Chapter II: Eavesdropping at Interlaken

I have sometimes thought that this gift of mine for reading words as they issue from people’s lips places me, with or without my will, in the position of the eavesdropper. There have been occasions on which, before I knew it, I have been made cognisant of conversations, of confidences, which were meant to be sacred; and, though such knowledge has been acquired through no fault of mine, I have felt ashamed, just as if I had been listening at a keyhole, and I have almost wished that the power which nature gave me, and which years of practice have made perfect, was not mine at all. On the other hand, there have been times when I was very glad indeed that I was able to play the part of eavesdropper. As, to very strict purists, this may not sound a pleasant confession to make, I will give an instance of the kind of thing I mean.

I suppose I was about seventeen; I know I had just put my hair up, which had grown to something like a decent length since it had come in contact with the edge of that doughty Scottish chieftain’s--MacGregor’s--knife. My mother was not very well. My father was reluctant to leave her. It looked as if the summer holiday which had been promised me was in peril, when two acquaintances, Mr. and Mrs. Travers, rather than that I should lose it altogether, offered to take me under their wing.

They were going for a little tour in Switzerland, proposing to spend most of their time at Interlaken, and my parents, feeling that I should be perfectly safe with them, accepted their proffered chaperonage. Everything went well until we got to Interlaken. There they met some friends who were going on a climbing expedition, and, as Mr. and Mrs. Travers were both keen mountaineers, they were very eager to join them. I was the only difficulty in their way. They could not say exactly how long they would be absent, but probably a week; and what was to become of me in that great hotel there all alone? They protested that it would be quite impossible to leave me; they would have to give up that climb; and I believe they would have done so if what seemed to be a solution of the difficulty had not turned up.

The people in the hotel were for the most part very sociable folk, as people in such places are apt to be. Among other persons whose acquaintance we had made was a middle-aged widow, a Mrs. Hawthorne. When she heard of what Mr. and Mrs. Travers wanted to do, and how they could not do it because of me, she volunteered, during their absence, to occupy their place as my chaperon, assuring them that every possible care should be taken of me.

In the hotel were stopping a brother and sister, a Mr. and Miss Sterndale. With them I had grown quite friendly. Mr. Sterndale I should have set down as twenty-five or twenty-six, and his sister as a year or two younger. From the day on which I had first seen them they had shown an inclination for my society; and, to speak quite frankly, on different occasions Mr. Sterndale had paid me what seemed to me to be delicate little attentions which were very dear to my maiden heart. I had some difficulty in inducing people to treat me as if I were grown up. After a few minutes’ conversation even perfect strangers would ask me how old I was, and when I told them they were apt to assume an attitude towards me as if I were the merest child, of which I disapproved.

What attracted me to Mr. Sterndale was that, from the very first, he treated me with deference, as if I were at least as old as he was.

On the third day after Mr. and Mrs. Travers had left Mrs. Hawthorne came to me with a long face and a letter in her hand.

“My dear, I cannot tell you how annoyed I am, but I shall have to go to England at once--to-day. And whatever will become of you?”

It seemed that her only sister was dangerously ill, and that she was implored to go to her as soon as she could. Of course, she would have to go. I told her that it did not matter in the least about me; Mr. and Mrs. Travers would be back in a day or two, and now that I knew so many people in the hotel, who were all of them disposed to be friendly, I should be perfectly all right until they came. She must not allow any consideration for me to keep her for a moment from obeying her sister’s call. She left for London that afternoon; but, so far from everything being perfectly all right with me after she had gone, the very next day my troubles began.

They began in the morning. I was sitting on the terrace with a book. Mr. Sterndale had been talking to me. Presently his sister came through an open French window from the lounge. Her brother went up to her; I sat still. She was at the other end of the terrace, and when she saw me she nodded and smiled. When her brother came up to her, he said something which, as his back was towards me, of course I did not catch; but her answer to him, which was very gently uttered, I saw quite distinctly; all the while she was speaking she was smiling at me.

“She has a red morocco jewel-case sort of a thing on the corner of her mantelshelf; I put it under the bottom tray. With the exception of that gold locket which she is always wearing it’s the only decent thing in it; it’s full of childish trumpery.”

That was what Miss Sterndale said to her brother, and I saw her say it with rather curious feelings. What had he asked her? To what could she be referring? I had “a red morocco jewel-case sort of a thing,” and it stood on a corner of my mantelshelf. I also had a gold locket, which, if I was not, as she put it, always wearing, I did wear pretty often. Certainly it was the only article in my jewel-case which was worth very much; and with a horrid sort of qualm I owned to myself that the rest of the contents might come under the definition of “childish trumpery.” She said she had put something under the bottom tray. What bottom tray? Whose bottom tray? There were trays in my jewel-case; she could not possibly have meant that she had put anything under one of them. The idea was too preposterous. And yet, if we had not been going to St. Beatenberg I think I should have gone straight up to my bedroom to see. I do not know how it was; the moment before I had been perfectly happy; there was not a grain of suspicion in the air, nor in my mind; then all of a sudden I felt quite curious. Could there be two persons in the house possessed of “a red morocco jewel-case sort of a thing,” which stood on a corner of the mantelshelf, in which was a gold locket and a rather mixed collection of childish trumpery? I wondered.

