“I might have known it. Doing all those bridge problems together, they kind of got fond of one another.”
“I have my reasons for thinking that the wedding will take place down at Hempstead on Long Island, where C, A’s stepmother, has her summer home.”
“Why? Why not in New York?”
“Because,” said Mr. Waddington simply, “I expressed a wish that it should take place in New York.”
“What have you got to do with it?”
“I am D, C’s husband.”
“Oh, the fellow who could fill a tank with water in six hours fifteen minutes while C was filling another in five hours, forty-five? Pleased to meet you.”
“I am now strongly in favour of the Hempstead idea,” said Mr. Waddington. “In New York it might be difficult to introduce you into the house, whereas down at Hempstead you can remain concealed in the garden till the suitable moment arrives. Down at Hempstead the presents will be on view in the dining-room, which has French windows opening on to a lawn flanked with shrubberies.”
“Easy!”
“Just what I thought. I will, therefore, make a point tonight of insisting that the wedding take place in New York, and the thing will be definitely settled.”
Fanny eyed him reflectively.
“It all seems kind of funny to me. If you’re D and you’re married to C and C is A’s stepmother, you must be A’s father. What do you want to go stealing your daughter’s necklace for?”
“Say, listen,” said Mr. Waddington urgently, “the first thing you’ve got to get into your head is that you’re not to ask questions.”
“Only my girlish curiosity.”
“Tie a can to it,” begged Mr. Waddington. “This is a delicate business, and the last thing I want is anybody snooping into motives and first causes. Just you go ahead, like a nice girl, and get that necklace and pass it over to me when nobody’s looking, and then put the whole matter out of your pretty little head and forget about it.”
“Just as you say. And now, coming down to it, what is there in it for me?”
“Three hundred dollars.”
“Not nearly enough.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
Fanny meditated. Three hundred dollars, though a meagre sum, was three hundred dollars. You could always use three hundred dollars when you were furnishing, and the job, as outlined, seemed simple.
“All right,” she said.
“You’ll do it?”
“I’m on.”
“Good girl,” said Mr. Waddington. “Where can I find you when I want you?”
“Here’s my address.”
“I’ll send you a line. You’ve got the thing clear?”
“Sure. I hang about in the bushes till there’s nobody around, and then I slip into the room and snitch the necklace. …”
“… and hand it over to me.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be waiting in the garden just outside, and I’ll meet you the moment you come out. The very moment. Thus,” said Mr. Waddington with a quiet, meaning look at his young friend, “avoiding any rannygazoo.”
“What do you mean by rannygazoo?” said Fanny warmly.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Mr. Waddington with a deprecating wave of the hand. “Just rannygazoo.”
VII
There are, as everybody knows, many ways of measuring time: and right through the ages learned men have argued heatedly in favour of their different systems. Hipparchus of Rhodes sneered every time anybody mentioned Marinus of Tyre to him: and the views of Ahmed Ibn Abdallah of Baghdad gave Purbach and Regiomontanus the laugh of their lives. Purbach in his bluff way said the man must be a perfect ass: and when Regiomontanus, whose motto was Live and let live, urged that Ahmed Ibn was just a young fellow trying to get along and ought not to be treated too harshly, Purbach said Was that so? and Regiomontanus said Yes, that was so, and Purbach said that Regiomontanus made him sick.
Tycho Brahe measured time by means of altitudes, quadrants, azimuths, cross-staves, armillary spheres and parallactic rules: and, as he often said to his wife when winding up the azimuth and putting the cat out for the night, nothing could be fairer than that. And then in 1863 along came Dollen with his Die Zeitbestimmung vermittelst des tragbaren Durchgangsinstruments im Verticale des Polarsterns (a bestseller in its day, subsequently filmed under the title Purple Sins), and proved that Tycho, by mistaking an armillary sphere for a quadrant one night after a bump-supper at Copenhagen University, had got his calculations all wrong.
The truth is that time cannot be measured. To George Finch, basking in the society of Molly Waddington, the next three weeks seemed but a flash. Whereas to Hamilton Beamish, with the girl he loved miles away in East Gilead, Idaho, it appeared incredible that any sensible person could suppose that a day contained only twenty-four hours. There were moments when Hamilton Beamish thought that something must have happened to the sidereal moon and that time was standing still.
But now the three weeks were up, and at any minute he might hear that she was back in the metropolis. All day long he had been going about with a happy smile on his face, and it was with a heart that leaped and sang from pure exuberance that he now turned to greet Officer Garroway, who had just presented himself at his apartment.
“Ah, Garroway!” said Hamilton Beamish. “How goes it? What brings you here?”
“I understood you to say, sir,” replied the policeman, “that I was to bring you my poem when I had completed it.”
“Of course, of course. I had forgotten all about it. Something seems to have happened to my memory these days. So you have written your first poem, eh? All about love and youth and springtime, I suppose? … Excuse me.”
The telephone-bell had rung: and Hamilton Beamish, though the instrument had disappointed him over and over again in the past few days, leaped excitedly to snatch up the receiver.
“Hello?”
This time there was no disappointment. The voice that spoke was the voice he had heard so often in his dreams.
“Mr. Beamish. I mean, Jimmy?”
Hamilton Beamish drew a deep breath. And so overcome was he with sudden joy that for the first time since he
