Chapter I: HAD called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the (2)

“You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed, in unfeigned
admiration. “It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.”

“It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning. “Alas! I already
feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to
escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems
help me to do so.”

“And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some
little use,” he remarked. “_‘L’homme c’est rien—l’œuvre c’est
tout_,’ as Gustave Flaubert wrote to Georges Sand.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ONE HUNDRED IN THE DARK
By Owen Johnson

THEY were discussing languidly, as such groups do, seeking from each
topic a peg on which to hang a few epigrams that might be retold in
the lip currency of the club—Steingall, the painter, florid of
gesture, and effete, foreign in type, with black-rimmed glasses and
trailing ribbon of black silk that cut across his cropped beard and
cavalry mustaches; De Gollyer, a critic, who preferred to be known
as a man about town, short, feverish, incisive, who slew platitudes
with one adjective and tagged a reputation with three; Rankin, the
architect, always in a defensive, explanatory attitude, who held his
elbows on the table, his hands before his long sliding nose, and
gestured with his fingers; Quinny, the illustrator, long and gaunt,
with a predatory eloquence that charged irresistibly down on any
subject, cut it off, surrounded it, and raked it with enfilading wit
and satire; and Peters, whose methods of existence were a mystery, a
young man of fifty, who had done nothing and who knew every one by
his first name, the club postman, who carried the tittle-tattle, the
_bon mots_ and the news of the day, who drew up a petition a week
and pursued the house committee with a daily grievance.

About the latticed porch, which ran around the sanded yard with its
feeble fountain and futile evergreens, other groups were eying one
another, or engaging in desultory conversation, oppressed with the
heaviness of the night.

At the round table, Quinny alone, absorbing energy as he devoured
the conversation, having routed Steingall on the Germans and
archæology and Rankin on the origins of the Lord’s Prayer, had
seized a chance remark of De Gollyer’s to say:

“There are only half a dozen stories in the world. Like everything
that’s true it isn’t true.” He waved his long, gouty fingers in the
direction of Steingall, who, having been silenced, was regarding him
with a look of sleepy indifference. “What is more to the point, is
the small number of human relations that are so simple and yet so
fundamental that they can be eternally played upon, redressed, and
reinterpreted in every language, in every age, and yet remain
inexhaustible in the possibility of variations.”

“By George, that is so,” said Steingall, waking up. “Every art does
go back to three or four notes. In composition it is the same thing.
Nothing new—nothing new since a thousand years. By George, that is
true! We invent nothing, nothing!”

“Take the eternal triangle,” said Quinny hurriedly, not to surrender
his advantage, while Rankin and De Gollyer in a bored way continued
to gaze dreamily at a vagrant star or two. “Two men and a woman, or
two women and a man. Obviously it should be classified as the first
of the great original parent themes. Its variations extend into the
thousands. By the way, Rankin, excellent opportunity, eh, for some
of our modern, painstaking, unemployed jackasses to analyze and
classify.”

“Quite right,” said Rankin without perceiving the satirical note.
“Now there’s De Maupassant’s _Fort comme la Mort_—quite the most
interesting variation—shows the turn a genius can give. There the
triangle is the man of middle age, the mother he has loved in his
youth and the daughter he comes to love. It forms, you might say,
the head of a whole subdivision of modern continental literature.”

“Quite wrong, Rankin, quite wrong,” said Quinny, who would have
stated the other side quite as imperiously. “What you cite is a
variation of quite another theme, the Faust theme—old age longing
for youth, the man who has loved longing for the love of his youth,
which is youth itself. The triangle is the theme of jealousy, the
most destructive and, therefore, the most dramatic of human
passions. The Faust theme is the most fundamental and inevitable of
all human experiences, the tragedy of life itself. Quite a different
thing.”

Rankin, who never agreed with Quinny unless Quinny maliciously took
advantage of his prior announcement to agree with him, continued to
combat this idea.

“You believe then,” said De Gollyer after a certain moment had been
consumed in hair splitting, “that the origin of all dramatic themes
is simply the expression of some human emotion. In other words,
there can exist no more parent themes than there are human
emotions.”

“I thank you, sir, very well put,” said Quinny with a generous wave
of his hand. “Why is the _Three Musketeers_ a basic theme? Simply
the interpretation of comradeship, the emotion one man feels for
another, vital because it is the one peculiarly masculine emotion.
Look at Du Maurier and _Trilby_, Kipling in _Soldiers Three_—simply
the _Three Musketeers_.”

“The _Vie de Bohème_?” suggested Steingall.

“In the real Vie de Bohème, yes,” said Quinny viciously. “Not in the
concocted sentimentalities that we now have served up to us by
athletic tenors and consumptive elephants!”

Rankin, who had been silently deliberating on what had been left
behind, now said cunningly and with evident purpose:

“All the same, I don’t agree with you men at all. I believe there
are situations, original situations, that are independent of your
human emotions, that exist just because they are situations,
accidental and nothing else.”

“As for instance?” said Quinny, preparing to attack.

“Well, I’ll just cite an ordinary one that happens to come to my
mind,” said Rankin, who had carefully selected his test. “In a group
of seven or eight, such as we are here, a theft takes place; one man
is the thief—which one? I’d like to know what emotion that
interprets, and yet it certainly is an original theme, at the bottom
of a whole literature.”

This challenge was like a bomb.

“Not the same thing.”

“Detective stories, bah!”

“Oh, I say, Rankin, that’s literary melodrama.”

Rankin, satisfied, smiled and winked victoriously over to Tommers,
who was listening from an adjacent table.

