CHAPTER XXII
HER COUSIN TO THE RESCUE
"GOOD evening," I said, coldly looking up at the young man, with aglance that said as plainly as possible, "What do you want?"
"I hoped you might be kind enough to allow me to escort you on thislittle stroll of yours, Miss Smith," said the young American politely,lifting his grey felt hat. "See here, I guess I'd better introdoocemyself. I'm Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago."
"You are a detective, too, I suppose," I said, still more coldly. Wewere standing by the railings of the old London churchyard close to theriver. The dark-green leaves of the plane-trees rustled above us. "Isuppose you are following me to find out if I'm taking Mr.Rattenheimer's ruby to a pawnshop?"
The young American smiled cheerfully down at me.
"Nix on the detective racket here," he said, in his queer, slow,pleasant accent. "You can cut out that about Rats and his ruby, I guess.I don't care a row o' beans where his old ruby has gann to. What Iwanted to ask you about was----" He concluded with a most unexpected twowords--
--"My cousin!"
I stared up at this big young stranger in the padded grey coat.
"Your cousin? But--I think you're making some mistake----"
"I guess not," said the young American. "You're my cousin's maid allright, aren't you? You're Miss Million's maid?"
"Yes. Yes, of course," I said, clinging on to that one straw of fact inan ocean of unexpectedness. "I'm her maid----"
"And I'm her cousin," said the young American simply. "Second cousin, orsecond, once removed--or something of that sort. You haven't heard ofme?"
"No, I never have heard of any of Miss Million's cousins," I said,shaking my head with a gesture of firm disbelief. For I summed up hisclaim to relationship with my mistress as being about as authentic asthe Honourable Jim's alleged friendship with her uncle.
Only the fibbing of this second young man seemed rather more shameless!
I said: "I didn't know that Miss Million had any cousins."
"And you don't believe it now you hear it? Is that so?" he said, stillsmiling cheerfully. "Why, it's quite right to be on the side of caution.But you're overdoing it, Miss Smith. I'm related to old man Millionright enough. Why, I'm at the boss-end of no end of his business. TheSausage King. Well, I've been the Sausage Prince. I see you looking atme as much as to say, 'You say so.' See here, d'you want some proofs?I've a wad of letters from the old man in my pocket now."
He put his hand to the breast of the grey-tweed jacket.
"Maybe you think those aren't proofs, either? Write myself a fewbillets-doux signed, 'Yours cordially, Sam Million'--easy as falling offa horse, eh?"
(Of course, this was what I had thought.)
"I guess I shall have to take you and my cousin along with me to ourlawyers the next time I'm calling, that's all," concluded the youngAmerican with his cheerfully philosophical air. "Chancery Lane, Messrs.Chesterton, Brown, Jones, and Robinson. That's the firm."
"Oh! You know Mr. Chesterton!" I exclaimed in accents of relief. I'dquite forgotten Miss Million's dear old family lawyer. That nice oldgentleman! If I wanted advice or help of course there was Mr. Chestertonto fall back on! I hadn't thought of him before.
"Know Mr. Chesterton? Sure thing," said the American. We had moved awayfrom the churchyard railings and were strolling slowly towards theembankment now. "Why, Mr. Chesterton and I had a long, longheart-to-heart talk this afternoon, before I came on in the greattrunk-searching act! I was just coming in to leave a card on my cousin,Miss Nellie Million, when I found myself one of the galaxy of beauty andtalent that was going to make a thorough examination of you girls'things."
"Oh, were you?" I said lamely. I couldn't think what else to say. Toomany things had been happening all day long!
I said: "Miss Million didn't know you were coming?
"Why, no! I guess she didn't suspect my existence, any more than Isuspected hers until a few weeks ago," said Miss Million's cousin. (Atlast I found myself believing that he really was her cousin after all.)"Horrible shock to me, I can tell you, that my Uncle Sam was cherishingthe thought of this little English niece of his all this time! Making uphis mind to leave his pile to this girl. Meantime Hiram P. Jessop," herehe tapped the grey-tweed jacket again, "had been looking upon himself asthe heir-apparent!"
"Oh! You thought all that money was coming to you?" I said, half-amused,half-pityingly, for this was certainly the frankest, most boyish sort ofyoung man I'd ever come across. "And you've lost it all on account of mymistress?"
"Say, doesn't that sound the queerest ever? A daisy little girl like youtalking about some other girl as her 'mistress'!" rejoined my companionin a wondering tone. "Why, d'you know? When I saw you standing there inthe sitting-room, in your black dress and that cute little apron andcap, I said to myself: 'If this isn't the image of some Society girl ofthe English upper class playing the Pretty Domestic part in some privatetheatricals where they rush you a quarter's salary, I guess, for half alook and a programme!' I said, if you'll pardon me: 'It's just theaccent, just the look, just the manner.'"
