Wiles of a Stranger Read online

The man turned ashen. He made a strange sound in his throat, and clutched at his heart. I was sure he was going to fall down dead of a heart attack on the very spot. We all stared at him until some trace of color returned to his cheeks.

  "That's what I thought,” Morrison said blandly, lifting the thing from Mills’ fingers.

  "Strass, certainly,” Mills spoke on, in the voice of authority. Just so had I heard my father speak to his clients, as though lecturing them. “A fine piece of work. I wouldn't be surprised if old Josef Strass himself hadn't manufactured this piece. He has an ingenious system—a melt of quartz, with lead oxide and some potassium carbonate. What was used to achieve this wonderful rose hue, I wonder? Some oxide of copper, I expect. What do you think, Major?"

  "Some mixture of copper and iron, perhaps,” Morrison said, discussing it as objectively as though fifty thousand pounds had not just flown out the window.

  "I still like it. I shall keep it, if you don't want it,” Lucien told them, and was allowed, as the thing was only glass, to hold it in his own hands and peer at the light through it. After his examination, he handed it to me. I had been figuring how I might get my hands on the fabulous rock, for whatever else it was, it was still very beautiful and interesting. It was hard to credit it was not a diamond. Hefting it, looking at it with the naked eye, did not convince me it was not a diamond either. The weight felt right.

  "Are you sure, Mr. Mills?” I asked.

  "Positive, Miss Stacey,” he replied, using my assumed name as though he had never known me by any other. I looked at the loupe he held, wishing I might see the gem through it, to determine he spoke the truth, but I could not very well ask for it, when I was posing as an ignorant governess.

  Mr. Beaudel stood stricken dumb with shock throughout it all. Whoever had switched the stone, I was morally certain he was not the culprit. It was impossible not to feel sorry for him. “I don't understand. I don't see how it could have happened,” he gasped at last.

  "When is the last time you were certain of the gem's authenticity? When was it last examined, I mean?” Mills enquired politely.

  "It hasn't been looked at by an expert for three years—three years ago in London it was studied by a potential buyer, but we didn't care for the price he offered. If only we had taken forty thousand! It hasn't left the house since that time. I have kept it under lock and key. It can't be a fake. Look again,” he pleaded.

  Both Mills and Morrison were happy to oblige him, and to confirm their mutual conviction that it was Strass glass.

  "A very fine piece of work,” Mills kept insisting, as though that were any consolation, when he went on to confirm it was undoubtedly glass, and not diamond.

  It was Morrison who diverted the talk to wonder whether the switch could not have taken place in London three years ago.

  "Impossible. It was never out of my hands. I slept with it in my fingers, and a pistol under my pillow,” Beaudel assured him. He had sunk on to a chair, his head in his hands, actually moaning. I looked from him to the two men. There was no mercy in their faces. They were perfectly satisfied to have shattered his life. And then I happened to think again of Stella. Now I knew why she was not here, intruding her presence. She had done it, switched stones, any time over the months she had been here, with easy access to it hidden away in that toy safe I could have opened myself with a screw driver.

  "Of course if you are not satisfied, you can have someone else look at it for you,” Mills said offhandedly.

  "Yes! Yes, that will be best,” Beaudel said, lifting his head to stare at us, distracted with grief and worry, but with now a tiny light of hope.

  "I understand Dutch van Deusen is right here, in town,” Morrison mentioned.

  "Excellent! You couldn't do better,” Mills seconded him.

  "No!” I exclaimed. It was pure, undiluted instinct. A moment earlier I had wished my father could be here, but I didn't want him involved now. He had been duped once in this house. To be put in a position where he might conceivably be held accountable for this monstrous crime was infinitely worse.

  Everyone looked at me, startled at my vehemence, when by rights I should not have spoken at all. “He—he is the man who—who stole your stones the other time,” I said to Beaudel.

  "I wouldn't let the man darken my door,” Beaudel said flatly.

  "Rubbish. Dutch van Deusen no more took your diamonds than I did,” Mills stated. “He is as honest as the day is long. There is something very havey-cavey going on here, Mr. Beaudel. I don't know what it is, but I would suggest you look into your—staff very closely."