“Of course your suggestion is out of order, my dear man, to this
extent,” said Quinny, who never surrendered, “in that I am talking
of fundamentals and you are citing details. Nevertheless, I could
answer that the situation you give, as well as the whole school it
belongs to, can be traced back to the commonest of human emotions,
curiosity; and that the story of _Bluebeard_ and _The Moonstone_ are
to all purposes identically the same.”

At this Steingall, who had waited hopefully, gasped and made as
though to leave the table.

“I shall take up your contention,” said Quinny without pause for
breath, “first, because you have opened up one of my pet topics,
and, second, because it gives me a chance to talk.” He gave a
sidelong glance at Steingall and winked at De Gollyer. “What is the
peculiar fascination that the detective problem exercises over the
human mind? You will say curiosity. Yes and no. Admit at once that
the whole art of a detective story consists in the statement of the
problem. Any one can do it. I can do it. Steingall even can do it.
The solution doesn’t count. It is usually banal; it should be
prohibited. What interests us is, can we guess it? Just as an
able-minded man will sit down for hours and fiddle over the puzzle
column in a Sunday balderdash. Same idea. There you have it, the
problem—the detective story. Now why the fascination? I’ll tell you.
It appeals to our curiosity, yes—but deeper to a sort of
intellectual vanity. Here are six matches, arrange them to make four
squares; five men present, a theft takes place—who’s the thief? Who
will guess it first? Whose brain will show its superior
cleverness—see? That’s all—that’s all there is to it.”

“Out of all of which,” said De Gollyer, “the interesting thing is
that Rankin has supplied the reason why the supply of detective
fiction is inexhaustible. It does all come down to the simplest
terms. Seven possibilities, one answer. It is a formula, ludicrously
simple, mechanical, and yet we will always pursue it to the end. The
marvel is that writers should seek for any other formula when here
is one so safe, that can never fail. Be George, I could start up a
factory on it.”

“The reason is,” said Rankin, “that the situation does constantly
occur. It’s a situation that any of us might get into any time. As a
matter of fact, now, I personally know two such occasions when I was
of the party; and very uncomfortable it was too.”

“What happened?” said Steingall.

“Why, there is no story to it particularly. Once a mistake had been
made, and the other time the real thief was detected by accident a
year later. In both cases only one or two of us knew what had
happened.”

De Gollyer had a similar incident to recall. Steingall, after
reflection, related another that had happened to a friend.

“Of course, of course, my dear gentlemen,” said Quinny impatiently,
for he had been silent too long, “you are glorifying commonplaces.
Every crime, I tell you, expresses itself in the terms of the
picture puzzle that you feed to your six-year-old. It’s only the
variation that is interesting. Now quite the most remarkable turn of
the complexities that can be developed is, of course, the well-known
instance of the visitor at a club and the rare coin. Of course every
one knows that? What?”

Rankin smiled in a bored, superior way, but the others protested
their ignorance.

“Why, it’s very well known,” said Quinny lightly. “A distinguished
visitor is brought into a club—dozen men, say, present, at dinner,
long table. Conversation finally veers around to curiosities and
relics. One of the members present then takes from his pocket what
he announces as one of the rarest coins in existence—passes it
around the table. Coin travels back and forth, every one examining
it, and the conversation goes to another topic, say the influence of
the automobile on domestic infelicity, or some other such asininely
intellectual club topic—you know? All at once the owner calls for
his coin.

“The coin is nowhere to be found. Every one looks at every one else.
First, they suspect a joke. Then it becomes serious—the coin is
immensely valuable. Who has taken it?

“The owner is a gentleman—does the gentlemanly idiotic thing, of
course, laughs, says he knows some one is playing a practical joke
on him and that the coin will be returned to-morrow. The others
refuse to leave the situation so. One man proposes that they all
submit to a search. Every one gives his assent until it comes to the
stranger. He refuses, curtly, roughly, without giving any reason.
Uncomfortable silence—the man is a guest. No one knows him
particularly well—but still he is a guest. One member tries to make
him understand that no offense is offered, that the suggestion was
simply to clear the atmosphere, and all that sort of bally rot, you
know.

“‘I refuse to allow my person to be searched,’ says the stranger,
very firm, very proud, very English, you know, ‘and I refuse to give
my reason for my action.’

“Another silence. The men eye him and then glance at one another.
What’s to be done? Nothing. There is etiquette—that magnificent
inflated balloon. The visitor evidently has the coin—but he is their
guest and etiquette protects him. Nice situation, eh?

“The table is cleared. A waiter removes a dish of fruit and there
under the ledge of the plate where it had been pushed—is the coin.
Banal explanation, eh? Of course. Solutions always should be. At
once every one in profouse apologies! Whereupon the visitor rises
and says:

“‘Now I can give you the reason for my refusal to be searched. There
are only two known specimens of the coin in existence, and the
second happens to be here in my waistcoat pocket.’”

“Of course,” said Quinny with a shrug of his shoulders, “the story
is well invented, but the turn to it is very nice—very nice indeed.”

“I did know the story,” said Steingall, to be disagreeable; “the
ending, though, is too obvious to be invented. The visitor should
have had on him not another coin, but something absolutely
different, something destructive, say, of a woman’s reputation, and
a great tragedy should have been threatened by the casual misplacing
of the coin.”

“I have heard the same story told in a dozen different ways,” said
Rankin.

“It has happened a hundred times. It must be continually happening,”
said Steingall.

“I know one extraordinary instance,” said Peters, who up to the
present, secure in his climax, had waited with a professional smile
until the big guns had been silenced. “In fact, the most
extraordinary instance of this sort I have ever heard.”

“Peters, you little rascal,” said Quinny with a sidelong glance, “I
perceive you have quietly been letting us dress the stage for you.”

“It is not a story that will please every one,” said Peters, to whet
their appetite.

“Why not?”

“Because you will want to know what no one can ever know.”

