THERE IS ONE MAN alive who once inflicted a terrible hurt upon Fidelity Dove. He never claims that distinction for reasons that you will guess—but it is ten to one that you will guess them wrongly.
Before his retirement, you used to read pretty regularly about the Marquis of Gulverbury as a shining light of the House of Lords, as a patron of the Turf and of the Ring. He was the only member of the aristocracy who was a typical aristocrat of the old school, with a grave, courtly manner and an altogether charming belief in the grandeur of his caste. Fidelity Dove cultivated his acquaintance just about the time of his retirement. You have heard of the Gulverbury diamonds, and so had Fidelity.
Almost, one could write that the Marquis of Gulverbury was too much for Fidelity. For instance, he was too upright a man to be ensnared by her beauty, so she used her brains. She studied heraldry, one of his hobbies, and in their long chats together Fidelity tasted the sweets of an artistic friendship. She came to respect and admire him quite a lot, and that wasn’t very good for business.
One day when he was strangely listless, she forced herself to mention the Gulverbury diamonds.
There broke from him a laugh that made Fidelity suddenly conscious of his age. That startled her. His next words startled her more.
“Did you happen to read in your paper this morning, Miss Dove, amongst the less important news of the day, that a young man named John Hilliard drove a motorcar over the cliffs at Rottingdean yesterday and was killed? It was assumed that he ran off the road in a mist. He did not. He ran off the road deliberately. And his name was not John Hilliard, though no one will ever know that but you. He was, to be precise, Lord Paynton. He was my son.”
“Oh!” gasped Fidelity. “How great of you to tell me like that! I will not hurt you with platitudes! I will go.” She was trembling—she knew she had paled. This emotion that was sweeping her—this aching pity—frightened her by its intensity. It was so long since she had been moved.… “I will go,” she repeated.
“You asked about the diamonds that belong to our family,” continued Lord Gulverbury as if he had not heard her. “They are in the possession of Miss Lola Marron of the chorus of the Olympic Theatre. She is the one other who knows the truth about my son. He stole the diamonds from me to give to her. He left a letter, a broken-hearted letter, confessing to me what he had done and what he intended to do. This morning my agents have offered double the intrinsic value of those diamonds and have been refused. The lady is under the impression that the possession of the Gulverbury diamonds will be the foundation of her career.”
The thin lips twisted bitterly; the white head was erect, but the eyes were those of a man whom ill-fortune has beaten at last.
“I have told you thus much, and I must, if you will allow me, tell you more—for I would not have you think ill of my son. He was wounded twice in a frontier war and received the Victoria Cross. One of his wounds was in the head and he was never the same man. He had fits of violent emotionalism. This woman maddened him with her coquetry. When she had obtained the diamonds she flaunted a rival. That, I think, must have unbalanced him.”
Fidelity no longer struggled with her longing to give comfort; she let herself be swept away. She told herself that just for once she could afford to do so. She was no longer the amazing Miss Dove; she was a girl in grey who grieved with her friend. She put out a hand and laid it on the clenched fist of the old man.
“To me there is an added grief in this lamentable history. If I may speak of such a subject to you, Miss Dove, the woman gave him nothing. It would have been easier to bear if he had had the pleasure of such kindness as she could give him. But he played the infatuated fool and for the destruction of his life and honour he once kissed her finger-tips.”
There was another silence. Fidelity was softly caressing the withered hand.
“That is my personal bereavement. There is a loss that goes through me, beyond myself. I am of those, Miss Dove, who are not ashamed to own to a pride of family. My family was ennobled by Richard Cœur de Lion. Since then we have stood for service. We have fought corruption, and as for our women—those diamonds have symbolized their crystal purity. Successive generations of women have been proud to wear them. And now their work is to enhance the reputation of a courtesan. I don’t grudge the woman their worth. But I would rather they were at the bottom of the sea than that they should serve such a purpose. And as for my poor boy—I will not bore you with the tale of his gallantry when he was himself——”
“Tell me about the V.C.,” whispered Fidelity.