"Oh!" I said, rather vexed.
I was annoyed that he should think there was any trace of "acting"about my appearance. I thought I'd had the art that conceals Art. Ithought I'd come to look such an irreproachable lady's-maid.
"Just typically the English Young Lady of the Upper Classes," pronouncedthis surprising young American, meditatively walking along by my side onthe asphalt paths of the Embankment Gardens. "As typical as theWestminster Abbey, or those tea-shops.... Real sweet-looking, realrefined-looking, if I may say so. But cold! Cold and stiff! 'Do not dareto approach me, for all my family were here dying of old age whenWilliam the Conqueror landed on these shores.' That's the way you'dimpress one, Miss Smith. 'Look through my trunks?'" Here he adopted anextraordinary voice that I suppose was intended for an imitation of myown tones.
Then he pulled himself up and said gravely: "You'll pardon me if I'm toofrank. But I'm always outspoken. It's my nature. I'm interested intypes. I was interested in yours. Noo to me. Quite noo. The young ladythat looks as if she ought to be standing to have her portrait paintedon the grey-stone steps of some big English country house--the younglady that turns out to be paid maid to my own cousin! A noo thing."
"Really!" I said gravely. I couldn't help feeling amused at his puzzledface.
We turned again down the asphalt path between the flower-beds of thosegardens that are overshadowed by the big hotel. On a bench I caughtsight again of the quiet figure that I had noticed on the other side ofthe Strand. It was the Scotland Yard man. He seemed to be reading anevening paper. But I felt that he was watching, watching....
I didn't mind; even if he did think he was watching some one who knewwhat had become of the Rattheimer ruby! I felt something comforting andtrustworthy in the presence of this other young man; this peculiarcousin of Million's, from whom one heard, quite unresentfully, remarksthat one would not forgive in an Englishman, for instance Mr. Brace. Notthat Mr. Brace would ever venture on such personalities ... theHonourable Jim now.... Yes, but he's a Celt. A Celt is a person whotakes, but cannot give, offence. Most unfair, of course.
The American pursued: "And this cousin of mine? There's another type Ishall be interested to see. Tell me about her, Miss Smith, will you?Have you known her long?"
"Oh, yes," I said. "It's some years since I've known Miss Million."
"And well, considering the difference in your positions, that is?"
"Oh, yes, fairly well," I said, thinking of the many artless confidencesI'd listened to from Miss Million--then "Million," of our disgracefullyinconvenient little kitchen at Putney. Those far-away days seemed verypleasant and peaceful to me to-night! But they--those kitchen days--wereno part of the business of the young man at my side.
"D'you get on with her?" he said.
"Oh, yes, thank you."
"You don't tell me much. It's this English reserve I
'm always upagainst. It's a thing you'd need an ice-axe for, I guess, or a hundredyears with your families living in the same village," complained theyoung American, laughing ruefully.
"Were you two girls raised together? School together?"
"Oh, no."
He sighed and went off on another tack.
"Can't you tell me the way she looks, so as to prepare me some for whenI see her?" he suggested. "Does she resemble you, Miss Smith?"
"I don't think so," I said, suppressing a foolish giggle. It was thefirst time I'd wanted to laugh at anything for the last twenty-fourhours. "No; Miss Million is--well, she's about my height. But she'sdark."
"I've always admired the small brunette woman myself," admitted Mr.Hiram P. Jessop, adding quickly and courteously: "Not that I don't thinkit's perfectly lovely to see a blonde with the bright chestnut hair andthe brown eyes that you have."
"Thank you," I said.
"And how soon can I see this little dark-haired cousin of mine?" went onthe American when we turned out of the Gardens. Unobtrusively theScotland Yard man had risen also. "What time can I call around thisevening?"
"I--I don't know when she'll be in," I hesitated.
"Where's she gone to?" persisted the cousin of this missing heiress."How long did she go for?"
I fenced with this question until we arrived at the very doors of theCecil again.
Then an impulse seized me.
All day long I had wrestled alone with this trouble of mine. I hadn'tconsulted Mr. Brace. I had kept it from the Honorable Jim. I had put upall sorts of pretences about it to the people at the hotel. But I feltnow that it would have to come out. I couldn't stand it any longer.
I turned to Miss Million's cousin.
"Mr. Jessop, I must tell you," I said in a serious and measured voice."The truth is I don't know!"