“It has no conclusion then?”

“Yes and no. As far as it concerns a woman, quite the most
remarkable woman I have ever met, the story is complete. As for the
rest, it is what it is, because it is one example where literature
can do nothing better than record.”

“Do I know the woman?” asked De Gollyer, who flattered himself on
passing through every class of society.

“Possibly, but no more than any one else.”

“An actress?”

“What she has been in the past I don’t know—a promoter would better
describe her. Undoubtedly she has been behind the scenes in many an
untold intrigue of the business world. A very feminine woman, and
yet, as you shall see, with an unusual instantaneous masculine power
of decision.”

“Peters,” said Quinny, waving a warning finger, “you are destroying
your story. Your preface will bring an anti-climax.”

“You shall judge,” said Peters, who waited until his audience was in
strained attention before opening his story. “The names are, of
course, disguises.”

* * * * *

Mrs. Rita Kildair inhabited a charming bachelor-girl studio, very
elegant, of the duplex pattern, in one of the buildings just off
Central Park West. She knew pretty nearly every one in that
indescribable society in New York that is drawn from all levels, and
that imposes but one condition for membership—to be amusing. She
knew every one and no one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest
rumors her history or her means. No one had ever heard of a Mr.
Kildair. There was always about her a certain defensive reserve the
moment the limits of acquaintanceship had been reached. She had a
certain amount of money, she knew a certain number of men in Wall
Street affairs, and her studio was furnished with taste and even
distinction. She was of any age. She might have suffered everything
or nothing at all. In this mingled society her invitations were
eagerly sought, her dinners were spontaneous, and the discussions,
though gay and usually daring, were invariably under the control of
wit and good taste.

On the Sunday night of this adventure she had, according to her
invariable custom, sent away her Japanese butler and invited to an
informal chafing-dish supper seven of her more congenial friends,
all of whom, as much as could be said of any one, were habitués of
the studio.

At seven o’clock, having finished dressing, she put in order her
bedroom, which formed a sort of free passage between the studio and
a small dining room to the kitchen beyond. Then, going into the
studio, she lit a wax taper and was in the act of touching off the
brass candlesticks that lighted the room when three knocks sounded
on the door and a Mr. Flanders, a broker, compact, nervously alive,
well groomed, entered with the informality of assured acquaintance.

“You are early,” said Mrs. Kildair, in surprise.

“On the contrary, you are late,” said the broker, glancing at his
watch.

“Then be a good boy and help me with the candles,” she said, giving
him a smile and a quick pressure of her fingers.

He obeyed, asking nonchalantly:

“I say, dear lady, who’s to be here to-night?”

“The Enos Jacksons.”

“I thought they were separated.”

“Not yet.”

“Very interesting! Only you, dear lady, would have thought of
serving us a couple on the verge.”

“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“Assuredly. Where did you know Jackson?”

“Through the Warings. Jackson’s a rather doubtful person, isn’t he?”

“Let’s call him a very sharp lawyer,” said Flanders defensively.
“They tell me, though, he is on the wrong side of the market—in
deep.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I? I’m a bachelor,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “and
if I come a cropper it makes no difference.”

“Is that possible?” she said, looking at him quickly.

“Probable even. And who else is coming?”

“Maude Lille—you know her?”

“I think not.”

“You met her here—a journalist.”

“Quite so, a strange career.”

“Mr. Harris, a clubman, is coming, and the Stanley Cheevers.”

“The Stanley Cheevers!” said Flanders with some surprise. “Are we
going to gamble?”

“You believe in that scandal about bridge?”

“Certainly not,” said Flanders, smiling. “You see I was present. The
Cheevers play a good game, a well united game, and have an unusual
system of makes. By-the-way it’s Jackson who is very attentive to
Mrs. Cheever, isn’t it?”

“Quite right.”

“What a charming party,” said Flanders flippantly. “And where does
Maude Lille come in?”

“Don’t joke. She is in a desperate way,” said Mrs. Kildair, with a
little sadness in her eyes.

“And Harris?”

“Oh, he is to make the salad and cream the chicken.”

“Ah, I see the whole party. I, of course, am to add the element of
respectability.”

“Of what?”

She looked at him steadily until he turned away, dropping his
glance.

“Don’t be an ass with me, my dear Flanders.”

“By George, if this were Europe I’d wager you were in the secret
service, Mrs. Kildair.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled appreciatively and moved about the studio, giving the
finishing touches. The Stanley Cheevers entered, a short fat man
with a vacant fat face and a slow-moving eye, and his wife, voluble,
nervous, overdressed and pretty. Mr. Harris came with Maude Lille, a
woman, straight, dark, Indian, with great masses of somber hair held
in a little too loosely for neatness, with thick, quick lips and
eyes that rolled away from the person who was talking to her. The
Enos Jacksons were late and still agitated as they entered. His
forehead had not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn.
He was of the type that never lost his temper, but caused others to
lose theirs, immovable in his opinions, with a prowling walk, a
studied antagonism in his manner, and an impudent look that fastened
itself unerringly on the weakness in the person to whom he spoke.
Mrs. Jackson, who seemed fastened to her husband by an invisible
leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate
dash, which she assumed rather than felt in her attitude toward
life. One looked at her curiously and wondered what such a nature
would do in a crisis, with a lurking sense of a woman who carried
with her her own impending tragedy.

As soon as the company had been completed and the incongruity of the
selection had been perceived, a smile of malicious anticipation ran
the rounds, which the hostess cut short by saying:

“Well, now that every one is here, this is the order of the night:
You can quarrel all you want, you can whisper all the gossip you can
think of about one another, but every one is to be amusing! Also
every one is to help with the dinner—nothing formal and nothing
serious. We may all be bankrupt to-morrow, divorced or dead, but
to-night we will be gay—that is the invariable rule of the house!”