The evening before we had arranged to make an excursion to St. Beatenberg on the Lake of Thun--five or six of us. I was dressed ready to start when Miss Sterndale came through that French window. She also was ready, and her brother. Presently the others appeared. I was feeling a little confused; I could not think of an excuse which would give me an opportunity of examining my jewel-case. Anyhow, I kept trying to tell myself it was absurd. I wished I could not see what people were saying merely by watching their lips.

My day at St. Beatenberg was spoilt, though I kept telling myself that it was all my own fault, and nobody else’s. Every one was gay, and full of fun and laughter--every one but me. My mood was so obviously out of tune with theirs that they commented on it.

“What is the matter with you, Miss Lee?” asked Mrs. Dalton. “You look as if you were not enjoying yourself one little bit.”

I did not like to say that I was not; as a matter of fact, when they rallied me I said that I was--but it was not true.

When I got back to the hotel and was in my bedroom, I went straight up to that “red morocco jewel-case sort of a thing” and looked at it. It was locked, just as I had left it. Clearly I had been worrying myself all day long about nothing at all. Still, I got my keys and opened it; there was nothing to show that the contents had been touched. I lifted the two trays--and I gasped. I do not know how else to describe it--something seemed all at once to be choking me, so that it was with an effort that I breathed. In the jewel-case, under the bottom tray, was a pendant--a beautiful circular diamond pendant, of the size, perhaps, of a five-shilling piece. It was not mine; I never had anything so beautiful in my life. Where did it come from? Could Miss Sterndale have put it there? Was that the meaning of her words?

I took the pendant out. It was a beauty; it could not be a present from the Sterndales, from either the sister or the brother. They must have known that I could not accept such a gift as that from strangers. And then, what a queer way of making a present--and such a present!

As I looked at it I began to have a very uncomfortable feeling that I had seen it before, or one very like it, on some one in the house. My head, or my brain, or something seemed to be so muddled that at the moment I could not think who that some one was. I had washed and tidied myself before I decided that I would go down with the pendant in my hand and, at the risk of no matter what misunderstanding, ask Miss Sterndale what she meant by putting it there. So, when I had got my unruly hair into something like order, downstairs I went, and rushed into the lounge with so much impetuosity that I all but cannoned against Miss Goodridge, who was coming out.

“Good gracious, child!” she exclaimed. “Do look where you are going. You almost knocked me over.”

The instant I saw her, and she said that, I remembered--I knew whom I had seen wearing that diamond pendant which I was holding tightly clasped in the palm of my hand. It was the person whom I had almost knocked over, Miss Goodridge herself--of course! One of the persons in the hotel whom, so far as I knew anything of them, I liked least. Miss Goodridge was a tall, angular person of perhaps quite thirty-five, who dressed and carried herself as if she were still a girl. She had been most unpleasant to me. I had no idea what I had done or said to cause her annoyance, but I had a feeling that she disliked me, and was at no pains to conceal the fact. The sight of her, and the thought that I had nearly knocked her over, quite drove the sense out of my head.

“Oh, Miss Goodridge!” I exclaimed, rather fatuously. “You look as if something had happened.”

“Something has happened,” she replied. “There’s a thief in the house. I have been robbed. Some one has stolen my pendant--my diamond pendant.”

Some one had stolen her diamond pendant! I do not know if the temperature changed all at once, but I do know that a chill went all over me. Was that the explanation? Could it possibly be---- I did not care to carry even my thought to a logical finish. I stood there as if I were moonstruck, with Miss Goodridge looking at me with angry eyes.

“What is the matter with the child?” she asked. “I did not know you dark-skinned girls could blush, but I declare you’ve gone as red as a lobster.”

I do not know if she thought that lobsters were red before they were boiled. I tried to explain, to say what I wanted to say, but I appeared to be tongue-tied.

“Can’t you speak?” she demanded. “Don’t glare at me as if you’d committed a murder. Anyone would think that you had been robbed instead of me. I suppose you haven’t stolen my pendant?”

She drew her bow at a venture, but her arrow hit the mark.

“Oh, Miss Goodridge!” I repeated. It seemed to be all I could say.

She put her hand upon my shoulder.

“What is the matter with the girl? You young wretch! Have you been playing any tricks with that pendant of mine?”

“I--I found it,” I stammered. I held out to her my open hand with the pendant on the palm.

“You--you found it? Found what?” She looked at me and then at my outstretched hand. “My pendant! She’s got my pendant!” She snatched it from me. “You--you young--thief! And you have the insolence to pretend you found it!”

“I did find it--I found it in my bedroom.”

“Did you really? Of all the assurance! I’ve always felt that you were the kind of creature with whom the less one had to do the better, but I never credited you with a taste for this sort of thing. Get out of my way! Don’t you ever dare to speak to me again.”