  The word staff was hesitated over enough to give the idea it was not his first choice of word, or his true meaning. Or so it seemed to me.

  "He does know gems, whatever else might be said of the man,” Morrison tossed in.

  "Knows more about them than I do myself, and I wouldn't say that of more than two or three men in the kingdom,” Mills added.

  Beaudel looked bewildered, but in the end, I believe he hoped van Deusen might prove the others wrong. “We'll have him come,” he decided. “I won't let the diamond go to him, but he can come here, providing the constable is with him, and stays with him while he makes his examination."

  "Good enough,” Morrison agreed at once, with an air of satisfaction.

  Questions teamed through my poor head. I wanted to warn Morrison that Stella might even at that moment be making off with the real stone. I looked a worried message to him. He smiled blandly and turned to Beaudel.

  "How shall we arrange it? It might be best if I go into the town and bring him back, with a constable, of course."

  "Yes, go ahead. Will you stay, Mr. Mills?"

  Again I shot a pleading look to the major. “I shall be back as soon as possible,” he said, and bowed his way out the door. I ran out after him, hoping for a private word, but already Wiggins was handing him his hat and cane, holding the door for him.

  "Is there something wrong, Miss?” Wiggins asked politely.

  I stared at him, trying to read on that handsome face whether he was being boldly satirical, whether he knew perfectly well what was wrong, and was laughing up his sleeve at us all.

  "No, nothing,” I said, and turned to Lucien, who had trailed out at my heels.

  Beaudel called Wiggins to the office. I heard him tell the butler to call Mrs. Beaudel down. Instead of going back upstairs with my charge, I said to him, “We shall wait here quietly in the saloon, till Major Morrison comes back."

  "Good. I would like to see the constable. I wonder if he will bring his gun."

  He opened up one of Stella's fashion magazines and perused it as happily as though it were a children's book, while I sat thinking. I heard Stella's soft footfalls hastening toward the office. The door was closed behind her. In about four minutes, she came out. Wiggins must have been loitering close by, though I did not see him.

  "What's up?” he asked in a loud whisper, not realizing we were in the saloon.

  "The diamond is a fake. It's only glass,” she said, her voice high with incredulity. “And I know he thinks I took it. I could see it in his eyes, though he didn't suggest it in front of the other man."

  "The devil you say! Who says it is a fake?” Wiggins answered, his tone throbbing with excitement.

  "That expert in there, come down from London. How is it possible? Stanley, you didn't..."

  "No, I didn't, my darling, dashing Stella. If you think you can fleece me..."

  The door opened suddenly behind them, and Beaudel's voice was heard. “Will you please order some tea for us, Stella,” he asked.

  "Of course, my dear,” she said sweetly. “You must not distress yourself. It will be all a mistake. You'll see.” Beaudel went back in the office and closed the door.

  "What do we do now?” Wiggins asked her.

  "We order tea, Wiggins, and make it snappy. We have to keep the old fool in good humor, don't we? This is no time for him to turn on me. That wouldn't do at all."

  "But if
the diamond is gone..."

  "We don't know for sure. Get it, I say!” She spoke angrily, then turned and fled up the stairs. I took her words for confirmation she was to be kidnapped, and Beaudel to ransom her with Lucien's money.

  When silence returned outside, I went on with my thinking and figuring. Stella and Wiggins hadn't stolen the diamond.

  And if not they, then who? Who else knew where it was but the major, myself, and Beaudel? Beaudel was as innocent as I in the affair. His ashen face left no doubt about it. And that left only Major Morrison, who was now on his way to bring my father, to be involved again at the scene of the crime.

  Lucien went on quietly turning pages, smiling at the pretty pictures of fashionable ladies. I was grateful, as it left me free to try to make sense of this latest turn.

  My main concern was for Papa. I didn't see how this could make his situation worse than before. He was coming to examine a stone already declared fake, so they could not blame him. But it really had not looked like glass. It looked amazingly like a beautiful, big, brilliant diamond. Mills would certainly know, however. I tried thinking in different directions.