“You would like to hear?” The father’s eyes brightened. “It was on the eve of the battle proper. His company …”
For an hour Fidelity listened. Then she stole from the room, leaving the old man sitting in his chair staring dreamily at the visions of the past.
Fidelity left the house in Portman Square for the green peace of Regent’s Park. She walked there for an hour or more, battling with her conflicting desires. Then she took a taxi and drove home.
In the vast hall of her house in Bayswater a letter was waiting for her. It had been delivered by express messenger and it bore Lord Gulverbury’s crest—Lord Gulverbury’s handwriting.
“Dear Miss Dove,” she read.
“A few minutes after you had left a gentleman called on me who I believe is known to you—Detective-Inspector Rason of New Scotland Yard. To your attempted injury, need you have added the cruel insult of allowing me to talk about my son? You have at least given me the satisfaction of knowing that I have amused you—Gulverbury.”
Fidelity stood very still. The grand old man had talked with Rason—and now classed her beside Lola Marron. Fidelity made her way upstairs very slowly.
She noted the sombre beauty of her house as though she were a stranger; the grim Holbeins on the wall, the carvings, the stained glass, the forbidding beauty of the long corridors. It was a house that would have utterly repelled many a young girl, but she—she had created it eagerly yet carefully, had chosen the gruesome prints and the massive tapestries.
“I do not look as though I had been hurt,” she thought, as she looked at herself in the triple mirrors of her dressing-room. “Perhaps that is because I never cry. But then I was not meant to cry. I was meant—to fight.”
The fierce fighting pride drove her hurt inwards. When she entered the drawing-room, exquisite in cloth of silver, none of them knew there was aught amiss with her. Appleby, who could never shake off his professorial habits, was giving his colleagues an informal lecture on meteorology, one of his special hobbies.
“He’s been telling us what the weather’s like ninety thousand feet up,” explained Varley, the jeweller.
Fidelity forced herself into the simulation of interest.
“Ninety thousand feet!” she echoed. She gave Appleby an angelic smile. “Much learning, my friend, has made you inconsistent. A little while ago you told me that mortal man had risen no more than twenty-five thousand feet above the terrestrial sphere and lived. I fear your weather reports of the upper air were written by a novelist.”
“You don’t, Princess,” said Appleby with mock severity. “You believe every word I tell you, always.”
“Self-flattery is born of self-deception,” said Fidelity. “Here comes our news-gatherer.”
“You’ve been wasting your time with the Marquis of Gulverbury, Fidelity,” said Gorse. Fidelity winced. “The diamonds have passed into the hands of the fair Lola Marron. I don’t know exactly how, but I can find out later.”
“Why should we concern ourselves with inessentials?” asked Fidelity reprovingly. “That is mere curiosity, and as such cannot be excused.”
Gorse was the only one of the gang who could not accept with equanimity Fidelity’s pose of puritanical aloofness; he made an effort to keep his temper, however, and succeeded.
“Lola Marron lives in a suite at the Parnassus on the third floor,” he continued. “It costs her fifty pounds a week. Her official salary at the Olympic is just enough to tip the servants. I’ve got the plans of the Parnassus, so my work’s done, unless you want me on the main stunt, if you’ve decided what it is. Personally, I think hotels are the devil.”
“The devil has been exorcised by science,” announced Fidelity. She hesitated a moment, head bent. Then—“Friends, for my own reasons, I am disinclined to concern myself with this matter. If the—reward seems to you of sufficiently easy attainment, make the necessary plans and tell me my part in them.”
A week later Fidelity was told that the time was ripe. Appleby, she found, had been placed in charge.
“And what are your plans, dear friend?” she asked.
“My plan is to find out whether my self-flattery proceeds from self-deception,” said Appleby. “I have told myself that you will carry out my directions without question.”
He handed her an aluminum cylinder some eight inches in length by three in diameter.
“That will go in your bag, Fidelity.”
