It was this ease, this ability to say things I couldn’t in a way that I couldn’t that set me a little against Darcy. I should have waited to ask that question until afterward, when so many attentions were not alert to be centered on anything that came to hand.
Nan nodded.
“I danced with Lady Diana once,” he went on. “She is tall, you know, and I am not so tall. It must have been torture to her, and certainly I was most fearful that she would say: T can’t go on with this; you are not tall enough for me.’ But she is as tolerant as she is beautiful, and so we finished it.”
A maid came in and stopped beside Polly.
“Excuse me,” she nodded to Darcy, “but shall I serve coffee now?”
Polly nodded, and the maid withdrew. The girl returned in another minute, and presently, in spite of the suppressed tension, we all felt pleasantly stimulated.
Darcy took up his story where he left off, a rambling but lightly narrated account of another week-end, in England, when there came a second interruption. Tim Crosby had risen from the table.
“Excuse me,” he said hurriedly, “but I think it’s started to rain and my car’s in the drive.”
He went around the table toward the door. Polly called to him: “Go through the pantry, Tim. It’s quicker.”
“I was going to,” he replied. He pushed the swinging door and disappeared. We heard him stumble.
Polly laughed. “Golf sticks,” she explained.
The words were scarcely out of her mouth when, astonishingly, the lights went out. For a second we sat struck silent, startled, our nerves suddenly taut. I, for one, hadn’t realized the tension. Then Polly giggled.
“He fell against the switch button,” she said. “Will somebody—”
I pushed my chair back hastily. Another chair scraped on the floor. I put out my hands to grope my way.
“It’s on the left side—”
The voice broke, raised into an ear-splitting scream, a scream of fright, of panic. A chair turned over. There were sudden noises, as somebody sprang up, and I heard Nan crying: “Polly! Polly! What is it, Polly?” I dashed through the dark for where I took the door to be, bumping against the table. Then I found it, flung it open, and collided with — Tim Crosby.
“What the devil!”
“Turn on those lights.”
“What lights?”
I knocked him aside, slid my hand down the left wall, and found the button. I returned in time to hear Polly sob:
“My rings! My rings! Somebody snatched them!”
I looked around, dumbfounded. Nan was holding Polly in her arms, begging her to tell what had happened. Tim Crosby stood at my shoulder, apparently trying to make out the scene. Harry Fothergill and Fletcher Gleason stared at each other, dazed. Durling seemed to be trying to catch Tim’s eye, and Darcy stood by Polly’s chair.
“What do you mean?” he demanded. “Somebody snatched your rings off then?”
Polly bobbed her head against Nan’s shoulder and held out her hand. The third finger was red and scratched — and bare.
“Good God!”
Fletcher Gleason shook himself, as if to see that he was wholly awake. “But there was nobody else—” He stopped.
“No,” Durling continued for him, “nobody but us.”
The silence that followed this must have lasted a year. Tim Crosby broke it.
“I don’t know,” he began. “That is, I didn’t know — oh, I didn’t know I’d turned off the lights.”
The lights! Almost with one accord we faced him, and his face blanched. Somebody struck a match — Durling. He lighted his cigar slowly, deliberately. It must have been what came to our eyes, automatically, against our wills, that prompted him to shoot an answer at our unuttered thoughts.
“Suppose you search me, then!”
At that Gleason waved his hand. “This is nonsense!” he said. “Don’t fly off the handle, Tim. Nobody has been accused.” He paused. “It isn’t the rings,” he said, “but — is one of us a thief?”
“Well,” spoke up Durling, “I suppose I’m the only stranger here. This may not be exactly the proper thing to do, but I’m willing that I should be searched from head to foot before I leave this room.”
Again Gleason raised his hand, but this time he was unanimously voted down. Darcy assumed the spokesmanship for all of us. “Mr. Durling’s suggestion is perfectly proper, it seems to me,” he said. “I too am comparatively a stranger. But I think these other gentlemen will all join me in a belief that we all ought to be searched, and thoroughly, from top to bottom. We should find out here and now er — er — whatever is to be found out.” He glanced around and we all nodded.
“This is terrible!” Gleason objected, obviously distressed. “And yet—”
“And yet,” I interrupted, “one of us here is undoubtedly responsible.”
Polly was sitting up straight again. Her eyes were red, and she was rubbing her finger. Nan and Mrs. Fothergill rose. “Perhaps,” Nan said, “Polly could help us.”
Polly shook her head. “I know nothing,” she declared, “except that just as I started to speak, two hands grabbed mine, and before I could clinch my fist they had slipped the rings off. Strong hands.”
“If I may offer a suggestion,” I said, “suppose Tim — Tim was out of the room at the time — search every man here. I assume that—”
“Why the devil should I have to say it? Durling, though, helped me out.”
“Of course,” he finished the sentence, “the ladies are eliminated.”
“Then,” said Nan, rising briskly, “we might as well get out and let you get to it. Please, please, be quick.”
They rose, led by Polly, and started to leave the room. Nan last. As she passed me she pulled me aside. “Max! Max!” she whispered. “Do something — anything!”
I shook my head. “Go outside,” I said. “I’ll let you know in a minute.” She hurried after the others.
There were nine of us left when the door closed behind her. Gleason, Fothergill, Ted Harrison, Cully Mason, Nan’s brother, Durling, Darcy, Tim Crosby, and myself. Gleason was impatient.
“Go to it, Tim,” he said.
Tim glanced around uncertainly. I stepped forward. “Begin with me,” I suggested. With a half-apology he began the ordeal — and I’ll vouch for its thoroughness. My pockets, the lining of my coat and vest, the hollows of my bat tie, my waistband — he went through everything.
Next came Fothergill. And then Gleason. And then Darcy. The little Englishman chattered away, offering possible and impossible hiding places for inspection. Then Harrison, Cully, and finally Durling. Tim hastened, was stepping back from the man he’d brought to the house, when Darcy spoke.
“Just a minute, Mr. Crosby!” he said sharply. “Mr. Durling has not been searched as thoroughly as he might be. We’re all, you know, to be treated with equal disrespect.” This last was with a cold, humorless smile.
Durling growled something. “Don’t slight me, Tim,” he said then. “Look good.”
Without comment Tim extended his search — his futile search. Completed, he made his report — the report that we already realized.
“They’re not here.”
Automatically I glanced about the room. It was comparatively bare, not a possible place where the rings could have been placed in the fraction of a second that followed the theft. The windows were down. The floor was hardwood — and glistened with a clear expanse.
Gleason sat down. “Will somebody call the girls?” he asked. I went into the next room. The occupants sprang to their feet. “Gleason will make the report,” I said, and they filed past me.
We took our chairs. Darcy was speaking.
“It makes the situation beastly awkward,” he said as I sat down. “One of us has got away with it, as you say here. One of us so far is an uncaught thief. We all suspect one another. I don’t dare suggest that the police be called—”