She did not wait for me to get out of her way; she gave me a violent push and rushed right past me. It was a polished floor; if I had not come in contact with a big arm-chair I should have tumbled on to it. My feelings when I was left alone in the lounge were not enviable. At seventeen, even if one thinks oneself grown up, one is still only a child, and I was a stranger in a strange land, without a friend in all that great hotel, without a soul to advise me. Still, as I knew that I was absolutely and entirely innocent, I did not intend to behave as if I were guilty. I went up to my room again and dressed for dinner. I told myself over and over again as I performed my simple toilette that I would make Miss Goodridge eat her words before she had done, though at that moment I had not the faintest notion how I was going to do it.

That was a horrid dinner--not from the culinary, but from my point of view. If the dinner was horrid, in the lounge afterwards it was worse. Miss Sterndale actually had the audacity to come up to me and pretend to play the part of sympathetic friend.

“You seem to be all alone,” she began. I was all alone; I had never thought that anyone could feel so utterly alone as I did in that crowded lounge. “Miss Lee, why do you look at me like that?” I was looking at her as if I wished her to understand that I was looking into her very soul--if she had one. Her smiling serenity of countenance was incredible to me, knowing what I knew. “Have you had bad news from home, or from Mr. and Mrs. Travers, or are you unhappy because Mrs. Hawthorne has gone? You seem so different. What has been the matter with you the whole of the day?”

I was on the point of giving an explanation which I think might have startled her when I happened to glance across the room. At a table near the open window Mr. Sterndale was sitting with Miss Goodridge. They were having coffee. Although Miss Goodridge was sitting sideways, she continually turned her head to watch me. Mr. Sterndale was sitting directly facing me. He had a cigarette in one hand, and every now and then he sipped his coffee, but most of the time he talked. But, although I could not even hear the sound of his voice, I saw what he said as distinctly as if he had been shouting in my ear. It was the sentence he was uttering which caused me to defer the explanation which I had it in my mind to give to his sister.

“Of course, the girl’s a thief--I’m afraid that goes without saying.” It was that sentence which was issuing from his lips at the moment when I chanced to glance in his direction which caused the explanation I had been about to make to his sister to be deferred.

Miss Goodridge had her coffee-cup up to her mouth, so I could not see what she said; but if I had been put to it I might have made a very shrewd guess by the reply he made. He took his cigarette from his lips, blew out a thin column of smoke, leaned back in his chair--and all the time he was looking smilingly at me with what he meant me to think were the eyes of a friend.

“It’s all very well for you to talk. I may have had my suspicions, but it is only within the last hour or two that they have been confirmed.”

She said something which again I could not see; his reply suggested that she must have asked a question.

“I’ll tell you what I mean by saying that my doubts have been confirmed. A man was passing through this afternoon with whom I have some acquaintance--the Rector of Leeds.” I wonder he did not say the Bishop of London. “He saw--our friend----” He made a slight inclination of his head towards me. “At sight of her he exclaimed: ‘Halloa, there’s that Burnett girl!’ For a parson he has rather a free-and-easy way of speaking; he’s one of your modern kind.” I believed him! “‘Burnett girl?’ I said. ‘But her name’s Lee--Judith Lee.’ ‘Oh, she calls herself Lee now, does she? That settles it.’ ‘Settles what?’ I asked, because I saw that there was something in his tone. ‘My dear Reggie,’ he said (he always calls me Reggie; I’ve known him for years), ‘at the beginning of the season that girl whom you call Judith Lee was at Pontresina, staying in the same hotel as I was. She called herself Burnett then. Robberies were going on all the time, people were continually missing things. At last a Russian woman lost a valuable lot of jewellery. That settled it--Miss Burnett went.’”

Miss Goodridge turned so that her face was hidden; but, as before, his reply gave me a pretty good clue as to the question she had asked.

“Of course I mean it. Do you think I’d say a thing like that if I didn’t mean it? I won’t tell you all he said--it wouldn’t be quite fair. But it came to this. He said that the young lady whom we have all thought so sweet and innocent----”

Miss Goodridge interposed with a remark which, in a guessing competition, I think I could have come pretty near to.

He replied:

“Well, I’ve sometimes felt that you were rather hard on her, that perhaps you were a trifle prejudiced.”

Miss Goodridge turned her face towards me, and then I saw her words.

“I’m a better judge of feminine human nature than you suppose. The first moment I saw her I knew she was a young cat, though I admit I didn’t take her to be as bad as she is. What did your clerical friend say of her, of the Miss Burnett whom we know now as Miss Lee?”

I did not wait to learn his answer--I had learnt enough. What his sister thought of my demeanour I did not care; I had been dimly conscious that she had been talking to me all the while, but what she was saying I do not know. My attention had been wholly taken up with what I did not hear. Before he began his reply to Miss Goodridge’s genial inquiry I got up from my chair and marched out of the lounge, without saying a word to Miss Sterndale. When I had gone a little way I remembered that I had left my handkerchief--my best lace handkerchief--on the table by which I had been sitting. Even in the midst of my agitation I was conscious that I could not afford to lose it, so went back for it.

