Leave It to Psmith, P. G. Wodehouse [novels to read .txt] 📗

that wasn’t a scream we heard when them lights was out. Or,” he added weightily, for he was a man who looked at every side of a question, “a shriek. It was a shriek or scream. I said so at the time. ‘There,’ I said, ‘listen!’ I said. ‘That’s somebody screaming,’ I said. ‘Or shrieking.’ Something’s up.”

“Well, Baxter hasn’t been murdered, worse luck,” said Thomas. “He’s up there screaming or shrieking for Susan. ‘Send Susan to me!’ ” proceeded Thomas, giving an always popular imitation. “ ‘Susan, Susan, Susan.’ So you’d best go, my girl, and see what he wants.”

“Very well.”

“And, Susan,” said Thomas, a tender note creeping into his voice, for already, brief as had been her sojourn at Blandings, he had found the new parlourmaid making a deep impression on him, “if it’s a row of any kind⁠ ⁠…”

“Or description,” interjected Stokes.

“Or description,” continued Thomas, accepting the word, “if ’e’s ’arsh with you for some reason or other, you come right back to me and sob out your troubles on my chest, see? Lay your little ’ead on my shoulder and tell me all about it.”

The new parlourmaid, primly declining to reply to this alluring invitation, started on her journey upstairs; and Thomas, with a not unmanly sigh, resumed his interrupted game of halfpenny nap with colleague Stokes.

The Efficient Baxter had gone to the open window and was gazing out into the night when Susan entered the drawing-room.

“You wished to see me, Mr. Baxter?”

The secretary spun round. So softly had she opened the door, and so noiselessly had she moved when inside the room, that it was not until she spoke that he had become aware of her arrival. It was a characteristic of this girl Susan that she was always apt to be among those present some time before the latter became cognisant of the fact.

“Oh, good evening, Miss Simmons. You came in very quietly.”

“Habit,” said the parlourmaid.

“You gave me quite a start.”

“I’m sorry. What was it,” she asked, dismissing in a positively unfeeling manner the subject of her companion’s jarred nerves, “that you wished to see me about?”

“Shut that door.”

“I have. I always shut doors.”

“Please sit down.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Baxter. It might look odd if anyone should come in.”

“Of course. You think of everything.”

“I always do.”

Baxter stood for a moment, frowning.

“Miss Simmons,” he said, “when I thought it expedient to install a private detective in this house, I insisted on Wragge’s sending you. We had worked together before⁠ ⁠…”

“Sixteenth of December, 1918, to January twelve, 1919, when you were secretary to Mr. Horace Jevons, the American millionaire,” said Miss Simmons as promptly as if he had touched a spring. It was her hobby to remember dates with precision.

“Exactly. I insisted upon your being sent because I knew from experience that you were reliable. At that time I looked on your presence here merely as a precautionary measure. Now, I am sorry to say⁠ ⁠…”

“Did someone steal Lady Constance’s necklace tonight?”

“Yes!”

“When the lights went out just now?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, why couldn’t you say so at once? Good gracious, man, you don’t have to break the thing gently to me.”

The Efficient Baxter, though he strongly objected to being addressed as “man,” decided to overlook the solecism.

“The lights suddenly went out,” he said. “There was a certain amount of laughter and confusion. Then a piercing shriek⁠ ⁠…”

“I heard it.”

“And immediately after Lady Constance’s voice crying that her jewels had been snatched from her neck.”

“Then what happened?”

“Still greater confusion, which lasted until one of the maids arrived with a candle. Eventually the lights went on again, but of the necklace there was no sign whatever.”

“Well? Were you expecting the thief to wear it as a watch-chain or hang it from his teeth?”

Baxter was finding his companion’s manner more trying every minute, but he preserved his calm.

“Naturally the doors were barred and a complete search instituted. And extremely embarrassing it was. With the single exception of the scoundrel who has been palming himself off as McTodd, all those present were well-known members of Society.”

“Well-known members of Society might not object to getting hold of a twenty-thousand pound necklace. But still, with the McTodd fellow there, you oughtn’t to have had far to look. What had he to say about it?”

“He was among the first to empty his pockets.”

“Well, then, he must have hidden the thing somewhere.”

“Not in this room. I have searched assiduously.”

“H’m.”

There was a silence.

“It is baffling,” said Baxter, “baffling.”

“It is nothing of the kind,” replied Miss Simmons tartly. “This wasn’t a one-man job. How could it have been? I should be inclined to call it a three-man job. One to switch off the lights, one to snatch the necklace, and one to⁠—was that window open all the time? I thought so⁠—and one to pick up the necklace when the second fellow threw it out on to the terrace.”

“Terrace!”

The word shot from Baxter’s lips with explosive force. Miss Simmons looked at him curiously.

“Thought of something?”

“Miss Simmons,” said the Efficient One impressively, “everybody was assembled in here waiting for the reading to begin, but the pseudo-McTodd was nowhere to be found. I discovered him eventually on the terrace in close talk with the Halliday girl.”

“His partner,” said Miss Simmons, nodding. “We thought so all along. And let me add my little bit. There’s a fellow down in the servants’ hall that calls himself a valet, and I’ll bet he didn’t know what a valet was till he came here. I thought he was a crook the moment I set eyes on him. I can tell ’em in the dark. Now, do you know whose valet he is? This McTodd fellow’s!”

Baxter bounded to and fro like a caged tiger.

“And with my own ears,” he cried excitedly, “I heard the Halliday girl refuse to come to the drawing-room to listen to the reading. She was out on the terrace throughout the whole affair. Miss Simmons, we must act! We must act!”

“Yes, but not like idiots,” replied the detective frostily.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you can’t charge out, as you looked as if you wanted