Chapter TEN

Mr. Collop came out, dressed, he was surprised to find his host waiting for him, not to say waylaying him, in the passage outside.

"I thought ..." began the politician nervously--"I thought I ought to have a word with you, Mr. Collop, before we ..."

"That's right!" roared Mr. Collop. "That's my style too. Always think of everything!"

"Not so loud! Not so loud!" implored his agonized host. He took the detective aside into yet another room with yet another fire. It looked like some little nursery or schoolroom, and Mr. Collop, used as he was to the houses of the great, marvelled at so many rooms, so many fires ... an empty room all ready, and with so many pictures in it, though on a bedroom floor.

"Mr. Collop," said the Home Secretary hurriedly when he had shut the door, "I thought I ought to tell you privately, and alone, before we go down to dinner what the circumstances are. The jewel was dropped by my daughter--last night after dinner. My three guests went down on the floor at once to look for it--it was upon the polar-bear rug which you will see in the West Room later. We shall go there together after all have retired. When they got up it had not been found ... they _said_ it had not been found ... they _all_ said it had not been found.... There is suspicion naturally, Mr. Collop.... You understand me?"

"There's always suspicion when vallybles are missing," said Mr. Collop, after some thought.

"Yes, Mr. Collop, exactly! Precisely!" said the Home Secretary. "But of course, you know, I must be told when you come to any clue.... I blame no one. I suspect no one.... But the emerald is missing. And what's more," he added with the firmness of a newly stuffed pillow, "I shall not spare the culprit."

"No, of course not," said Mr. Collop sympathetically. "I'll get it for you, never fear."

His manner, though hearty, was respectful enough in such privacy, for he knew that though his promotion depended principally upon permanent officials, a good word from one of the fleeting politicians was not without its value at the Home Office. Therefore did he forbear to lay a hand upon the Home Secretary's shoulder; and therefore--still more--did he forbear to slap it as nature would have seemed to demand.

"Thank you, Mr. Collop," said the Home Secretary gratefully, as though he had been given a considerable sum of money. "I trust you. I trust you implicitly."

"You may trust me _im_plicitly and _ex_plicitly," declared Mr. Collop in solemn religious tones.

"Thank you, oh! Ah! Thank you! Thank you again! Thank you most warmly!" said his host more and more nervously. "Really you know, we must not be seen together. Pray take your time, Mr. Collop; the ladies are always late coming down."

"Ah, that's their sort, ain't it? Girls are the devil nowadays, aren't they?" said Mr. Collop in his friendliest tones; and with that farewell in his ears the master of the house slipped out.

The Home Secretary's next action was to go straight to McTaggart's room. It was an act of decision and initiative that you would hardly have expected in so well-bred a man. But suffering is a powerful tonic. He knew what he was after. He had to speak. He would come boldly, directly and simply. He would tell the young man of what he was accused, and ask him straightforwardly and at once to clear himself--or at any rate to say "yes" or "no." He knocked on the door; he went in; and he began thus:

"Ah, Mr. McTaggart! Mr. McTaggart! I'm afraid I am interrupting you in your dressing. It is really very rude of me! I wish ... But the fact is ... It's rather important.... I want to put it to you as clearly as I can, and you'll understand me when I say that time presses after a fashion ... so to speak...."

McTaggart was at the last stage when the male brushes the hair before he puts on the coat; all the rest of the detestable ritual was accomplished, including the sacrosanct tie. He stood gaping with his round face, a brush in either hand. Then he said:

"Yes, certainly, sir, if you please." He rapidly brushed his disordered hair into a shape yet more disordered, struggled into his coat, and then, with an odd reminiscence of manner elsewhere, said, "Won't you sit down," feeling that he was a temporary host, as it were, a host within his host's house; a nest of Chinese boxes.

"Thank you," said the Home Secretary. "Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you." And he sank his long, lean and therefore gentlemanly body into the only armchair. He crossed his long, lean and therefore gentlemanly legs, poised his two hands together like a steep Norwegian roof, and said:

"Mr. McTaggart, you will think it very odd of me, this invasion of your ... er, your, ah ... privacy? Yes, your privacy, er! If I may say so. But there is something very important I must say to you before we go down to dinner."