Fidelity nodded. She had regained her old serenity. Her eyes were lustrous, her lips slightly parted with the happy expectancy of a child who is given a magic wand.…
“We’ve got an electric bell under the hearth-rug in Miss Marron’s sitting-room, but, of course, every time anyone steps on it it rings. You’ll have to ring in code. When you make the signal the lights will go out. You will then place the diamonds in this cylinder——”
Fidelity smiled the smile of an angel.
“Having done so, you press the steel catch, and then, by means of this metal ring, slip it onto a hook which you will find just inside the chimney of the sitting-room at a point I’ll show you on this chart.”
Fidelity had opened her big grey velvet bag that might have contained a fleecy shawl, a piece of altar embroidery and, perhaps, a charitable dole or two. For the present, apparently, it was to contain an aluminum cylinder fitted with a steel catch and a metal ring.
There were men at Scotland Yard who dreamed of that grey bag.
Two days later, at a quarter to six, Fidelity called at the private office of Sir Frank Wrawton, her solicitor. She waited while he reached for his hat and then took him down to her car.
“It is very good of you to come with me, Sir Frank,” she said, as they sped in the direction of the Parnassus.
No one had ever been able to discover the real attitude of Sir Frank Wrawton to his client Fidelity Dove. Fidelity herself did not know, and she had the wisdom never to find out. It is probable—for Sir Frank had an enormous circle of acquaintances—that he was fully informed of Fidelity’s activities and was under no misapprehension as to their nature. And it was, after all, his affair. For Fidelity’s purpose, it was enough that his manner to her was courtesy itself, and that he grasped fully the futility of ever offering her advice, legal or otherwise.
“I am only too delighted—but I’m afraid I don’t yet understand what you wish me to do, Miss Dove,” said Sir Frank with a laugh. “Do I understand that you merely wish me to be present during an interview with Miss Lola Marron at the Parnassus?”
“Miss Marron very kindly consented to let me interview her and to show me her diamonds, which once belonged to the Gulverbury family, for my book, The Historic Gems of England,” explained Fidelity, her saint-like face very grave above her wonderful grey furs. “I felt a little nervous, because somehow I always seem to bring bad luck to persons who own jewellery.” Sir Frank removed his gaze to the ceiling of the car. “Also, Sir Frank, I—er—that is, I know nothing about the lady except that she is a musical comedy actress and I—I—as you know, the sect whose faith I cherish has a—possibly unfair—prejudice against the stage and its votaries——”
“Quite so, quite so, Miss Dove,” said Sir Frank with creditable vagueness. “You did very wisely, and it’s a great pleasure to me to come.”
“The evenings are beginning to draw out nicely,” said Fidelity. “We shall soon have spring with us.”
Sir Frank mumbled appropriately as the car turned into the courtyard of the Parnassus. Three minutes later they were being ushered into Miss Marron’s sitting-room; its quiet opulence had been disturbed by the chorus girl’s own litter of gaudy gew-gaws. The evening light was failing and the page who had taken them up switched on the lights as he left the room.
Lola Marron’s beauty was of the most flamboyant type, and from the moment she entered, Fidelity found herself wondering how the son of Lord Gulverbury could ever have been attracted. There was a very noticeable twang in her voice as she greeted Fidelity, and she looked at Sir Frank with a certain pleased insolence in her dark eyes.
“Sir Frank Wrawton,” murmured Fidelity. “Sir Frank is my solicitor, Miss Marron, and I have asked him to accompany me——”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Sir Frank. Come and sit over here and make yourself comfortable,” invited Lola Marron.
When Sir Frank had assured her that he was comfortable, thanked her, and refused her offer of a cocktail, Lola Marron turned to Fidelity.
“Well, now, I couldn’t quite get the hang of that letter you wrote me, Miss—er—Dove,” said Lola. “You want to see my jools, don’t you, to put in your book?”
“That is so, if you will be so kind,” said Fidelity with humility. “My book is nearly completed. I have had interviews with three duchesses, four marchionesses, and nine viscountesses.” Fidelity glanced at Sir Frank, but he was staring at his boots. “Of course, my book deals only with gems that have a history.”
