A Doubtful Case

by Barry Pain

A DOUBTFUL CASE

By BARRY PAIN.

MY friend, James Foxton Mace, was admitted a solicitor. He was managerially employed by the firm to which in previous years he had been articled. Higgs, Petworth, and Higgs enjoy the cleanest of reputations and the dirtiest of offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields. They are a very solid firm, and James had a sure and certain hope of being taken in as a partner.

"When poor old Higgs is called to his rest," was the way Petworth put it.

"When poor dear old Petworth is no longer with us," was what Higgs said.

James had only to wait. He filled in the time by falling in love with Viola Lessing. The affair was rapid and tempestuous. He proposed and was accepted immediately.

He was to be married in three months. During those three months he ceased to be fit for masculine society.

He seemed to think that no one had ever been engaged before, and that he, personally, with some assistance from Miss Lessing, had invented marriage. Many men get similar ideas at such times; a baseless conviction that they are quite extraordinary comes over them and, as I say, renders them unfit for masculine society.

It is a merciful dispensation that they do not seek masculine society, or any society but à deux. Still, I found it necessary to call James's attention to the marriage advertisements in the morning papers, and to remind him that these appeared with fair regularity.

James also developed nerves. In his office he may have been as shrewd and self-reliant as ever; he may have been as sound on the subject of "all that messuage and tenement," and wise in the conduct of cases; but outside the office he became a child. He worried himself about his wedding, and he worried his best man about it to such an extent that the poor fellow told me that he had some thoughts of turning it into a funeral. James hesitated and vacillated over the least important details.

He went bleating for advice to everybody about anything.

His friends were patient, knowing that in six months he would be normal again. But we were—if I may speak for the others—somewhat sick of James.

Consequently, when I had settled down to the evening papers, tea, and possibly sleep, at the club one afternoon, I was annoyed to see James bearing down on me.

"Go away, James!" I said: "this is no place for the ecstatic and domestic. Go and buy fenders!"

"Don't be an ass!" said James, smiling feebly. "the fact is that a most annoying and troublesome thing has happened, and I should like your opinion about it."

"The last time you consulted me," I said wearily. "it was about your clothes—which is in itself a sign of dementia and loss of willpower. But go on."

"Well, it's about old Higgs. Know him?"

"Your senior partner? No."

"He's not a bad chap in some ways. We are always perfectly civil to one another, and I dine at his house once or twice a year. But he's distinctly touchy, and we've not always quite agreed. An old lawyer doesn't like to be shown that he's in the wrong by a young lawyer—and that's had to happen now and again. We are not intimate, you understand?"

"Yes; so far the problem presents no difficulties."

"You wait a bit. I had never expected old Higgs to send us a wedding present. The association is almost entirely a business one, and although Higgs isn't mean exactly, he doesn't much like spending money. But yesterday a parcel arrived by registered post. Inside there was Higgs's card, and a jewel-case."

"Get on to the important point. What was in the jewel-case?"

"Nothing. You could see by the velvet and padding stuff that it was meant to hold a necklace. But there was no necklace there. What's one to make of it?"

"Had the packet been tampered with?"

"Not a bit. Every seal was unbroken. What I want to know is what I'm to do."

"Write and tell him about it, of course."

"I couldn't possibly do that," said James.

"Why not?"

James took a seat on the couch by my side and dropped his voice to a mysterious tone. "There was a chap once," he said, "who wanted to seem to give an expensive present, but not to pay much for it. In a curiosity shop he found a Chinese porcelain thing that had been broken all to shivers. Before it was broken it was worth thirty guineas. He bought the bits for sixpence and had them sent to the bride's house, knowing that she would think the thing had been broken in transit. He was checkmated of course, because the people at the shop wrapped each bit in a separate piece of paper."

"Very old story. But what's it got to do with it?"

"It's obvious. This is a similar thing. Higgs told the jeweller to send me the empty case by post, and his card with it. He supposed that I would think that the necklace had been stolen in the post, and that I should be too delicate to mention it. You see, if it had been sent by ordinary post—which was the way he supposed the jeweller would send an empty case—the Post Office would not be responsible, and to mention that no necklace had arrived would practically be asking him to replace it. But the jeweller has checkmated him by sending it sealed and registered: it couldn't have been stolen."

"What a nasty, suspicious mind you have got, James!"

"Not a bit of it. If anybody had told me a week ago that old Higgs would be guilty of a trick like that, I should have laughed at him. But what else can I think? The case arrives empty, in a way which shows that its contents were not stolen in transit. Therefore it never had any contents. There's no other explanation possible."

"Rubbish! It was stolen in the post. These clever thieves might fake the seals somehow. Just sit down at that table and write to Higgs at once, and tell him the case arrived empty."

"Why should the thieves send on the empty case?"

"To keep the Post Office authorities from discovering that a registered parcel was missing, and give them time to get away, or they might have done it out of a diabolical kind of humour that they display sometimes."

"Ah!" said James. "I rather wish I'd thought of that. However, I feel so absolutely certain of my own view that last night I did—well, I did what I thought to be the tactful thing."

"Go on," I said. "Let's hear the worst."