Miss Sterndale had joined her brother and Miss Goodridge. Two or three other people were standing by them, evidently interested in what was being said. I found my handkerchief. As I was going off with it Miss Sterndale turned round in my direction, without, however, thinking it worth her while to break off the remark she was making, taking it for granted, of course, that it was inaudible to me. I came in, as it were, for the tail end of it.

“… I am so disappointed in her; I have tried to like her, and now I fear it is only too certain that she is one of those creatures of whom the less said the better.”

That these words referred to me I had not the slightest doubt. Yet, while they were still on her lips, presuming on her conviction that they were hidden from me, she nodded and smiled as if she were wishing me a friendly good night.

The treachery of it! Now that I am able to look back calmly, I think it was that which galled me most. Her brother, with his gratuitous, horrible lies, had actually been pretending to make love to me--I am sure that was what he wished me to think he was doing. What a fool he must have thought me!

That was a sleepless night. It was hours before I got between the sheets, and when I did it was not to slumber. The feeling that I was so entirely alone, and that there was not a soul within miles and miles to whom I could turn for help, coupled with the consciousness that I had scarcely enough money to pay the hotel bill, and, what was even worse, that Mr. and Mrs. Travers had gone off with the return-half of my ticket to London, so that I could not go back home however much I might want to--these things were hard enough to bear; but they seemed to be as nothing compared to that man and woman’s treachery. What was their motive, what could have induced them, was beyond my comprehension. It was a problem which I strove all night to solve. But the solution came on the morrow.

I soon knew what had happened when I went downstairs. Miss Goodridge had told her story of the pendant, and Mr. Sterndale had circulated his lie about his clerical friend. Everybody shunned me. Some persons had the grace to pretend not to see me; others looked me full in the face and cut me dead. The only persons who were disposed to show any perception of my presence were the Sterndales. As, entering the breakfast-room, I passed their table, they both smiled and nodded, but I showed no consciousness of them. As I took a seat at my own table, I saw him say to his sister:

“Our young friend seems to have got her back up--little idiot!”

Little idiot, was I? Only yesterday he had called me something else. The feeling that he was saying such things behind my back hurt me more than if he had shouted them to my face. I averted my gaze, keeping my eyes fixed on my plate. I would learn no more of what he said about me, or of what anyone said. I was conscious that life might become unendurable if I were made acquainted with the comments which people were making on me then. Yet, as I sat there with downcast face, might they not construe that as the bearing of a conscience-stricken and guilty wretch? I felt sure that that was what they were doing. But I could not help it; I would not see what they were saying.

Later in the morning matters turned out so that I did see, so that practically I had to see what the Sterndales said to each other. And perhaps, on the whole, it was fortunate for me that I did. I had spent the morning out of doors. On the terrace the Sterndales were standing close together, talking; so engrossed were they by what they were saying that they did not notice me; while, though I did not wish to look at them, something made me. That may seem to be an exaggeration. It is not--it is the truth. My wish was to have nothing more to do with them for ever and ever; but some instinct, which came I know not whence, made me turn my eyes in their direction and see what they were saying. And, as I have already said, it was well for me that I did.

They both seemed to be rather excited. He was speaking quickly and with emphasis.

“I tell you,” he was saying, as I paused to watch, “we will do it to-day.”

His sister said something which, as she was standing sideways, was lost to me. He replied:

“The little idiot has cooked her own goose; there’s no need for us to waste time in cooking it any more--she’s done. I tell you we can strip the house of all it contains, and they’d lock her up for doing it.”

Again his sister spoke; without, because of her position, giving herself away to me. He went on again:

“There are only two things in the house worth having--I could give you a catalogue of what every one has got. Mrs. Anstruther’s diamonds--the necklace is first-rate, and the rest of them aren’t bad; and that American woman’s pearls. Those five ropes of pearls are worth--I hope they’ll be worth a good deal to us. The rest of the things you may make a present of to our young friend. The odium will fall on her--you’ll see. We shall be able to depart with the only things worth having, at our distinguished leisure, without a stain upon our characters.”

He smiled--some people might have thought it a pleasant smile--to me it seemed a horrid one. That smile finished me--it reminded me of the traitor’s kiss. I passed into the house still unnoticed, though I do not suppose that if I had been noticed it would have made any difference to them.

What he meant by what he had said I did not clearly understand. The only thing I quite realized was that he was still making sport of me. I also gathered that that was an amusement which he proposed to continue, though just how I did not see. Nor did I grasp the inner meaning of his allusion to Mrs. Anstruther’s diamonds and Mrs. Newball’s pearls--no doubt it was Mrs. Newball he meant when he spoke of the American woman. The fine jewels of those two ladies, which they aired at every opportunity, were, as I knew perfectly well, the talk of the whole hotel. Probably that was what they meant they should be. When Mrs. Anstruther had diamonds round her neck and on her bosom and in her ears and hair and round her wrists and on her fingers--I myself had seen her wear diamond rings on all the fingers of both hands and two diamond bracelets on each wrist--she was a sight to be remembered; while Mrs. Newball, with her five strings of splendid pearls, which she sometimes wore all together as a necklace and sometimes twisted as bracelets round her wrists, together with a heterogeneous collection of ornaments of all sorts and kinds, made a pretty good second.

