Bender. Leaning
far over in the saddle, he was riding for all he
was worth; but he had still a hundred yards to
COWer.
262


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
Over the wheel I leaped before we had fairly
stopped, and seizing Harry Glenn’s outstretched
hand, sprang in beside him.
“Hurry! Hurry!” I urged. “Don’t let Bender
catch me.”
“Small fear of that,” laughed my deliverer.
“He’s only got one horsepower to travel on; and
I’ve got forty.”
As he spoke he shot his lever forward to its
farthest notch, and we went skimming up the
hill, leaving my discomfited pursuer behind as
easily as though he had been tied.
263


THE WAN SUY DE N SAPP HIRES
attempted to pass off my thrust with a bit of
banter.
“Don’t spring those things on me without warn-
ing,” he complained with an air of mock injury;
“or you’ll be giving me heart disease. My dear
woman,” more seriously, “if you were a little bet-
ter acquainted with our methods of doing busi-
ness, you would understand what a ‘pipe-dream”
such an idea is. You must remember this is 1904,
and a safety deposit box costs only five dollars
a year.”
“But if there were no safety deposit boxes at
hand, and the necklace had to be concealed with-
out delay?”
He leaned over to pull the lever back a notch
and reduce our speed before he made answer;
then he straightened up, and bestowed upon me
another of those long, searching stares, as though
he would read my very soul.
“Look here,” he said at length, “are you play-
ing straight with me as you promised, or are
you scheming around to spy on me, trying to
give me the double-cross?”
There was a hard, threatening glitter in his
eyes very different from their usual teasing
twinkle, a coarseness to his tone which be-
266


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
trayed to me an entirely foreign side of his
character.
In all our previous exchanges he had seemed
to me a true son of Hermes, patron deity of
thieves, light, airy, inconsequent; now I recog-
nised with a shock that he was also of the guild
of Bill Sykes. It came over me suddenly that
this was a desperado with whom I was dealing,
one whom the very exigencies of his trade re-
quired to be cruel and unsparing.
We were on a lonely stretch of road with a
steep, rocky bank upon our right, and running
along its foot the railroad track. With my ac-
quired insight to his dual nature, I realised forci-
bly that if he knew the stolen sapphires were
then about my neck, or suspected that I held
proof sufficient to convict him of their theft,
my life would not be worth a moment’s purchase.
An automobile accident, from which he should
escape practically unscathed, but which would
toss my mangled body over the bank and in
front of one of those trains constantly grinding
to and fro, would, under the circumstances, be
too ridiculously easy to manage.
I may have misjudged him in this. Often, in
the light of later events, I have believed that I
267


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
possible. I have never even considered an ac-
ceptance, nor could I do so. I have but one desire
in the world, to clear up the seeming mystery
of this case, and to recover the necklace you
filched from me on the train.”
“Then you have been trying to trap me
all the time?” he asked, his lip curling in con-
tempt.
“No;” I spiritedly repelled the accusation. “I
have been trying, as was my right, to recover the
property lost while in my charge; and I also
have been endeavouring to trace this tangle of
crime back to the man I believe responsible.”
“Ah,” he interrupted, “Baggerly? You are as
persistent as a bloodhound,” with a short laugh.
I nodded assent. “You could scarcely expect
me to feel otherwise,” I muttered, stubbornly;
“has he not done everything in his power to cast
unjust suspicion upon me?”
“And my part in this little comedy of yours,”
he questioned still darkly, but with a touch of
his satiric humour, “was to play a piece of
cheese, I suppose? It was to bait the trap for
Baggerly, I was wanted, eh?”
I flushed hotly over the accuracy with which
he had divined my intentions; but I sought to
269


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
gerly, I very much doubt if I would consent to
speak the word.”
His face cleared as though by magic, and he
straightened up, tense and alert. Nor was there
anything of the old flippancy in the smile he
gave me.
“I knew you were on the square,” he asserted,
with a satisfied nod of his head. “I never yet
was fooled in man or woman, and I felt from
the first I could trust you.”
He was evidently about to say more; but he
checked himself abruptly, and turned to me with
a quick, searching question.
“What did you mean, though, by that remark
about a hiding place for the sapphires?” he
asked.
I laughed tantalisingly; I was no longer afraid
of him. “Why worry over my ‘pipe dreams’?”
I said mischievously, “since this is 1904, and
safety deposit boxes cost only five dollars a
year?”
“But you meant something,” he persisted,
“Come on,” coaxingly, “tell me what the idea
was you had in your mind.”
“Well,” I yielded at length, not uninfluenced,
perhaps, by a willingness to demonstrate my own
271


