Part 14 (2/2)
”And I can't wear the ruby?” Her voice was shrill. Ruyler wondered if his stimulated imagination fancied a note of terror in it.
”I--I--am afraid not--darling--”
”But that Spaulding man will be there to watch--”
”Unfortunately--I forgot to tell you--he cannot go--he is on an important case. Besides--when I make a promise I usually keep it.”
”But--but--” She stammered as if her brain were confused, then turned and pressed her face to the window. ”I suppose nothing matters,” she said dully. ”Perhaps you will let me wear my own little ruby. After all, that was maman's, and she gave it to me before I was married. I should like to wear one jewel.”
”You shall have all your jewels, if you will promise not to give them to Polly Roberts or any one else.”
”I promise.”
He went over and opened the safe, and when he rose with the gold jewel case he saw that she was standing behind him. Once more it flitted through his mind that she had watched him manipulate the combination several times, but he had little confidence in any but a professional thief's ability to memorize such an involved a.s.sortment of figures as had been invented for this particular safe. It was only once in a while that he was not obliged to refer to the key that he carried in his pocketbook.
Nor was she looking at the safe, but staring upward at a maharajah, covered with pearls of fantastic size. She took the box from his hand with a polite word of thanks, offered her cheek to be kissed, and left the room.
Price threw himself into a chair and rehea.r.s.ed the instructions Spaulding had given him.
CHAPTER XI
It was half-past eleven when Ruyler and Spaulding, masked and wearing colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates of the Thornton estate in San Mateo, the detective merely displaying something in his palm to the stern guardians that kept the county rabble at bay.
The mob stood off rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get closer to that gorgeous ma.s.s of light they could merely glimpse through the great oaks of the lower part of the estate, and to the music so seductive in the distance.
They were not a rabble to excite pity, by any means. A few ragged tramps had joined the crowd, possibly a few pickpockets from the city, watching their opportunity to slip in behind one of the automobiles that brought the guests from the station or from the estates up and down the valley.
They were, for the most part, trades-people from the little towns--San Mateo, Redwood City--or the wives of the proletariat--or the servants of the neighboring estates. But, although, they grumbled and envied, they made no attempt to force their way in; it was only the light-fingered gentry the police at the great iron gates were on the lookout for.
Ruyler, if his mind had been less harrowed with the looming and possibly dire climax of his own secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this melodramatic entrance to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends.
He and Spaulding had walked from the train, but they were not detained as long as a gay party of young people from Atherton, who teased the police by refusing to present their cards or lift their masks. Ruyler knew them all, but they finally sped past him without even a glance of contempt for mere foot pa.s.sengers, even though they looked like a couple of dodging conspirators.
He had met Spaulding at the station in San Francisco, and private conversation on the crowded train had been impossible. When they had walked a few yards along the wide avenue, as brilliant as day with its thousands of colored lights concealed in the astonished pines, Ruyler sat deliberately down upon a bench and motioned the detective to take the seat beside him.
”It is time you gave me some sort of a hint,” he said. ”After all, it is my affair--”
”I know, but as I said, you might not approve my methods, and if you balk, all is up. We've got the chance of our lives. It's now or never.”
”I do not at all like the idea that you may be forcing me into a position where I may find myself doing something I shall be ashamed of for the rest of my life.”
Ruyler's tone was haughty. He did not relish being led round by the nose, and his nerves were jumping.
”Now! Now!” said Spaulding soothingly, as he lit a cigar. ”When you hire a detective you hire him to do things you wouldn't do yourself; and if you won't give him the little help he's got to have from you or quit, what's the use of hiring him at all?
”I know perfectly well that nothing but your own eyes would convince you of what it's up to me to prove--to say nothing of the fact that I count on your entrance at the last minute to put an end to the whole bad business. For it is a bad business--believe me. But not a word of that now. You couldn't pry open my lips with a five dollar Havana.”
<script>