“Are you?” he demanded. “Are you?”
McEachern’s hand, hanging at his side, lifted itself hesitatingly. The fingers brushed against Jimmy’s shoulder. Jimmy’s lips twitched.
“Yes,” he said, “do it! Do it, and see what happens! By God! if you put a hand on me I’ll finish you. Do you think you can bully me? Do you think I care for your size?”
McEachern dropped his hand. For the first time in his life he had met a man who, instinct told him, was his match and more. He stepped back a pace.
Jimmy put his hands in his pockets and turned away. He walked to the mantelpiece and leaned his back against it.
“You haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Perhaps you can’t!”
McEachern was wiping his forehead and breathing quickly.
“If you like,” said Jimmy, “we’ll go down to the drawing room now, and you shall tell your story and I’ll tell mine. I wonder which they will think the more interesting? Damn you!” he went on, his anger rising once more, “what do you mean by it? You come into my room and bluster and talk big about exposing crooks. What do you call yourself, I wonder? Do you realise what you are? Why, poor Spike’s an angel compared with you! He did take chances. He wasn’t in a position of trust. You—”
He stopped.
“Hadn’t you better get out of here, don’t you think?” he said curtly.
Without a word McEachern walked to the door and went out.
Jimmy dropped into a chair with a deep breath. He took up his cigarette case, but before he could light a match the gong sounded from the distance.
He rose and laughed rather shakily. He felt limp. “As an effort to conciliating papa,” he said, “I’m afraid that wasn’t much of a success.”
It was not often that Mr. McEachern was visited by ideas—he ran rather to muscle than to brain—but he had one that evening during dinner. His interview with Jimmy had left him furious, but baffled. He knew that his hands were tied. Frontal attack was useless; to drive Jimmy from the castle would be out of the question. All that could be done was to watch him while he was there, for he had never been more convinced of anything in his life than that Jimmy had wormed his way into the house party with felonious intent. The appearance of Lady Julia at dinner wearing the famous rope of diamonds supplied an obvious motive. The necklace had an international reputation. Probably there was not a prominent thief in England or on the Continent who had not marked it down as a possible prey. It had already been tried for once. It was big game—just the sort of lure which would draw the type of criminal he imagined Jimmy to be.
From his seat at the farther end of the table he looked at the jewels as they gleamed on their wearer’s neck. They were almost too ostentatious for what was, after all, an informal dinner. It was not a rope of diamonds—it was a collar. There was something Oriental and barbaric in the overwhelming display of jewellery. It was a prize for which a thief would risk much.
The conversation becoming general with the fish, was not of a kind to remove from his mind the impression made by the sight of the gems. It turned on burglary. Lord Dreever began it.
“Oh, I say,” he said. “I forgot to tell you, Aunt Julia; No. 6 was burgled the other night.”
No. 6A Eaton Square was the family’s London house.
“Burgled!” said Sir Thomas.
“Well, broken into,” said his lordship, gratified to find that he had got the ear of his entire audience. Even Lady Julia was silent and attentive. “Chap got through the scullery window about one o’clock in the morning.”
“And what did you do?” inquired Sir Thomas.
“Oh, I—er—I was out at the time,” said Lord Dreever. “But something frightened the feller,” he went on hurriedly, “and he made a bolt for it without taking anything.”
“Burglary,” said a young man whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, “is the hobby of the sportsman and the lifework of the avaricious.”
He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket and made a rapid note on his cuff.
Everybody seemed to have something to say on the subject. One young lady gave it as her opinion that she would not like to find a burglar under her bed. Somebody also had heard of a fellow whose father had fired at the butler under the impression that he was a housebreaker, and had broken a valuable bust of Socrates. Lord Dreever had known a man at college whose brother wrote lyrics for musical comedy, and had done one about a burglar’s best friend being his mother.
“Life,” said Charteris, who had had time for reflection, “is a house which we all burgle. We enter it uninvited, take all that we can lay hands on, and go out again.”
He scribbled “Life—house—burgle” on his cuff and replaced the pencil.
“This man’s brother I was telling you about,” said Lord Dreever, “says there’s only one rhyme in the English language to ‘burglar,’ and that’s ‘gurgler’—unless you count ‘pergola.’ He says—”
“Personally,” said Jimmy, with a glance at McEachern, “I have rather a sympathy for burglars. After all, they are one of the hardest-working classes in existence. They toil while everybody else is asleep. Besides, a burglar is only a practical Socialist. People talk a lot about the redistribution of wealth. The burglar goes out and does it. I have found burglars some of the decentest criminals I have ever met.”
“I despise burglars!”