Not a person spoke to me the whole of that day. Every one avoided me in a most ostentatious manner; and every one, or nearly every one, had been so friendly. It was dreadful. If I had had enough money to pay the hotel bill, as well as the return half of my ticket home, I believe I should have left Interlaken there and then. But the choice of whether I would go or stay, as it turned out, was not to be left to me.

Depressed, miserable, homesick, devoutly wishing that I had never left home, almost resolved that I would never leave it again, I was about to go up to my room to dress for what I very well knew would only be the ghastly farce of dinner, when, as I reached the lift, a waiter came up to me and said that the manager wished to see me in his office. I did not like the man’s manner; it is quite easy for a Swiss waiter to be rude, and I was on the point of telling him that at the moment I was engaged and that the manager would have to wait, when something which I thought I saw in his eye caused me to change my mind, and, with an indefinable sense of discomfort, I allowed him to show me to the managerial sanctum. I never had liked the look of that manager; I liked it less than ever when I found myself alone in his room with him. He was a youngish man, with a moustache, and hair parted mathematically in the centre. In general his bearing was too saccharine to be pleasant; he did not err in that respect just then--it was most offensive. He looked me up and down as if I were one of his employés who had done something wrong, and, without waiting for me to speak, he said:

“You are Miss Judith Lee--or you pretend that is your name?”

He spoke English very well, as most of the Swiss one meets in hotels seem to do. Nothing could have been more impertinent than his tone, unless it was the look which accompanied it. I stared at him.

“I am Miss Lee. I do not pretend that is my name; it is.”

“Very well--that is your affair, not mine. You will no longer be allowed to occupy a room in this hotel. You can go at once.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. The man was incredible.

“You know very well what I mean. Don’t you try that sort of thing with me. You have stolen an article of jewellery belonging to a guest in my hotel. She is a very kind-hearted lady, and she is not willing to hand you over to the police. You owe me some money; here’s your bill. Are you going to pay it?”

He handed me a long strip of paper which was covered with figures. One glance at the total was enough to tell me that I had not enough money. Mrs. Travers was acting as my banker. She had left me with ample funds to serve as pocket-money till she returned, but with nothing like enough money to pay that bill.

“Mrs. Travers will pay you when she comes back, either to-morrow or the day after.”

“Will she?” The sneer with which he said it! “How am I to know that you’re not at the same game together?”

“The same game! What do you mean? How dare you look at me like that, and talk to me as if I were one of your servants!”

“I’m not going to talk to you at all, my girl; I’m going to do. I’m not going to allow a person who robs my guests to remain in my house under any pretext whatever. Your luggage, such as it is, will remain here until my bill is paid.” He rang a bell which was on the table by which he was standing. The waiter entered who had showed me there. He was a big man, with a square, dark face. “This young woman must go at once. If she won’t leave of her own accord we must put her out, by the back door. Now, my girl--out you go!”

The waiter approached me. He spoke to me as he might have done to a dog.

“Now, then, come along.”

He actually put his hand upon my shoulder. Another second, and I believe he would have swung me round and out of the room. But just as he touched me the door was opened and some one came rushing in--Mrs. Anstruther, in a state of the greatest excitement.

“My diamonds have been stolen!” she cried. “Some one has stolen my diamonds!”

“Your diamonds?” The manager looked at her and then at me. “I trust, madam, you are mistaken?”

“I’m not mistaken.” She sank on to a chair. She was a big woman of about fifty, and, at the best of times, was scant of breath. Such was her agitation that just then she could scarcely breathe at all. “As if I could be mistaken about a thing like that! I went up to my bedroom--to dress for dinner--and I unlocked my trunk--I always keep it locked; I took out my jewel-case--and unlocked that--and my diamonds were gone. They’ve been stolen!--stolen!--stolen!”

She repeated the word “stolen” three times over, as if the heinousness of the fact required to be emphasized by repetition. The manager was evidently uneasy, which even I felt was not to be wondered at.

“This is a very serious matter, Mrs. Anstruther----”

She cut him short.

“Serious? Do you think I need you to tell me that it’s serious? You don’t know how serious. Those diamonds are worth thousands and thousands of pounds--more than the whole of your twopenny-halfpenny hotel--and they’ve been stolen. From my trunk, in my bedroom, in your hotel, they’ve been stolen!”

The way she hurled the words at him! He looked at me, and he asked:

“What do you know about this?”

What did I know? In the midst of my confusion and distress I was asking myself what I did know. Before I could speak the door was opened again and Mrs. Newball came in. And not Mrs. Newball only, but six or seven other women, some of them accompanied by men--their husbands and their brothers. And they all told the same tale. Something had been stolen from each: from Mrs. Newball her five strings of pearls, from Mrs. This and Miss That the article of jewellery which was valued most. I am convinced that that manager, or his room, or probably his hotel, had never witnessed such a scene before. They were all as excited as could be, and they were all talking at once, and every second or two some one else kept coming in with some fresh tale of a dreadful loss. How that man kept his head at all was, and is, a mystery to me. At last he reduced them to something like silence, and in the presence of them all he said to me--pointing at me with his finger, as if I were a thing to be pointed at:

“It is you who have done this! You!”