“Well, all I can say is you’ve come to the right shop,” said Lola Marron, good-tempered at the idea of appearing in a galaxy of women of the aristocracy. “My joolry, as I daresay you know, used to belong to Lord Paynton. They belonged to his mother, and he came by them when he was twenty-one. He was one of my best pals——”
Fidelity’s eyes hardened until their violet gleam became a gleam of steel; but her attitude of interested attention did not falter.
“—the poor boy was dying for me to marry him. I turned him down—I simply had to. Then he said, ‘Lola,’ he said, ‘if you won’t wear those jewels my mother left me, no one shall,’ he says, ‘will you accept them as a gift?’ he says. I says, ‘Don’t be silly,’ and he says, ‘I mean it,’ he says. So I says, ‘I’ll take them if you like, but I’m going to pay for them, as it wouldn’t be right otherwise, being as I can’t marry you.’ In the end I gave him twenty thou. for them. But don’t put that bit in your book. I hate anything to do with money—it always seems sordid to me somehow. Now I’ll show them you if you like.”
Fidelity murmured pious appreciation of the favour, and Lola Marron rang for her maid.
“Fetch my joolry out of the safe and bring it here,” she ordered, and when the girl returned with the jewel cases and hovered: “All right, I’ll ring when I want you.”
Fidelity was allowed to admire in turn a diamond necklace, a pendant, two bracelets, two buckles, and a wonderful crescent for the hair. She fingered the necklace rapturously.
“Oh, how fortunate you are!” she exclaimed. “These stones are wonderful. I can almost claim to be an expert and I have rarely seen stones to equal these. And they have a history. You know their history, Miss Marron? No? You must let me tell you the story—let me see, how does it begin?” She closed her eyes and her silvery tones were hushed.
“One day—many hundreds of years ago—a stately lady had a private audience of Queen Elizabeth. ‘Madam,’ whispered the Queen, ‘you know that I fear you, but for all that I have sent your husband to the Tower.’ And the Marchioness of Gulverbury replied—replied——”
Fidelity’s memory was evidently growing a little blurred, but it revivified when she took the pendant in her hand beside the necklace.
“ ‘Your Majesty has three ships at sea,’ replied the Marchioness of Gulverbury …”
The breathless little anecdote of Court intrigue was being built up piece by piece as Fidelity piece by piece gathered the Gulverbury jewels into her hand. She touched the last piece and talked on. Her heel tapped rhythmically on the hearth-rug, but no one noticed that. When her heel had finished tapping, the lights went out. Sir Frank stifled an exclamation.
“Ow!” gasped Lola Marron and snatched at her jewels. But the jewels were not where they were when the lights went out. They were inside an aluminum cylinder. Some five seconds later, the cylinder was fixed onto a hook just inside the chimney. Fidelity’s heel tapped again in rhythm. The lights went up. Sir Frank had risen and was looking hard at Fidelity.
“My joolry!” shrieked Lola Marron. “You had it in your hand, all of it! Where is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Fidelity diffidently. “You snatched it from me as the lights went out.”
“You’ve robbed me, you little—Help! Burglars! Burglars! Help!” Lola Marron’s shrieks rang through the room. She made for the door.
Fidelity turned with a helpless little gesture to Sir Frank Wrawton.
“Oh, Sir Frank, you see what has happened! How terribly thankful I am that you are here! Oh, dear, who is this?”
As Lola reached the door it was flung open—by Detective-Inspector Rason.
“It’s all right, madam,” said Rason reassuringly.
“I’ve been robbed,” shouted Lola. Sir Frank was still eyeing Fidelity, but he had drawn her hand through his arm and was patting it—he simply couldn’t help it.
“And I know who’s robbed you,” Rason was saying. “Your jewels are either in the chimney itself now—or they’ve been taken through the wall into the next room by a crook. We were warned this afternoon that the fire-place had been tampered with and we stood by. There’s one of our fellows watching the window of the next-door room from the street below and there are two entering it at this moment. I’ll just see if the goods are still here.”