Immediately a nervous laughter broke out and the company,
chattering, began to scatter through the rooms.

Mrs. Kildair, stopping in her bedroom, donned a Watteaulike cooking
apron, and slipping her rings from her fingers fixed the three on
her pincushion with a hatpin.

“Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful,” said the low voice of
Maude Lille, who, with Harris and Mrs. Cheever, was in the room.

“There’s only one that is very valuable,” said Mrs. Kildair,
touching with her thin fingers the ring that lay uppermost, two
large diamonds, flanking a magnificent sapphire.

“It is beautiful—very beautiful,” said the journalist, her eyes
fastened to it with an uncontrollable fascination. She put out her
fingers and let them rest caressingly on the sapphire, withdrawing
them quickly as though the contact had burned them.

“It must be very valuable,” she said, her breath catching a little.
Mrs. Cheever, moving forward, suddenly looked at the ring.

“It cost five thousand six years ago,” said Mrs. Kildair, glancing
down at it. “It has been my talisman ever since. For the moment,
however, I am cook; Maude Lille, you are scullery maid; Harris is
the chef, and we are under his orders. Mrs. Cheever, did you ever
peel onions?”

“Good Heavens, no!” said Mrs. Cheever, recoiling.

“Well, there are no onions to peel,” said Mrs. Kildair, laughing.
“All you’ll have to do is to help set the table. On to the kitchen!”

Under their hostess’s gay guidance the seven guests began to
circulate busily through the rooms, laying the table, grouping the
chairs, opening bottles, and preparing the material for the chafing
dishes. Mrs. Kildair, in the kitchen, ransacked the ice box, and
with her own hands chopped the _fines herbes_, shredded the chicken
and measured the cream.

“Flanders, carry this in carefully,” she said, her hands in a towel.
“Cheever, stop watching your wife and put the salad bowl on the
table. Everything ready, Harris? All right. Every one sit down. I’ll
be right in.”

She went into her bedroom, and divesting herself of her apron hung
it in the closet. Then going to her dressing table she drew the
hatpin from the pincushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her
fingers. All at once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand.
Only two rings were there, the third ring, the one with the sapphire
and the two diamonds, was missing.

“Stupid,” she said to herself, and returned to her dressing table.
All at once she stopped. She remembered quite clearly putting the
pin through the three rings.

She made no attempt to search further, but remained without moving,
her fingers drumming slowly on the table, her head to one side, her
lip drawn in a little between her teeth, listening with a frown to
the babble from the outer room. Who had taken the ring? Each of her
guests had had a dozen opportunities in the course of the time she
had been busy in the kitchen.

“Too much time before the mirror, dear lady,” called out Flanders
gaily, who from where he was seated could see her.

“It is not he,” she said quickly. Then she reconsidered. “Why not?
He is clever—who knows? Let me think.”

To gain time she walked back slowly into the kitchen, her head
bowed, her thumb between her teeth.

“Who has taken it?”

She ran over the characters of her guests and their situations as
she knew them. Strangely enough, at each her mind stopped upon some
reason that might explain a sudden temptation.

“I shall find out nothing this way,” she said to herself after a
moment’s deliberation; “that is not the important thing to me just
now. The important thing is to get the ring back.”

And slowly, deliberately, she began to walk back and forth, her
clenched hand beating the deliberate rhythmic measure of her
journey.

Five minutes later, as Harris, installed _en maître_ over the
chafing dish, was giving directions, spoon in the air, Mrs. Kildair
came into the room like a lengthening shadow. Her entrance had been
made with scarcely a perceptible sound, and yet each guest was aware
of it at the same moment, with a little nervous start.

“Heavens, dear lady,” exclaimed Flanders, “you come in on us like a
Greek tragedy! What is it you have for us, a surprise?”

As he spoke she turned her swift glance on him, drawing her forehead
together until the eyebrows ran in a straight line.

“I have something to say to you,” she said in a sharp, businesslike
manner, watching the company with penetrating eagerness.

There was no mistaking the seriousness of her voice. Mr. Harris
extinguished the oil lamp, covering the chafing dish clumsily with a
discordant, disagreeable sound. Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Enos Jackson
swung about abruptly, Maude Lille rose a little from her seat, while
the men imitated these movements of expectancy with a clumsy
shuffling of the feet.

“Mr. Enos Jackson?”

“Yes, Mrs. Kildair.”

“Kindly do as I ask you.”

“Certainly.”

She had spoken his name with a peremptory positiveness that was
almost an accusation. He rose calmly, raising his eyebrows a little
in surprise.

“Go to the door,” she continued, shifting her glance from him to the
others. “Are you there? Lock it. Bring me the key.”

He executed the order without bungling, and returning stood before
her, tendering the key.

“You’ve locked it?” she said, making the words an excuse to bury her
glance in his.

“As you wished me to.”

“Thanks.”

She took from him the key and, shifting slightly, likewise locked
the door into her bedroom through which she had come.

Then transferring the keys to her left hand, seemingly unaware of
Jackson, who still awaited her further commands, her eyes studied a
moment the possibilities of the apartment.

“Mr. Cheever?” she said in a low voice.

“Yes, Mrs. Kildair.”

“Blow out all the candles except the candelabrum on the table.”

“Put out the lights, Mrs. Kildair?”

“At once.”

Mr. Cheever, in rising, met the glance of his wife, and the look of
questioning and wonder that passed did not escape the hostess.

“But, my dear Mrs. Kildair,” said Mrs. Jackson with a little nervous
catch of her breath, “what is it? I’m getting terribly worked up! My
nerves—”

“Miss Lille?” said the voice of command.

“Yes.”

