The Complete Short Stories (78 page)

“Bertie, carissimo,” it began, “I wonder if you will have the nerve to do it: it will take some nerve, too. Don't forget the jewels. They are a detail, but details interest me.

“Yours as ever,

“C
LOTILDE
.

“Your mother must not know of my existence. If questioned swear you never heard of me.”

For years Mrs. Heasant had searched Bertie's correspondence diligently for traces of possible dissipation or youthful entanglements, and at last the suspicions that had stimulated her inquisitorial zeal were justified by this one splendid haul. That any one wearing the exotic name “Clotilde” should write to Bertie under the incriminating announcement “as ever” was sufficiently electrifying, without the astounding allusion to the jewels. Mrs. Heasant could recall novels and dramas wherein jewels played an exciting and commanding rôle, and here, under her own roof, before her very eyes as it were, her own son was carrying on an intrigue in which jewels were merely an interesting detail. Bertie was not due home for another hour, but his sisters were available for the immediate unburdening of a scandal-laden mind.

“Bertie is in the toils of an adventuress,” she screamed; “her name is Clotilde,” she added, as if she thought they had better know the worst at once. There are occasions when more harm than good is done by shielding young girls from a knowledge of the more deplorable realities of life.

By the time Bertie arrived his mother had discussed every possible and improbable conjecture as to his guilty secret; the girls limited themselves to the opinion that their brother had been weak rather than wicked.

“Who is Clotilde?” was the question that confronted Bertie almost before he had got into the hall. His denial of any knowledge of such a person was met with an outburst of bitter laughter.

“How well you have learned your lesson!” exclaimed Mrs. Heasant. But satire gave way to furious indignation when she realized that Bertie did not intend to throw any further light on her discovery.

“You shan't have any dinner till you've confessed everything,” she stormed.

Bertie's reply took the form of hastily collecting material for an impromptu banquet from the larder and locking himself into his bedroom. His mother made frequent visits to the locked door and shouted a succession of interrogations with the persistence of one who thinks that if you ask a question often enough an answer will eventually result. Bertie did nothing to encourage the supposition. An hour had passed in fruitless one-sided palaver when another letter addressed to Bertie and marked “private” made its appearance in the letterbox. Mrs. Heasant pounced on it with the enthusiasm of a cat that has missed its mouse and to whom a second has been unexpectedly vouchsafed. If she hoped for further disclosures assuredly she was not disappointed.

“So you have really done it!” the letter abruptly commenced; “Poor Dagmar. Now she is done for I almost pity her. You did it very well, you wicked boy, the servants all think it was suicide, and there will be no fuss. Better not touch the jewels till after the inquest.

“C
LOTILDE
.”

Anything that Mrs. Heasant had previously done in the way of outcry was easily surpassed as she raced upstairs and beat frantically at her son's door.

“Miserable boy, what have you done to Dagmar?”

“It's Dagmar now, is it?” he snapped; “it will be Geraldine next.”

“That it should come to this, after all my efforts to keep you at home of an evening,” sobbed Mrs. Heasant; “it's no use you trying to hide things from me; Clotilde's letter betrays everything.”

“Does it betray who she is?” asked Bertie. “I've heard so much
about her, I should like to know something about her home-life. Seriously, if you go on like this I shall fetch a doctor; I've often enough been preached at about nothing, but I've never had an imaginary harem dragged into the discussion.”

“Are these letters imaginary?” screamed Mrs. Heasant. “What about the jewels, and Dagmar, and the theory of suicide?”

No solution of these problems was forthcoming through the bedroom door, but the last post of the evening produced another letter for Bertie, and its contents brought Mrs. Heasant that enlightenment which had already dawned on her son.

“D
EAR
B
ERTIE
,” it ran; “I hope I haven't distracted your brain with the spoof letters I've been sending in the name of a fictitious Clotilde. You told me the other day that the servants, or somebody at your home, tampered with your letters, so I thought I would give any one that opened them something exciting to read. The shock might do them good.

“Yours,

“C
LOVIS
S
ANGRAIL
.”

