CHAPTER IV
Cut and Thrust
JOHN DRYSDALE accompanied the other men to town in the morning, not that he cared to be with either of them, for his indignation at what he considered Delroy’s laxness had not in the least diminished, and his distrust of Tremaine had grown stronger with the passing hours; but the prospect of a day alone in the house was intolerable, and he felt that Grace Croydon would wish to avoid him till the hour of explanation was at hand.
Indeed, the sudden antagonism he had developed toward Delroy would have suggested a permanent return to town had not a point of honour, as it were, compelled him to stay. He could not, at this moment, desert Grace Croydon to the machinations of Tremaine; he must save her if he could, not only for his own sake, but for hers.
It was this gloomy meditation which occupied him on the trip in to the city, for his companions, immersed in the details of the day’s business, left him severely to himself. He bade them goodbye at the ferry, and, in a sort of desperation, went down to the Record office and asked for Godfrey. He felt that he was being swept into waters beyond his depth, that he needed a strong, cool hand to pluck him back to safety; but he found that Godfrey was out of town.
Delroy and Tremaine went at once to the Wall Street office where the conference concerning the railroad was to take place. Memories of that conference still survive in the Street; wild legends concerning it—how a company of conservative, cold-blooded, steel-gutted capitalists were worked upon, bamboozled, hypnotised, wrought up to enthusiasm over a project which was proved, by the subsequent reports of engineers, to be about as practicable as a bridge to the moon. Even yet, the glamour of that meeting endures with some of the investors who were present, and they are still convinced that a railroad in Martinique would pay a fabulous return. Tremaine set for the Street a new standard of “smoothness,” and one which has never been approached.
The conference was over by noon, and Tremaine announced his intention of returning to Edgemere by the first train.
“I’m feeling a little worn out by the morning’s exertions,” he explained, and he really looked it. “When are you coming out?”
“I’m going up to Tiffany’s first,” Delroy answered, “and have a talk with them about my wife’s necklace. I left it with them Saturday. If they advise a sea-bath, I’ll bring it along with me, and we’ll see what virtue there is in the treatment.”
“Perhaps there isn’t any,” said Tremaine; “or it may be that Tiffany has some better method.”
“Well, I’ll know by to-night,” and Delroy held up a beckoning finger to a passing cab. “Good-bye till then.”
When Tremaine reached Edgemere, he made a tour of the hall, library, billiard-room, but finding them deserted, at last went slowly up to his own room and remained there for an hour or more. Then he came down and spent the remainder of the afternoon walking thoughtfully about the grounds, smoking innumerable cigarettes. If the object of his early return was another interview with Miss Croydon, as one would naturally suppose, he was disappointed in it, for she, knowing perhaps that he had come back alone, did not leave her apartments.
Delroy and Drysdale returned together on the five-o’clock train, and hurried into the house. They found Tremaine lounging in a great chair in the hall, and if the glance which Drysdale shot at him was electric with suspicion, he had at least self-control enough to restrain any ill-considered or hasty words. But he blamed himself bitterly for not having foreseen the possibility of Tremaine’s early return, the reason for which he guessed at once.
“We’ve just time to make the arrangements before dinner,” said Delroy, and he held up a long morocco case.
“Ah,” and Tremaine rose lazily, “so you’ve brought it? Tiffany advises it, then?”
“Yes—but come into the library and you shall hear. Thomas, ask Mrs. Delroy and Miss Croydon if they will come down to the library for a moment. I want to get the stones in the water at once.”
Drysdale, looking at Tremaine, thought he perceived a sudden flash of triumph in his face, but it was instantly repressed and may have been only fancy. The women joined them in the library almost immediately. Delroy unwrapped a bundle and laid it on the table. It was a little cage of fine but exceedingly strong gilt wire, closely meshed.
“My dear,” he began, turning to his wife, “you know I took your necklace to Tiffany’s just before we came out here, and left it for them to examine. They seemed rather puzzled by its condition—rather sceptical about its having changed so suddenly—and they asked me to leave it until to-day. When I went back after it, their expert gave me a long lecture about the action of fatty acids and the danger of leaving pearls shut up in air-tight safe-deposit boxes. I assured him that these hadn’t been shut up—they haven’t, have they, Edith?”
“No, of course not,” answered his wife promptly.
“I thought not, but I doubt if he fully believed me. Finally he said that in a case so unusual as this, it would be well to try the sea-water treatment before proceeding to anything more heroic—peeling, for instance.”
“Not very encouraging,” remarked Drysdale.
“Oh, I didn’t stop there. I drove from Tiffany’s up to that queer little Italian jewel-store—Contiani’s—on Thirty-third Street. Contiani himself was there and he grew quite excited when he saw the stones and heard the story. He said that a sea-bath was unquestionably the best thing for them—in fact, he advised it most strongly. The stones are getting deader and deader, so to speak.”
He took up the case from the table and snapped it open. The necklace lay before them, a dull, clammy white.
“So it seems that the only thing to be done is to immerse them in their native element for a few days,” he continued; “and the sooner it’s done the better, Contiani says. That’s what I brought this cage for. We’ll put the necklace in it and let it down into the water at the end of the pier.”
“It seems a rather dangerous thing to do,” objected Drysdale. “Why not have a lot of water brought up to the house and immerse them here?”
