Byways to Evil. Lloyd Biggle, jr.

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СКАЧАТЬ you aren’t wearing any of it.”

      “He said he needed money to pay some debts so we could get married.”

      “And your father didn’t like him?”

      She shook her head tearfully.

      “Have you seen him or heard from him since you gave him your jewellery?”

      She shook her head again.

      “Describe him as best you can.”

      She did so and also gave us the Bloomsbury address where he had claimed to be living. One of her father’s grooms—his daughter had been her nurse, and she felt able to trust him—had made enquiries there after the man stopped seeing her. The landlady claimed the man wasn’t known at that address.

      She had met him at Lord’s at the Oxford-Cambridge cricket match. She had thought he was with some friends of hers. Later, when her father enquired, the friends denied any knowledge of him. Her father considered him an interloper looking for a girl to pick up, which was one reason he had taken such a violent dislike to him.

      The man told her his name was Kingsley Lyman. He seemed very pleasant. He did nothing at all improper, then or later. When she introduced him to her parents, they said he was no gentleman, but he had been to Oxford—

      “Or so he said,” Lady Sara observed. “I know the rest of the story. You kept meeting him, and you fell in love. Finally he asked you to marry him as soon as he was able to pay his debts, so you gave him your jewellery.”

      She nodded. Sobs shook her body.

      “All right. I know all about this man. He has been involved in shady business before—a lot of shady business. Sit down at the desk and make a complete list of every item of jewellery you gave him. Describe it as carefully as you can and don’t leave anything out. It may be possible to recover some or even most of it.”

      Once Blanche Dillion had accepted my presence, she paid no further attention to me. During her sad tale of deception, she did not send a glance in my direction. Her attitude was not uncommon among Lady Sara’s titled friends. A girl like Blanche could fall madly in love with a crook pretending to be a gentlemen, but she was unlikely to make this kind of mistake about Lady Sara’s secretary and assistant, however upright and presentable he might be. Only too obviously, he was no gentleman—he worked for a living.

      At one time Lady Sara had been concerned that I might fall in love with one of these young women from titled families. That could have been devastating for me; like Blanche Dillion, all of them accepted my presence without really being aware of my existence.

      But Lady Sara need not have worried. After my association with her, they and their fluttery lives that revolved so exclusively around their social concerns seemed shallow and frivolous, not to mention downright silly.

      While Blanche was making her list, we returned to the drawing room for a talk with Lady Cowlan.

      “So sorry to bother you, Sara, dear,” Lady Cowlan said gushingly when the maid had poured more coffee for her. “My brooch is missing—the gold one with diamonds. It was my mother’s, you know, and her mother’s, and her mother’s, and I don’t know how far back it goes, it’s a family heirloom. I’m afraid it’s been stolen, and I had so counted on giving it to Melantha.”

      “When did you first miss it?”

      “Oh, days and days ago. I don’t often wear it, and at first I thought I had mislaid it. I often do. But now I’ve searched and searched, and the servants have searched and searched, and it isn’t anywhere. I just realized yesterday that it must have been stolen.”

      “Do you suspect anyone?”

      “Goodness, no! If I suspected anyone, I would have got rid of them. I wouldn’t have a servant in the house who stole things.”

      “Would you describe it for Colin?”

      “Well it’s an oval, about—” She waveringly held up two fingers. “—this big.” She could have been indicating three inches or six. “It’s gold, of course, with little diamonds around the edge and a big one in the centre.”

      “Very well, dear,” Lady Sara said. “You finish your coffee, and then I’ll send Colin home with you. The first thing is to make a really thorough search. When he has done that, he can talk with your servants.”

      She turned to me. “Oh! Would you?”

      “I should be honoured, my lady,” I told her.

      While she gulped her coffee and finished the biscuit she was eating, Lady Sara took me aside. “What a parcel of dreary problems,” she said wearily. “It’s a gold antique brooch that Lady Cowlan is missing, oval, two and a half inches long by an inch high. It has ten small diamonds around the perimeter and a large one in the centre about a half carat in weight. Because it is so old, its value as an antique would certainly be far greater than the value of the stones and the gold separately, but a thief might not know that. If it really was stolen, it probably has been broken up and disposed of by now. Her servants are highly reliable, and they dote on her. I’m sure none of them took it nor would any of them cooperate with a thief. I think it much more likely that she lost or mislaid it. Find out when she last wore it and what gown she wore it on.”

      We had a short ride down Park Lane in the Viscountess’s carriage. Dorothy, her maid, a sensible, middle-aged woman who had been with her for years, told me she had searched every drawer and container that could possibly have contained the brooch.

      “What gown was the Viscountess wearing when she last wore it?” I asked.

      This occasioned an argument between Dorothy and another maid. Neither of them remembered, and of course the Viscountess had no recollection of it. Finally Dorothy went to a wardrobe crammed with dresses, one of several such wardrobes, and took out a gown, a showy arrangement of silk that must have looked odd on the elderly Viscountess.

      On the breast of the gown was pinned the brooch.

      It was a typical triumph for Lady Sara—a brilliant solution to a problem that proved to be trivial only because of her brilliant solution. As was usually the case, someone else got the credit. I was warmly embraced by the Viscountess, congratulated by Dorothy, and viewed as a miracle-worker by all of the servants, who had been extremely distressed over the Viscountess’s loss. Her butler presented me with a bottle of a fine old port that I knew I didn’t have the palate to properly appreciate.

      I took it home with me and gave it to Lady Sara. This was one of the few times her prowess brought her a tangible reward.

      After I returned to Connaught Mews, Lady Sara and I discussed the river thefts. She first wanted to know about the Thames Police’s detective staff.

      “The detectives use disguised boats and follow no schedules at all, but there are too few of them,” I said. “Occasionally they happen onto booty that’s been sunk in waterproof bags and buoyed with an innocent-looking float of some kind, but almost always this turns out to be smuggled goods. The smugglers cache them here and there in small quantities, and the occasional discovery of a hiding place is no great loss to them. As far as the police are concerned, these are worthwhile ‘finds,’ but they have nothing to do with the river thefts.”

      “What СКАЧАТЬ