"Yes, sir," said McTaggart, still expectant, as he slowly filled his pockets with the various things which journalists carry about with them, even among the great, and which destroy the shape of their clothes.

"Mr. McTaggart ..." began the Home Secretary desperately, now leaning forward with his elbow on his knee and his forehead in his hand. "What I have to say is not very easy, but it is best to get these difficult things over at once. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, certainly," said McTaggart.

"I mean," said the Home Secretary, "it would be a great pity to waste a moment in beating about the bush. There's no sense in mere verbiage and slow approach to the essentials. Moreover, my time is short: I mean our time is short.... I mean there's not much time before dinner, and to tell the truth, that's why I came in here, so apparently suddenly.... What was I saying?"

Then, looking up and leaning back again in the chair: "But we need not go into all that. As I say, the great thing is to come to the point at once, isn't it?"

McTaggart was tired of standing up. He sat down in another chair, and said "Yes," with a look of expectancy not quite unmixed with approaching boredom.

"Well, Mr. McTaggart," went on the great statesman at last desperately, like a man who has determined to take a plunge. "You will excuse my being quite blunt and straightforward, won't you?"

"Of course," said McTaggart.

"I mean, we have already agreed that wasting time in preliminaries over a matter of this kind ..."

"But a matter of _what_ kind?" said McTaggart, now roused--though his guilty soul told him well what was coming.

"Well, the fact is, Mr. McTaggart," said the Home Secretary, suddenly uncoiling himself and straightening out the joints until he stood up above the younger man--he felt it gave him a kind of moral advantage, and he needed it--"the fact is, it's only fair to tell you ... only the difficulty is how to put it. But one must be straightforward, mustn't one?"

And once more Mr. McTaggart said "Yes." But certain ancient traditions of the middle class were stirring in his blood and he very nearly added, "You doddering old fool."

"Why then, Mr. McTaggart, to put it quite plainly, ... well, now, perhaps I ought to say this first. You know my cousin William? The Professor?"

"Yes," said Mr. McTaggart, for the sixth time and with a touch of savagery in his voice, "I do. I have been in this house with him for over twenty-four hours."

"He tells me, Mr. McTaggart," began the Home Secretary seriously and half an octave lower--"mind you, I don't say I believe it!"

"No?" said McTaggart, "Well, go on."

"He tells me he has proof, scientific proof-- Mind you, I don't say I believe him! I'm only saying what he said."

"Yes," said McTaggart, for the seventh time, and with more patience.

"Scientific proof, I say--not personal, you understand. No personal insinuation whatever--only _scientific_ proof that the emerald is or was--shall I say, has been, upon your--damn it all!--_person_."

McTaggart started up. The issue was joined. He behaved very well.

"Mr. de Bohun," he said, in a slow but frank and straightforward way, "you are not bound to believe me. But not only have I not the emerald, but I will not even take the trouble to swear I have not got it. _I have not got the Emerald_. Is that clear?"

"Yes," said his unfortunate host. With a world of apology in his voice and stretching forth a deprecating hand! "Oh, yes, Mr. McTaggart! Yes, quite clear!"

"Not only have I _not_ got the emerald," McTaggart went on with painfully clear diction, "but I know who has."

"Oh! Lord," thought the Home Secretary, "another of 'em!" Then he said aloud: "Ah? Oh! most _interesting_! Who?"

The other phrases he had heard during the last twenty-four hours crowded upon him, and he felt slightly faint.

"Yes," said McTaggart, continuing in a virile intonation, "I know who has it. _Mr. Collop has it_!"

"What?" shouted the Home Secretary, startled into a lucid interval of terseness. "Think what you are saying, young man! Collop! He wasn't in the house when it was lost! He's only just come."