Self-flattery is born of self-deception, ran in Fidelity’s brain. She leant quite heavily upon Sir Frank’s arm as she waited while Detective-Inspector Rason examined the chimney. He flashed an electric light inside. Nothing happened.
“Sir Frank,” said Fidelity with a timid, upward glance. He was too absorbed in the detective’s growing bewilderment to hear her. “Sir Frank,” she repeated. “I think that you and I had both better remain in this room until the police have found Miss Marron’s jewellery or are convinced that neither you nor I know anything about its disappearance. In the circumstances we must not blame Miss Marron and this gentleman for distrusting us.”
A man stood in the doorway.
“Well?” snapped Rason, abandoning his search in the chimney.
“Nothing doing, sir. The fire-place has certainly been loosened, but the bricks are quite intact and there’s no communication that I can see.”
“But——”
“Yes, sir. We’ve detained the man who was in the room; he’s submitted to search, and we’re going through the room itself. The window was latched when we went in, and there’s no ventilator, and he couldn’t have passed them out of the window—nor through the door, because we were outside.”
“Phone for a female searcher,” ordered Rason. “You get onto the roof and I’ll be with you in a few minutes. Your name, sir?”
“Wrawton.”
“Sir Frank Wrawton is my solicitor,” murmured Fidelity. Rason looked at her with something approaching awe. Then, at Sir Frank Wrawton’s request, he searched him. Needless to say, the diamonds were not forthcoming.
“I was sitting over there,” volunteered Sir Frank amusedly, “so that really, however nefarious my intentions——”
At the end of an hour Fidelity had been searched; the police had satisfied themselves that no one had been on the roof—that neither were the jewels in the chimneys nor had they been removed through the chimney to another room—that they were not in the carpets or the upholstery of the room. In fact, the only discovery they made was that of a metal disc in the floor connected with a wire.
“That’s where the signal was given to put the lights out,” said Rason. “Track out where that wire runs.”
They succeeded in tracking out where the wire ran; it ran to where the floor mains had been tapped. But further they discovered nothing. Or, rather, they discovered beyond doubt that neither by door, by window, by concealment in the walls or the furniture, could the jewels be accounted for.
They proved, in fact, that the jewels could not have left the room.
Which, as Euclid used to say, was absurd.
“Were you afraid, Princess, when you sat in that room and the police came and searched the chimney—and told you all about the fire-place in the next room?” asked Appleby three hours later. “Or was my self-deception founded on reality?”
Gorse grinned. He had had the task of creating a diversion with the fire-place.
“Where are the diamonds?” asked Fidelity, demurely.
“I again flatter myself that you will believe me, Princess, when I tell you that neither I nor any of us know. Am I right?”
Fidelity’s smile answered that he was.
She asked him the same question again a week later and received the same answer. A week after that, just as they were going to sit down to lunch, Appleby handed her the Gulverbury jewels.
“Now you have teased me, tell me,” begged Fidelity. She could see by the others’ faces that there was a huge joke on and she was willing to play up to it. She loved them all, but not in the sense that each of them separately wished her to love him.
“You handed in the opinion, Fidelity,” said Appleby with ponderous good-humour, “that the—er—weather reports of the atmosphere at a height of ninety thousand feet were written by a novelist. In point of fact, they are written by little instruments that record such dull things as pressures and so forth with complete accuracy. Do you wish to know who takes the little instruments up there?”
“Yes, please,” said Fidelity, meekly.
“No one takes them up there,” said Appleby. “They are sent. They are attached to small balloons, not very much larger than a child’s balloon. So little as ten cubic feet of hydrogen will lift, roughly, one pound weight. These little balloons go on ascending until they reach an enormous height and then they burst. Attached to these scientific instruments is a parachute and a float—and a label offering a reward to anyone who forwards them to the authorities.”
“Oh!” said Fidelity, as light broke upon her. “How did you prevent these being sent to the authorities?”
