Chapter FIVE

Lord Galton stood by the Home Secretary in his study, looked round suddenly, and said, "May I lock the door?" locked it without leave and then came back and began talking.

The young fellow talked as impressively as ever he had talked when he was giving instructions to a jockey, or rather, to the go-between who took the risk. He knew how to talk, as do most men who are successful in giving instructions to jockeys. His sentences came, weighty, short, decisive, and each had its effect. Men said he would have done well in the House of Commons, but the men who have said that do not know the House of Commons. Yes, he would have done well in the House of Commons: not by oratory, but by what I may call the Attaboy side of his character. He began:

"Humphrey, I'm going to tell you about the emerald. I think I know where it is."

The Home Secretary looked up, startled; but he did not interrupt.

"I want to begin by saying that I know I am myself under suspicion."

"Oh, my dear Tommy," began his unfortunate host. But the younger man put up a hand like a slab of stone.

"No," he said. "There's no time to be wasted, and we must have things absolutely clear. One of us three must have got that brooch. No doubt we are all under suspicion--but I know why I am under suspicion. People say I pulled a horse." Again the Home Secretary would have interrupted, but the heavy hand made an impatient gesture, and again he checked himself. "Marjorie mayn't believe it, and of course that old fool of a Cousin Bill hasn't heard of it; and as for that journalist fellow McTibbert, or whatever his name is, he may or may not have; I don't care. But anyhow, you know it. _You've_ heard all about it!"

"But, my dear Tommy," broke in the Home Secretary, lying eagerly and almost with affection, "I don't believe it. Believe me, I don't believe it. Do you suppose," he added with beautiful tact, "that if I believed it I'd have you here at Paulings?"

Lord Galton just showed at the muscles of the mouth what a fool he thought the man. He went on undisturbed.

"It's nothing to do with the value of the lie--they haven't turned me out of the Posts, for that matter; nor warned me off. But the point is, the story has gone the rounds. A man that would cheat would steal. Also you know I'm on the rocks, and therefore I'm under suspicion. Now we're all three under suspicion, as I say. That old ass, Cousin Bill, got mixed up with the Mullingar Diamond years ago--too much of a fool to pinch it for selling; wanted to look at it through one of his contraptions. Anyhow, he can't keep his hands off crystals. And an emerald's a crystal."

"Is it?" asked the Head of the Family with great interest.

"I think so--I don't know," said Galton impatiently. "Anyhow, it's a jewel, a precious stone--what?"

"Oh, yes! It's a jewel, yes, a precious stone. Oh, yes," admitted Humphrey de Bohun.

"Well then, so's a diamond. A man who'll take diamonds'll take emeralds--what? ... Then there's that journalist fellow--he's under suspicion because he's a journalist; they're all on their uppers, and you told me yourself about the one who stole the spoons when you were at the Board of Works."

A faint smile appeared for a moment on the face of his host. It was his favourite funny story--all about a journalist who once stole some government spoons. He had told it on every occasion. He told it to journalists. But then he was never really featured by the Press.

"Now of those three," went on Lord Galton, rather more slowly, and separating his words, "the man who has got it is our miserable old family goat, Cousin Bill...."

The Home Secretary started.

"Yes, I know what you'll say ... he got the fright of his life over the Mullingar Diamond. You'd say he'd never dream of doing it in the house of the head of the family." (A dignified look passed over the features of the Chieftain of the de Bohuns.) "Then he's such a clumsy old ass that you can't imagine him doing it so quickly. After all, it took him half an hour to fish the Mullingar Diamond out of an open drawer, and even then he left things topsy-turvy. You'll say all that, and if I were just guessing I'd half agree with you. But I'm not guessing. And I tell you _he's got it_. I don't pretend to do any of this private detective work, and I've never read one of their rotten mystery stories in my life. That's how I've kept my common sense clear--men who are blown upon need their wits about them. I know Bill's got it for a very simple reason--_I've seen it in his hand with my own eyes_. Some one told the old goat that the place to hide anything was where it would be most obvious and simple. He's got it in the left-hand pocket of that damned smelly overcoat he wears; but he's such a nervous old balmy that he can't help fingering it the whole time; and when he thinks no one's looking he pulls it half out and looks at it furtively out of the corner of his eye. Dons are always as mad as hatters. He did it three separate times while we were out walking just now. He couldn't help himself. He's too much shut up inside his own addled head to notice other people. And I'll tell you something else, which is also common sense. He won't take it out of that pocket till he's left the house. An overcoat's the only thing they don't brush or fold up, in this house; you're old-fashioned, with these things on pegs and not on marble tables. He knows that. It'll hang there on the peg till he goes away. That's the whole point of leaving it in such a place.... _And it's there now_. You look for it there, and you'll find it."

