The Case of the Two Pearl Necklaces (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ two pearl necklaces so gorgeously displayed around your pretty throat. As I helped you choose it, I don't need to have it valued first. Just over a thousand pounds Arthur paid for it, I know. You're a lucky girl, Violet. Well, would you like me to give Gray-ham my cheque instead of drawing one yourself?"

      "Oh, thanks ever so!" Violet unfastened the string of lovely pearls in question and stood playing with it, running the pearls fondly through her well-manicured rather thick fingers, while Ann, picking up a pen, drew her cheque for the four hundred and seventy-five pounds. But, as Violet handed the pearls to her, Ann asked her to sit down again for a moment more.

      "You must give me a line, you know, to say that the pearls are one of the two strings I saw bought, the Queen Charlotte's pearls,' as they were called by the jeweller; and a further line to say that they are your own property, that you have a perfect right to raise a loan on them, and that you will redeem them within a month after your marriage to Arthur, at latest."

      "But surely all that's quite unnecessary between friends, as we are," Violet exclaimed, with a confident smile.

      "Absolutely necessary," was the cool and quite definite reply. "To me, at least."

      Violet met Ann's firm look and capitulated, though with an inward curse. She wrote the words dictated, signed the paper, handed it and the pearls to Ann, and received in return the cheque; then they stepped back into the other room. Mr. Grayham seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. He left one of his friends to continue paying out notes, and was at their side in a moment. Violet handed him Ann's cheque.

      "Miss Finch will settle with me," Ann said lightly. Grayham gave her a receipt, and saw them to the door, all smiles and pleasant speeches.

      At eleven next morning, Arthur was told that Miss Lovelace and Miss Walsh had called and would like to see him.

      The drawing-room in Grosvenor Square looked very pleasant that sunny morning, but it was unmistakably the drawing-room of a bachelor—or' a widower. Arthur's mother had died at his birth.

      "Kitty, what's the matter?" Arthur began, before he was well into the room.

      Kitty shook her head. She looked uneasy. "Don't ask me. This is Ann's show. She routed me out this morning and said I must come along. That it was a family matter—a 'Walsh' matter."

      Ann Lovelace—dressed in cool-looking muslin and a large, shady black hat—hesitated a moment perceptibly. Her long gloves, matching her bag and shoes, were black, and she stood smoothing them along her slender arms before she spoke.

      "It's a very serious matter, I fear," she said at length, hesitantly. "And I hate to speak of it, Arthur. Believe me, I do, indeed, but I can't help myself. It's concerned with Violet Finch."

      "Then she ought to be present," Kitty broke in hotly.

      Ann silenced her with a look—calm, but authoritative. "Not at all I On the contrary, we must first decide what is best to be done for all sakes. She borrowed close on five hundred pounds from me last night. Oh—" in reply to a quick forward step on Arthur's part. "It's not the money that troubles me I But she asked me to lend it to her on the security of one of those pearl necklaces you had given her. One of the 'Queen Charlotte's' necklaces. I agreed, and suggested the smaller one." She paused.

      "Well?" snapped Arthur. His face had flushed deeply. Even the whites of his eyes were suffused.

      Kitty was speechless. What was coming? If she knew Ann—and she did—it would be something very clever—and very unpleasant for Violet Finch. For that Ann Lovelace was no friend of Arthur's fiance, Kitty was convinced.

      With great deliberation Ann undid her black shopping bag with its chased silver mount to let her slender, coral-nailed fingers extract a string of pearls and a sheet of note-paper. "Here is what she wrote, assuring me that these pearls are her own property, and that she has therefore a perfect right to raise a loan on them. Well, by merest chance, as it happens, I heard this morning that the pearls are not at all Violet's as yet. That they are only to become her own on her wedding day; and that even then they are to be family heirlooms. Which means, of course, that she had absolutely no right whatever to pledge them to me for the requested loan."

      "I will make that pledge good," Arthur declared instantly and stiffly; and Kitty could have clapped him on the shoulder for the championship, for his deep and loyal anger at the aspersion against Violet.

      "Yes, I don't doubt that you would," Ann said gently. "But I don't see how we're going to get around a startling difficulty in the way. These pearls aren't real. This is a necklace of imitation pearls."

      "Nonsense!" Arthur exclaimed rudely, furiously, while Kitty caught her breath in, aghast.

      Violet had certainly had no shadow of right to allege—as she had in that paper; it lay on the table and Kitty was reading it—that she owned the pearls; but that was as nothing to this dreadful rider. In a few days the pearls given to Violet provisionally were to be truly her own, as Arthur's wedding gift, although to be held as an heirloom. But if there were any reality in Ann's accusation—!

      "You're talking nonsense, and spiteful nonsense!" Arthur went on still more roughly. "Of course these are the pearls I bought as part of my wedding gift."

      He reached out to seize them, but in a twinkling Ann had slipped the string over her head and down inside her frock. She had on an ostrich-feather boa, and it covered the clasp.

      "It's a lie!" Arthur exclaimed with clenching teeth, looking as though he could have struck Violet's accuser.

      "Arthur!" Ann said quietly, "I think you're growing a bit Finchy yourself. I don't tell lies, nor cheat, nor steal. For that so-called 'loan' was stolen from me. I've asked Violet to meet me here without fail; and, as I hear some car driving up in a great hurry, it's probably hers. Oh, I haven't any wish to take her character away behind her back!" she finished with an open sneer. "I tried to get the Colonel here, too but he couldn't come."

      The rage in Arthur's face again did Kitty good to see. But its occasion was tragic. If Ann's charge had any foundation...I Could it possibly have any? Ann was a serpent...Guile was her positive genius...

      Quick and not overlight feet could now be heard coming up the stairs, and Violet was shown in. Was it that Kitty's eye was distorted by the previous scene? Or did Violet usually dress with greater care? Look less—well, yes, less common?

      "What's it all about?" Violet demanded, as she entered, her colour mounting and then paling sickeningly as she saw Ann Lovelace. Kitty did not like that whitening face.

      "Miss Finch, you got me to lend you close on five hundred pounds on a sham security," Ann said clearly and haughtily. "These aren't pearls at all. They're wax beads."

      Kitty gave a sort of cry at this, and snatched in her turn at the string around Ann's neck which the wearer was touching scornfully.

      "You liar! Or you've changed them!" Violet said hoarsely. And, as she heard her, a great relief came to Kitty. Of course! Ann had dug a pit, and was now about to fall into it herself. Kitty had never before known Ann to go anything like as far as this. But, given sufficient motive—and cover—there was nothing sinister of which she believed her incapable.

      "Ah!" came from Arthur. And his tone of relief told Kitty how similarly he had been feeling. "Ah, I might have thought of that—"

      "Instead of believing her lies against me!" stormed Violet.

      "I СКАЧАТЬ