The Bandbox Part 31

She nodded impatiently: "Oh, of course--with the lining half ripped out and the necklace missing."

"Curious!" he murmured.

"Rather," she agreed. "What do you make of it?"

"This address isn't her writing," he said, deep in thought.

"Oh, so you're familiar with the lady's hand?" There was an accent in Alison's voice that told him, before he looked, that her lip was curling and her eyes were hard.

"This is a man's writing," he said quietly, wondering if it could be possible that Alison was jealous.

"Well?" she demanded. "What of it?"

"I don't know. Miss Searle got me on the telephone a little after one last night; she said she'd found the necklace in the hat and was bringing it to me."

"How did she know it was mine?"

"Heard you order it sent to me, in London. You'll remember my telling you she knew."

"Oh, yes. Go on."

"She didn't show up, but telephoned again some time round four o'clock explaining that she had been in a taxicab accident in the Park and lost her way but finally got home--that is, to her hotel, the St. Simon. She said the necklace was safe--didn't mention the hat--and asked me to call for it at noon today. I said I would, and I'm by way of being late now.

Doubtless she can explain how the hat came to you this way."

"I'll be interested to hear," said Alison, "and to know that the necklace is really safe. On the face of it--as it stands--there's something queer--wrong.... What are you going to do?"

Staff had moved toward the telephone. He paused, explaining that he was about to call up Miss Searle for rea.s.surance. Alison negatived this instantly.

"Why waste time? If she has the thing, the quickest way to get it is to go to her now--at once. If she hasn't, the quickest way to get after it is via the same route. I'm all ready and if you are we'll go immediately."

Staff bowed, displeased with her manner to the point of silence. He had no objection to her being as temperamental as she pleased, but he objected strongly to having it implied by everything except spoken words that he was in some way responsible for the necklace and that Eleanor Searle was quite capable of conspiring to steal it.

As for Alison, her humour was dangerously impregnated with the consciousness that she had played the fool to such an extent that she stood in a fair way to lose her necklace. Inasmuch as she knew this to be altogether her fault, whatever the outcome, she was in a mood to quarrel with the whole wide world; and she schooled herself to treat with Staff on terms of toleration only by exercise of considerable self-command and because she was exacting a service of him.

So their ride uptown was marked by its atmosphere of distant and dispa.s.sionate civility. They spoke infrequently, and then on indifferent topics soon suffered to languish. In due course, however, Staff mastered his resentment and--as evidenced by his wry, secret smile--began to take a philosophic view of the situation, to extract some slight amus.e.m.e.nt from his insight into Alison's mental processes. Intuitively sensing this, she grew even more exasperated with him--as well as with everybody aside from her own impeccable self.

At the St. Simon, Staff soberly escorted the woman to the lounge, meaning to leave her there while he enquired for Eleanor at the office; but they had barely set foot in the apartment when their names were shrieked at them in an excitable, shrill, feminine voice, and Mrs.

Ilkington bore down upon them in full regalia of sensation.

"My dears!" she cried, regarding them affectionately--"such a surprise!

Such a delightful surprise! And so good of you to come to see me so soon! And opportune--I'm dying, positively expiring, for somebody to gossip with. Such a singular thing has happened--"

Alison interrupted bluntly: "Where's Miss Searle? Mr. Staff is anxious to see her."

"That's just it--_just_ what I want to talk about. You'd never guess what that girl has done--and after all the trouble and thought I've taken in her behalf, too! I'm disgusted, positively and finally disgusted; never again will I interest myself in such people. I--"

"But where is Miss Searle?" demanded Alison, with a significant look to Staff.

"Gone!" announced Mrs. Ilkington impressively.

"Gone?" echoed Staff.

Mrs. Ilkington nodded vigorously, compressing her lips to a thin line of disapproval. "I'm positively at my wits' end to account for her."

"I fancy there's an explanation, however," Alison put in.

"I wish you'd tell me, then.... You see, we dined out, went to the theatre and supper together, last night. The Struyvers asked me, and I made them include her, of course. We got back about one. Of course, my dears, I was fearfully tired and didn't get up till half an hour ago.

Imagine my sensation when I enquired for Miss Searle and was informed that she paid her bill and left at five o'clock this _morning_, and with _a strange man!_"

"She left you a note, of course?" Staff suggested.

"Not a line--nothing! I might be the dirt beneath her feet, the way she's treated me. I'm thoroughly disillusioned--disgusted!"

"Pardon me," said Staff; "I'll have a word with the office."

He hurried away, leaving Mrs. Ilkington still volubly dilating on that indignity that had been put upon her: Alison listening with an air of infinite detachment.

His enquiry was fruitless enough. The day-clerk, he was informed by that personage, had not come on duty until eight o'clock; he knew nothing of the affair beyond what he had been told by the night-clerk--that Miss Searle had called for her bill and paid it at five o'clock; had given instructions to have her luggage removed from her room and delivered on presentation of her written order; and had then left the hotel in company with a gentleman who registered as "I. Arbuthnot" at one o'clock in the morning, paying for his room in advance.

Staff, consumed with curiosity about this gentleman, was so persistent in his enquiry that he finally unearthed the bellboy who had shown that guest to his room and who furnished what seemed to be a tolerably accurate sketch of him.

The man described was--Iff.

Discouraged and apprehensive, Staff returned to the lounge and made his report--one received by Alison with frigid disapproval, by Mrs.

Ilkington with every symptom of cordial animation; from which it became immediately apparent that Alison had told the elder woman everything she should not have told her.

"'I. Arbuthnot,'" Alison translated: "Arbuthnot Ismay."

"Gracious!" Mrs. Ilkington squealed. "Isn't that the real name of that odd creature who called himself Iff and pretended to be a Secret Service man?"

Staff nodded a glum a.s.sent.

"It's plain enough," Alison went on; "this Searle woman was in league with him--"

"I disagree with you," said Staff.

"On what grounds?"

"I don't believe that Miss Searle--"

"On what grounds?"

He shrugged, acknowledging his inability to explain.

"And what will you do?" interrupted Mrs. Ilkington.

"I shall inform the police, of course," said Alison; "and the sooner the better."

"If I may venture so far," Staff said stiffly, "I advise you to do nothing of the sort."