as time went on i dismissed the women of the company from my calculations—though i still kept an eye on them through sadie. of the men i had most to do with two, roland quarles and kenton milbourne, the first because i liked him, and the second because i didn't.
though i had no evidence against him, the idea that milbourne was the thief had little by little fixed itself in my mind. it was largely a process of elimination. all the others had proved to my satisfaction one way or another that they couldn't have committed the robbery. with the exception of quarles, none of them had the brains to conceive of such a plan, or to hide it afterwards. i didn't know if milbourne had the brains, indeed the more i went with him the less i knew. yet he did not seem to have a guard over himself. i laid several ingenious little traps to get a sight of his bank-book, but did not succeed in finding out even if he possessed such a thing.
milbourne was a pasty, hatchet-faced individual, very precise and conscientious in his manner, and exceedingly talkative. that was what put me off. he talked all the time, but i learned nothing from it. with his sharp, foxy features and narrow-set eyes he had the look of a crook right enough, but after all looks are not so important as disposition, and this heavy, dull-witted, verbose fellow was the epitome of respectability. he was not at all popular in the company, principally, i fancy, because of his over-nicety. he bragged of the number of baths he took. he was not "a good fellow." he never joked nor carried on with the crowd. in the play he took the part of a brutal thug, a sort of bill sykes, and played it well though there was nothing in his appearance to suggest the part. he was the fox, not the bull-dog. imagine a man with the appearance of a fox and the voice of a sheep and you have milbourne.
shortly after i joined the company i was allotted to share his dressing-room. he told me that he had requested the stage-manager to make the change, because he objected to the personal habits of his former roommate. so i had every opportunity to observe him. a lot of good it did me. he talked me to sleep. he would recite all the news of the day which i had just read for myself, and commented on it like a country newspaper. you couldn't stop him.
roland quarles i cultivated for a different reason. i did not suspect him. as a popular leading juvenile his life for years had been lived in the public eye and there was no reason in the world save pure cussedness why he should be a thief. i liked him. i was working hard, but one can't be a detective every waking minute. i sought out roland to forget my work. i had started disinterestedly with the whole company, but i gradually came to feel an affection for roland, principally because, much to my surprise, he seemed to like me.
i have said he was a morose young man. such was my first impression. he did not make friends easily. he was hated by all the men of the company, because he despised their foolish conceit, and took no pains to hide it. but the women liked him, i may say all women were attracted to him. he did not plume himself on this, it was a matter of great embarrassment to him. he avoided them no less than the men.
he was exceedingly good-looking and graceful, and there was not the slightest consciousness of it in his bearing. in that among young actors he stood alone. he had a sort of proud, reserved, bitter air, or as a novelist would say, he seemed to cherish a secret sorrow. his mail at the theatre was enormous. he used to stuff it in his pocket without looking at it.
i got my first insight into his character from his treatment of me. of the entire company he and milbourne were the only members who never made my meek insignificance a target for unkind wit. of them all only this high and mighty young man never tried to make me feel my insignificance. for a while he ignored me, but it seemed to strike him at last that i was being put upon by the others, whereupon in an unassuming way he began to make little overtures of friendship. i was charmed.
one night after the show he offered me a cigar at the stage door, and we walked down the street smoking and chatting until our ways parted. he was not on during the second act, and after my brief scene i got in the habit of stopping a while in his room before i went up to change. he had good sense. it was worth while talking to him. we became very friendly. he was only a year or two younger than i, but to me he seemed like a mere kid.
one night in the middle of our talk he said: "you're not like an actor. you're human."
"don't you like actors?" i asked curiously.
"it's a rotten business for men," he said bitterly. "it unsexes them. but here i am! what am i to do about it?"
i learned as i knew him better that the popular young actor, notwithstanding the adulation of women—or perhaps because of it, led an exemplary life. the dazzling palaces of the great white way knew him not. it was his custom to go home after the show, have a bite to eat in solitude, and read until he turned in.
one night he invited me to accompany him home. he had a modest flat in the gramercy square neighbourhood with an adoring old woman to look after him. the cheerful fire, the shaded lamp, the capacious easy chair, gave me a new conception of bachelor comfort. books were a feature of the place.
"pretty snug, eh?" he said, following my admiring eyes.
"well, you're not like an actor either," said i.
he laughed. "after the theatre this is like heaven!"
"why don't you chuck it?" i asked. "you're young."
he shrugged. "who wants to give an actor a regular job?"
we had scrambled eggs and sausages. i stayed for a couple of hours talking about the abstract questions that young men loved to discuss. when i left he was as much of an enigma to me as when i arrived. he was willing to talk about anything under the sun—except himself. without appearing to, he foiled all my attempts to draw him out.
hard upon this growing friendship it was a shock to learn from sadie as a result of her work during the days, that it was roland quarles who had deposited forty thousand dollars in his bank.