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPPHIRES
cleverness, “suppose I tell you how I have de-
cided that the robbery of Mrs. Van Suyden’s
sapphires was accomplished? But you must
promise in return,” I stipulated, “to let me know
whether or not my deductions are correct. Is
it a bargain?”
He pretended to ponder the question very seri-
ously; but I could gather from the quizzical lift
to his eyebrows that he had but small fear of
my striking any approximation to the truth.
“You’re scheming to get a confession out of
me, aren't you?” he grinned, stroking his chin
in meditative fashion. “And it’s about a hundred
to one that you are wrong. All right,” with
decision; “I guess I can afford to chance it.
‘You may fire whenever you are ready, Grid-
ley.’ **
But his easy contempt for my powers speedily
faded as I began to set forth my theory. His
nonchalant pose changed to one of absorbed at-
tention; his glance strayed away from the road
ahead and remained fixed steadily upon my face.
Noting his evident interest, I considerably
elaborated my tale, taking pains to explain the
various steps which had led up to my conclu-
sions, and leaving out of the narrative only
272


THE WAN SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
those circumstances which had disclosed to me
the actual hiding place of the sapphires.
On that point I was discreetly silent, permitting
him to infer that, although I was positive the
jewels were concealed somewhere about the
grounds, the extent of the estate and a lack of
definite data rendered the exact spot a veritable
needle and haystack puzzle to me.
Even with this omission, however, he was
fairly staggered by the accuracy of my con-
jectures.
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Wonderful! “You
couldn’t have described it better if you had been
sitting in a box at the theatre, watching the whole
show acted out upon the stage. By Jove,” re-
gretfully, “what an addition you would have been
to us with that head of yours!”
“But there is one point that still bothers me,”
I put in, thinking I might thus induce him to
reveal the hand of Baggerly. “How did you
come to select the very time for your exploit that
Miss Yeats had chosen in which to get her
rubies?”
“Why,” he answered quickly, “don’t you see
it was a knowledge of her little game that first
set us to scheming for the sapphires?”
273


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPP HIRES
“Certainly. But how did you happen to have
a knowledge of her little game?”
He caught himself up sharply just as he was
about to reply. “Er—er,” he stammered, at a
loss for just a second; then, with glib men-
dacity: “Why, I overheard her talking to Son-
nenthal. I was ‘chauffing him that Sunday he
was up here, you know.
“For all our careful plans, we thought the jig
was up at one time, though,” he hurried on, as if
to stall off any further embarrassing questions;
“that was when the French girl kept holding the
fort so steadily on us.
“I was up on the roller, just as you figured
it out, piping her off, and fidgeting like a hen
on a hot griddle, while she sat there, swiping
that needle in and out as regularly as a clock,
and never showing the least hint of pulling
stakes.
“You ought to have seen us,” laughing at the
recollection. “There we were, two desperate
burglars,” with ironic emphasis, “and a safe full
of sparklers not ten feet away. But in between
was that ninety pounds of Parisian skinniness,
and she had us bluffed worse than a couple of
bulldogs and a cannon.
274,


THE VAN SUYDEN SAPPHIRE's
“‘Let’s raise a yell of fire, and make a dash for
the box,’ growled my partner down on the
ground, who was cutting loose over the delay,
like a river mate at a gang of roustabouts; but
just then the damsel took it into her head to
evacuate, and I threw him down a quick sign
that the coast was clear.
“‘Dark stage, and a little two-four time music
there, Beau,” I whispered down to him. “This is
the cue for Sarah Bernhardt to make her en-
trance.” Sure enough, I had hardly got the
words out of my mouth before in popped the
actress.
“Talk about nervousness,” he continued; “she
was worse rattled over her job than we had been.
I had a pair of field-glasses levelled on her, so
that I could catch the combination as she worked
it; but, Lord, if I’d had to depend on that, I never
would have seen the inside of the safe. She
twisted that knob around like she was trying to
unscrew it from its socket, and I guess it was
more pure luck than any judgment that she
ever did get it open.
“Bragged to you that she was as cool as a
cucumber, and took pains to shut the safe care-
fully before she left, did she?” he repeated my
275


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
observation with a reminiscent chuckle. “Why,
her hand shook so, when she first reached for
the rubies, that she knocked down both cases of
sapphires.—A lucky thing for me, too, by the
way,” he commented in parenthesis; “it saved
me the trouble of having to locate what I wanted.
—And then, when she did get her own stones,
she just gave one push at the door, and dived
out of the room as though the Old Boy himself
was at her elbow.
“With her gone,” he resumed complacently,
“the rest of it looked like a snap to me.
“‘Toss up the rake here, my boy,” I called
down to my helper. “There’s a little hay to be
made at this altitude.”
“He looked at me as though he thought I was
crazy; but he’s been in jobs with me before, and
he knows I generally mean what I say. So, up
came the rake, and I started in to play ‘Board-
ing-house Willie' with the butter-dish on the far
side of the table.
“It was a bit clumsy, though, you know, hand-
ling the thing at arm’s length that way, and be-
side, I was laughing so hard at the idea of
cracking a box with a tool like that, that I guess
I took longer over it than I should. Anyway,
276


