The Case of the Two Pearl Necklaces. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ going to marry outside his Church, even apart from other considerations. There had been a time when he had seen a great deal of Arthur...when he had cherished strong hopes of getting him, too, to enter a Religious Life, either as a Priest or as a Brother. But in these last years Arthur had drawn away more and more from Ambrose, had left his letters unanswered, had refused to be in when he called...To any one who knew Ambrose Walsh at all, Arthur could have done nothing better calculated to make his cousin more firmly determined on getting his own way—even had there been no religious dynamic involved.

      In silence he opened the door now for Kitty's departure and she felt herself still in pinafores, morally, as she said good-bye to him. She went down at once to Friar's Halt, and saw, as she stepped into Colonel Walsh's study, that he knew. He looked as though he had had a great shock.

      "You've seen Ann," she said without hesitation.

      He nodded. "She met me going to my club." He paused as Arthur came hurrying into the house and the room. He had driven Violet home, and had had a hard task to convince her that to him she was beyond suspicion, far above reproach. But he had succeeded in doing so. Now, as soon as he saw his father's face, he, too, knew that the Colonel had been met by Ann and her story.

      His own face hardened; his back straightened; his jaw set.

      "I'd like you to stay, Kitty," was his greeting, "as Violet's friend. Thank God, you're not prejudiced against her!"

      "No, I'm not," Kitty replied. Hearing which, the Colonel wheeled on her.

      "What? You don't believe—?" He checked himself. "Look here," he began again, "I don't think we need drag you into this harrowing question, Kitty, except for one vital query. Have you ever known Ann Lovelace to tell a lie? I don't mean those polite, stereotyped words which we all use as 'delighted' to meet people, or 'sorry' to see them go, etcetera. I mean by a 'lie' a deliberate, downright falsehood. Have you ever heard her utter one?"

      "No," Kitty answered reluctantly. "But I've known her do still worse when it suited her game. I've known her so to put the truth so that it sounded more false than any outright lie could be."

      "Oh, quite possible,"—agreed the Colonel promptly. "But subtlety of that sort need not be considered here, even if a fact. For here Ann makes certain definite assertions. She declares that she lent a considerable sum of money to Miss Finch on the pledged security of a certain necklace which was not, as Miss Finch stated them to be, her own property, and which, moreover, is not a string of real pearls, but a wax imitation. Ann and I went to Rinks', and saw the assistant manager who dealt with the affair. He assured me that the necklace shown him by Miss Lovelace earlier this morning was an exact facsimile of the shorter of the two necklaces which you, Arthur, bought of them.

      "He agreed, too, with Ann that such a copy could only have been made from the original; and then only by an expert craftsman. He also further affirmed that the imitation Ann showed him was an exact duplicate of the original pearl necklace in weight and colour. For Ann had made him go into the matter very thoroughly indeed before coming to you, Arthur.

      "Now, my boy, I'm inexpressibly sorry for your terrible shock; but I can't see that there's any possibility that Ann is not telling the absolute truth about it. She says you have taken possession of the paper written by Violet herself—" At this point Colonel Walsh caught sight of aghast Kitty, and insisted on her leaving them. He had quite forgotten her presence. And this was no question of attitude to one or the other girl. It was a question of actual facts; and the Colonel uncompromisingly held that he and his only son must sift these to the bottom together.

      Kitty glanced back at her cousin. He looked like a man bracing himself for a bitter struggle, but firmly determined not to yield an inch of ground. And something in her leapt to meet this new Arthur, while her heart seemed a stricken thing.

      As the door closed behind her, there was a second's silence, then Arthur said: "I have just given Violet those pearls outright, sir, though they will still be my wedding present to her. So she has a perfect right to raise money on them in such a position as she found herself in last night; a position, too, into which she had been jockeyed by Ann Violet had no other way of paying her gaming debt there and then. And, seeing that clearly, she took it. Ann had grossly deceived her as to the value of the discs with which they were playing. She had told her that they represented shillings, whereas they were pounds. Violet's no practised gambler, sir."

      "Even though her mother had long kept what were essentially gambling hells?" the Colonel asked gently, for he was desperately sorry for his unhappy son.

      "Just because of that, sir," Arthur said soberly. "I didn't conceal from you that, had I known beforehand whose daughter she was, I wouldn't have avoided her. But as it was...and is... she's the only woman in the world for me. She's quite incapable of the charge against her." He stopped. Arthur was never given to long speeches. His father's eyes were unrelenting, although his voice had real compunction in its tones.

      "Sorry, my dear boy; but after what has come indubitably to light there can be no going on with the wedding. Surely you must see that, too?"

      "I surely do not, sir!" Arthur's tones were no less firm than his father's. "It's a vile plot, Ann Lovelace's plot against Violet. I won't let her, or any one, come between me and the girl I love I Violet's as true as steel. Honest, loyal, honourable. Without a crooked fibre in her."

      "She lied deliberately when she pledged those pearls as her own property," the Colonel said in a grim voice. "No, no "—as Arthur made a violent movement. "That's not all by a long way. But it is a thing to which you can't shut your eyes. Ann didn't write that I.O.U. Miss Finch wrote it herself, alleging both that she owned the pearls and that the string which she was handing over to Ann as security for the loan was one of the two that Ann had helped her choose and seen taken. The value of which Ann could therefore take on trust. And I cannot see any loophole where Miss Finch wasn't lying about that last, too."

      Arthur kept silent with an effort; but he looked furious and obstinate.

      "You know," the Colonel went on, "what I feel about a lie. It's not prejudice. It's not attaching an exaggerated importance to something that really means very little. All civilisation, all intercourse, all business, is built up on the belief that you can rely on a deliberate assertion. Why, Religion itself depends on that! I cut your brother Gerald off as I did because he was a deliberate liar; in other words, a moral leper. Do you mean to tell me that you intend to choose such a leper for your wife? For the mother of your children?"

      "I maintain that it is Ann who is the 'moral leper' here," Arthur said hotly. "I deny absolutely that Violet was lying when she scribbled down those words about being the owner of the pearls. I had told her yesterday that they would be hers—absolutely—on her wedding day. As for the effective use that Ann made of an imitation necklace on which to base her accusations against Violet, I intend to have that curiously plausible production drastically investigated, you may rest assured, Pater! And you may also rest assured that my wife's honour will be irrefutably vindicated," Arthur's voice rang out. And like Kitty, his father rated him the higher for his unshakable and impassioned championship of the girl he loved. Yet Colonel Walsh was no less convinced that his son was the victim of a sheer infatuation.

      "Love is often blind," he said gravely.

      "I'm not blind!" Arthur exclaimed hotly. "Ann Lovelace hasn't succeeded in pulling her unscrupulously clever wool over my eyes, as she has, apparently, over yours, sir."

      The Colonel took it quietly. He was too sorry for his son, too certain that he would yet know the bitterness of awaking, to be angry.

      "How do you mean to prove your case?" he asked, "since you intend to do so?"

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