“Where? I don’t see it.”
“There-on the right, by your hand-under the big, square case. Look!”
“And who put it there?” said Mr. Carthew angrily. “I’ll swear it wasn’t me. Who’s been messing the things about? Who-”
He pulled out the case with a jerk. It was very rubbed and shabby and old; the leather, which had once been scarlet, was now a dim pinkish brown; the gold crown on the lid could only just be distinguished, a mere tarnished hint of royalty.
Mr. Carthew turned round, still grumbling.
“I suppose you’ll say I’m losing my memory-but I never put it there, and that I’ll swear to.”
Anna stepped down. She did not say a word. She kept her eyes on the table.
“Oh, do show it to us!” said Corinna.
Mr. Carthew came down too. He opened the case, and the case was empty.
The library seemed to fill with silence. It was like water rushing into an empty place.
Mr. Carthew and Corinna both looked at what he had in his hand. The case had a satin lining, the white of which had turned to a yellowish brown. The outline of a loosely shaped bow was marked upon it, both by the dinting of the satin and by a deeper discoloration. Two brownish hollows marked the places of those emeralds which Mr. Carthew had described as worth a lot of money. From their size, he did not seem to have been guilty of overstatement.
Anna looked too, and then looked away.
Corinna spoke first. She said in a whisper,
“It’s gone!”
And then, to her own surprise, her legs began to tremble so much that she looked round for a chair and sat down abruptly.
“What’s it mean?” said Mr. Carthew in an odd, troubled voice.
Then, with sudden passion, “What’s it mean? Anna!” The word came out with explosive force. Then, checking himself, he advanced to the table and put down the empty case.
As if his voice, speaking her name in that sharp peremptory way, had called her from the wings where like many another actress she had been standing dumb with stage-fright, Anna started, drew on that sense of drama which never left her for very long, and took up her part. It was the first step, the first plunge, that stopped one’s breath and set one’s heart thudding. She heard herself say, “It must be there,” and approved the low shocked tone that contradicted the assertion.
It was she who rummaged in the safe, handing things down to Corinna until nothing more remained, whilst John Carthew stood half turned away, looking, still looking, at the empty case.
When the safe had been cleared, he roused himself and displayed a sudden energy. Everything was to be put back, the safe re-locked, the picture hung, the blinds drawn up.
When the sun was slanting in again, he slipped the case into his pocket. He looked older. His sudden energy had failed. He leaned with one hand on the table.
“What are you going to do?” said Corinna, and Anna blessed her for the question. In another moment she would have had to ask it herself.
“Do?” said Mr. Carthew. “Do? The thing’s an heirloom. It’s got to be found.” He straightened himself up as if his own loud voice had encouraged him. “What do we have police for? If we have got a Socialist government, we haven’t got to the point where a burglar can break into my safe and take a family heirloom and get away with it-no, by jingo, we haven’t, though that’s where we’re heading for! Thank God, I shan’t be here to see it! Law and order’ll last my time, and an heirloom’s an heirloom. It don’t belong to me-it belongs to all the Carthews-it belongs-” His voice had been dropping; now it ceased.
Corinna thrilled to the broken sentence. Was it Car’s name that had broken it? Anna knew that it was, and a rising passion swept away her last qualm.
“You can’t call in the police,” she said in a hard, dogmatic tone.
Mr. Carthew stiffened at once.
“I can’t-what? And why not?”
Corinna saw his angry flash, and remembered Car saying, “He’s all right as long as you don’t cross him. He likes his own way.” Funny that Anna shouldn’t have known better than to lay down the law to him like that, and to keep on doing it in the face of his rising anger.
“It will make such a talk.”-Anna, pale and shrinking.
“And why the deuce should I care about that?”-Cousin John, the very image of the old squire who is just going to turn an erring daughter out into the snow.
“But, Uncle John, you can’t!”
“And why can’t I? And whose business is it except my own?”
“You mustn’t!”
“Mustn’t I-what?”-and a snort of wrath and the click of the telephone.
Corinna, standing back against the mantelpiece, a little abashed at this frank lapse into family manners, turned a pitying glance on Anna. Cousin John had just sworn-yes, really sworn at her. She received a shock, because, just for an instant as the angry man shouted into the telephone, a fleeting look changed Anna’s shocked pallor into something else and Corinna thought that the something else was triumph.
XXXII
Miss Willy Tarrant lived in a dumpy brick house exactly half-way down the village street. The original small casements of the two front rooms having been replaced by generous bow windows Miss Willy commanded a view of practically every front door in Linwood. She knew at once when Dr. Monk had been sent for to a case, or when the Vicar, to whom time meant nothing, was going to be late for church. She could follow him from a few feet within his own hall door all the way to the vestry, and if the vestry door had been left open, she would have been able to watch him robing. This from the dining-room.
The drawing-room afforded her a perfect view of the interior of the local grocery, a partial one of old Mrs. Hoylake’s parlor, and, if she leaned out, an opportunity of seeing Linwood buy its Saturday joints from Mr. Brown the butcher.
Very little went on in Linwood about which Miss Willy did not know at least as much as the people immediately concerned. Sometimes it might be said that she knew a good deal more. She could certainly tell the Vicar just what was wrong with his sermons, and how to improve them; whilst she never met Dr. Monk without contending for the superior efficacy of some specific of her own. She had a finger in every pie, and a better way of baking it than the one which you had always thought quite good enough.
On the morning after Mr. Carthew’s wedding-day anniversary Miss Willy was in her dining-room cleaning the cages inhabited respectively by a pink and gray parrot called Archibald, a pair of small, green parakeets, a very large and highly colored macaw, an invisible dormouse, and an elderly and partially bald, white rat. Whilst the cages were being cleaned, their tenants disported themselves about the room, with the exception of the dormouse, who remained obstinately in seclusion, although he should not have begun to think about hibernating for an least another month.
Miss Willy was so busy for once in a way that she did not observe the approach of Mrs. Hoylake’s son Bert with the post. She heard the rat-tat too late to get to the door and detain him for news of his wife’s sister Ellen, who had married a cousin of Mr. Carthew’s second gardener and had just had twins. Miss Willy had the greatest possible contempt for Ellen’s mother’s views on the upbringing of babies, and she wanted to tell Bert Hoylake so, and to urge him on no account to allow his mother-in-law to give Ellen any advice about the twins. She might have caught him if Rollo, the raven, had not been immediately in front of the door. Rollo required careful handling and had to be coaxed away, by which time the only sign of Bert was the small parcel which he had pushed into the letter-box.
Miss Willy picked the parcel up and went back into the dining-room, where she was greeted by loud squawks of welcome from Archibald, who was climbing methodically up the left-hand curtain, and from the macaw, who was perched on the back of one of the dining-room chairs. She looked round anxiously for the rat, Augustus, because he was not very good at getting out of the way, and, if trodden on, was apt to retaliate. His teeth were still quite good.