THE WAN SU Y DE N S APP HIRES
I only got a chance to make the one haul before
back swished the maid.
“‘Duck, Beau, duck,” I gave the word, and
down I came from my perch, for I certainly
thought it was all day with us then, and that
in about a minute there would be a roar you
could hear from Harlem to the Battery.
“I had sense enough to realise, though, that
our only chance was to play out the hand as it
laid; so, when my buddy straightened out for a
sprint, I was after him with a clutch on his col-
lar before he’d fairly got in motion.
“‘Back to the roller, you dolt,” I scolded him.
‘It’s strategy, not legs, that has got to save us
here!?
“Still, you can well imagine we didn’t loiter
much in getting the team turned around and
headed toward the fence.
“‘Whip ’em up,” Ben kept begging me. “For
God’s sake, go faster!' I guess he wanted me
to do the trick in Roman chariot style, and I
really couldn’t blame him; but it was me that
was handling the ribbons, and for once I kept
my head.
“Maybe you think it wasn’t a strain on a fel-
low, though,” he ejaculated, “tooling along at
277


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPP HIRES
that funeral gait a good quarter of a mile down
to the edge of the grounds, with the cold shivers
chasing each other up and down my spine every
foot of the way, and the beads of sweat popping
out on my forehead as big as hen's eggs. Gosh,”
with a lively recollection of his experience, “I
wouldn’t go through it again for twice the
haul"
“At what spot did you finally leave the
grounds?” I broke in, with assumed eager-
ness. It is never wise to let your opponent
know the exact number of trumps in your
hand.
My feint deceived him. “Ah,” he parried
warily: “that was not in the bargain.”—
“Why are you so keen to recover those old sap-
phires?” he asked curiously, after a little. “You
have no interest in them, have you?”
“Yes, I have,” I asserted; “a very strong inter-
est in clearing myself from the charge of having
stolen them.”
“But outside of that?” he probed.
“None; except that I have always felt myself
in a measure to blame for the theft. If I had
not agreed to Miss Yeats's plan, they would
never have been taken.”
278


T H E W A N S U Y DE N S AP PHIRES
“Oh, don’t go to cultivating a sensitive con-
science,” he broke in impatiently. “It’s like
nursing a cold; the more you cocker it up, the
worse it gets. What I mean, is that beyond your
personal connection with the affair, you don’t
really care a hang whether those stones are ever
recovered or not?”
“No ; I suppose not.”
“Then, why not let them go?” he urged. “You
are in no danger. Let Captain McCracken come
to me, and I’ll show him how to fix things so you
need never fear the slightest trouble.—Oh, I’m
not blind to what is on between you two,” as
I strove to interrupt. “I knew long before you
ever told me, that there was no chance of your
hooking up with us.
“And I’m not blaming you either, mind,” he
went on heartily enough, although he turned his
eyes away, and became suddenly interested in the
working of the brake. “He’s a good fellow, and
he’s got money to burn, they say.
“All that I want is to have him burn some of
it to get you out of this scrape. A couple of
thou. in the right quarter would settle things,
so that Baggerly or nobody else would have any
license to bother you. You just arrange it so
279


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
.
:
and he handed me out of the car with the aplomb
of a courtier.
“Don’t forget to look for Santa,” he again ad-
jured me, as he released my hand. “I am almost
certain he will come to-night.”
281


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
Unquestionably, I was taking desperate chances.
The contest was absurdly unequal, the odds terri-
bly against me. A faint heart whispered to me
to take the easier way which Glenn had sug-
gested, or else, if I was bound to carry the project
through, to summon the Captain to my assist-
ance. But my pride, and perhaps my obstinacy,
rebelled at such coward promptings.
“No,” I declared emphatically. “I have gone
thus far alone and unaided. I will complete the
task in the same way, or not at all.”
Psychologists aver there is a distinct force
gained to a decision by the mere uttering of it
in spoken words; and, whether it be true as a
general law or not, it certainly seemed to act
in this instance. As with a bound, my wavering
resolution stiffened, my faltering courage re-
vived. I was once more calm and self-possessed,
ready to meet the issue.
My idea, as well as I was able to outline it in
advance, was not to provoke any scene in the
house, but to permit the thieves full sway during
their visit, and then quietly to follow them when
they took their departure, for I never doubted
that the pursuit would eventually lead me to Bag-
gerly.
284


