Part 20 (1/2)

”Yes, that primarily; but now, you know--because he was given so much rope--he's vanished.”

”What!”

”Vanished--disappeared--gone!” said the purser, waving his hands graphically.

”But he can't have left the s.h.i.+p!”

”Doesn't seem so, does it?” said the Pinkerton man morosely. ”All the same, we've made a pretty thorough search, and he can't be found.”

”You see,” resumed Manvers, ”when the captain got word yesterday afternoon that Iff or Ismay wasn't what he pretended to be, he simply wirelessed back for a detective, and didn't arrest Iff, because--he said--he couldn't get away. I told him he was wrong--and he was!”

VIII

THE WRONG BOX

When the janitor and the taxicab operator between them had worried all his luggage upstairs, Staff paid and tipped them and thankfully saw the hall-door close on their backs. He was tired, over-heated and glad to be alone.

Shaking off his coat, he made a round of his rooms, opening windows.

Those in the front of the apartment looked out from the second-story elevation upon East Thirtieth Street, between Fourth and Lexington Avenues. Those in the rear (he discovered to his consummate disgust) commanded an excellent view of a very deep hole in the ground swarming with Italian labourers and dotted with steam drills, mounds of broken rock and carters with their teams; also a section of East Twenty-ninth Street was visible through the s.p.a.ce that had been occupied no longer ago than last spring by a dignified row of brownstone houses with well-tended backyards.

Staff cursed soulfully the noise and dirt caused by the work of excavation, shut the back windows to keep out the dust and returned to the front room--his study, library and reception-room in one. With the addition of the bath off the bedroom in the rear, and a large hall-closet opening from the study, these two rooms comprised his home.

The hall was public, giving access to two upper floors which, like that beneath him, were given up to bachelor apartments. The house was in reality an old-fas.h.i.+oned residence, remodelled and let out by the floor to young men mainly of Staff's ilk: there was an artist on the upper story, a writer of ephemeral fiction on the third, an architect on the first. The janitor infested the bas.e.m.e.nt, chiefly when bored by the monotony of holding up an imitation mahogany bar over on Third Avenue.

His wife cooked abominably and served the results under the name of breakfast to the tenants, who foraged where they would for their other meals. Otherwise she was chiefly distinguished by a mad, exasperating pa.s.sion for keeping the rooms immaculately clean and in order. Staff noted approvingly that, although Mrs. Shultz had not been warned of his return, there was no trace of dust in the rooms, not a single stick of furniture nor a book out of place.

There wasn't really any reason why he should stick in such un-modern and inconveniently situated lodgings--that is, aside from his ingrained inclination to make as little trouble for himself as possible. To hunt a new place to live would be quite as much of a nuisance as to move to it, when found. And he was comfortable enough where he was. He had taken the place some eight years previously, at a time when it was rather beyond his means; today when he could well afford to live where he would in New York, he found that his rooms had become a habit with him. He had no intention whatever of leaving them until the house should be dismantled to make way for some more modern structure--like that going up in the rear--or until he married.

He poked round, renewing acquaintance with old, familiar things, unearthed an ancient pipe which had lain in one of his desk-drawers like a buried bone, fondled it lovingly, filled and lighted it, and felt all the time more and more content and at ease.

Then Shultz knocked at the door and delivered to him a bundle of afternoon papers for which he had filed a requisition immediately on his arrival.

He sat down, enjoying his pipe to the utmost and wondering how under the sun he had managed to worry along without it all the time he had been away, and began to read what the reporters had to say about the arrival of the Autocratic and the case of the Cadogan collar.

In the main they afforded him little but amus.e.m.e.nt; the stories were mostly a hash of misinformation strongly flavoured with haphazard guesswork. The salient facts of the almost simultaneous disappearance of the necklace and Mr. Iff stood up out of the welter of surmise like mountain peaks above cloud-rack. There were no other facts. And both these remained inexplicable. No trace had been found of Mr. Iff; his luggage remained upon the pier, unclaimed. With him the Cadogan collar had apparently vanished as mysteriously: thus the consensus. The representative of the Secret Service bent on exposing an impostor, the Pinkerton men employed by the steams.h.i.+p company, and a gratuitous corps of city detectives were verbally depicted as so many determined bloodhounds nosing as many different scents--otherwise known as clues.

Jules Max, moreover, after a conference with his star, had published an offer of a reward of $10,000 for the return of the necklace or for information leading to its recovery whether or not involving the apprehension of the thief.

Several of the papers ”ran” unusually long stories descriptive of the scenes on the pier. Staff chuckled over them. The necklace had, in fact, made no end of trouble for several hundred putatively innocent and guileless pa.s.sengers. The customs examination had been thorough beyond parallel. Not even the steerage and second-cabin pa.s.sengers had escaped; everybody's belongings had been combed fine by a corps of inspectors whose dutiful curiosity had been abnormally stimulated by the prospect of a ten-thousand-dollar reward. Not a few pa.s.sengers had been obliged to submit to the indignity of personal search--Staff and Alison in their number; the latter for no reason that Staff could imagine; the former presumably because he had roomed with the elusive Mr. Iff on the way over. He had also been mulcted a neat little sum as duty on that miserable hat, which he had been obliged to declare as a present for a friend.

In memory of this he now rose, marched over to the bandbox, innocently reposing in the middle of the floor, and dispa.s.sionately lifted it the kick he had been promising it ever since the first day of their acquaintance.

It sailed up prettily, banged the wall with a hollow noise and dropped to the floor with a grievous dent in one side.

There--out of his way--Staff left it. Immeasurably mollified, he proceeded to unpack and put his house in order. By the time this was done to his satisfaction and Shultz had dragged the empty trunks into the hall, to be carried down-stairs and stored in the cellar, it was evening and time to dress. So Staff made himself clean with much water and beautiful with cold steel and resplendent with evening clothes, and tucked the ma.n.u.script of _A Single Woman_ into the pocket of a light topcoat and sallied forth to dine with Jules Max and Alison Landis.

It was late, something after midnight, when he returned, driving up to his house in a taxicab and a decidedly disgruntled frame of mind. Alison had been especially trying with regard to the play; and Max, while privately letting the author see that he thought him in the right in refusing to make changes until rehearsals had demonstrated their advisability, and in spite of his voluble appreciation of the play's merits, had given Alison the support she demanded. The inference was plain: the star was to be humoured even at the cost of a crippled play.

Between love for the woman and respect for his work, desire to please her and determination not to misrepresent himself to the public, Staff, torn this way and that, felt that he had at length learned the true meaning of ”the horns of dilemma.” But this reflection availed nothing to soothe his temper.