"impossible!" i said in my first surprise.
"i got it direct from the bank," she said. "it was the second national. he deposited forty thousand in cash on april sixth."
my heart sunk.
"but that doesn't prove that he stole the pearls," said sadie. she shared my liking for the young fellow.
"i hope not," i said gloomily. "but if it wasn't he then our promising clue is no good."
"maybe he won it on the stock exchange."
"that doesn't explain the cash. no broker pays in cash."
"well i can think of ten good reasons why he couldn't have done it," sadie said obstinately. she had too warm a heart, perhaps, to make an ideal investigator.
that night roland asked me home to supper again. this was about a week after the first occasion. the old woman had gone to bed and he cooked creamed oysters in a chafing-dish, while i looked at the paper.
"wouldn't it be nice to have white hands waiting at home to do that for you?" i suggested teasingly.
"never for me!" he said with a bitter smile.
"why not?"
"what i can have i don't want. what i want i can never have."
"you never can tell," i said encouragingly. i was thinking what a superb couple the handsome young pair made on the stage. it seemed low to cross-examine him while he was preparing to feed me, but there was no help for it.
"the market is off again," i said carelessly. "chance for somebody to make money."
"how can you make money when the market is going down," he said innocently.
if the innocence was assumed it was mighty well done. however, i told myself his business was acting.
"by selling short," i said.
"i never understood that operation."
i explained it.
"too complicated for me," he said. "i consider the whole business immoral."
i agreed, and switched to talk of solid, permanent investments. he immediately looked interested.
"you seem to know something about such matters," he said. "suppose a man had a little money to invest, what would you advise?"
"your savings?" i asked with a smile.
"lord! i couldn't save anything. no, i have a friend who has a few thousand surplus."
being anxious to believe well of him i snatched at this straw. maybe a friend had entrusted him with money to invest. hardly likely though, and still more unlikely that it would be handed over in cash. i gave him some good advice, and the subject was dropped.
later we got to talking about acting again. he said in his bitter way:
"i shall soon be out of it now, one way or the other."
"what do you mean?" i asked.
"i mean to leave the stage at the close of this engagement or before."
"what are you going to do?"
"god knows!" he said with his laugh. "go to the devil, i expect."
i couldn't get anything else out of him. it was all mysterious enough. he sounded utterly reckless when you got below the surface, but somehow it was not the recklessness of a crook.
worse was to follow.
first, however, i must put down how the situation stood with milbourne, because i shall not return to him for some time. kenton milbourne! i have to smile every time i write it, the fancy appellation was so unsuitable to the tallow-cheeked, hatchet-faced talker who bore it. i believed milbourne had stolen the pearls, and i worked hard to justify my belief, but without being able to lay anything bare against him.
every night he talked me to a standstill. he seemed to be a man totally devoid of individuality, temperament, a mere windbag. but i told myself that dullness is the favourite and most effective disguise of a sharper. his talk was a little too dull to be natural, and once in a while i received an impression that he was anything but dull.
one night i said to him as roland had said to me: "you don't seem like an actor. how did you get into this business?"
"drifted into it," he said. "always knew i could act, but was too busy with other things. i had an attack of typhoid in sydney four years ago which shattered my health. when i was getting better a friend gave me the part of a human monster to play, just to help me pass the time. i made a wonderful hit in it. they wouldn't let me stop. since then i've never been idle. i haven't any conceit, so they offer me the horrible parts."
"sydney?" i said.
"i was raised in australia. i came to america last fall because there was a wider field for my art."
i put this down in my mind as a lie. i do not know australia but i suppose they have their own peculiarities of speech, and this man talked good new york.
i asked idly what parts he had played in australia. he named three or four and i made careful mental notes of them. i thought i had him there.
the next day i consulted old files of an australian stage paper in the rooms of the actors' society. to my chagrin i found his name, kenton milbourne listed in the casts of the very plays he had mentioned. i was far from being convinced of his genuineness, however. i wrote to australia for further information.
under cover of my meek and gentle air, i continued to watch him close. i could have sworn he was not aware of it, which shows how you may fool yourself. his apparent stupidity still blocked me. but one night when he lifted the tray of his trunk i saw the edge of a book underneath.
"anything good to read?" i said, picking it up before he could stop me.
a peculiar look chased across his face, which was anything but stupidity. the title of the book was: "the world's famous jewels."
"aha! my man!" i thought. i dropped it, saying: "that's not in my line."
this was how matters stood when things began to happen which drove all thought of kenton milbourne out of my mind.
the next day sadie came into the office to report, looking so confoundedly pretty that it drove the detective business clean out of my mind for the moment. what with her thirty dollars a week from the theatre and her additional salary as operative (which miss hamerton insisted on her taking) sadie was in affluent circumstances, and for the first time in her life she was able to dress as a pretty girl ought. with her spring hat and suit, her dainty gloves and boots, all from the best shops, she was as smart a little lady as you'd find from one end of the avenue to the other.