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPPHIRES
I had reasoned, too, that similar methods would
be employed on this occasion to those adopted in
the theft of Miss Arliss's opals; and I had conse-
quently heavily tipped Albert, the elevator boy,
to inform me the moment that any stranger
should go to one of the apartments.
Fortunately, the hour chosen chimed in admira-
bly with this arrangement. Ten o’clock would
be a trifle late for evening callers, and yet too
early for persons returning from the theatre or
other entertainments; so I felt sure that Albert,
a bright, quick lad, could readily single out any
stranger boarding his car, and under the stimulus
of my douceur would at once report the fact to
Ine.
Uncertain, however, whether the expected foray
might not take place sooner than the time set,
I was all dressed and ready for the summons by
nine o’clock. I had donned a dark walking skirt
and jacket, a plain hat with a heavy veil; and
thus equipped deemed myself sufficiently unob-
trusive to escape scrutiny, no matter where the
chase might lead me.
Then I sat waiting. I tried to read, to sew,
to pass the time in a score of ways; but it was in
vain. I could not distract my thoughts from
285


THE WAN SU Y DEN SAPP HIRES
and down the corridor; then stepped hurriedly
inside, and quickly closing the door, turned the
key in the lock.
“What do you mean by that?” I demanded, my
indignation at his action overcoming my surprise
at his presence.
He did not anver me for a moment; but lifting
his hand to enjoin silence, laid his ear against the
crack of the door and listened intently.
While he stood there the light fell full upon
his face; and I could see that it had lost its
mocking, devil-may-care expression. His man-
ner was brusque and business-like; his mouth a
straight line, set and grim. Yet his eyes held a
gleam more reckless and defiant than ever.
Needle sharp, they darted in quick inspection
over the room, and noted with a frown that the
shades before my windows had not been drawn.
“Pull them down,” he commanded, indicating
the offending blinds with a jerk of his thumb;
and wondering at my complaisance even while
I did so, I meekly obeyed his bidding. As I
finished this task and turned to him again with
the question on my lips, he gave a quick sigh
of relief, and stood away from the door.
“They pretty nearly got me that time,” he
287


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPP HIRES
smiled, throwing off the fur coat across a chair,
“but, thanks to your refuge here, I think I’ve
been able to shake them off the scent.”
“Pretty nearly got you?” I exclaimed. “What
do you mean? Who pretty nearly got you?”
“That blasted Baggerly,” curtly, “the detec-
tive.”
For a second I thought he was joking; then the
quick suspicion formed itself that this was an-
other wile to lead me astray. But there was a
bitter disgust to his tone, incapable of being
simulated, stamping even so astounding a state-
ment with the impress of truth.
“Baggerly?” I stammered weakly, clutching at
the back of a chair. “Baggerly? A detect-
ive?”
He stared at my amaze in puzzled wonder for
a moment; then gave a short laugh of compre-
hension.
“Oh, I forgot. You sized him up for one of us,
didn't you? Well, he isn’t, worse luck,” sobering
suddenly to a sullen resentment. “If we’d had
as smart a leader as he is to run us, we’d none
of us ever be in the box that I am to-night.
That Jew numbskull!” he railed disdainfully,
“I might have known how it would be, when he
288


CHAPTER V
THE KNOCK AT THE DOOR
“SoNNENTHAL!” I repeated slowly; and with the
very utterance of the name a hundred things
became plain to me.
“It was he you came here to see to-night?” I
cried, turning upon Glenn with swift conviction.
“He is the one who has been inserting these vari-
ous notices in the papers?”
He acquiesced with an indifferent shrug of the
shoulders. So much for the vaunted loyalty of
thieves, I thought, with a flash of cynical dis-
cernment.
“So you tumbled to that, too, eh?” he said.
“Well, he has no one but himself to blame. I
warned him that it was a dangerous policy; but
he was so dead frightened of ever being seen
with one of us, that he preferred to take the
risk. I was the only one he ever allowed a per-
sonal interview, and they were few and far be-
tween.
“Since you had worked out the puzzle, though,”
291


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
on him he looked up with a start, and—eh? Did
you speak?” for I had given an involuntary ex-
clamation of dismay.
“It is nothing,” I returned rather faintly. “Go
on with your story,” and he resumed:
“Even at that, though, I don’t think he was
able to recognise me. His back was to the light,
and I had taken the precaution of turning up
the collar of my coat in case of accident. But I
knew that it wouldn’t be a minute before those
gimlet eyes of his did spot me, and then it would
be good-bye to any hope of a getaway. I had
to think, and think quick.
“Look at it. I was between the devil and the
deep blue sea, as you might say. Up here, was
Baggerly, cutting off any chance of getting to
Sonnenthal; and down below was Bender waiting
to nab me the minute I should show my face.”
“What did you do?” I asked breathlessly.
“Well, I gave a sort of an astonished grunt,
like a man would that had happened to take a
wrong turn in the hallway, and, without seeming
to be in too big a hurry, back-pedalled grace-
fully around the corner. When I got into the
clear, however, and saw the stairway ahead of
me, you can bet I didn’t waste any time throwing
296