The journalist, calmer than the rest, had watched the proceedings
without surprise, as though fore-warned by professional instinct
that something of importance was about to take place. Now she rose
quietly with an almost stealthy motion.

“Put the candelabrum on this table—here,” said Mrs. Kildair,
indicating a large round table on which a few books were grouped.
“No, wait. Mr. Jackson, first clear off the table. I want nothing on
it.”

“But, Mrs. Kildair—” began Mrs. Jackson’s shrill voice again.

“That’s it. Now put down the candelabrum.”

In a moment, as Mr. Cheever proceeded methodically on his errand,
the brilliant crossfire of lights dropped in the studio, only a few
smoldering wicks winking on the walls, while the high room seemed to
grow more distant as it came under the sole dominion of the three
candles bracketed in silver at the head of the bare mahogany table.

“Now listen!” said Mrs. Kildair, and her voice had in it a cold
note. “My sapphire ring has just been stolen.”

She said it suddenly, hurling the news among them and waiting
ferret-like for some indications in the chorus that broke out.

“Stolen!”

“Oh, my dear Mrs. Kildair!”

“Stolen—by Jove!”

“You don’t mean it!”

“What! Stolen here—to-night?”

“The ring has been taken within the last twenty minutes,” continued
Mrs. Kildair in the same determined, chiseled tone. “I am not going
to mince words. The ring has been taken and the thief is among you.”

For a moment nothing was heard but an indescribable gasp and a
sudden turning and searching, then suddenly Cheever’s deep bass
broke out:

“Stolen! But, Mrs. Kildair, is it possible?”

“Exactly. There is not the slightest doubt,” said Mrs. Kildair.
“Three of you were in my bedroom when I placed my rings on the
pincushion. Each of you has passed through there a dozen times
since. My sapphire ring is gone, and one of you has taken it.”

Mrs. Jackson gave a little scream, and reached heavily for a glass
of water. Mrs. Cheever said something inarticulate in the outburst
of masculine exclamation. Only Maude Lille’s calm voice could be
heard saying:

“Quite true. I was in the room when you took them off. The sapphire
ring was on top.”

“Now listen!” said Mrs. Kildair, her eyes on Maude Lille’s eyes. “I
am not going to mince words. I am not going to stand on ceremony.
I’m going to have that ring back. Listen to me carefully. I’m going
to have that ring back, and until I do, not a soul shall leave this
room.” She tapped on the table with her nervous knuckles. “Who has
taken it I do not care to know. All I want is my ring. Now I’m going
to make it possible for whoever took it to restore it without
possibility of detection. The doors are locked and will stay locked.
I am going to put out the lights, and I am going to count one
hundred slowly. You will be in absolute darkness; no one will know
or see what is done. But if at the end of that time the ring is not
here on this table I shall telephone the police and have every one
in this room searched. Am I quite clear?”

Suddenly she cut short the nervous outbreak of suggestions and in
the same firm voice continued:

“Every one take his place about the table. That’s it. That will do.”

The women, with the exception of the inscrutable Maude Lille, gazed
hysterically from face to face; while the men, compressing their
fingers, locking them or grasping their chins, looked straight ahead
fixedly at their hostess.

Mrs. Kildair, having calmly assured herself that all were ranged as
she wished, blew out two of the three candles.

“I shall count one hundred, no more, no less,” she said. “Either I
get back that ring or every one in this room is to be searched,
remember.”

Leaning over, she blew out the remaining candle and snuffed it.

“One, two, three, four, five—”

She began to count with the inexorable regularity of a clock’s
ticking.

In the room every sound was distinct, the rustle of a dress, the
grinding of a shoe, the deep, slightly asthmatic breathing of a man.

“Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—”

She continued to count, while in the methodic unvarying note of her
voice there was a rasping reiteration that began to affect the
company. A slight gasping breath, uncontrollable, almost on the
verge of hysterics, was heard, and a man nervously clearing his
throat.

“Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven—”

Still nothing had happened. Mrs. Kildair did not vary her measure
the slightest, only the sound became more metallic.

“Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine and seventy—”

Some one had sighed.

“Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six,
seventy-seven—”

All at once, clear, unmistakable, on the resounding plane of the
table was heard a slight metallic note.

“The ring!”

It was Maude Lille’s quick voice that had spoken. Mrs. Kildair
continued to count.

“Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one—”

The tension became unbearable. Two or three voices protested against
the needless prolonging of the torture.

“Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine and one
hundred.”

A match sputtered in Mrs. Kildair’s hand and on the instant the
company craned forward. In the center of the table was the sparkling
sapphire and diamond ring. Candles were lit, flaring up like
searchlights on the white accusing faces.

“Mr. Cheever, you may give it to me,” said Mrs. Kildair. She held
out her hand without trembling, a smile of triumph on her face,
which had in it for a moment an expression of positive cruelty.

Immediately she changed, contemplating with amusement the horror of
her guests, staring blindly from one to another, seeing the
indefinable glance of interrogation that passed from Cheever to Mrs.
Cheever, from Mrs. Jackson to her husband, and then without emotion
she said:

“Now that that is over we can have a very gay little supper.”

* * * * *

When Peters had pushed back his chair, satisfied as only a trained
raconteur can be by the silence of a difficult audience, and had
busied himself with a cigar, there was an instant outcry.

“I say, Peters, old boy, that is not all!”

“Absolutely.”

“The story ends there?”

“That ends the story.”

“But who took the ring?”

Peters extended his hands in an empty gesture.

“What! It was never found out?”

“Never.”

“No clue?”

“None.”

“I don’t like the story,” said De Gollyer.

“It’s no story at all,” said Steingall.