Some one exclaimed in the crowd: “I saw her coming out of Mrs. Anstruther’s room.”

The manager demanded: “Who spoke? Who was it said that?”

A slight, faded, fair-haired woman came out into the public gaze.

“I am Mrs. Anstruther’s maid. I was going along to her room when I saw this young lady come out of the door. Whether she saw me or not I can’t say; she might have done, because she ran off as fast as ever she could. I wondered what she was doing there, and when my mistress came I told her what I had seen, and that’s what made her open her trunk.”

“What Perkins says is quite true,” corroborated Mrs. Anstruther. “She did tell me, and that made me uneasy; I had heard something about a diamond pendant having been stolen last night, so I opened my jewel-case, and my diamonds were gone.”

“Mine was the diamond pendant which was stolen by this creature last night,” interposed Miss Goodridge. “She came to my room and took it out of my trunk. Since she did that it seems not impossible that she has played the same trick on other people to-day. If she has, she must have had a pretty good haul, because I don’t believe there is a person in the hotel who hasn’t lost something.”

The manager spoke to an under-strapper.

“Have this young woman’s luggage searched at once, in the presence of witnesses, and let me know the result as soon as you possibly can.”

As the under-strapper went out I noticed for the first time that Mr. Sterndale was present with the rest, and almost at the same instant his sister came in. She looked about her as if wondering what was the cause of all the fuss. Then she went up to her brother, and he whispered something to her, and she whispered something to him. Only three or four words in each case, but my heart gave a leap in my bosom--I mean that, really, because it did feel as if it actually had jumped--courage came into me, and strength, and something better than hope: certainty; because they had delivered themselves into my hands. I was never more thankful that I had the power of eavesdropping--you can call it eavesdropping, if you like!--than I was at that moment. Only a second before I had been fearing that I was in a tight place, from which there was no way out; which would mean something for me from which my very soul seemed to shrink. But God had given me a gift, a talent, which I had striven with all my might to improve ten, twenty fold, and that would deliver me from the wiles of those two people, even when hope of deliverance there seemed none. I feel confident that I held myself straighter, that trouble went from my face as it had done from my heart, and that, though each moment the case against me seemed to be growing blacker and blacker, I grew calmer and more self-possessed. I knew I had only to wait till the proper moment came, and the toils in which they thought they had caught me would prove to be mere nothings; they would be caught, and I should be free.

All the same, until that moment for which I was waiting came, it was not nice for me--standing there amidst all those excited people, between two porters, who kept close to either side of me, as if I were a prisoner and they had me in charge; though I dare say it was as well that they did keep as close to me as they did, because I fancy that some of the injured guests at that hotel would have liked to give me a practical demonstration of what their feelings towards me were.

That under-strapper came back in a surprisingly short space of time with a hand-bag--a brown bag, which I recognized to be my own.

The agitated guests crowded round him like a swarm of bees. He had difficulty in forcing his way through them. The manager did his best to keep them in something like order--first with a show of mildness.

“Ladies, gentlemen--gently, gently, if you please.” Then, with a sudden ferocity: “Stand back, there! If you will not stand back, if you will not make room, how can anything be done? Keep these people back!”

To whom this order was addressed was not quite clear. Thus admonished, the people kept themselves back--at least, sufficiently to enable that under-strapper to pass with my bag to the table. The manager said to him:

“Go to the other side; what have you in that bag?” When, as he said this, his guests evinced an inclination to press forward, he threw out his arms on either side of him and positively shouted:

“Will you not keep back? If you will keep back, everything shall be done in order before you all. I ask you only to be a little sensible. If there is so much confusion, we shall not know what we are doing. I beg of you that you will be calm.”

If they were not precisely calm, the people did show some slight inclination to behave with an approach to common sense. They permitted the bag to be placed on the table, and the manager to open it, having first put some questions to the young man who brought it in.

“Where did you find this bag?”

“In her room.” I was the “her,” which he made clear by pointing his finger straight at me.

“Was anyone else present in the room at the time you found it? Did you find anything else?”

“There were three other persons present in the room. That bag was the first thing I touched. When I opened it and saw what was inside, I thought that, for the present, that would be enough. I think you also will be of my opinion when you see what it contains.”

Then the manager opened the bag. He looked inside, then he turned it upside down and allowed the whole contents to fall out on to the table. Of all the extraordinary collections! I believe there were articles belonging to every person in the hotel. When you came to think of it, it was amazing how they had been gathered together--in what could only have been a short space of time--without the gatherer being detected. As for the behaviour of the guests of the hotel, it was like Bedlam broken loose. They pressed forward all together, ejaculating, exclaiming, snatching at this and that, as each saw some personal belonging.

“Keep back! Keep back!” shouted the manager. “Will you not keep back?” As he positively roared at them they did shrink back as if a trifle startled. “If you will only have a little patience each lady shall have what belongs to her--if it is here.”

