Miss Million's Maid Part 51

I've got my car here. I'll fix it up.

"Don't you worry----"

Here I seemed to detect a movement of Mr. Hiram P. Jessop's hand towards his breast-pocket.

Was it? Yes! He drew out a pigskin leather pocketbook. Swiftly, but quietly, he took out notes.... "Heavens!" This sincere and well-meaning citizen of no mean country was making an unapologised-for attempt to bribe Scotland Yard!

Their backs were towards me now; I do wish I had seen the detective's face! "See here, officer----Ah, you're proud? Well, that's all right.

I've got my car here, I say. You and I'll buzz up to Mr. Rattenheimer's, I guess. We'll leave these young ladies here with Miss Va.s.sity----"

"Very sorry, sir, but that's quite impossible," declared the even, expressionless voice of the Scotland Yard man. "These ladies have to return to London at once with me."

"But I tell you it's prepos----"

"Those are my orders, sir. Very sorry. If the car is ready"--turning to Miss Vi Va.s.sity--"I'll drive her, I'll take these ladies now."

"All alone, with you? Faith, and that you won't," declared the Honourable Jim Burke, stepping forward from where he had been standing, hastily finis.h.i.+ng the drink that had been poured out for him by the handsome white hands of Marmora, the Breathing Statue. "I'll go up with you, and see where you're taking the ladies----"

"And I'll accompany you, if you'll permit me," from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.

"Room in the car for six. Pity I can't leave Maudie, or I'd come. But young Olive must get her night's rest to-night, so I'm doing nurse and attending to the midget ventriloquist myself," declared the cheerful voice of England's Premier Comedienne.

"See you to-morrow in court, girls. Don't look like that, Nellie! You've got a face on you like a blessed bridegroom; there's nothing to get scared about. Lor'! No need to fret like that if you'd just been given ten years!... Got plenty o' rugs, Miss Smith? I'd lend one of you my best air-cus.h.i.+on to sleep on, full of the sighs of me first love. But if I did they'd only pinch it at the station. I know their tricks at that hole. So long, Ah-Sayn Lupang!" Again to the detective: "You ought to be at the top of your profession, you ought; got such an eye for character. Cheery-Ho!"

And we were off; the detective, the two arrested criminals (ourselves), the cousin of one of the "criminals" and the Honourable Jim Burke. In what character this young man was supposed to be travelling with us I'm sure I don't know.

I only know that but for him that motor drive through Suss.e.x up to the London police court would have been a nightmare. It was the Honourable Jim who managed to turn it into something of a joke.

For all the way along the gleaming white roads, with our headlights casting brilliant moving moons upon the hedges, the persuasive, mocking Irish voice of the Honourable Jim laughed and talked to the detective who was driving us to our fate. And the conversation of the Honourable Jim ran incessantly upon just one theme. The mistakes that have been made by the police in tracking down those suspected of some breach of the law!

As thus. "Were you in that celebrated case, officer, of the Downs.h.i.+re diamonds? Another jewel robbery, Miss Smith! Curious how history repeats itself. They'd got every bit of circ.u.mstantial evidence to show that the tiara had been stolen and broken up by a young maid-servant in the house. The 'tecs were hanging themselves all over with whatever's their equivalent for the D.S.O., for having got her, when the butler owned up and showed where he'd put the thing, untouched and wrapped up in a workman's red handkerchief, in an old dhry well in the grounds. Mustn't it make a man feel he ought to sing very small when he's been caught out in a little thing like that?"

"That's so," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, with a tone in his voice of positive grat.i.tude. Grat.i.tude, to the man whom he'd been blackening and showing up, this very afternoon! Together they seemed to be making common cause against the detective, who was rus.h.i.+ng Miss Million up to town and to durance vile!

The detective said less than any man with whom I've ever spent the same length of time.

But I believe he took it all in!

"Then there were the Ballycool murders, when they were as near as dash it to hanging the wrong man," pursued Mr. James Burke. "Of course, that was when my grandfather was a boy. So that particular show-up would be before your time, officer, possibly."

"Eighteen Sixty-Two, sir," said the detective briefly.