“We didn’t. They were sent to the authorities—the authorities of the International Meteorological and Aviation Observance Society, of which Varley was last week elected president—er—by the unanimous vote of the society, which consisted of Gorse, Garfield, Maines and myself. Our offices are in Cockspur Street—or, rather, they were. The society has gone into liquidation, after paying the reward.”
Fidelity clapped her hands in congratulation.
“But wait a minute,” she interrupted herself. “The wire in the chimney was attached to a balloon. Where was the balloon?”
“The wire ran up the chimney—and from the chimney through the window into the room I occupied on the top floor. The balloon, by the way, was not a balloon as you understand the word. It was twelve balloons, each the shape of those sort of super-German-sausages you sometimes see in Bond Street. They were, of course, tied together, and their lifting power was as great as a single balloon that just could not get through the doorway—still less the window. As Maines flicked up the lights in reply to your O.K. signal, I simply let my super-sausages out of the window. Some five seconds later they were hauling your cylinder to the upper air. Above that hook to which you fixed the cylinder, was a complete outfit as used by the real Meteorological Society.”
For a moment Fidelity was silent. There came into her eyes the look that had been there—an hour after she had left Lord Gulverbury.
“Appleby, you have not restored my faith, for it had never waned. But I have learned in all humility to guard my tongue from careless speech. I feel a certain affection for these stones that have been the means of admonishing me. I would like to buy them from the firm. Will you value them, Varley?”
“I will not, Fidelity.”
“It is your birthday, Princess,” said Appleby with amazing gentleness.
Fidelity started. She had genuinely forgotten the fact. Though none of them knew Fidelity’s age, all of them knew her birthday. For a moment she hesitated, then she gathered up the jewels and slipped them into the big grey bag.
“You are all so good to me,” she said, and her voice was like the croon of a bird at eve. “These stones, what are they?—pretty toys that may corrupt, or be destroyed, or taken from me; but the spirit in which you have given them to me will be mine forever.”
Gorse groaned. His career held no regrets for him, but he could have dispensed with the “sermonettes.” Fidelity glanced at him indulgently. She detained him after lunch when he would have left with the others.
“Gorse, my news-gatherer who despises me, I seek a favour of you,” said Fidelity.
“It is the same as a command,” said Gorse dully.
“Then bring to me here—by any means other than that of physical force—the Marquis of Gulverbury.”
Gorse brought him by artifice. The Marquis did not even know that he was coming to see Fidelity. The house gave him no hint. When the door of the study closed behind him and he faced the grey-clad form and dream-like face, he was for a moment incapable of speech.
“Lord Gulverbury, you wrote to me recently saying that I intended to steal your diamonds. You were quite right. I have succeeded. Here they are.”
The bag was on her wrist. From it she drew handfuls of crystal fire. She let them slip through her fingers and clatter down upon the polished table.
“You stole them!” gasped Lord Gulverbury.
“Yes—I have stolen them—but not in the same manner in which Lola Marron stole them. I am not a moral philosopher, Lord Gulverbury, but one of my friends is, and I have no doubt that he could prove to you that I have a great deal more right to them than Miss Lola Marron.”
“I can guess the purpose of your having sent for me,” said Lord Gulverbury. “I betrayed to you the fact that I value those diamonds for their association. My agents offered Miss Lola Marron twenty thousand pounds for them. I will pay you the same.”
“My price is higher than that,” said Fidelity, her eyes pools of contemplation.
Lord Gulverbury winced.
“Forty thousand. It is all that I can afford,” he said haltingly.
“It is far, far more than that, Lord Gulverbury. My price is that you accept those stones from me as a gift.”
They looked at one another. Then—
“I understand,” said Lord Gulverbury. “In profound humility, I apologize.”
Fidelity extended her hand.
“Madame, I am proud to accept your gift,” said Lord Gulverbury, that gallant of the old school. He stooped over her hand, and, like the grand seigneur he was, touched her fingers with his lips.