"you look sweet enough to eat!" i said, grinning at her like a cheshire cat.
"cut it out!" she said with her high and mighty air. "it's business hours. i'm operative s.f."
"what's that for, swell figure?"
"wait till after the whistle blows."
"after hours you're miss covington the actress, and i'm not allowed to know you."
"well, there's sunday."
"but this is only tuesday."
"i've got to respect my boss, haven't i?"
"what if i kissed you anyhow?"
"i'd box your ears!" she said quick as lightning.
and she would. i sighed, and came back to earth. it was not that i was afraid of the box on the ears, but she was right, and i knew it. as soon as i started that line of talk i resigned my proper place as the boss of the establishment.
"what's new?" i asked.
"i found out something interesting to-day," she said. "miss hamerton's in love with roland quarles."
"i guessed that long ago," i said calmly.
sadie was much taken aback. evidently she had expected to stun me. "you never said anything about it," she said pouting.
"i left it for you to find out for yourself."
"she never believed he had anything to do with the robbery," sadie said with a touch of defiance.
"then why was she so distressed in the beginning?"
"well, there was something that would have looked like evidence to a man," said sadie scornfully. "so naturally she didn't want to tell you."
"did she tell you?" i asked, a little huffed at the thought that sadie was getting deeper in the confidence of my client than i.
"yes, to-day. she didn't tell me about her feelings, of course. i guessed that part."
"what is this mysterious thing?"
"she only told me because since she saw the cryptogram she knows there couldn't be anything in it."
this was getting denser instead of more clear. "what was there about the cryptogram that eased her mind?" i asked.
"she knows that it couldn't have been written to roland quarles because he has no idea of leaving the company."
"oh, hasn't he!" i thought to myself. how strangely loving women reason. aloud i said: "now for the thing that a mere man would have considered evidence."
"don't try to be sarcastic," said sadie. "it doesn't suit you."
"who's forgetting that i'm the boss now?" i said severely.
she made a face at me and went on: "it seems that miss hamerton and roland quarles had a bet on about the pearls."
this was something new. i pricked up my ears.
"she laughed at him because he thought he knew something about jewels, and she says he scarcely knows a pearl from an opal. they argued about it, and she finally bet him a box of cigars against a box of gloves that he wouldn't be able to tell when she wore the genuine pearls. that is how she came to wear them the night they were stolen."
"the devil!" i exclaimed.
"but he has never spoken about it since. she believes that he has forgotten all about the bet."
i walked up and down the room considering what this meant.
"you needn't look like that," said sadie. "we know he didn't do it. wouldn't he have paid his bet if he had?"
"it seems so," i said. i didn't know what to believe.
"there's another reason," said sadie, "sufficient for a woman."
"what's that?"
"he's in love with her. he's making love to her now. he couldn't do that if he had robbed her."
"i don't know," i said grimly. "if he could rob her, i suspect he could make love to her."
that night at the theatre i devoted my attention pretty exclusively to quarles. god knows i was not anxious to ruin the young fellow, but sadie's communication taken in connection with the cryptogram and that mysterious cash deposit was beginning to look like pretty strong evidence. this being my first case, i attached more importance to "evidence" than i would now.
i was in his dressing-room when he left to go on for the third act. he had only a short scene at the beginning, and as he went out, he asked me to wait till he came off.
i watched him go with a sinking heart for i hated to do what i had to do. he was so handsome, so graceful, and with that burden on his breast, so invariably kind to me, i felt like a wretch. nevertheless, i told myself for the sake of all of us i had to discover the painful secret he was hiding.
i knew exactly how long i had before he would return. i swung the door almost shut, as if the wind had blown it, and made a rapid, thorough search. there was a pile of letters on his dressing-table as yet unopened. nothing suspicious there. nothing in the drawers of his dressing-table. there was no trunk in the room. his street coat was on a form hanging from a hook. i frisked the pockets. there was a handful of letters, papers in the breast pocket. shuffling them over i came upon a sheet of "dimity" note-paper without an envelope. opening it i beheld a communication in cryptogram exactly like the other.
i could hear the voices on the stage. roland was about to come off. i hastily returned all the papers to his pocket as i had found them,—except the cryptogram. that i put in my own pocket.
when he came in we picked up our conversation where we had dropped it.
as soon as i got home i made haste to translate my find. i had saved the numerical key i used before. i instantly found that it fitted this communication also. this is what i got:
"i. has known of her loss for a couple of weeks. she has put two detectives in the company. faxon and the girl covington. i have this straight. watch yourself. j."
so this is why quarles cultivated my friendship! i thought, feeling all the bitterness of finding myself betrayed. i could no longer doubt my evidence. my friendly feelings for the young fellow were curdled.