Mrs. Anstruther’s voice was heard above the hubbub:

“Are my diamonds there?” Then Mrs. Newball’s “And my pearls?”

The under-strapper was examining the miscellaneous collection which my bag had contained with all those women breaking into continual exclamations, watching him with hungry eyes. He announced the result of his examination.

“No; Mrs. Anstruther’s diamonds do not appear to be here, nor Mrs. Newball’s pearls; there is nothing here which at all resembles them.”

The manager held out towards me a minatory finger; every one seemed to have developed a sudden mania for pointing, particularly at me.

“You! Where have you put Mrs. Newball’s pearls and Mrs. Anstruther’s diamonds? Better make a clean breast of it, and no longer play the hypocrite. We will find them, if you do not tell us where they are, be sure of it. Now tell us at once.”

How he thundered at me! It was most embarrassing, or it would have been if I had not been conscious that I held the key of the situation in my hand. As it was, I minded his thunder scarcely a little bit, though I always have hated being shouted at. I was very calm--certainly the calmest person there--which, of course, was not saying very much.

“I can tell you where they are, if that is what you mean.”

“You know that is what I mean. Tell us at once! at once!”

He banged his fist upon the table so that that miscellaneous collection trembled. I did not tremble, though perhaps it was his intention that I should. I was growing calmer and calmer.

“In the first place, let me inform you that if you suppose I put those things in my bag--the bag is certainly mine--or had anything to do with their getting there, you are mistaken.”

My words, and perhaps my manner, created a small diversion. “What impudence!” “What assurance!” “Did you ever see anything like it?” “So young and so brazen!” “The impudent baggage!” Those were some of the things which they said, which were very nice for me to have to listen to. But I was sure, from a glimpse I had caught of Mr. and Miss Sterndale, that they were not quite at their ease, and that was such a comfort.

“No lies!” thundered the manager, whose English became a little vulgar. “No foolery! No stuck-up rubbish! Tell us the truth--where are these ladies’ jewels?”

“I propose to tell you the truth, if you will have a little patience.” I returned him look for look; I was not the least afraid of him. “I am going to give you a little surprise.” I was so conscious of that that I was beginning to feel almost amused. “I have a power of which I think none of you have any conception, especially two of you. I know what people are saying although I do not hear them; like the deaf and dumb, who know what a person is saying by merely watching his lips.”

There were some very rude interruptions, to which I paid no notice whatever. An elderly man whom I had never seen before, and who spoke with an air of authority, advised them to give me a hearing. They did let me go on.

I told them what I had seen Miss Sterndale say to her brother on the balcony the morning before. It was some satisfaction to see the startled look which came upon the faces of both the brother and the sister. They made some very noisy and uncivil comments, but, as I could see how uncomfortable they were feeling, I let them make them. I went on. I told how unhappy I had been all day, and how, when I returned, I found under the bottom tray of my jewel-case the diamond pendant. How, astounded, I went down to ask Miss Sterndale why she had put it there, and how, encountering Miss Goodridge bewailing her loss, utterly taken aback, I held out to her her pendant in a manner which, I admitted, might very easily have seemed suspicious.

By this time the manager’s room was in a delightful state of din. Mr. and Miss Sterndale were both of them shouting together, declaring that it was shocking that such a creature as I was should be allowed to make such monstrous insinuations. I believe, if it had not been for that grey-haired man who had suddenly assumed a position of authority, that Miss Sterndale would have made a personal assault on me. She seemed half beside herself with rage--and, I was quite sure, with something else as well.

I continued--in spite of the Sterndales. I could see that I was creating a state of perplexity in the minds of my hearers which might very shortly induce them to take up an entirely different attitude towards me. I told of the brief dialogue which had taken place between the sister and brother that very morning. And then you should have seen how the Sterndales stormed and raged.

“It seems to me,” observed the grey-haired man to Mr. Sterndale, “that you protest too much, sir. If this young lady is all the things you say she is, presently you will have every opportunity of proving it. Since she is one young girl among all us grown-ups, it is only right and decent that we should hear what she has to say for herself. We can condemn her afterwards--that part will be easy.”

So I went on again. There was very little to add. They knew almost as much of the rest as I did. Some one had effected a wholesale clearance of pretty nearly every valuable which the house contained. I did not pretend to be certain, but I thought it extremely probable that it was Miss Sterndale who had done this, while her brother kept the owners occupied in other directions. At this point glances were exchanged. I afterwards learned that Mr. Sterndale had organized a party for an excursion on the Lake of Brienz, which had been joined by nearly every one in the place with the exception of Miss Sterndale, who was supposed to have gone for a solitary expedition up the Schynnige Platte. When Miss Sterndale saw those glances, as I have no doubt she did, she commenced to storm and rage again, and continued to the end. I do not think, even then, she guessed what was coming; but she was already more uncomfortable than she had expected to be, and I could see that her brother felt the same. His face was white and set; he looked like a man who was trying to think of the best way in which to confront a desperate situation.

