that a woman had toyed with my heart and thrown it away like a worn-out tube of tooth-paste and all that sort of thing. What seemed to me the important item was the fact that, thanks to Jeeves, I was not going to be called on to cough up several thousand quid.
“It looks to me as though you had saved the old home. I mean, even a chappie endowed with the immortal rind of dear old Sid is hardly likely to have the nerve to come back and retrieve these little chaps.”
“I should imagine not, sir.”
“Well, then—— Oh, I say, you don’t think they are just paste or anything like that?”
“No, sir. These are genuine pearls, and extremely valuable.”
“Well, then, dash it, I’m on velvet. Absolutely reclining on the good old plush! I may be down a hundred quid, but I’m up a jolly good string of pearls. Am I right or wrong?”
“Hardly that, sir. I think that you will have to restore the pearls.”
“What! To Sid? Not while I have my physique!”
“No, sir. To their rightful owner.”
“But who is their rightful owner?”
“Mrs. Gregson, sir.”
“What! How do you know?”
“It was all over the hotel an hour ago that Mrs. Gregson’s pearls had been abstracted. The man Sid travelled from Paris in the same train as Mrs. Gregson, and no doubt marked them down. I was speaking to Mrs. Gregson’s maid shortly before you came in, and she informed me that the manager of the hotel is now in Mrs. Gregson’s suite.”
“And having a devil of a time, what?”
“So I should be disposed to imagine, sir.”
The situation was beginning to unfold before me.
“I’ll go and give them back to her, eh? It’ll put me one up, what?”
“If I might make the suggestion, sir, I think it would strengthen your position if you were to affect to discover the pearls in Mrs. Gregson’s suite—say, in a bureau drawer.”
“I don’t see why.”
“I think I am right, sir.”
“Well, I stand on you. If you say so— I’ll be popping, what?”
“The sooner the better, sir.”
LONG before I reached Aunt Agatha’s lair I could tell that the hunt was up.
Divers chappies in hotel uniform and not a few chambermaids of sorts were hanging about in the corridor, and through the panels I could hear a mixed assortment of voices, with Aunt Agatha’s topping the lot. I knocked, but no one took any notice, so I trickled in. Among those present I noticed a chambermaid in hysterics, Aunt Agatha with her hair bristling, and a whiskered cove who looked like a bandit, as no doubt he was, being the proprietor of the hotel.
“Oh, hallo,” I said. “I got your note. Aunt Agatha.”
She waved me away. No welcoming smile for Bertram.
“Oh, don’t bother me now,” she snapped, looking at me as if I were more or less the last straw.
“Something up?”
“Yes, yes, yes! I’ve lost my pearls.”
“Pearls? Pearls? Pearls?” I said. “No, really? Dashed annoying. Where did you see them last?”
“What does it matter where I saw them last? They have been stolen.”
Here Wilfred the Whisker-King, who seemed to have been taking a rest between rounds, stepped into the ring again and began to talk rapidly in French. Cut to the quick he seemed. The chambermaid whooped in the corner.
“Sure you’ve looked everywhere?” I asked.
“Of course I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Well, you know, I’ve often lost a collar-stud and——”
“Do try not to be so maddening, Bertie! I have enough to bear without your imbecilities. Oh, be quiet! Be quiet!” she shouted in the sort of voice used by sergeant-majors and those who call the cattle home across the Sands of Dee. And such was the magnetism of what Jeeves called her forceful personality that Wilfred subsided as though he had run into a wall. The chambermaid continued to go strong.
“I say,” I said, “I think there’s something the matter with this girl. Isn’t she crying or something?”
“She stole my pearls! I am convinced of it.”
This started the whisker-specialist off again, and I left them at it and wandered off on a tour round the room. I slipped the pearls out of the case and decanted them into a drawer. By the time I’d done this and had leisure to observe the free-for-all once more, Aunt Agatha had reached the frozen grande-dame stage and was putting the last of the bandits through it in the voice she usually reserves for snubbing waiters in restaurants.
“I tell you, my good man, for the hundredth time, that I have searched thoroughly—everywhere. Why you should imagine that I have overlooked so elementary——“
“I say,” I said, “don’t want to interrupt you and all that sort of thing, but aren’t these the little chaps?”
I pulled them out of the drawer and held them up.
“These look like pearls, what?”
I don’t know when I’ve had a more juicy moment. It was one of those occasions about which I shall prattle to my grandchildren—if I ever have any, which at the moment of going to press seems more or less of a hundred-to-one shot. Aunt Agatha simply deflated before my eyes. It reminded me of when I once saw some chappies letting the gas out of a balloon.
“Where—where—where——?” she gurgled.
“In this drawer. They’d slid under some paper.”
“Oh!” said Aunt Agatha, and there was a bit of a silence.
I dug out my entire stock of manly courage, breathed a short prayer, and let her have it right in the thorax.
“I must say, Aunt Agatha, dash it,” I said, crisply, “I think you have been a little hasty, what? I mean to say, giving this poor man here so much anxiety and worry and generally biting him in the gizzard. You’ve been very, very unjust to this poor man!”
“Yes, yes, “chipped in the poor man.
“And this unfortunate girl, what about her? Where does she get off? You’ve accused her of pinching the things on absolutely no evidence. I think she would be jolly well advised to bring an action for—for whatever it is, and soak you for substantial damages.”
“Mais oui, mais oui, c’est trop fort!” shouted the Bandit Chief, backing me up like a good ’un. And the chambermaid looked up inquiringly, as if the sun was breaking through the clouds.
“I shall recompense her,” said Aunt Agatha, feebly.
“If you take my tip, you jolly well will, and that eftsoones or right speedily. She’s got a cast-iron case, and if I were her I wouldn’t take a cent under twenty quid. But what gives me the pip most is the way you’ve abused this poor man here and tried to give his hotel a bad name——”
“Yes, by dam’! It’s too bad!” cried the whiskered marvel. “You careless old woman! You give my hotel bad names, would you or wasn’t it? To-morrow you leave my hotel.”
And more to the same effect, all good, ripe stuff. And presently, having said his say, he withdrew, taking the chambermaid with him, the latter with a crisp tenner clutched in a vice-like grip. I suppose she and the bandit split it outside. A French hotel-manager wouldn’t be likely to let real money wander away from him without counting himself in on the division.
I