“Permit me,” said Quinny in a didactic way; “it is a story, and it
is complete. In fact, I consider it unique because it has none of
the banalities of a solution and leaves the problem even more
confused than at the start.”

“I don’t see—” began Rankin.

“Of course you don’t, my dear man,” said Quinny crushingly. “You do
not see that any solution would be commonplace, whereas no solution
leaves an extraordinary intellectual problem.”

“How so?”

“In the first place,” said Quinny, preparing to annex the topic,
“whether the situation actually happened or not, which is in itself
a mere triviality, Peters has constructed it in a masterly way, the
proof of which is that he has made _me_ listen. Observe, each person
present might have taken the ring—Flanders, a broker, just come a
cropper; Maude Lille, a woman on the ragged side of life in
desperate means; either Mr. and Mrs. Cheever, suspected of being
card sharps—very good touch that, Peters, when the husband and wife
glanced involuntarily at each other at the end—Mr. Enos Jackson, a
sharp lawyer, or his wife about to be divorced; even Harris,
concerning whom, very cleverly, Peters has said nothing at all to
make him quite the most suspicious of all. There are, therefore,
seven solutions, all possible and all logical. But beyond this is
left a great intellectual problem.”

“How so?”

“Was it a feminine or a masculine action to restore the ring when
threatened with a search, knowing that Mrs. Kildair’s clever
expedient of throwing the room into darkness made detection
impossible? Was it a woman who lacked the necessary courage to
continue, or was it a man who repented his first impulse? Is a man
or is a woman the greater natural criminal?”

“A woman took it, of course,” said Rankin.

“On the contrary, it was a man,” said Steingall, “for the second
action was more difficult than the first.”

“A man, certainly,” said De Gollyer. “The restoration of the ring
was a logical decision.”

“You see,” said Quinny triumphantly, “personally I incline to a
woman for the reason that a weaker feminine nature is peculiarly
susceptible to the domination of her own sex. There you are. We
could meet and debate the subject year in and year out and never
agree.”

“I recognize most of the characters,” said De Gollyer with a little
confidential smile toward Peters. “Mrs. Kildair, of course, is all
you say of her—an extraordinary woman. The story is quite
characteristic of her. Flanders, I am not sure of, but I think I
know him.”

“Did it really happen?” asked Rankin, who always took the
commonplace point of view.

“Exactly as I have told it,” said Peters.

“The only one I don’t recognize is Harris,” said De Gollyer
pensively.

“Your humble servant,” said Peters, smiling.

The four looked up suddenly with a little start.

“What!” said Quinny, abruptly confused. “You—you were there?”

“I was there.”

The four continued to look at him without speaking, each absorbed in
his own thoughts, with a sudden ill ease.

A club attendant, with a telephone slip on a tray, stopped by
Peters’ side. He excused himself and went along the porch, nodding
from table to table.

“Curious chap,” said De Gollyer musingly.

“Extraordinary.”

The word was like a murmur in the group of four, who continued
watching Peters’ trim, disappearing figure in silence, without
looking at one another—with a certain ill ease.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION[9]
By O. HENRY

Footnote 9:

From _Roads of Destiny_. Published by permission of the
publishers. Copyright, 1909, by Doubleday, Page & Co.

A GUARD came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was
assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office.
There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that
morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He
had served nearly ten months of a four-year sentence. He had
expected to stay only about three months, at the longest. When a man
with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is
received in the “stir” it is hardly worth while to cut his hair.

“Now, Valentine,” said the warden, “you’ll go out in the morning.
Brace up, and make a man of yourself. You’re not a bad fellow at
heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight.”

“Me?” said Jimmy, in surprise. “Why, I never cracked a safe in my
life.”

“Oh, no,” laughed the warden. “Of course not. Let’s see, now. How
was it you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job? Was it
because you wouldn’t prove an alibi for fear of compromising
somebody in extremely high-toned society? Or was it simply a case of
a mean old jury that had it in for you? It’s always one or the other
with you innocent victims.”

“Me?” said Jimmy, still blankly virtuous. “Why, warden, I never was
in Springfield in my life!”

“Take him back, Cronin,” smiled the warden, “and fix him up with
outgoing clothes. Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him
come to the bull-pen. Better think over my advice, Valentine.”

At a quarter past seven on the next morning Jimmy stood in the
warden’s outer office. He had on a suit of the villainously fitting,
ready-made clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky shoes that the
state furnishes to its discharged compulsory guests.

The clerk handed him a railroad ticket and the five-dollar bill with
which the law expected him to rehabilitate himself into good
citizenship and prosperity. The warden gave him a cigar, and shook
hands. Valentine, 9762, was chronicled on the books “Pardoned by
Governor,” and Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine.

Disregarding the song of the birds, the waving green trees, and the
smell of the flowers, Jimmy headed straight for a restaurant. There
he tasted the first sweet joys of liberty in the shape of a broiled
chicken and a bottle of white wine—followed by a cigar a grade
better than the one the warden had given him. From there he
proceeded leisurely to the depot. He tossed a quarter into the hat
of a blind man sitting by the door, and boarded his train. Three
hours set him down in a little town near the state line. He went to
the café of one Mike Dolan and shook hands with Mike, who was alone
behind the bar.

“Sorry we couldn’t make it sooner, Jimmy, me boy,” said Mike. “But
we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the
governor nearly balked. Feeling all right?”

“Fine,” said Jimmy. “Got my key?”

He got his key and went up-stairs, unlocking the door of a room at
the rear. Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor
was still Ben Price’s collar-button that had been torn from that
eminent detective’s shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to
arrest him.

Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in
the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suit-case. He opened this
and gazed fondly at the finest set of burglar’s tools in the East.
It was a complete set, made of specially tempered steel, the latest
design in drills, punches, braces and bits, jimmies, clamps, and
augers, with two or three novelties, invented by Jimmy himself, in
which he took pride. Over nine hundred dollars they had cost him to
have made at ——, a place where they make such things for the
profession.