Mrs. Heasant knew Clovis slightly, and was rather afraid of him. It was not difficult to read between the lines of his successful hoax. In a chastened mood she rapped once more at Bertie's door.

“A letter from Mr. Sangrail. It's all been a stupid hoax. He wrote those other letters. Why, where are you going?”

Bertie had opened the door; he had on his hat and overcoat.

“I'm going for a doctor to come and see if anything's the matter with you. Of course it was all a hoax, but no person in his right mind could have believed all that rubbish about murder and suicide and jewels. You've been making enough noise to bring the house down for the last hour or two.”

“But what was I to think of those letters?” whimpered Mrs. Heasant

“I should have known what to think of them,” said Bertie; “if you choose to excite yourself over other people's correspondence it's your own fault. Anyhow, I'm going for a doctor.”

It was Bertie's great opportunity, and he knew it. His mother was conscious of the fact that she would look rather ridiculous if the story got about. She was willing to pay hush-money.

“I'll never open your letters again,” she promised.

And Clovis has no more devoted slave than Bertie Heasant.

“I
SUPPOSE
we shall never see Wilfrid pigeoncote here now that he has become heir to the baronetcy and to a lot of money,” observed Mrs. Peter Pigeoncote regretfully to her husband.

“Well, we can hardly expect to,” he replied, “seeing that we always choked him off from coming to see us when he was a prospective nobody. I don't think I've set eyes on him since he was a boy of twelve.”

“There was a reason for not wanting to encourage his acquaintanceship,” said Mrs. Peter. “With that notorious failing of his he was not the sort of person one wanted in one's house.”

“Well, the failing still exists, doesn't it?” said her husband; “or do you suppose a reform of character is entailed along with the estate?”

“Oh, of course, there is still that drawback,” admitted the wife, “but one would like to make the acquaintance of the future head of the family, if only out of mere curiosity. Besides, cynicism apart, his being rich
will
make a difference in the way people will look at his failing. When a man is absolutely wealthy, not merely well-to-do, all suspicion of sordid motive naturally disappears; the thing becomes merely a tiresome malady.”

Wilfrid Pigeoncote had suddenly become heir to his uncle, Sir Wilfrid Pigeoncote, on the death of his cousin, Major Wilfrid Pigeoncote, who had succumbed to the after-effects of a polo accident. (A Wilfrid Pigeoncote had covered himself with honours in the course of Marlborough's campaigns, and the name Wilfrid had been a baptismal weakness in the family ever since.) The new heir to the family dignity and estates was a young man of about five-and-twenty, who was known more by reputation than by person to a wide circle of cousins and kinsfolk. And the reputation was an unpleasant one. The numerous other Wilfrids in the family were distinguished one from another chiefly by the names of their residences or professions, as Wilfrid of Hubbledown, and young Wilfrid the Gunner, but this particular scion was known by the ignominious and expressive label of Wilfrid the Snatcher. From his late schooldays onward he had been possessed by an acute and
obstinate form of kleptomania; he had the acquisitive instinct of the collector without any of the collector's discrimination. Anything that was smaller and more portable than a sideboard, and above the value of ninepence, had an irresistible attraction for him, provided that it fulfilled the necessary condition of belonging to some one else. On the rare occasions when he was included in a country-house party, it was usual and almost necessary for his host, or some member of the family, to make a friendly inquisition through his baggage on the eve of his departure, to see if he had packed up “by mistake” any one else's property. The search usually produced a large and varied yield.

“This is funny,” said Peter Pigeoncote to his wife, some half-hour after their conversation; “here's a telegram from Wilfrid, saying he's passing through here in his motor, and would like to stop and pay us his respects. Can stay for the night if it doesn't inconvenience us. Signed ‘Wilfrid Pigeoncote.' Must be the Snatcher; none of the others have a motor. I suppose he's bringing us a present for the silver wedding.”

“Good gracious!” said Mrs. Peter, as a thought struck her; “this is rather an awkward time to have a person with his failing in the house. All those silver presents set out in the drawing-room, and others coming by every post; I hardly know what we've got and what are still to come. We can't lock them all up; he's sure to want to see them.”