  Was it a ploy on Morrison's part to make him drop the charge against Papa? If he came and said the diamond was indeed a diamond, and Mills was talked into agreeing, would Beaudel be so grateful he would let my father go Scot free? I wondered too if Morrison had possibly corrupted Mills, had him call a diamond Strass glass. But again it made no sense. If the diamond were a diamond, my father would say so.

  I had made no advance, but was only more confused, when my father was shown in, about an hour later. Morrison and the constable were with him—so degrading to have to have that constable along. I hurried into the hallway, anxious for a look at him. He was not the haggard, worn man I expected to see, after his incarceration. He looked well, clean-shaven, cheeks not sunken from starvation, shirt not filthy. Really he appeared just fine, which was a great relief to me.

  Only his eyes betrayed we two were anything more than strangers. They lingered on me for a long minute, then he went into the office. I followed them in, with Lucien. We had not been asked, but everyone was so upset, we got in without being told to leave.

  Mills was holding the alleged Jaipur when Papa entered. He handed it to him. My father followed Mills's procedure of hefting the stone, examining it by the window and so on. Like Mills, he turned sadly to Beaudel to declare the thing a fake. I had to accept it then, and hard on the heels of my acceptance came the cold, certain knowledge that it was Major Morrison and no one else who had stolen the original. And I who had led him to it, opened the door for him, held a candle while he found the secret spot behind the portrait in the tower room. I even knew why he had not wanted to open the door, to see the diamond. He had been afraid I would know the stone was genuine, when he hoped to make folks believe the substitution had taken place much earlier. It was Morrison who deserved the constable at his elbow. He should be in the roundhouse, and not my innocent father. And I should too, for being an accessory to theft.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mills, my father and Major Morrison discussed the matter for some minutes with Beaudel, enquiring whether he would call in the Bow Street Runners and so on, but no decision was come to before the men left. Lucien listened with interest, not as downcast as he would have been had he realized his position.

  "We should let Algernon know,” he told Beaudel.

  "I will take care of it, child."

  "You haven't taken very good care of my diamond. I will do it myself,” he replied, not in a bold way, but matter-of-factly. The old man was close to tears, or perhaps beyond them. He had aged a decade that afternoon.

  "I will try to undo the damage,” Beaudel promised, his shoulders squaring, a firmer look taking possession of his countenance. He pulled the draw cord and requested Wiggins to send Mrs. Beaudel to his office. I took Lucien upstairs.

  It seemed Beaudel had finally admitted to himself that his wife was an adventuress. He could hardly be unaware of her carrying on in an unwifely manner. She took but slim pains to hide it from him. Ironically, when he was about to confront her with her treachery, he chose an act of which she was innocent. I knew I should be active, doing something to bring Morrison to justice, but sat on like a statue, thinking, thinking, thinking.

  My every train of thought led to the same conclusion. Morrison had stolen the Jaipur, at some time after I had shown him its hiding place. Why he had decided to draw attention to its theft by offering to purchase it was a mystery. His escape would have been easier had he just left the neighborhood quietly. So he wanted everyone to know it had been stolen, as long as no suspicion was directed toward himself.

  Beaudel suspected his wife, and for that reason hesitated to call in the law. And if the law was not to be called in, Morrison would get away clean, without so much as a question being asked of him. The only person who could point a finger at him was myself, the daughter of an incarcerated felon, who had lied to get herself into the house.

  To put an extra knot in the ties binding my hands, Morrison had contrived to have my father dragged into it. Already suspect, it would be natural to assume Papa and I had connived together in the theft. I longed to talk to my father, but to go to the jail was tantamount to announcing my close connection to him. I was not clever enough to invent any logical excuse to call on an accused man.

  I had fallen neatly into Morrison's trap, baited with his chivalrous flirting, his repeated promises of helping my father, his injunctions to trust him. It must have been laughably easy for him to wind me round his finger, an inexperienced fool like me, who had never had a beau in her life.

  Tess brought our dinner up on two trays while I still sat pondering. Lucien attacked his with his customary relish, but I did not even go to the table. I paced the room, trying to find some solution, some way to trap the major, without putting my father in worse jeopardy.