The Home Secretary put on his expression of gravity in the third degree--the expression with which he would meet a deputation for saving an innocent man from the gallows and gratify them with a majestic refusal.

"What you say, Tommy," he began, slowly, "is very serious. Very serious indeed. In my judgment ..."

"Oh, look here," said Lord Galton impatiently, "cut out all that! He's not in the hall. He went off to the library, and when he gets there he strikes root. There'll be no one about--they're laying the table. Come with me, and I'll prove it."

"I hesitate ..." began the Home Secretary. His powerful young relative, by way of reply, hooked him by the arm, unlocked the door, and marched him straight out into the hall. The ghost of what might well have been an ancestor--for we all have such things--must have mourned, if, as such things do, it had taken up its kennel in a suit of armour standing by the side of the fireplace in the hall: it would have mourned to see the head of the de Bohuns stand by while the deed was done.

Lord Galton went smartly up to the bunch of coats, plunged his hand into the left-hand pocket of that one wretched old garment, and turned it sharply inside out, so that the damning evidence should fall before his cousin's eyes. There fell out no small amount of gathered dirt, some paper torn into minute fragments, and a stub of pencil; also a rather repulsive handkerchief--nothing more. Nothing rang upon the hall floor. There was no Emerald.

Lord Galton for once did a weak thing--or a superstitious one. As though not trusting his senses, he picked the repulsive handkerchief up and shook it. But there was no emerald. Indeed, one could see and hear by the way it had fallen that there was no emerald within its large but unattractive folds. He knew that well enough before he touched the rag--but it was a forlorn hope.

It was the older man who hastily picked up these evidences, not of the Professor's dishonour, but his own, and rapidly put them back where they belonged; darting a glance over his left shoulder and sighing with relief to find that there was still no one about, not the sound of a distant footfall, not the glide of a serf. His companion's face was darker and flushed.

"I could have sworn ..." he opened. Then he added, murmuring, "He must have taken it away."

"I wish we hadn't ..." began the Home Secretary, and then switched off to, "You're quite sure you saw it with your own eyes, Tommy?"

"Absolutely certain," said the young man, with a fearless steady gaze, and proud to be telling one truth at least.

The Home Secretary held his chin in his hand, stood silent for a good quarter of a minute, and then said something characteristic of his profession as a statesman. He said, "Humm!"

* * * * * * *

What had happened?

Dear--or, if that is too familiar a term--charming reader, this is not one of the detective stories of commerce. You shall know all about it beforehand, as you have already known all about it, step by step. You shall be subjected to no torture of suspense. We will leave that to the people of our story. They were born for it.

What had happened was simple enough. The Professor had gone off to the library. He wanted to make certain of the Society at Berne in the _Almanac de Gotha_. With men such as he, an obsession having cropped up has a horrid fascination for the mind and holds it. He was worrying about the exact title: whether it was Crystallographique, or Crystallographische, or de Crystallographic. He was determined to get it right.

He kept on talking to himself, as was his learned habit, repeating with a hideous smile the words, "Crystals ... ah! yes ... crystals.... Crystals, eh? Crystals ... yes.... Crystallograph ... something, eh? Now then, it'll be among the books of reference, eh? Crystals.... Oh, what a dirty trick that was of Leader to play!" His left hand was fumbling in the left-hand pocket, where he always kept those indispensable instruments of research, his large tortoise-shell spectacles. His hand groped. He muttered the word "Berne" three times in less and less confident tones. Then the message so tardily conveyed reached his erudite brain. "Oh! ... I've lost my spectacles!"

He never got used to the shock of losing his spectacles, though he suffered from it a dozen times a day. Each time he lost them it was all up with him; each time he went through a crisis. Here he was in the depths of the country and without eyes! There was a touch of agony in his muttering now, as came louder the words, "My spectacles, oh, ah! my spectacles ... now where could I ..." He bent his powerful will to the control of his, if possible, less powerful memory; he traced events back one after the other for a good three minutes, and then he remembered that he had gone out in his overcoat and had left it hanging in the hall.