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
arm as an inspiration came to me. “Those rooms
across the court are Baggerly's,” I counselled
him in a tense whisper; “and the paper-hangers
who were to have been here to-day have left a
long plank in my bedroom.”
The light of hope flashed into his eye for a
moment; then he drew back from the window with
a regretful shake of his head.
“No good,” he murmured. “They’ve got a
man stationed in the areaway to watch.”
While we stood there, gazing at each other,
vainly endeavouring to hit some plan of escape,
there came a sharp, imperative ring upon my
bell. They had come!
I felt my face grow white, as the blood settled
about my heart. Involuntarily, I clutched
Glenn’s arm, and turned my eyes to him in des-
perate appeal.
“You’ve got to face them,” he spoke master-
fully, and with a quick decision. “It’s no good
not answering; they would break in at the end.
But don’t give way to them,” he hissed. “Keep
your nerve. Seem surprised. Don’t let them
in on any pretext unless they’ve got a warrant.
It’s ten to one they haven’t, and while they are
off after it something may turn up.”
299


THE WAN SU Y DEN SAPP HIRES
I caught his idea like a flash, and while he was
speaking had thrown a dressing sack over the
waist of my gown, and with rapid fingers was dis-
arranging my hair.
“Good,” he whispered approvingly; then with a
final admonition: “Remember, your house is your
castle. They’ve got no right in here except with
a warrant.” He disappeared into my bedroom,
and softly shut the closet door upon himself.
Disarrayed, then, and with blinking eyes, as
though just awakened from sleep, I opened the
door.
And, by the way, that door of mine as a maker
of melodrama was rapidly surpassing the gifted
Mr. Theodore Kremer; for—dramatic surprise
No. 2,-there stood Captain McCracken!
300


CHAPTER VI
T H E M A JESTY OF THE LAW
“Do pardon my coming at this late hour,” apol-
ogised the Captain, hesitating at the threshold.
“I feared you might have gone to bed: but
thought I would run up on the slender chance
of getting to see you. However, you look so
sleepy, poor girl, that I’ll not dream of inflict-
ing myself on you now. My errand can keep
just as well until to-morrow morning.”
He was turning away; but I seized him by the
arm and dragged him into the room. In the re-
lief of seeing his kindly face instead of the hick-
ory-nut visage of Bender, or Baggerly’s mocking
leer of triumph, I could only cling to his arm
and sob wildly.
Astonished at such an outburst on the part of
my usually composed self, and failing of course
to comprehend any especial reason for it, he yet
soothed and petted me, asking no questions until
I had regained some measure of my self-control.
“There, there,” he murmured; “calm yourself.
Nothing shall harm you. All this has been too
301


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PPHIRES
much for you, and no wonder either. Come,
come, dear; do not shudder and tremble so. I will
look after you.” And gradually, under the min-
istration of his protecting tenderness, I was able
to dry my eyes and check my hysterical sobbing.
I realised none the less distinctly, however, that
my position was still one of the greatest peril.
The cracksman’s continued presence in my room
remained a source of imminent danger. At any
moment the detectives might come thundering at
my door.
Like Glenn, “I had to think, and think quick;”
and under the very stress of necessity an in-
spiration flashed upon me.
I laid my hands on the Captain’s shoulders and
entreated him with both eyes and lips.
“Duncan,” I pleaded desperately, “I have
brought nothing but trouble and worry to you
ever since you have known me. I seem almost
endowed with the evil eye, so persistently have
I dragged you into my scrapes. But you do
love me enough, do you not?” I hurried on, “to
take one more risk for my sake, a risk which
will end this sorry business for once and all,
and leave us free?”
He caught me to him in his strong arms. “Jove,
302


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“Yes; now that you speak of it, there was a big
chap out at the curb who might have been an
officer. But I am sure he paid no heed to me.
He was too busy watching some one who had
just come out.”
“Excellent,” I cried, buoyed up by a reviving
hope. “Now, Duncan, I wish you to do exactly
as I say and ask no questions. I have not time
to explain at present; but you will understand
in due time and see the necessity for what I am
about to do. Remember, though, that you have
been here for over an hour, and on your arrival
inadvertently went to the floor above before com-
ing to my room.”
Almost before I had finished speaking came the
knock I had been expecting, a loud, authorita-
tive rat-a-tat upon the door, not to be mistaken
for any other knock in the world, saying as
sternly as though in spoken words: “Open in
the name of the law P’
How many times has that autocratic summons
laid the quick hush of apprehension on listen-
ing ears, caused cheeks to pale and hearts to
pause throbbing in anguished suspense!
I flew to my closet and dragged Harry Glenn
out from behind my dangling gowns.
304