“We must keep a sharp look-out, that's all,” said Peter reassuringly.

“But these practised kleptomaniacs are so clever,” said his wife apprehensively, “and it will be so awkward if he suspects that we are watching him.”

Awkwardness was indeed the prevailing note that evening when the passing traveller was being entertained. The talk flitted nervously and hurriedly from one impersonal topic to another. The guest had none of the furtive, half-apologetic air that his cousins had rather expected to find; he was polite, well-assured, and, perhaps, just a little inclined to “put on side.” His hosts, on the other hand, wore an uneasy manner that might have been the hallmark of conscious depravity. In the drawing-room, after dinner, their nervousness and awkwardness increased.

“Oh, we haven't shown you the silver-wedding presents,” said Mrs.
Peter suddenly, as though struck by a brilliant idea for entertaining the guest; “here they all are. Such nice, useful gifts. A few duplicates, of course.”

“Seven cream jugs,” put in Peter.

“Yes, isn't it annoying,” went on Mrs. Peter; “seven of them. We feel that we must live on cream for the rest of our lives. Of course, some of them can be changed.”

Wilfrid occupied himself chiefly with such of the gifts as were of antique interest, carrying one or two of them over to the lamp to examine their marks. The anxiety of his hosts at these moments resembled the solicitude of a cat whose newly born kittens are being handed round for inspection.

“Let me see; did you give me back the mustard-pot? This is its place here,” piped Mrs. Peter.

“Sorry. I put it down by the claret-jug,” said Wilfrid, busy with another object.

“Oh, just let me have that sugar-sifter again,” asked Mrs. Peter, dogged determination showing through her nervousness. “I must label it who it comes from before I forget.”

Vigilance was not completely crowned with a sense of victory. After they had said “Good night” to their visitor, Mrs. Peter expressed her conviction that he had taken something.

“I fancy, by his manner, that there was something up,” corroborated her husband. “Do you miss anything?”

Mrs. Peter hastily counted the array of gifts.

“I can only make it thirty-four, and I think it should be thirty-five,” she announced. “I can't remember if thirty-five includes the Archdeacon's cruet-stand that hasn't arrived yet.”

“How on earth are we to know?” said Peter. “The mean pig hasn't brought us a present, and I'm hanged if he shall carry one off.”

“Tomorrow, when he's having his bath,” said Mrs. Peter excitedly, “he's sure to leave his keys somewhere, and we can go through his portmanteau. It's the only thing to do.”

On the morrow an alert watch was kept by the conspirators behind half-closed doors, and when Wilfrid, clad in a gorgeous bathrobe, had made his way to the bath-room, there was a swift and furtive rush by two excited individuals towards the principal guest-chamber. Mrs. Peter kept guard outside, while her husband first made a hurried and successful search for the keys, and then
plunged at the portmanteau with the air of a disagreeably conscientious Customs official. The quest was a brief one; a silver cream jug lay embedded in the folds of some zephyr shirts.

“The cunning brute,” said Mrs. Peter; “he took a cream jug because there were so many; he thought one wouldn't be missed. Quick, fly down with it and put it back among the others.”

Wilfrid was late in coming down to breakfast, and his manner showed plainly that something was amiss.

“It's an unpleasant thing to have to say,” he blurted out presently, “but I'm afraid you must have a thief among your servants. Something's been taken out of my portmanteau. It was a little present from my mother and myself for your silver wedding. I should have given it to you last night after dinner, only it happened to be a cream jug, and you seemed annoyed at having so many duplicates, so I felt rather awkward about giving you another. I thought I'd get it changed for something else, and now it's gone.”

“Did you say it was from your
mother
and yourself?” asked Mr. and Mrs. Peter almost in unison. The Snatcher had been an orphan these many years.

“Yes, my mother's at Cairo just now, and she wrote to me at Dresden to try and get you something quaint and pretty in the old silver line, and I pitched on this cream jug.”