He shambled out and groped in the recesses of the left-hand pocket, and there, side by side with his familiar handkerchief, the faithful companion of many days, was the feel of the rough spectacle case; it was all right, but also, what annoyed him a little, a pebble. It was natural that pebbles should get into one's pockets when one was out walking in the country; at least, he thought it was. He thought it went with those terrible animals called cows, and all that sort of thing. But he pulled it out mechanically, felt the prick of a pin and then gave an odd little scream, like a shot rabbit. Next (excuse him!) he rapped out a frightful oath. "My God!" cried the aged blasphemer. No less. But the violence of his emotion must have shaken his standards.

He stood there, with the emerald in the palm of his right hand, staring at it, distraught. And once more in his bewilderment he fell to repeating the name of his Creator--upon whose existence indeed, he had more than once learnedly discoursed, concluding upon the whole against it.

It is said that under the strain of very severe emotion men do things unnatural, out of themselves. And behold! Professor William de Bohun behaved for the next half hour like a whole group of characters, any one of whom you would have said he could not have thrown himself into for the world. Terror inspired him, and the tragic sense of impending doom.

It must be got rid of!

He had a mad impulse to swallow it. Luckily he restrained it in time: it was too big, its metal fastenings too angular for health; and then, there was the pin.

After he had given up the swallowing baulk, another, far more feasible, arose and formed itself more clearly. There appeared before his mind's eye a young, round naïve face, fresh to the world, an awkward figure, the whole standing out against the background of known poverty. It was the figure of McTaggart, the journalist.

A wicked glint illumined the Professor's eye.

"Oh! Baleful, hellish light, thus to suffuse
The inactive optic, wontedly so dulled,
But now with evil purpose all inflamed!"

as Milton has it in the matter of the fish-god, Dagon.

He made no excuses for himself. He recked nothing of the young man's ruin. He plunged heartily and heavily into sin. As his colleague the Professor of Pastoral Theology had once finely quoted in his Luther Commemoration Lecture, "_Si peccas pecca fortiter_."

It is generally held by the more liberal school among theologians that man acting of his own free will is not mastered by an external evil impulse, but may well submit to it.

So it was with Cousin William on this never-to-be-forgotten occasion of his chief downfall.

A Minor Devil happened at that moment to be wandering rather emptily through Paulings, seeking what he might devour. He was hungry, poor spirit; he had eaten nothing since he had left his own place at midnight and he had got lost in the fog all morning. He had almost caught a small housemaid, but she had slipped away through the efforts of her patron saint, sweet Millicent, and left him perfectly ravenous. It was almost noon and devils are not built for fasting. Judge then his joy at coming, by pure chance, upon this evil old man. He almost jumped out of his black fiendish skin for joy to perceive the flashing violet light which surrounds, in the eyes of supernatural beings, the head of a wicked man. He spotted it first from a corner of the hall where he had just come out of a corridor. He rubbed his hands together and even flapped his clawed wings in his excitement. He flew up to the Professor and began pouring all sorts of excellent suggestions into his ear--his left ear.

Young McTaggart could play billiards ... the Professor had heard them say that ... young McTaggart was probably proud of his billiards ... he could be got to go round the table exhibiting his billiards. He would take off his coat before exhibiting his billiards. And when the coat was once off, and its owner's eye was concentrated on the billiard table ... oh, then!...

The Devil, who can see through walls, gently shepherded his pupil into the little room next the library where the overflow of books was kept. That door, with horrid smile, the old conspirator opened; and there, indeed, he found the youth, looking miserably enough out of the window with his hands in his trousers pockets. He had slunk into that inhospitable fireless den in order to be free for a while from the terrors of high society.

"Ah, Mr. McTaggart, Mr. McTaggart, Mr. McTaggart!" carolled the scientist--and as he said it he opened his arms wide in a most genial gesture. "I've been looking for you everywhere!" There slyly wagging a knotted forefinger, "And I wonder if you can guess why? Eh? Why? Guess why!" Which words said, and smiling still broader, he repeated them once more three times, as was his wont, and then added: "I wonder whether you can guess why, Mr. McTaggart, whether you can guess why ... whether you can guess why?"

The Devil was now so happy that he could hardly refrain from manifesting himself, which would have been fatal. He whisked all round the room, jeering at McTaggart.

Poor young Mr. McTaggart! He had been all night and all that morning a most unhappy man. He exaggerated in his own mind the suspicions under which he lay. He was too innocent to believe that he shared it with such exalted beings as the lord and the Professor, of whom--though he had never heard his name--he was assured the fame to be European, and who, anyhow, was connected by blood with a cabinet minister.