In half an hour Jimmy went down stairs and through the café. He was
now dressed in tasteful and well-fitting clothes, and carried his
dusted and cleaned suit-case in his hand.

“Got anything on?” asked Mike Dolan, genially.

“Me?” said Jimmy, in a puzzled tone. “I don’t understand. I’m
representing the New York Amalgamated Short Snap Biscuit Cracker and
Frazzled Wheat Company.”

This statement delighted Mike to such an extent that Jimmy had to
take a seltzer-and-milk on the spot. He never touched “hard” drinks.

A week after the release of Valentine, 9762, there was a neat job of
safe-burglary done in Richmond, Indiana, with no clue to the author.
A scant eight hundred dollars was all that was secured. Two weeks
after that a patented, improved, burglar-proof safe in Logansport
was opened like a cheese to the tune of fifteen hundred dollars,
currency; securities and silver untouched. That began to interest
the rogue-catchers. Then an old-fashioned bank-safe in Jefferson
City became active and threw out of its crater an eruption of
bank-notes amounting to five thousand dollars. The losses were now
high enough to bring the matter up into Ben Price’s class of work.
By comparing notes, a remarkable similarity in the methods of the
burglaries was noticed. Ben Price investigated the scenes of the
robberies, and was heard to remark:

“That’s Dandy Jim Valentine’s autograph. He’s resumed business. Look
at that combination knob—jerked out as easy as pulling up a radish
in wet weather. He’s got the only clamps that can do it. And look
how clean those tumblers were punched out! Jimmy never has to drill
but one hole. Yes, I guess I want Mr. Valentine. He’ll do his bit
next time without any short-time or clemency foolishness.”

Ben Price knew Jimmy’s habits. He had learned them while working up
the Springfield case. Long jumps, quick get-aways, no confederates,
and a taste for good society—these ways had helped Mr. Valentine to
become noted as a successful dodger of retribution. It was given out
that Ben Price had taken up the trail of the elusive cracksman, and
other people with burglar-proof safes felt more at ease.

One afternoon Jimmy Valentine and his suit-case climbed out of the
mail-hack in Elmore, a little town five miles off the railroad down
in the black-jack country of Arkansas. Jimmy, looking like an
athletic young senior just home from college, went down the board
side-walk toward the hotel.

A young lady crossed the street, passed him at the corner and
entered a door over which was the sign “The Elmore Bank.” Jimmy
Valentine looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became
another man. She lowered her eyes and colored slightly. Young men of
Jimmy’s style and looks were scarce in Elmore.

Jimmy collared a boy that was loafing on the steps of the bank as if
he were one of the stockholders, and began to question him about the
town, feeding him dimes at intervals. By and by the young lady came
out, looking royally unconscious of the young man with the
suit-case, and went her way.

“Isn’t that young lady Miss Polly Simpson?” asked Jimmy, with
specious guile.

“Naw,” said the boy. “She’s Annabel Adams. Her pa owns this bank.
What’d you come to Elmore for? Is that a gold watch-chain? I’m going
to get a bulldog. Got any more dimes?”

Jimmy went to the Planters’ Hotel, registered as Ralph D. Spencer,
and engaged a room. He leaned on the desk and declared his platform
to the clerk. He said he had come to Elmore to look for a location
to go into business. How was the shoe business, now, in the town? He
had thought of the shoe business. Was there an opening?

The clerk was impressed by the clothes and manner of Jimmy. He,
himself, was something of a pattern of fashion to the thinly gilded
youth of Elmore, but he now perceived his shortcomings. While trying
to figure out Jimmy’s manner of tying his four-in-hand he cordially
gave information.

Yes, there ought to be a good opening in the shoe line. There wasn’t
an exclusive shoe-store in the place. The dry-goods and general
stores handled them. Business in all lines was fairly good. Hoped
Mr. Spencer would decide to locate in Elmore. He would find it a
pleasant town to live in, and the people very sociable.

Mr. Spencer thought he would stop over in the town a few days and
look over the situation. No, the clerk needn’t call the boy. He
would carry up his suit-case, himself; it was rather heavy.

Mr. Ralph Spencer, the phœnix that arose from Jimmy Valentine’s
ashes—ashes left by the flame of a sudden and alterative attack of
love—remained in Elmore, and prospered. He opened a shoe-store and
secured a good run of trade.

Socially he was also a success, and made many friends. And he
accomplished the wish of his heart. He met Miss Annabel Adams, and
became more and more captivated by her charms.

At the end of a year the situation of Mr. Ralph Spencer was this: he
had won the respect of the community, his shoe-store was
flourishing, and he and Annabel were engaged to be married in two
weeks. Mr. Adams, the typical, plodding, country banker, approved of
Spencer. Annabel’s pride in him almost equalled her affection. He
was as much at home in the family of Mr. Adams and that of Annabel’s
married sister as if he were already a member.

One day Jimmy sat down in his room and wrote this letter, which he
mailed to the safe address of one of his old friends in St. Louis:

DEAR OLD PAL:

I want you to be at Sullivan’s place, in Little Rock, next
Wednesday night, at nine o’clock. I want you to wind up some
little matters for me. And, also, I want to make you a
present of my kit of tools. I know you’ll be glad to get
them—you couldn’t duplicate the lot for a thousand dollars.
Say, Billy, I’ve quit the old business—a year ago. I’ve got
a nice store. I’m making an honest living, and I’m going to
marry the finest girl on earth two weeks from now. It’s the
only life, Billy—the straight one. I wouldn’t touch a dollar
of another man’s money now for a million. After I get
married I’m going to sell out and go West, where there won’t
be so much danger of having old scores brought up against
me. I tell you, Billy, she’s an angel. She believes in me;
and I wouldn’t do another crooked thing for the whole world.
Be sure to be at Sully’s, for I must see you. I’ll bring the
tools with me.