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“But—but—,” stammered Baggerly, “we ex-
pected to find Harry Glenn, the burglar, here.
—Ha!” as his eye pounced upon the fur coat.
“He has been here! He was seen by Bender this
evening wearing that very coat!
“That must have been one of those hallucina-
tions Bender used to be so fond of ascribing to
me,” scoffed Captain McCracken with malicious
satisfaction. “I–I—.” My heart stopped
beating for the second that he hesitated; but the
powers of strategy, which had once enabled him
to bring his command unscathed out of an
Afghan ambuscade, and which had won him his
Victoria Cross, did not desert him here. “I was
fortunate enough to regain possession of the
coat to-day,” he finished; “and I may add,” in
a tone which created evident embarrassment
among his auditors, “without assistance from
the authorities.”
“Then it was you I followed here in an auto-
mobile?” and “It was you I met on the upper
floor?” excitedly demanded Bender and Bag-
gerly in one breath.
The Captain uncertainly sought my eye.
His face was flushed and there were little
beads of perspiration standing out all over his
307


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
brow; but he plainly purposed sticking to his
guns.
To his unspoken question I gave a quick, barely
perceptible nod. “Aren’t you both a bit absurd?”
he returned testily to their inquiry. “Who else
could it have been?”
Then, giving them no time for further interro-
gation, he deftly shifted his rôle to that of ex-
aminer.
“Now, if you are satisfied,” he said, addressing
Baggerly direct, “I should like to have an ex-
planation for this unwarranted intrusion, that
man,” indicating the policeman, “with a drawn
weapon. Will you kindly give me some reason
for such a demonstration?”
Baggerly showed manifest confusion. “I sup-
pose it is a mistake,” he granted sullenly.
“A mistake?” repeated the Captain with lifted
eyebrows.
“Yes,” hastily: “but you must understand we
had no other idea than that we should find Harry
Glenn concealed about the premises. Bender saw
him, as he supposed, on his way here in his auto-
mobile, and followed him to the door; but was
delayed by the elevator boy’s trying to convince
him that no such person was in the house.”
308


CHAPTER VII
READING THE RIDDLE
BENDER and the officer, who had been whispering
together in an interested aside during our col-
loquy, at this point took their departure; but
Baggerly, in response to our eager queries,
detailed briefly for us the facts elicited by this
latest development.
“Sonnenthal, it seems,” he went on in rapid mar-
ration, “by reason of his dissipations and ex-
travagances, found himself, a year or two ago,
face to face with ruin. Spurred on by the very
desperation of his predicament, he finally evolved
a plan of allying himself with a band of clever
thieves, and disposing of the gems which came
into his hands through their agency, as though
he had received them in the regular channels of
trade.
“At first he confined himself for better safety
to dealing only with a gang of crooks working
in London; but waxing bolder, he has recently
312


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
to me the little plan she had arranged with him
for the pseudo-robbery of the rubies; and con-
fidence returned, for I felt certain he would never
have consented to such an enterprise unless he
had been meditating mischief in some other di-
rection.
“So I bided my time and waited. My idea was,
of course, that he would permit the excitement
over the stolen rubies to die down for a week or
so, and then, with the information in his posses-
sion, would proceed to make a clean sweep of the
contents of the safe.
“But I had reckoned wrong. It was the sap-
phires only that he wanted, and his judgment
counselled him there would be less chance of de-
tection if they disappeared at the same time as
the rubies.
“Therefore, when I learned of their loss, and
endeavoured to account for it from the facts I
knew, I was forced to the conviction that it
must have been Miss Bramblestone who had acted
as his accomplice.
“For this,” turning to me, “I owe Miss Bram-
blestone my humblest apologies. It has been
only her own good sense and marvellous astute-
ness which has saved me from doing her an irrep-
314


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
or some other agent of Sonnenthal’s, who was
interrupted in his work by the unexpectedly ab-
rupt return of Estelle. My reasons—”
“Perhaps it would be wise to confine yourself
to the things you actually know,” suggested the
Captain drily. “Your conjectures might possi-
bly be wrong, don’t you know?”
Baggerly, however, took the dig in good part.
“Oh, that is all right,” he laughed. “I am not
pluming myself much on my powers as a
Widocq just at present. I simply presented that
bit of hypothesis so that you might comprehend
the conditions which brought about the loss of
the tiara.
“Returning to it, then, you must understand
that long previous to this affair of Miss Yeats's
rubies, Sonnenthal had cast an envious eye in
the direction of the Wan Suyden sapphires, and
had even made an effort to corrupt Estelle into
securing them for him.
“He had employed the accepted methods in
attempting this, and was successful in so far
that he did win the girl’s affections; but in spite
of his protestations and appeals he could never
induce her to betray her mistress’s trust. She
steadfastly refused to steal the sapphires for
3.18