"What?" he took up, startled. "Are you telling me that you don't knowwhere my cousin is at this moment?"
I nodded.
"I wish I did know," I said fervently. And as we stood, a little asidefrom the glass doors in the vestibule, I went on, in soft, rapid tones,to tell him the story of Miss Million's disappearance from my horizonsince half-past eleven last night.
I looked up, despairingly, into his startled, concerned face.
"What has happened to her?" I said urgently. "What do you think? Wheredo you think she is?"
Before he could say a word a messenger came up to me with a telegram.
"For Miss Smith."
I felt that this would be news at last. It must be. I seized the wire; Itore it open.
I read----
"Oh!" I cried quite loudly.
One of the commissionaires glanced curiously over his shoulder at me.
I dropped my voice as I said feverishly: "Yes, it is! It's from HER!"
And I held the telegram out, blindly, towards the young American.
The telegram which my mistress had sent ran simply and superbly thus:
"Why ever don't you bring my clothes? "MISS MILLION."
There was no address.
The wire had been handed in at half-past seven o'clock that evening atLewes. It left me silent for a moment with bewilderment and dismay.After waiting so long for a message! To receive one that told menothing!
"What is the meaning of this here?" said Miss Million's cousin,repeating, in the accent that makes all our English words soundsomething new and strange. "'Why ever don't you bring my clothes?' Well!I guess that sounds as if nothing very terrible had happened to her. Herclothes! A woman's first thought, of course. Where does she want you to'bring' them to, Miss Smith?"
"How on earth should I know?" I cried, in desperation. "When I stilldon't know where she is, or what she is doing!"
"But this place, Lewes. Surely that's some guide to you?"
"Not the slightest," I said. "We don't know anybody at Lewes! At least,I don't know that she knew anybody there! I don't know who on earth canhave taken her there!" This with another nervous thought of young LordFourcastles. "I shall have to go at once--no, it's too late to-night.To-morrow I shall go. But----
"She may not be there at all. She may have been motoring through whenshe sent this absurd wire!"
"Maybe," said the American. "But it's a clue, for all that. Lewes! Thepost-offices at Lewes will tell you something about her."
"Why, why didn't she tell me something about herself?" I stormed softly."Here she is taking it for granted that I know exactly what's happenedand where she's gone! Does she imagine that she explained that to melast night before she went out? Does she think she gave me any orders?Here she is actually asking 'why?' to me!" I concluded, stammering withindignation. "She sounds quite furious because I haven't brought herclothes to her----somewhere in Space!"
"What clothes was she wearing, may I ask?" demanded the American cousin,in his simple, boyishly interested manner.
And when I told him of the bright, cherry-coloured evening gown, and thecreamy restaurant coat, and the little cerise satin shoes with jewelledheels that Million had on, he put back his head and laughed gently.
"Poor little girl! Poor little Cousin Nellie! I guess she must have beenreal mad with herself and you for letting her loose in that get-up," hesaid, "prancing about all day in the bright sunlight in that outfit.Enough to jar any girl of taste in dress, I guess!"
Then his alert face grew grave again. He said, glancing over hisshoulder at the groups that were coming and going in the vestibule:"Well, we'll discuss this. Come into the lounge, where we can talkquietly."
We went into the lounge, where only yesterday I had perceived for thefirst time the sumptuous apparition of Miss Vi Vassity pouring out teafor my now vanished mistress.
It seemed to me that everybody there looked up at me as we passed in. Ibit my lip and frowned a little.
"You are right. This is no place for a quiet chat," said the Americansoftly. "It will have to be my cousin's sitting-room again, I reckon."
Upstairs, in Miss Million's sitting-room, that I seemed to know as wellnow as a penal-servitude prisoner knows his cell, the American said tome gravely and quietly: "There is one thing, I daresay, which you havenot thought of in connection with that----"
He nodded his smooth, mouse-coloured head at the tantalising wire that Istill held crushed in my hand.
"Now, I don't know much about your police system," said young Mr.Jessop, "but I reckon it won't be so very different from our own in amatter of this nature." He nodded again, and went on gravely:
"That telegram will have been read all right! The people here, themanager and the Scotland Yard man, they will know what's in that."
"Know what's in it?" I gasped, staring at him. "Why, how can they? Doyou mean," indignantly, "that they opened it?"
"Why, no! You saw for yourself the envelope was not opened when you gotthe thing. But that is not to say that they could not get it repeated,as easy as winking, at the post-office," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, ofChicago. "So I'd be ready to bet that everybody here knows what you'reup to when you leave this hotel to-morrow. My old acquaintance, Rats,and all of 'em. They'll know you're taking something to your youngmistress--your confederate, they'll think her!--in Sussex. You may bequite sure they're not going to allow you to take any trips intoSussex--alone. Nope. Somebody will go with you, Miss Smith."
