“And what happened then?”
“Mrs. Waddington refused to permit the wedding to take place. The guests returned to New York. Mr. Finch, after uttering certain protests which my informant could not hear distinctly but which appear to have been incoherent and unconvincing, also took his departure. Mrs. Waddington has for some little time past been closeted in the boudoir with Miss Waddington. A very unpleasant affair, sir, and one which could never have occurred at Brangmarley Hall.”
One hates to have to record it, but it is a fact that the first emotion which came to Sigsbee H. Waddington after the waning of his initial amazement was relief. It was not the thought of this broken romance that occupied his mind, nor pity for the poor girl who had played the principal part in the tragedy. The aspect of the matter that touched him most nearly was the fact that he was not in for trouble, after all. His absence had probably escaped notice, and that wifely lecture to which he had been looking forward so apprehensively would never be delivered.
And then, cutting through relief, came a sudden thought that chilled his satisfaction.
“What sort of a girl was it that came in through the window?”
“My informant describes her as small, sir, and of a neat figure. She had a retroussé nose and expressive black eyes, sir.”
“Great Godfrey!” ejaculated Mr. Waddington.
He sprang from the sofa and, despite his aching feet, made good time along the hall. He ran into the dining-room and switched on the light. He darted across the room to the table where the wedding-presents lay. At first glance, they seemed to be all there, but a second look showed him that his suspicions had been well-founded.
The case containing the necklace was gone.
XIII
One of the most sustaining gifts a man can possess is the ability to look upon the bright side of disaster. It was a gift which, until now, Sigsbee H. Waddington had lacked almost entirely: but at this moment, owing perhaps to the fact that he had just introduced into his interior a healing drink of quite exceptional strength, he suddenly found himself discerning with a limpid clearness the fact that the elimination of that near-pearl necklace from the scheme of things was, from his point of view, the very best thing that could have happened.
It had not been his intention to allow his young assistant to secure the necklace and convert it to her own uses: but, now that this had happened, what, he asked himself, had he to worry about? The main thing was that the necklace had disappeared. Coming right down to it, that was the consummation at which he had aimed all along.
What it amounted to was that, when all the tumult and the shouting had died, he was three hundred dollars in hand and consequently in a position, if he ever met that policeman again and the policeman had not happened to hear the news which United Beef had told him, to. …
At this point in his meditations Mr. Waddington suddenly broke off and uttered a sharp exclamation. For before his eyes in letters of fire there seemed to be written the one word:
Gallagher
Sigsbee H. Waddington reeled in his tracks. Gallagher! That was the name. Not Mulcahy. Not Garrity. Not Murphy. Gallagher!
Like many another good man before him, Sigsbee Waddington chafed at the fatheaded imbecility with which Memory can behave. Why should Memory have presented to his notice futile Mulcahys and Garritys and Murphys when what he had been asking for was Gallagher? Wasting his time!
But it was not too late. If he went straight back to New York now and resumed his quest, all might yet be well. And Fortune had, he perceived, presented him with the most admirable excuse for going straight back to New York. In a crisis like this, with a valuable pearl necklace stolen it was imperative that a cool-headed, clear-thinking man of the world should take the next train up and place the facts in the possession of Police Headquarters.
“Good enough!” said Mr. Waddington to his immortal soul; and hobbled stiffly but light-heartedly to the boudoir.
Voices reached his ears as he opened the door. They ceased as he entered, and Mrs. Waddington looked up peevishly.
“Where have you been, I should like to know?” she said.
Sigsbee H. was ready for this one.
“I took a long country walk. A very long country walk. I was so shocked, horrified and surprised by that dreadful scene that the house seemed to stifle me. So I took a long country walk. I have just got back. What a very disturbing thing to happen! Ferris says it could never have occurred at Brangmarley Hall.”
Molly, somewhat red about the eyes and distinctly mutinous about the mouth, spoke for the first time.
“I’m sure there is some explanation.”
“Tchah!” said Mrs. Waddington.
“I know there is.”
“Then why did not your precious Finch condescend to give it?”
“He was so taken aback.”
“I don’t wonder.”
“I’m sure there was some mistake.”
“There was,” said Mr. Waddington. He patted his daughter’s hand soothingly. “The whole thing was a put-up job.”
“Kindly talk sense, Sigsbee.”
“I am talking sense.”
“What you call sense, perhaps, but not what anyone outside the walls of an institution for the feebleminded would call sense.”
“Is zat so?” Mr. Waddington put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and felt rather conquering. “Well, let me tell you that that girl simply pretended to be what she wasn’t so as to fool you into thinking she wasn’t what she was.”
Mrs. Waddington sighed despairingly.
“Go away, Sigsbee,” she said.
“That’s all right about Go away, Sigsbee. I’m telling you that that girl was a crook. She couldn’t get in any other way, so she pulled that discarded stuff. She was after the wedding-presents.”
“Then why did she not take them?”
“She did. She took Molly’s pearl