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
him herself or to impart any information which
would make it possible to have them stolen.
“Finally came the day of the robbery. Estelle
left Mrs. Van Suyden’s boudoir for some pur-
pose, and on her return was startled to find the
safe door open. Making a hasty examination,
she discovered that Miss Yeats's rubies and the
necklace of the set of sapphires was missing.
“Her first impulse was to raise an alarm; but
even as she started to her feet to do so, a realis-
ing knowledge came to her of the one who must
be responsible for this daring larceny.
“She hesitated,—remember, she loved the man,
and she recognised, too, that any precipitate ac-
tion on her part now might easily result in his
ruin. She hesitated; and in that moment of hesi-
tation she was lost.
“For then came the whisper of temptation in
her ear. If she were to abet the robbery by her
silence, why not go a step farther? A part of
the sapphires were gone, and that plainly by
the hand of some intruder. If the tiara should
also be missing, who would ever doubt but that
the entire set had been taken at one time, or
ascribe the theft of both pieces to other than the
same hand? In any event, there would be no
319


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
risk for her. She felt too secure in her mis-
tress's favour to fear that she herself might
ever fall under suspicion, while she was likewise
positive that the tiara would win back for her
a regard for which she cared much more, and
which had lately seemed to be cooling in its
andour.
“She wavered no longer; but seizing the rem-
nant of the sapphires, closed the safe, and con-
cealing her prize in a secure place, sat herself
down to await developments.
“The remainder of the story is familiar to you,”
went on Baggerly, “so I will skip to the time
when she came to town to surprise Sonnenthal
with his unexpected gift. She knew that he
lodged here, and therefore came direct to this
house; but inasmuch as she was not devoid of
a certain shrewd cunning, and realised that she
might well be shadowed by detectives, adopted
the ruse of asking for Miss Bramblestone at the
desk.”
“But how could she tell that I was not at
home?” I interrupted to ask.
“She did not care. All that she wanted was
to get up to your floor unobserved. From there
she could easily skim up the stairway and gain
320


T H E W A N SUY DE N S AP PHIRES
Sonnenthal’s rooms, to which, it seems, he had
in an unguarded moment given her a pass-
key.
“Arriving there, she waited some twenty or
thirty minutes for him, and finally, to pass the
time, began to rummage among the articles on
his desk. Thus she came upon a note to him
from Evelyn Arliss, accepting an invitation for
dinner that evening, and couched in terms which
even the dullest intellect could not have failed
to understand.
“Estelle was on fire in a moment. Here she
had broken the trust reposed in her and had
steeped her soul in crime for a man whose vows
of love to her had been no more than the careless
perjuries of a trickster. Inflamed with jealous
rage, she hastened from the hotel and sought
the appointed rendezvous, with the firm intention
of confronting him and the other woman, and
charging him with his treachery to his face.
“The threatened ‘scene, however, was averted
by Sonnenthal’s quick realisation of the situa-
tion. Before Estelle got fairly started or her
identity could be learned, he played a trick upon
her by which he drew her out of the place and
into a cab where, through her hysterical rav-
321


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“And where are Miss Yeats's rubies?” supple-
mented the Captain.
“We do not know,” Baggerly passed his hand
perplexedly over his brow; “but we believe that
both are in the hands of Harry Glenn. Bender
is out now hard upon his trail, and we shall
probably hear something before very long. The
little jockey and I each tried to get the better of
the other in this case,” he added; “but,” with
a shrug of the shoulders, “we have had to join
hands at the finish, whether we liked to or not.—
“Ah, that must be he now!” as a sharp ring
sounded upon my telephone.
He sprang quickly to the receiver and held a
brief colloquy over the wire. “Ha,” excitedly,
as he turned away. “We will get him after
all. Bender says he has indubitable proof that
the man has been in this house to-night, and we
know that he could not have passed our line of
pickets. We will turn the place upside down
from cellar to garret, but what we find him now!”
He waited for no more; but dashed from the
room. As the door closed behind him Captain
McCracken turned to me, and I saw a hundred
questions trembling on his lips.
324