“Because only living sea water will do; it seems to have no efficacy shut up in a vessel of any kind. I asked about that particularly. Besides, I don’t see that there’ll be any danger—we’re the only ones who know. Still, if Edith objects”
“Oh, not at all,” said Mrs. Delroy instantly. “I only hope the stones will be restored; I think they’re horrid now,” and she shivered a little as she looked at them.
“I would suggest, nevertheless,” put in Tremaine, “that a guard be stationed at the pier, to prevent any possibility of danger. If you haven’t any servants you can fully trust, we might ourselves take turn about.”
“Nonsense!” protested Delroy quickly. “Do you think I’d impose on you like that?”
“I think Mr. Tremaine’s suggestion a good one, nevertheless,” said Miss Croydon. “A guard could stay in the boathouse for a few days without any great discomfort.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” and Delroy nodded. “Graham and his boy will be just the ones. They can relieve each other, so that the time won’t seem so long.”
“Yes,” agreed Drysdale, “the Grahams are all right.” Delroy touched the bell.
“Send someone after Graham and his boy, Thomas,” he said. “Bring them here at once.”
“You’re quite certain of them?” asked Tremaine. “It’s rather a big temptation to put in any man’s way.”
Delroy laughed.
“Certain! I should say so. He was an old servant of my father’s, and would as soon think of robbing himself as robbing us. His son’s a chip of the old block. But here they are,” he added, as the door opened and two men came in.
A single glance was enough to convince anyone of their absolute probity. The elder man was perhaps sixty years of age, in the very prime of health and strength, with a weather-beaten countenance surrounded by a grizzled beard; the younger one was about twenty-five. Both showed the clean skin and clear eyes and firm muscles resulting from life in the open air, for they had the care of the acres of lawn and garden and woodland and meadow belonging to the estate.
“We was jest passin’, sir,” began Graham, “when Tummas called us an’ said as how you wanted t’ see us.”
“Yes,” said Delroy, and held up the little cage. “Do you know what this is for?” Graham looked at it stolidly. “No, sir; I don’t,” he said.
“Well, I’ll show you. This string of white stones is Mrs. Delroy’s pearl necklace, worth something over a hundred thousand dollars. I put them in this cage, close the lid, and fasten it with these little hooks. Now, Graham, these stones have lost their lustre and sea-water’s the only thing that will restore it. I want you to tie a rope to this cage and lower it into the bay from the end of the pier, securing it, of course, so that it can’t thresh around or break away. It will have to stay there for three or four days, and during that time I’d like you and your boy to sleep at the boathouse and see that nobody meddles with it.”
The two men had listened intently, with serious faces.
“Very well, sir,” said the elder, as Delroy finished, and held out his hand for the cage.
Delroy gave it to him, with a little chuckle of enjoyment.
“You’d better have a gun with you—not that I think there’s any danger”
“Never fear, sir,” interrupted Graham. “We’ll ’tend t’ all that. Come on, Willum.”
Delroy watched them till the door closed behind them,
“I believe Graham would say ‘Very well, sir,’ in just that tone if I told him to burn the house down,” he remarked. “We’ll go down after dinner and see how he’s arranged things. And now,” he added, “my innards are beginning to clamour vigorously for refreshment.”
Drysdale lost no time in staring out of the window or in unprofitable meditation, for he was determined that Tremaine should have no second opportunity for a tête-à-tête with Grace Croydon. Therefore he dressed as rapidly as he could and ran lightly down the stair. But there was no one waiting for him before the fire-place.
He sat down in one of the great chairs, hoping against hope. Perhaps she would come; every moment of silence irked him; he was chafing to tear down the wall of misunderstanding that had risen between them. How could she have permitted Tremaine’s threatening insolence? She was the last woman in the world…
“I think we’re going to have rain,” said a smooth voice, and Drysdale looked up with a start to find Tremaine standing beside him.
Since the night before they had made no pretence of friendship; they instinctively understood each other; and Tremaine’s smile now had a cool impudence very galling. Nevertheless, Drysdale choked back his first angry impulse; he must wait until Grace spoke.
“Do you?” he said carelessly, and turned deliberately away.
Tremaine’s face flushed at the tone and his eyes narrowed like a cat’s; then he, too, sat down and stretched out his legs.
“It’s a great privilege,” he said, “to be admitted thus to a place where life passes so pleasantly.”
“It is,” agreed Drysdale. “I confess, I don’t understand how you obtained it.”
He regretted the words the instant they were spoken; he had no wish to precipitate a quarrel.
Tremaine did not change his careless attitude, but he turned upon his companion a gaze that glittered coldly.
“I must tell you,” he said in a voice of steel, “that you have not the manners of a gentleman.”
The words brought Drysdale upright.
“Perhaps not,” he retorted hotly; “but neither have I those of a blackguard. I had the good fortune to overhear the infamous threats you made to Miss Croydon”
Tremaine laughed a laugh that was more insulting than any words.
“So you’re also an eavesdropper, a listener at doors? That confirms the statement I have already made. You will make me an apology or”
“Or what?” demanded Drysdale fiercely, rising from his chair with muscles tense.
Tremaine rose, too, deliberately, and faced him with a look so terrible that despite himself he shivered.
“Or take the consequences,” said Tremaine, in a tone all the more threatening because it was very calm.
Drysdale laughed—it cost him something, but he achieved it.
“Very well,” he said contemptuously, “I’ll take the consequences,” and he turned his back upon Tremaine and walked away with an indifference he was very far from feeling.