The Bandbox, Louis Joseph Vance [little red riding hood ebook free .TXT] 📗

impulse to laugh idiotically, and gravely shook hands with the captain. He had already exchanged a glance with the lady of his heart’s desire.

An insanely awkward pause marked Iff’s exhibition of matchless impudence. Each hesitated to speak while the captain was occupied with a vain attempt to make Iff realise his position by scowling at him out of a blood-congested countenance. But of this, Iff appeared to be wholly unconscious. When the situation seemed all but unendurable for another second (Staff for one was haunted by the fear that he would throw back his head and bray like a mule) Manvers took it upon himself to ease the tension, hardily earning the undying gratitude of all the gathering.

“I asked Mr. Staff to come and tell you, sir,” he said haltingly, “that I spoke to him about this matter the very night we left Queenstown—asked him to do what he could to make Miss Landis appreciate—”

“I see,” the captain cut him short.

“That is so,” Staff affirmed. “Unfortunately I had no opportunity until this afternoon—”

Alison interposed quietly: “I am quite ready to exonerate Mr. Manvers from all blame. In fact, he has really annoyed me with his efforts to induce me to turn the collar over to his care.”

“Thank you,” said Manvers bowing.

There was the faintest tinge of sarcasm in the acknowledgment. Staff could see that Alison felt and resented it; and the thought popped into his mind, and immediately out again, that she was scarcely proving herself generous.

“It’s a very serious matter,” announced the captain heavily—“serious for the service: for the officers, for the good name of the ship, for the reputation of the company. This is the second time a crime of this nature had been committed aboard the Autocratic within a period of eighteen months—less than that, in fact. It was June, a year ago, that Mrs. Burden Hamman’s jewels were stolen—on the eastbound passage, I believe.”

“We sailed from New York, June 22,” affirmed the purser.

“I want, therefore,” continued the captain, “to ask you all to preserve silence about this affair until it has been thoroughly sifted. I believe the knowledge of the theft is confined to those present.”

“Quite so, sir,” agreed the purser.

“May I ask how it happened?” Staff put in.

The captain swung on his heel and bowed to Alison. She bent forward, telling her story with brevity and animation.

“You remember”—she looked at Staff—“when we met in the saloon, about half-past five, and went on deck?... Well, right after that, Jane left my rooms to return the hat you had been showing me to your steward. She was gone not over five minutes, and she swears the door was locked all the time; she remembers locking it when she went out and unlocking it when she returned. There was no indication that anybody had been in the rooms, except one that we didn’t discover until I started to go to bed, a little while ago. Then I thought of my jewels. They were all kept in this handbag”—she dropped a hand upon a rather small Lawrence bag of tan leather on the table before her—“under my bed, behind the steamer trunk. I told Jane to see if it was all right. She got it out, and then we discovered that this had happened to it.”

She turned the bag so that the other side was presented for inspection, disclosing the fact that some sharp instrument had been used to cut a great flap out of the leather, running in a rough semicircle from clasp to clasp of the frame.

“It wasn’t altogether empty,” she declared with a trace of wonder in her voice; “but that only makes it all the more mysterious. All my ordinary jewels were untouched; nothing had been taken except the case that held the Cadogan collar.”

“And the collar itself, I hope?” Iff put in quietly.

The actress turned upon him with rising colour.

“You hope—!” she exclaimed.

The little man made a deprecatory gesture. “Why, yes,” he said. “It would seem a pity that a crook cute enough to turn a trick as neat as that should have got nothing for his pains but a velvet-lined leather case, worth perhaps a dollar and a half—or say two dollars at the outside, if you make a point of that.”

“How do you happen to know it was a velvet-lined leather case?” Alison flashed.

Iff laughed quietly. “My dear lady,” he said, “I priced the necklace at Cottier’s in Paris the day before you purchased it. Unfortunately it was beyond my means.”

“A bit thick,” commented the purser in an acid voice.

“Now, listen”—Iff turned to face him with a flush of choler—“you keep on that way and I’ll land on you if it’s the last act of my gay young life. You hear me?”

“That will do, sir!” barked the captain.

“I trust so, sincerely,” replied Iff.

“Be silent!” The captain’s voice ascended a full octave.

“Oh, very well, very well. I hear you—perfectly.” With this the little man subsided, smiling feebly at vacancy.

Staff interposed hastily, in the interests of peace: “The supposition is, then, that the thief got in during those five minutes that Jane was away from the room?”

“It couldn’t have happened at any other time, of course,” said Alison.

“And, equally of course, it couldn’t have happened then,” said Iff.

“Why not?” the woman demanded.

“The girl was gone only five minutes. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jane.

“And the door was locked—you’re positive about that?”

“Quite, sir.”

“Then will anyone explain how any thief could effect an entrance, pull a heavy steamer trunk out from under a bed, get at the bag, cut a slit in its side, extract the leather case—and the collar, to be sure—replace the bag, replace the trunk, leave the stateroom and lock the door, all in five short minutes—and without any key?” Iff wound up triumphantly: “I tell you, it couldn’t be done; it ain’t human.”

“But a skeleton-key—” Manvers began.

