I receive the support of my friend, Monsieur Valmont.'
'My lady,' said I, with a bow, 'it is but yours to command, mine to obey. What were the contents of that letter?'
'Read it,' she replied, taking the folded sheet from her pocket, and handing it to me.
She had been quite right in characterising the note as an extraordinary epistle. The Honourable John Haddon had the temerity to propose that she should go through a form of marriage with him in the old church we had just left. If she did that, he said, it would console him for the mad love he felt for her. The ceremony would have no binding force upon her whatever, and she might bring whom she pleased to perform it. If she knew no one that she could trust, he would invite an old college chum, and bring him to the church next morning at half-past seven o'clock. Even if an ordained clergyman performed the ceremony, it would not be legal unless it took place between the hours of eight in the morning, and three in the afternoon. If she consented to this, the emeralds were hers once more.
'This is the proposal of a madman,' said I, as I handed back the letter.
'Well,' she replied, with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders, 'he has always said he was madly in love with me, and I quite believe it. Poor young man, if this mummery were to console him for the rest of his life, why should I not indulge him in it?'
'Lady Alicia, surely you would not countenance the profaning of that lovely old edifice with a mock ceremonial? No man in his senses could suggest such a thing!'
Once more her eyes were twinkling with merriment.
'But the Honourable John Haddon, as I have told you, is not in his senses.'
'Then why should you indulge him?'
'Why? How can you ask such a question? Because of the emeralds. It is only a mad lark, after all, and no one need know of it. Oh, Monsieur Valmont,' she cried pleadingly, clasping her hands, and yet it seemed to me with an undercurrent of laughter in her beseeching tones, 'will you not enact for us the part of clergyman? I am sure if your face were as serious as it is at this moment, the robes of a priest would become you.'
'Lady Alicia, you are incorrigible. I am somewhat of a man of the world, yet I should not dare to counterfeit the sacred office, and I hope you but jest. In fact, I am sure you do, my lady.'
She turned away from me with a very pretty pout.
'Monsieur Valmont, your knighthood is, after all, but surface deep. 'Tis not mine to command, and yours to obey. Certainly I did but jest. John shall bring his own imitation clergyman with him.'
'Are you going to meet him tomorrow?'
'Certainly I am. I have promised. I must secure my necklace.'
'You seem to place great confidence in the belief that he will produce it.'
'If he fails to do so, then I play Monsieur Valmont as my trump card. But, monsieur, although you quite rightly refuse to comply with my first request, you will surely not reject my second. Please meet me tomorrow at the head of the avenue, promptly at a quarter-past seven, and escort me to the church.'
For a moment the negative trembled on my tongue's end, but she turned those enchanting eyes upon me, and I was undone.
'Very well,' I answered.
She seized both my hands, like a little girl overjoyed at a promised excursion.
'Oh, Monsieur Valmont, you are a darling! I feel as if I'd known you all my life. I am sure you will never regret having humoured me,' then added a moment later, 'if we get the emeralds.'
'Ah,' said I, 'if we get the emeralds.'
We were now within sight of the house, and she pointed out our rendezvous for the following day, and with that I bade her good-bye.
It was shortly after seven o'clock next morning when I reached the meeting-place. The Lady Alicia was somewhat long in coming, but when she arrived her face was aglow with girlish delight at the solemn prank she was about to play.
'You have not changed your mind?' I asked, after the morning's greetings.
'Oh, no, Monsieur Valmont,' she replied, with a bright laugh. 'I am determined to recover those emeralds.'
'We must hurry, Lady Alicia, or we will be too late.'
'There is plenty of time,' she remarked calmly; and she proved to be right, because when we came in sight of the church, the clock pointed to the hour of half-past seven.
'Now,' she said 'I shall wait here until you steal up to the church and look in through one of the windows that do not contain stained glass. I should not for the world arrive before Mr. Haddon and his friend are there.'
I did as requested, and saw two young men standing together in the centre aisle, one in the full robes of a clergyman, the other in his ordinary dress, whom I took to be the Honourable John Haddon. His profile was toward me, and I must admit there was very little of the madman in his calm countenance. His was a well-cut face, clean shaven, and strikingly manly. In one of the pews was seated a woman—I learned afterwards she was Lady Alicia's maid, who had been instructed to come and go from the house by a footpath, while we had taken the longer road. I returned and escorted Lady Alicia to the church, and there was introduced to Mr. Haddon and his friend, the made-up divine. The ceremony was at once performed, and, man of the world as I professed myself to be, this enacting of private theatricals in a church grated upon me. When the maid and I were asked to sign the book as witnesses, I said:—
'Surely this is carrying realism a little too far?'
Mr. Haddon smiled, and replied:—
'I am amazed to hear a Frenchman objecting to realism going to its full length, and speaking for myself, I should be delighted to see the autograph of the renowned Eugène Valmont,' and with that he proffered me the pen, whereupon I scrawled my signature. The maid had already signed, and disappeared. The reputed clergyman bowed us out of the church, standing in the porch to see us walk up the avenue.
'Ed,' cried John Haddon, I'll be back within half an hour, and we'll attend to the clock. You won't mind waiting?'
'Not in the least, dear boy. God bless you both,' and the tremor in his voice seemed to me carrying realism one step further still.
The Lady Alicia, with downcast head, hurried us on until we were within the gloom of the forest, and then, ignoring me, she turned suddenly to the young man, and placed her two hands on his shoulders.
'Oh, Jack, Jack!' she cried.
He kissed her twice on the lips.
'Jack, Monsieur Valmont insists on the emeralds.'
The young man laughed. Her ladyship stood fronting him with her back towards me. Tenderly the young man unfastened something at the throat of that high-necked dress of hers, then there was a snap, and he drew out an amazing, dazzling, shimmering sheen of green, that seemed to turn the whole bleak December landscape verdant as with a touch of spring. The girl hid her rosy face against him, and over her shoulder, with a smile, he handed me the celebrated Blair emeralds.
'There is the treasure, Valmont,' he cried, 'on condition that you do not molest the culprit.'
'Or the accessory after the fact,' gurgled Lady Alicia in smothered tones, with a hand clasping together her high-necked dress at the throat.
'We trust to your invention, Valmont, to deliver that necklace to uncle with a detective story that will thrill him to his very heart.'
We heard the clock strike eight; then a second later smaller bells chimed a quarter-past, and another second after they tinkled the half-hour. 'Hallo!' cried Haddon, 'Ed has attended to the clock himself. What a good fellow he is.'
'I looked at my watch; it was twenty-five minutes to nine.
'Was the ceremony genuine then?' I asked.
'Ah, Valmont,' said the young man, patting his wife affectionately on the shoulder, 'nothing on earth can be more genuine than that ceremony was.'