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets as I walked, mindlessly fingering a bit of paper that had somehow got there. I pulled it out, and found myself staring at the directions to reach Mr. Kirby, only five miles from Chelmsford. I had forgotten in the throes of other matters, that Morrison had given it to me that afternoon.

  Morrison—was there any trusting him, even in this detail? Might it not be a trick, a trap? With all other options closed to me, I decided I must give it a try. Whoever Mr. Kirby was, he was rich, and thus with some influence. He knew something was peculiar, here at Glanbury Park. He had hinted as much to Papa before we left London. He might even know Morrison was a scoundrel—that might have been the meaning of his hint. It was imperative that I see him.

  Getting away would be difficult, but with the house in an uproar over the theft, it would not be impossible. I did not ask Beaudel's permission to go. When I got to his office door, I heard him ringing a peal over Stella, who replied in tones of outraged virtue that she didn't know what he was talking about. I continued down to the kitchen and told Cook I had to make a quick visit into town.

  "If it's for cloves for your toothache, Miss Stacey, I have some in my room,” she offered, not suspecting any trickery from me.

  "No, it's not that,” I said vaguely. “I just wanted to ask if you or Tess would watch Lucien for a while. I am taking the gig."

  "Fine, my dear. Do you want a box to go with you? It will be dark before you're back."

  "No, thanks. I'll hurry."

  I left no message with the Beaudels, in case they should inquire for me. I didn't think they would. They had enough problems to make them forget an inconsequential governess.

  It was dusk when I set out in the slow gig for Kirby's home. My route took me two miles along the major road toward Chelmsford, until I reached a side road called McMaster's Lane. There was nothing frightening while I stayed on the main road. Traffic was moderate, and the sun still visible on the horizon. It was about five minutes down McMaster's Lane that it finally set, casting me into heavy shadows, as I trekked alone into the darkness. I had not eve
n brought a lantern.

  Before long, it was pitch black. Bushes encroached on the narrow path; from time to time, a soft, leafed branch would brush my cheek, sending my heart leaping into my throat. Sounds of the country night were all around me, alien to my city ears, but holding great menace.

  I very nearly lost courage and stopped at the first farmhouse that showed a light. I had to take myself by the scruff of the neck and remind myself what was at stake. I fought down the betraying notion that I could go home and return tomorrow by daylight. Tomorrow might be too late. Morrison might be on his way to Paris or London or Rome by then, with his ill-gotten gains.

  About a mile down the road, the few farmhouses previously encountered petered out. Utter darkness lay beyond. There was considerable doubt in my mind that Mr. Kirby had a residence here at all. I had only the major's word for it. And even if I did find Kirby, who was to say he would help? He had proved so elusive throughout the whole ordeal, I was ready at times to wonder if he even existed. But he did exist, of course. It was he who had catapulted my father and me into this mess. Yes, of course he existed. He was interested in the Jaipur, and he would help me to recover it and rescue Papa. It was only these reassurances that gave me the courage to jog on, down the black lane.

  It was difficult to gauge distances in the slow-moving vehicle. On foot, I can judge a mile pretty accurately. In a regular carriage by daylight too one gets some idea of the ground covered, the number of blocks and so on. But in the dark, seeing nothing but your hands a light blur in front of you, and occasionally a flickering shadow that must be the horse's tail, you lose all track of the distance traversed. It could have been a mile or a hundred miles I had gone, when at last I saw a white cottage nestled off to the left, with cozy lights twinkling. As I went closer, I saw it was stucco, as the Major had said, with a rounded archway over the front door. I was so very happy to have reached my destination it did not occur to me to wonder why a man able to purchase a fifty-thousand-guinea diamond should be living in a cottage.

  The house had a stable, but my courage was all spent. I did not take the gig to it, but tethered the nag to the closest tree by means of the reins. My feet flew up the cobbled path to the door, with the welcoming light in the windows beyond. If there was a knocker, it was invisible by moonlight. I lifted my hand and knocked hard with my knuckles. A kindly-looking housekeeper in a dark gown and white cap answered within a minute.