“O you!” said Iff with a withering glance. “The door to Miss Landis’ suite opens directly opposite the head of the main companionway, which is in constant use—people going up and down all the time. Can you see anybody, however expert, picking a lock with a bunch of skeleton-keys in that exposed position without being caught red-handed? Not on your vivid imagination, young man.”

“There may, however, be duplicate keys to the staterooms,” Alison countered.

“My dear lady,” said Iff, humbly, “there are; and unless this ship differs radically from others, those duplicate keys are all in the purser’s care. Am I right, Mr. Manvers?”

“Yes,” said Manvers sullenly.

“And here’s another point,” resumed Iff. “May I ask you a question or two, Miss Landis?” Alison nodded curtly. “You kept the handbag locked, I presume?”

“Certainly.”

“And when you found it had been tampered with, did you unlock it?”

“There wasn’t any need,” said Alison. “You can see for yourself the opening in the side is so large—”

“Then you didn’t unlock it?”

“No.”

“That only makes it the more mysterious. Because, you see, it’s unlocked now.”

There was a concerted movement of astonishment.

“How do you make that out, sir?” demanded the captain.

“You can see for yourself (to borrow Miss Landis’ phrase) if you’ll only use your eyes, as I have. The side clasps are in place, all right, but the slide on the lock itself is pushed a trifle to the left; which it couldn’t be if the bag were locked.”

There was a hint of derision in the little man’s voice; and his sarcastic smile was flickering round his thin lips as he put out one hand, drew the bag to him, lifted the clasps, and pushing back the lock-slide, opened it wide.

“The thot plickens,” he observed gravely. “For my part I am unable to imagine any bold and enterprising crook taking the trouble to cut open this bag when the most casual examination would have shown him that it wasn’t locked.”

“He might ’ve done it as a blind....” Manvers suggested.

“Officer!” piped Iff in a plaintive voice—“he’s in again.”

The purser, colouring to the temples, took a step toward the little man, his hands twitching, but at a gesture from the captain paused, controlled himself and fell back.

For a few moments there was quiet in the cabin, while those present digested Iff’s conclusions and acknowledged their logic irrefragable. Staff caught Alison staring at the man as if fascinated, with a curious, intense look in her eyes the significance of which he could not fathom.

Then the pause was brought to an end by the captain. He shifted his position abruptly, so that he towered over Iff, scowling down upon him.

“That will do,” he said ominously. “I’m tired of this; say what you will, you haven’t hoodwinked me, and you shan’t.”

“My dear sir!” protested Iff in amazement. “Hoodwink you? Why, I’m merely trying to make you see—”

“You’ve succeeded in making me see one thing clearly: that you know more about this robbery than you’ve any right to know.”

“Oh, you-all make me tired,” complained Iff. “Now you have just heard Miss Landis declare that this collar of pearls vanished between, say, five-thirty and five-forty-five. Well, I can prove by the testimony of three other passengers, and I don’t know how many more, to say nothing of your smoke-room stewards, that I was playing bridge from four until after six.”

“Ah, yes,” put in the purser sweetly, “but you yourself have just demonstrated conclusively that the robbery couldn’t have taken place at the hour mentioned.”

Iff grinned appreciatively. “You’re improving,” he said. “I guess that doesn’t get you even with me for the rest of your life—what?”

“Moreover,” Manvers went on doggedly, “Ismay always could prove a copper-riveted alibi.”

“That’s one of the best little things he does,” admitted Iff cheerfully.

“You don’t deny you’re Ismay?” This from the captain, aggressive and domineering.

“I don’t have to, dear sir; I just ain’t—that’s the answer.”

“You’ve been recognised,” insisted the captain. “You were on this ship the time of the Burden Hamman robbery. Mr. Manvers knows you by sight; I, too, recognise you.”

“Sorry,” murmured Iff—“so sorry, but you’re wrong. Case of mistaken identity, I give you my word.”

“Your word!” snapped the captain contemptuously.

“My word,” retorted Iff in a crisp voice; “and more than that, I don’t ask you to take it. I’ve proofs of my identity which I think will satisfy even you.”

“Produce them.”

“In my own good time.” Iff put his back against the wall and lounged negligently, surveying the circle of unfriendly faces with his odd, supercilious eyes, half veiled by their hairless lids. “Since you’ve done me the honour to impute to me guilty knowledge of this—ah—crime, I don’t mind admitting that I was a passenger on the Autocratic when Mrs. Burden Hamman lost her jewels; and it wasn’t a coincidence, either. I was with you for a purpose—to look out for those jewels. I shared a room with Ismay, and when, after the robbery, you mistook me for him, he naturally didn’t object, and I didn’t because it left me all the freer to prosecute my investigation. In fact, it was due to my efforts that Ismay found things getting too hot for him over in London and arranged to return the jewelry to Mrs. Hamman for an insignificant ransom—not a tithe of their value. But he was hard pressed; if he’d delayed another day, I’d ’ve had him with the goods on.... That,” said Iff pensively, “was when I was in the Pinkerton service.”

“Ah, it was?” said the captain with much irony. “And what, pray, do you claim to be now?”

“Just a plain, ordinary, everyday sleuth in the employ of the United States Secret Service, detailed to work with the Customs Office to prevent smuggling—the smuggling of such articles as, say, the Cadogan collar.”

In the silence that followed this astounding declaration, the little man hunched up his shoulders until they seemed more round than ever, and again subjected the faces