Your old friend,

JIMMY.

On the Monday night after Jimmy wrote this letter, Ben Price jogged
unobtrusively into Elmore in a livery buggy. He lounged about town
in his quiet way until he found out what he wanted to know. From the
drug-store across the street from Spencer’s shoe-store he got a good
look at Ralph D. Spencer.

“Going to marry the banker’s daughter are you, Jimmy?” said Ben to
himself, softly. “Well, I don’t know!”

The next morning Jimmy took breakfast at the Adamses. He was going
to Little Rock that day to order his wedding-suit and buy something
nice for Annabel. That would be the first time he had left town
since he came to Elmore. It had been more than a year now since
those last professional “jobs,” and he thought he could safely
venture out.

After breakfast quite a family party went downtown together—Mr.
Adams, Annabel, Jimmy, and Annabel’s married sister with her two
little girls, aged five and nine. They came by the hotel where Jimmy
still boarded, and he ran up to his room and brought along his
suit-case. Then they went on to the bank. There stood Jimmy’s horse
and buggy and Dolph Gibson, who was going to drive him over to the
railroad station.

All went inside the high, carved oak railings into the
banking-room—Jimmy included, for Mr. Adams’s future son-in-law was
welcome anywhere. The clerks were pleased to be greeted by the
good-looking, agreeable young man who was going to marry Miss
Annabel. Jimmy set his suit-case down. Annabel, whose heart was
bubbling with lively youth, put on Jimmy’s hat, and picked up the
suit-case. “Wouldn’t I make a nice drummer?” said Annabel. “My!
Ralph, how heavy it is? Feels like it was full of gold bricks.”

“Lot of nickel-plated shoe-horns in there,” said Jimmy, coolly,
“that I’m going to return. Thought I’d save express charges by
taking them up. I’m getting awfully economical.”

The Elmore Bank had just put in a new safe and vault. Mr. Adams was
very proud of it, and insisted on an inspection by every one. The
vault was a small one, but it had a new, patented door. It fastened
with three solid steel bolts thrown simultaneously with a single
handle, and had a time-lock. Mr. Adams beamingly explained its
workings to Mr. Spencer, who showed a courteous but not too
intelligent interest. The two children, May and Agatha, were
delighted by the shining metal and funny clock and knobs.

While they were thus engaged Ben Price sauntered in and leaned on
his elbow, looking casually inside between the railings. He told the
teller that he didn’t want anything; he was just waiting for a man
he knew.

Suddenly there was a scream or two from the women, and a commotion.
Unperceived by the elders, May, the nine-year-old girl, in a spirit
of play, had shut Agatha in the vault. She had then shot the bolts
and turned the knob of the combination as she had seen Mr. Adams do.

The old banker sprang to the handle and tugged at it for a moment.
“The door can’t be opened,” he groaned. “The clock hasn’t been wound
nor the combination set.”

Agatha’s mother screamed again, hysterically.

“Hush!” said Mr. Adams, raising his trembling hand. “All be quiet
for a moment. Agatha!” he called as loudly as he could. “Listen to
me.” During the following silence they could just hear the faint
sound of the child wildly shrieking in the dark vault in a panic of
terror.

“My precious darling!” wailed the mother. “She will die of fright!
Open the door! Oh, break it open! Can’t you men do something?”

“There isn’t a man nearer than Little Rock who can open that door,”
said Mr. Adams, in a shaky voice. “My God! Spencer, what shall we
do? That child—she can’t stand it long in there. There isn’t enough
air, and, besides, she’ll go into convulsions from fright.”

Agatha’s mother, frantic now, beat the door of the vault with her
hands. Somebody wildly suggested dynamite. Annabel turned to Jimmy,
her large eyes full of anguish, but not yet despairing. To a woman
nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she
worships.

“Can’t you do something, Ralph—_try_, won’t you?”

He looked at her with a queer, soft smile on his lips and in his
keen eyes.

“Annabel,” he said, “give me that rose you are wearing, will you?”

Hardly believing that she heard him aright, she unpinned the bud
from the bosom of her dress, and placed it in his hand. Jimmy
stuffed it into his vest-pocket, threw off his coat and pulled up
his shirt-sleeves. With that act Ralph D. Spencer passed away and
Jimmy Valentine took his place.

“Get away from the door, all of you,” he commanded, shortly.

He set his suit-case on the table, and opened it out flat. From that
time on he seemed to be unconscious of the presence of any one else.
He laid out the shining, queer implements swiftly and orderly,
whistling softly to himself as he always did when at work. In a deep
silence and immovable, the others watched him as if under a spell.

In a minute Jimmy’s pet drill was biting smoothly into the steel
door. In ten minutes—breaking his own burglarious record—he threw
back the bolts and opened the door.

Agatha, almost collapsed, but safe, was gathered into her mother’s
arms.

Jimmy Valentine put on his coat, and walked outside the railings
toward the front door. As he went he thought he heard a far-away
voice that he once knew call “Ralph!” But he never hesitated.

At the door a big man stood somewhat in his way.

“Hello, Ben!” said Jimmy, still with his strange smile “Got around
at last, have you? Well, let’s go. I don’t know that it makes much
difference, now.”

And then Ben Price acted rather strangely.

“Guess you’re mistaken, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “Don’t believe I
recognize you. You’re buggy’s waiting for you, ain’t it?”

And Ben Price turned and strolled down the street.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BROTHER LEO
By PHYLLIS BOTTOME