The lad imagined himself watched by a thousand eyes. He dared not take his leave, and yet he was in hell during those hours he passed at Paulings. He would have been unhappy anyhow, for it was not his world; but to be within all that set and at the same time a marked criminal--for that is what he felt himself to be--was almost intolerable. How he had sprung up when the learned Ancient approached him, with those seeming kindly eyes! Ah! had McTaggart enjoyed a few more years of human experience he would have seen in those eyes such a mixture of cunning and evil joy as might have put him on his guard. But no; he thought that in his loneliness he had found a friend. Who knew?--perhaps a supporter.

The Professor's plan was simple, but McTaggart was simpler still.

"Mr. McTaggart," said the Ancient, with horrible geniality, "I hear that you are astonishing at billiards.... Billiards, billiards, yes, billiards.... Billiards. The Home Secretary was telling me, Humphrey, I mean, my cousin, my cousin Humphrey ... the Home Secretary, yes ... the Home Secretary was telling me that you were astonishing at billiards. Now you know"--and here he went so far as to make a step sideways and seize the young man by the arm--"it is the one thing I can watch for hours ... billiards ... good billiards.... I have gone into the mechanics of the thing"--he was lying freely, and gambling, rightly, on the idea that his companion could not distinguish between Crystallography and any other science--"and it fascinates me ... fascinates me ... oh! fascinates me. I wonder whether--" and in a fashion which would have been crude to any other man, but to the lonely McTaggart was heavenly kindness, he urged with linked arm and long sidling crablike step towards the billiard-room.

It was in the Professor's conception of things that when one is deceiving a fellow being one must talk the whole time. He is not the only one to suffer from that delusion.

He talked all the way to the billiard-room; he talked while McTaggart was pulling off the cloth; he talked while McTaggart was putting on the lights to see clearly on that dim January day; he talked while McTaggart was chalking his cue and thoughtfully placing the three balls in position.

The torrent of rapid words--all dealing with excellency at billiards, all squeaky--was interrupted only at one moment. It was the moment when McTaggart did what he had been expected to do--the moment when he took off his coat and threw it on the leather cushions by the side of his newly-made and slightly eccentric friend.

The sight of that coat so thrown immediately by his side, and subject to his hand, almost choked the senile conspirator with joy. But he recovered himself, and still poured out a torrent of repeated words as the young fellow walked slowly round the table, getting absorbed in a continuous break. The Professor interrupted that verbal spate only now and then to gaze with a murderous keenness at a projected stroke and to mutter "Marvellous!" two or three times; but all the while his heart was failing him. It was not the only mean thing he had done in his life by a long chalk. He had spent the whole of his life doing nothing but mean things; but it was the first actively and perhaps dangerously wrong thing the old booby had ever dared to do: for he did not count the Mullingar Diamond--that was in the cause of Science, and in the cause of Science you can do anything.

But the Devil chose his moment for him; it was a moment of silence when young McTaggart was waiting long and breathlessly to be certain of a stroke that would bring his break over the hundred. His back was turned to the Professor; he was intent upon his play.

The old bony hand, with the gesture of one that takes rather than gives, put the emerald into a side pocket of the coat, where lay he knew not what--but in point of fact, a tobacco pouch, a pipe, a pencil, and a piece of chocolate--of all things in the world!--no longer clean. Nor had the Emerald ever been in such society before, from the day when it had started life in the splendid court of Moscovy to these last evil days of ours.

McTaggart had brought off his shot: his break was 102, and the spot and the red lay perfect for a cannon and red in the pocket.

But you exaggerate the diplomatic value of the Professor if you think that he had the wit to continue his stream of gabble after the deed was done.

It was lucky for him that he was dealing with the candour of youth, or that abrupt retreat of his from the scene of his crime would have brought suspicion. For, his deed accomplished, he simply got up with a jerk, dropped all attention to the play, looked at his watch, muttered the time of day with an exclamation, and sidled out of the room, leaving his companion marooned ... and with him, full of success, went the Lesser Devil.

McTaggart could do without him; he went on playing for another ten minutes or so, till the break ended, and had reached the pretty figure of 151. Then he in turn looked at his watch in his waistcoat pocket, found it would be time for luncheon in a few minutes, put up his cue, and sadly resumed his coat.