"Ah, yes, I remember," mused the Honourable Jim, who, I suppose, must have been born about Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-Seven himself. "Ah, yes; but then, some aspects of life, and love, and law don't seem to alter much, do they?"

"That's correct, Mr. Burke," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop again in his most empresse American.

"Then," pursued the ineffable Irish voice as we whizzed along, "there's that case of the Indian tray that was missing from that wealthy bachelor's rooms--but I misremember the exact end of that story.

"Plenty of them on record in this country as well as America. I daresay you agree with me, Jessop?"

Mr. Jessop, sitting there in the hurrying car, seemed to be agreeing with everything that Mr. Burke chose to say.

The young American, from what glimpses I caught of his firm, short, Dana-Gibson-like profile against the blue night sky, was full of the tenderest and most rueful concern for the little cousin who was involved in this pretty kettle of fish.

His broad, though padded, form was sitting very close to the minute, dejected figure of Miss Million, who had gradually ceased to shudder and to whimper "Oh, lor'! Oh, my! Oh, whatever is going to happen to us now!" as she had done at the beginning of the journey.

She was, I realised, a little cheered and encouraged now. From a movement that I had noticed under Miss Vi Va.s.sity's sable motor-rug I guessed that Mr. Jessop had taken his cousin's hand, and that he was holding it as we drove.

Well, after all, why shouldn't he? They are cousins.

Also it's quite on the cards that she may accept him yet (if we ever get out of this atrocious muddle about the stolen ruby) as her husband!

These two facts make all the difference....

And I should have said so to the Honourable Jim had we been alone.

It didn't really surprise me that he, in his turn, attempted to hold a girl's hand under that rug.

Men always seem to do what they notice some other man doing first. That must have been it. Except, of course, that it wasn't Miss Million's hand that Mr. Burke tried to take. It was the hand of Miss Million's maid.

I was determined that he shouldn't. Firmly I drew my hand out of his clasp--it was a warm and strong and comforting clasp enough, very magnetic; but what of that?

Then I clasped my own hands tightly together, as I am doing now, and left them on my lap, outside the rug.

The Honourable Jim seemed to tire, at last, of "batting" the detective who was driving us. He leant back and began to sing, in a sort of musical whisper.... Really, it's unfair that a man who has the gift of such a speaking voice should have been granted the gift of song into the bargain. They were just little s.n.a.t.c.hes that he crooned, the sort of sc.r.a.ps of verse with which he'd woken me up on the cliff that same afternoon--bits of an Irish song called "The Snowy-breasted Pearl," that begins:

"Oh, she is not like the rose That proud in beauty blows----"

And goes on something about:

"And if 'tis heaven's decree That mine she may not be----"

So sweet, so tuneful, so utterly tender and touching that--well, I know how I should have felt about him had I been Miss Million, who three days ago considered herself truly in love with the owner of this calling, calling tenor voice!

Had I been Miss Million, I could not have sat there with my hand firmly and affectionately clasped in the hand of another man, ignoring my first attraction. No; if I had been my mistress instead of just myself, I could not have remained so stolidly pointing out to the Honourable Jim that all was indeed over.

I could not have refused him a glance, a turn of the head in the direction of the voice that crooned so sweetly through the purring rush of the car.

However, this was all--as Million herself would say--neither here nor there. Apart from this Scotland Yard complication, she was Miss Million, the heiress, drifting slowly but surely in the direction of an eligible love affair with her American cousin.

I had nothing whatever to do with her rejected admirer, or how he was treated.

I was merely Miss Million's maid, Beatrice Lovelace, alias Smith, with an eligible love affair of her own on hand. How I wished my Mr. Reginald Brace could have been anywhere get-at-able! He would have been so splendid, so reliable!

He would have--well, I don't know what he could have done, exactly. I suppose that even he could scarcely have interfered with the carrying out of the law! Still, I felt that it would have been a great comfort to have had him there in that car.

And, as I am going to be engaged to him, there would have been nothing incorrect in allowing him to hold my hand. In fact, I should have done so. I hadn't got any gloves with me, and the night air was now chill.

"Why, your little hands are as cold as ice, Miss Smith," murmured Mr.