"Go with me? D'you mean," I said, "that I shall be shadowed all the wayby that odious detective man?"
"Well, now, isn't it more than probable, Miss Smith?" said the youngAmerican shrewdly. "They'd their eye on you two girls from the start, itseems. You aren't a very usual couple. Noo to me, you are. Both of youseemed noo to them!"
"I knew they gossiped about us!" I said ruefully.
"Sure thing; but don't say 'gossip' as if it was something nobody elsedid only the folks around this hotel!" protested the American,twinkling. "Well, to-day after the great Jewel Steal you arousedconsiderable suspicion by refusing to let Rats and the others do theCustom House offic
er's act through your wardrobe. This wire will haveraised more suspicion this evening. And to-morrow--d'you think they'regoing to let you quit without further notice taken? Think!"
I thought for a second.
I saw that he was perfectly right.
It was just what would happen. Wherever I went to-morrow in search ofthat baffling mistress of mine I should have that Scotland Yarddetective on my heels!
That sort of thing made me terribly nervous and uneasy! But I couldimagine the ingenuous Million being forty times worse about it! If I didsucceed in running her to earth at last, I could just imagine Million'sunconcealed and compromising horror at seeing me turn up with acompanion who talked about "the necessary steps" and "the Law!"
Million would be so overwhelmed that she would look as if she had awhole mine full of stolen rubies sewn into the tops of her corsets. Shehas a wild and baseless horror of anything to do with the police. (I sawher once, at home, when a strange constable called to inquire about alost dog. It was I who'd had to go to the door. Million had sat,shuddering, in the kitchen, her hand on her apron-bib, and her wholeperson suffering from what she calls "the palps.")
So this was going to be awkward, hideously awkward.
Yet I couldn't go out in search of her!
I said, desperately: "What am I to do about it?"
"There is only one thing for it as far as I can see," said the youngAmerican thoughtfully; "you will have to let me go down with a suit-casefull of lady's wearing apparel. You will have to let me make all theinquiries in Lewes."
"You? Oh, no! That is quite impossible," I exclaimed firmly. "You couldnot."
"Why not? I tell you, Miss Smith, it seems to me just to meet the case,"he said earnestly.
"Here's this little cousin of mine, that I have never yet seen, thatI've got to make friends with. I am to be allowed to make heracquaintance by doing her a service. Now, isn't that the real,old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon chivalry? It would just appeal to me."
"I don't think it would appeal to Miss Million," I said, "to have aperfectly strange young man suddenly making his appearance in the middleof--wherever she is, with a box full of all sorts of her things, andsaying he is her cousin! No, I shall have to go," I said.
And then a sudden awful thought struck me. How far could I go on themoney that was left to me? Three and sixpence!
"My goodness! What's the railway fare from Victoria, or wherever you goto Lewes from? I don't believe I have got it!" I turned to the young manwith a resigned sigh of desperation. "I shall have to borrow from you,"I said.
"With great pleasure," said the young American promptly. Then, with atwinkle, he added swiftly: "See here, Miss Smith. Cut out the railroadbusiness altogether. Far better if you were to permit me to take youdown by automobile. Will you let me do that, now? I can hire anautomobile and tear off a hundred miles or so of peaceful Englishlandscape before anybody has had time to say 'How very extraordinary!'which is the thing they always are saying in England when any remark isput forward about what they do in the States. Pack up my cousin'scontraptions to-night, will you? To-morrow morning, at nine or eight orseven if you like, we'll buzz out of this little old town and playbaseball with all the police traps between here and Brighton! Does thisappeal to you?"
I could not help feeling that this did very considerably appeal to me.
If I went with this un-English, unconventional, but kind and helpfulyoung man, I should at least not feel such a lone, lorn female, such asuspect in the eyes of the law! I could rise superior to the dogging ofdetectives, just as I had risen superior to them this evening in theEmbankment Gardens.
Suffragists and college-educated girls and enlightened persons of thatsort may say what they choose on the subject of woman becoming dailymore self-reliant and independent of man.
But I don't care. The fact remains that to the average girl-in-a-scrapethe presence of man, sympathetic and efficient, does still appear theone and only and ideal prop!
Bless Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago! I was only too thankful to acceptthe offer of his escort--and of his car!
Before he left me I had arranged to meet him at a certain garage at nineo'clock in the morning.
"Bright and early, as we may want to have the whole day before us," saidthe American as he went out. "Till then, Miss Smith!"