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
to save your worthless hide, have you?” he de-
manded hotly. “Well, let me tell you, sir, that
you have a man to deal with now; and one who
has small regard for rogues of your stripe. I
shall take the greatest pleasure in turning you
over to the authorities without delay.”
Glenn was wise enough to keep silent and leave
the management of the affair to me; but I will
admit that for a moment I was frightened. For
all I could tell, I might be running up against
the solid granite of British obstinacy.
“Oh, Duncan,” I pleaded, “do you not see how
that would complicate matters? Can't you un-
derstand you would thus bring upon us the very
publicity and notoriety we have been striving
so hard to avoid? Beside,” as a final argument,
“you promised to give me free rein, Duncan.
You agreed to do as I said without question or
demur.”
“Well, I didn’t know then that you intended
to inveigle me into assisting an escaping crim-
inal,” he grumbled. “But if I do help,” he
declared firmly, “this fellow will have to give up
those stolen jewels. I do not stir a hand until
he accedes to that.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. His assistance was
326


THE WAN SUYDEN SAPP HIRES
uring them with his eye and debating their prob-
able effect. The Captain stood sternly aloof,
pretending to view the project with scornful
disfavour, but really as excited and eager now
as either of us.
“Now, Glenn,” I exhorted, snatching up a long
black skirt with fluffy ruffles all about the foot,
“into this; and don’t dare hold it up under any
circumstances. Let it trail. And slip into this
long, loose evening coat, warranted to conceal
any one's figure. And now this big, plumy hat
with the two veils, and this big boa, and the
muff. Be sure and hide your hands in the
muff.”
While I was giving the finishing touches and
adjusting the veil, Duncan took occasion to put
my prisoner through a searching interrogatory;
and as Glenn seemed nothing loath to telling his
share in the matter, we in this way rapidly filled
in the blanks which Baggerly had perforce been
obliged to leave in his story.
When the Captain had finished I, too, took a
hand. “By the way, Glenn,” I questioned, try-
ing to speak coldly, although I am afraid a
mouth full of pins rather spoiled the effect,
“there is one incident which I would especially
328


THE WAN SUY DE N S APP HIRES
strike a bargain with you in regard to the deal
we were speaking of.”
“Goodness, gracious me!” I broke in with a sud-
den perturbed recollection. “I had forgotten all
about the rubies!”
“Yes,” smiled Glenn once more; “I noticed
that; but there was no need for you to get fright-
ened. Santa Claus had them here all the time
just as he promised he would.”
He dived his hand into a pocket of the fur
coat, and bringing out a flat, carefully tied par-
cel, only too well remembered by me, laid it in
my lap. I glanced at it, tossed it over on the
table, and went on rehearsing him in the man-
agement of his train.
Under my instructions, he took two or three
turns up the room until he had learned to fairly
simulate my walk. Then he stopped abruptly in
front of me with a sudden fire in his blue eyes.
So intense was his earnestness that even the
woman’s garb did not render him ridiculous.
“I want to thank you for one thing especially,
Miss Bramblestone,” he said huskily; “and that
is for not looking in the box to see if the rubies
were really there. People don’t often trust me
very far; and I–I appreciate it.” His face
330


THE WAN SUY DE N S A PP HIRES
quivered a moment, and then, with the passing of
the mood, relaxed into its old mischievous lines.
“And I want to tell you, furthermore,” he went
on teasingly, “that if you ever weary of the dull
routine of respectability and wealth, my offer
will always remain open to you. Our profes-
sion lost a shining ornament when you decided
to stay straight.”
The Captain returned now with the informa-
tion that the enemy was busily engaged in
searching the upper floors, and that the way
was open to the front door.
“Even if they were all in the office, though,”
he remarked with an admiring glance at the
transformation which had been wrought in our
visitor’s appearance, “they would never doubt
but that it was you, Gwendolen. That disguise is
perfect enough to deceive the most searching
eye.”
We waited for no more. Glenn extended his
hand toward me in farewell; and despite the
Captain’s muttered explanation and hasty stride
forward, I placed mine in it. Then, with a
saucy twitch to his draperies, although I caught
a touch of wistfulness in the quizzical smile he
threw back at me, one of the most sincere ad-
331


THE WAN SUY DEN SAPP HIRES
“He is safe?” I asked eagerly.
“Yes; over in Jersey City, well beyond the
reach of the police.—But,” with a note of im-
patient decision, “enough of that. As you so
often say, we have no time to waste. I have a
cab at the door, and I want you to put on your
bonnet and come with me.”
There was no gainsaying the man’s obstinate
purpose. In the end, I had meekly to accompany
him down the elevator and out to the waiting
cab.
“Where?” asked the driver, slamming the door
upon us.
A thrill crept into the Captain's voice. “To
the Little Church around the Corner,” he said.
THE END
333


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APR 2 – 1941