"I decided that I'd found Higgs out, but that I mustn't let him know that I'd found him. You see, the old man is at present my employer, and will probably be my partner. His trick amounted only to obtaining a little guarantee under false pretences, and in business he's as straight as possible. So I wrote just the letter that I should have written if I had really believed that the necklace had been stolen in transit. I thanked him for the charming necklace, and said how much Viola liked it.

"I see. So when you say you want my advice, what you really mean is that you've already done the wrong thing, and want me to be fool enough to say that it was right. However, you're in for it now, my boy."

"How?"

"The necklace was stolen, of course, and you have told Higgs that it wasn't. He'll look for it when the presents are displayed at your reception. He'll expect your wife to wear it when you dine at his house. You'll make one lying excuse after another, and in the end you'll be found out."

"But if he never sent the necklace, it'll be all right. Now I come to think of it, he's a marvel at economy—never cuts a bit of string, but always unties the knots. And he never liked me. Yes, it's pretty certain he sent the case empty."

"On the contrary, my friend. He sent the necklace and it was stolen. And a pretty idiot you've made of yourself, and the dickens of a mess you've got into!"

James got rather fretful. "Well, I must think what to do. It's no good consulting you. You never seem to be able to suggest anything."

•••••

At the wedding reception Higgs's empty case formed part of the contents of a locked show-table. The case was closed, but not fastened.

Higgins remarked it and was not pleased.

"Those pearls of mine weren't fit to be seen, eh?" he said to James.

"I'm more annoyed about it than I can say," said James, who had prepared himself for all possibilities. "Someone knocked against the table, and that jerked the lid of the case down. I must find out who's got the key of the table and have it put right. My wife adores pearls, you know. So good of you."

James told me of this incident, and said that he supposed Higgs was bluffing; but I do not think he believed it, and for a bridegroom he looked a little careworn.

A few minutes later James came back to me, and this time he looked panic-stricken.

"Higgs wants that glass table opened, in order that he may see if the shop has made the alteration on the necklace that he ordered. I told him I'd get the key. It's twenty minutes before he leaves, and he's bound to be at me again. I think he's suspicious—believes I've sold the blessed pearls."

"James," I said, "you have acted like an idiot. But, as it is your wedding-day, I will save you for the moment. In three minutes Higgs will be out of the house."

"How?"

"You'd much better not know."

Even as I said, so did it happen. In less than three minutes Higgs was being driven furiously in the direction of his office. A waiter had told him that a telephone message had been received, and that he was wanted urgently. But nobody at the office knew anything about that telephone message, and Mr. Higgs was very angry and much mystified. He considered the waiter must have made some mistake. On the contrary, I know that that waiter said exactly what he was told to say.

•••••

It was three months before I saw James again. I had a charming note from his wife asking me to dine at their flat. They would be alone, she said. Thoughts of Higgs flashed across my mind at once. Now I should find out what had happened. I accepted the invitation.

Now that I was rid of James's absurd overestimate of her, I could see that Viola was really quite a pretty woman. And I have an idea that all pretty women look their prettiest during the first few months after marriage. Possibly this is because the bloom is not yet off the trousseau, and they have got such a lot of nice new clothes.

Viola wore something cream-coloured and youthful, and she had a string of pearls about her neck. Now, I know something about pearls, and my admiration of them was worth having.

"Yes," said James cheerily, "that's the necklace old Higgs sent us. I told you about it, didn't I?"

His distinctly shifty glance failed beneath my steady gaze.

"Now I come to think of it," I said, "you did say something about it. You spoke of it at the reception, didn't you?"

"Well, to be absolutely honest," said James, "when we got back from our honeymoon, I of course had to meet Higgs. He handed me the necklace and asked me sardonically to explain myself. So of course I told him the truth—that I supposed the empty case had been sent as a practical joke, more especially as I was undeserving of such munificent kindness from him, and that I should be doing the best if I kept the joke up. He didn't quite like it, because, as it happens, he hates practical jokes. Funnily enough, he had one played off him on the day of the reception. A bogus telephone message or something of that kind. However, it's all right now. We are dining there to-morrow."

"But how did he come to have the necklace to give you?" I asked.

"The thing was absolutely simple and happened almost exactly as I supposed. Higgs bought the necklace at Crosby's, paid for it with notes across the counter, and directed that it should be sent off at once by post. While that assistant had gone to get the receipt, Higgs took out the necklace again and discovered that the clasp was, in his opinion, not sufficiently secure. He gave a second assistant the order to have that alteration made, and the second assistant took it away for the purpose. Consequently, while the first assistant was packing up the empty case and sending it off to me, the second assistant was handing the necklace itself to one of the workmen. When the mistake was discovered some days afterwards, they sent the necklace with a letter of apology and explanation to Higgs."

"That was what you thought at the time, was it?" I asked.

He looked away from me. "Well, pretty much what I thought," he said, and turned to his wife. He told her that I myself had had some absurd ideas that Higgs was making a fraudulent attempt to appear as the donor of a necklace without actually giving it.

Viola laughed and said that it would be really too impossible.

"It was so impossible," I said, "that it never happened." Then I turned to James.

"James," I said, "what an absolute lawyer you are!"

He laughed shamelessly.