Had he been of those who smoke all day he would have pulled out his pipe, and ten to one would have found the thing lurking there next his tobacco; but he thought of the meal coming on, and much more did he think with dread that it would be breaking some mysterious etiquette of country houses if he were to smoke a pipe. He would not dare to do it till he saw some one of his betters at the same work. For the same reason, after he had heard them going towards the dining-room and had joined them, he was too nervous to put his hands in his pockets in a gesture of repose. He kept them dangling in his extreme anxiety to commit no solecism. He moved nervously about amid the sullen silence of the rest and wondered a little why the burst of geniality upon the part of the man of gems should have dried up so suddenly. For not a word more did the Professor speak to him; and all through luncheon McTaggart sat there in the same terror and the same misfortune of soul, never daring to speak some artificial word during the rare moments when anyone broke the silence.

They had not yet risen from table; he was still wondering what one did at the end of luncheon in the houses of the great--at what point one got up, whether immediately after one's host or simultaneously with one's host; whether the women went out first, as he knew they did at dinner; whether it was his duty to open the door for them--when Lord Galton pulled out his pipe, filled it deliberately enough, and lit it. After the easy manners of our happy times he slowly and with deliberation blew a cloud of smoke across the board which wreathed itself, not ungracefully, about the venerable head of Aunt Amelia. So natural an action was followed by his host, who in turn thoughtfully pulled out his own pipe and lit it, as he rose to fetch himself wine: he mixed tobacco and wine, did Humphrey de Bohun.

"Then," thought McTaggart to himself, in an agony of desire for tobacco, "it seems this kind of thing _can_ be done,"--and he felt for his pipe, and pulled out his pouch.

Now there happened to be in the room at that moment an Angel. He had come to Paulings express to counteract the Devil who had been putting in such strong work on the Professor, and the Angel saved the quill driver, whom, for his poverty, he loved. For that innocent, finding something that felt like his slab of chocolate in among his tobacco, and knowing himself to be well capable of having put it there, was just about to pull it out, and was already speculating on what sort of flavour chocolate gave to Bondman--or Bondman to chocolate--when the Angel seized his wrist and pinned it. He did not know the Angel was doing this--we never know our luck--he could not have told you what happened, except that he hesitated, and being of the opposite sex, was not lost. But for the Angel, he would have pulled out the thing before them all, and said, "Hallo, what's this?" and there would have been an end of McTaggart. Instead of which the Angel, with angelic swiftness, put a thought into his head.

"Don't pull out that lump of chocolate! It will make you look a fool. The great don't eat chocolate, except out of large expensive wooden boxes with Japanese pictures outside; elaborate boxes. The rich do not carry half-broken slabs of chocolate in their pockets--still less in their tobacco pouches!"

Therefore was it that McTaggart did not take out the lump, whatever it was; he grasped a fingerful of tobacco and peered down with one eye into the recesses of the pouch. When he saw what was there, his heart stopped beating! For a moment he felt faint and giddy.... But the angel firmly put the pouch back again, leaving the tobacco in his fingers, and with shaking hand he filled his pipe, and with shaking hand he lit it!

What the devil?

How on earth ...?

The unfortunate boy actually examined his own mind to see whether he could possibly have done such a thing, and then forgotten it--have done it inadvertently. Then he thought it had fallen into his coat when Marjorie had let it drop. Then he remembered that he had not been wearing that coat, that he had been in evening dress. Then he thought that the universe was made in some way that he did not understand. He looked at his coat, and fingered it. It was all right. His mind would not work properly again until he had satisfied himself beyond a doubt not once, but many times. He allowed--through terror--too long a time to pass lest he should seem in haste; strolled, looking as careless as he could, towards the library, looked round to make sure that no one had noticed him, leaped upstairs to his room, locked the door, took out his pouch and that which was within. He gazed at it for something like half a minute, putting it down on his dressing-table in the strong light to make sure.

There was no doubt at all. Either he was mad, or that was the emerald. He remembered some odiously vivid dreams that he had had as a child during the air raids--but he was certain this was no dream. He was McTaggart all right, a miserable young journalist against whom fate had woven some hellish plot; and there was the Emerald.

Next he tortured himself as to what he should do; obviously he must keep it upon him; he dared not secrete it anywhere. If one secretes things one can be traced. Conscience for one moment bade him go and tell his host, and risk all; but unfortunately the Angel had been called away at that very moment to tackle the Devil again, who had settled in the Vicarage; and in lack of such heavenly aid McTaggart fell, as any one of us would have fallen. He put the emerald into the inner pocket of his coat, pinned three pins round it carefully to make certain that it should not escape; and then went down with leaden heart to mix with his fellow beings and to trust to time.