I went on to explain, quite calmly, that as, owing to the machinations of Mr. Sterndale and his sister, every one in the house had come to look upon me as a thief, their evident intention was to allow suspicion to be centred on me, and that that was why they put those things in my bag.

“But what were they going to gain by that?” asked the grey-haired man, rather pertinently. His question was echoed in a chorus by the rest--particularly, I noticed, by the Sterndales, who laid emphasis on the transparent absurdity of what I was saying.

“If you will allow me to continue, I will soon make it perfectly clear to you what they were going to gain. If you remember, when Mr. Sterndale was talking to his sister on the balcony this morning, I saw him say to her that there were only two things in the house worth having----”

Here Mr. Sterndale burst into a very hurricane of adjectives. The grey-haired man addressed him with rather unlooked-for vigour.

“Silence, sir! Allow Miss Lee to continue.”

Mr. Sterndale was silent. I fancy he was rather cowed by what he saw in the speaker’s eyes. I did continue.

“The only two things which, according to Mr. Sterndale, were worth having were Mrs. Anstruther’s diamonds and Mrs. Newball’s pearls. If they put the whole of the rest of the stolen things into my bag it would be taken for granted that I was the thief, and they would be able to continue in unsuspected possession of the two things which were worth much more than all the rest put together.”

The moment I stopped the clamour began again.

“And where do you suggest, young lady,” asked the grey-haired man, “that those two articles are?”

“I will tell you.” I looked at Miss Sterndale and then at her brother. I believe they would both have liked to have killed and eaten me. They can scarcely have been sure, even then, of what I was going to say, but I could see that they were devoured by anxiety and fear. “I have told you that I can see what people are saying by merely watching their lips. When Miss Sterndale came into the room she whispered something to her brother, in so faint a whisper that her words could have been scarcely audible even to themselves; but I saw their faces, and I knew what they had said as plainly as if they had shouted it. He told her that he had Mrs. Anstruther’s diamonds in the pocket of the jacket he has on.”

I paused. The first expression on Mr. Sterndale’s face was one of blank astonishment. Then he broke into Billingsgate abuse of me.

“You infernal liar! You two-faced cat! You dirty little witch! I’m not going to stay in this room to be insulted by a miserable creature----”

He made for the door. “Stop him!” I cried. As he reached the door it was thrown back almost in his face, and who should come into the room but Mr. and Mrs. Travers. How glad I was to see them! “Stop him!” I cried to Mr. Travers. “Stop that man!” And Mr. Travers stopped him. “Put your hand into the pocket of his jacket and take out what he has there.”

Mr. Travers, knowing nothing of what had been taking place, must have been rather at a loss as to what I might mean by such a request; but he did as I told him, all the same. Mr. Sterndale struggled; he did his best to protect himself and his pocket; but he was rather a small man, and Mr. Travers was a giant, both in stature and in strength. In a very few seconds he was staring at the contents of his hand.

“From the look of things, this gentleman’s pocket seems to be stuffed with diamonds. Here’s a diamond necklace.”

He held one up in the air. Heavy weight though she was, I believe that Mrs. Anstruther sprang several inches from the floor.

“It’s my necklace!” she screamed.

“And where are my pearls?” demanded Mrs. Newball.

“Miss Sterndale whispered to her brother that your pearls were inside the bodice of her dress.”

The words were scarcely out of my lips before Mrs. Newball sprang at Miss Sterndale, and there ensued a really painful scene. Had she not been restrained, I dare say she would have torn Miss Sterndale’s clothes right off her. As it was, some one opened her bodice, and the pearls were produced.

The scene which followed was like pandemonium on a small scale. It seemed as if every one had gone stark, staring mad. Guests, manager, and staff were all shouting together. I know that Mrs. Travers had her arm round me, and I was happier than--only a few minutes before--I thought that I should ever feel again.

We did not prosecute the Sterndales--which turned out not to be their name, and they were proved not to be sister and brother. Law in Switzerland does not move too quickly; the formalities to be observed are numerous. I did not very much want to have to remain in Switzerland for an indefinite period, at my own expense, to give evidence in a case in which I was not in the faintest degree interested. The others, the guests in the hotel, did not want to do that any more than I did. Their property was restored to them--that was what they wanted. They would have liked to punish the thieves, but not at the cost of so much inconvenience to themselves. So far as we were concerned, the criminals got off scot-free; but, none the less, they did not escape the vengeance of the law. That night they were arrested at Interlaken on another charge. It seemed that they were the perpetrators of that robbery in the hotel at Pontresina which, according to Mr. Sterndale, his apocryphal clerical friend had laid at my door. They had passed there as Mr. and Mrs. Burnett, and were found guilty and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. I have not seen or heard anything of that pseudonymous brother and sister since. I hope I never shall.

To find out what people are saying to each other in confidence, when they suppose themselves to be out of the reach of curious ears, may be very like eavesdropping. If it is, I am very glad that, on various occasions in my life, I have been enabled to be an eavesdropper in that sense. Had I not, at Interlaken, had the power which made of me an eavesdropper, I might have been branded as a criminal, and my happiness, my whole life, have been destroyed for ever.