"That's true," hesitated the journalist, slowly turning over in his own mind how he should get out of this mess. "But I tell you what, I tell you he's got it.... It's only an instinct," he added with sudden humility. "I have these odd feelings sometimes--and they are usually right. My mother was a Highland woman, and I am the seventh son of a seventh son. I don't pretend to any proof. All I say is"--more firmly--"Mr. Collop has got the emerald." He gathered confidence. He struck his left open palm with his right fist and said: "Mr. de Bohun, Mr. Collop has got the emerald ... and as for me, you may go through my pockets, here and now, you may have me searched, here and now if you will, and all my clothes and all the drawers in the room and every corner in the room, and anything else you will. And what's more," he said, as he saw still further weakness in that weak old face, "I mean to stay in this house till the emerald appears. I owe that to my honour."

"Oh, Mr. McTaggart," said the Home Secretary imploringly, and even as he spoke, he heard steps on the stairs and knew that they must be going down, "don't misunderstand me! I am not accusing you! I wouldn't accuse you for a moment! I am only saying ... I am only repeating to you what was told to me. Indeed, I should be treating you very ill had I not done so. Don't you agree?" and he actually seized the young man's hand.

McTaggart accepted the gesture.

"I am grateful, sir," he said simply. "I quite understand that a man in my position would be naturally suspected."

"Don't say that, Mr. McTaggart"--all the gentleman in him arising to patronize poverty--"don't say that!"

"I say I can understand that a man in my position should be suspected. But you will see; mark my words, you will see after no long space of time that I was right. I have an instinct in such things."

"But damn it all! Mr. McTaggart! Collop? Damn it all, think!"

"No," said Mr. McTaggart, moving towards the door, "I tell you I am sure, for I had it in a dream." And he and his bewildered host went downstairs.

The Home Secretary, as he moved by the young man's side towards the big drawing-room where they were all to assemble, felt in his mind something like a kaleidoscope or like the music in the drunken scene of "The Master Singer," or like a Wiggle-Woggle or like the Witching Waves.... Galton had seen Cousin William with the emerald. He had seen it with his own eyes--or else he lied. Cousin William had worked an infallible scientific test, and the Emerald had certainly been on McTaggart or else _he_ lied. And yet McTaggart had not got it--or else _he_ lied. The Home Secretary's powerful mind kept on returning to the central point, "How the hell could they _all_ have it, and least of all how could Collop have it? That _must_ be nonsense! ... Anyhow, Collop was there, that was a relief. It was his business to find out." Had Mr. de Bohun been in the habit of prayer he would have prayed fervently that Collop would track down the real man.

But side by side with that relief rose an immense wave of apprehension, for he remembered what manner of deep-sea beast Collop was, and he sickened at the coming ordeal of the dinner.

Nor was he wrong.

* * * * * * *

In the hall the Devil and the Angel were having a most furious row.

"What I want to bring home to you," said the Devil, pressing a red-hot forefinger upon a smoking palm, "is that you've intruded. You've done something I only had the right to do. It was my place to suggest McTaggart passing the Emerald on!"

"It was nothing of the sort," said the Angel angrily. "You're like all devils; you won't listen to reason." Then he began to count off on the larger feathers of his wing. "Firstly, it's up to me to protect the young man. _Secondly_, it does no sort of harm if the 'tec finds that stone; why, it's all the better for him! It relieves a lot of honest and dishonest men from suspicion. Thirdly"-- Here he hesitated, as theologians often do upon thirdly, thinking what he could scrape up. But the Devil interrupted him.

"Never mind your 'thirdly.' It's a dirty trick, slipping jewels into people's pockets! And dirty tricks are my stunts, not yours. Wasn't it me," he added with a rising grievance in his voice, "that made the old Don stick it into his pocket to begin with?"

Then the Angel played the trick which I am sorry to say is always being played upon poor devils: he played the trick of the superior person.

"Well," he said, "you may be right. I can't bother about it. I've got something else to do, and you can go back to hell."

The Devil, stung beyond endurance, grappled and closed. They wrestled magnificently and it was fifty-fifty--as it always is with devils and angels in this world--when the Angel began to get the worst of it. The Devil, though shorter, was in far better training--humanity had seen to that--and he was pressing the Angel down, when the Angel, without scruple, began to increase his size and strength prodigiously, till he towered above the poor Devil like a giant and half broke his back.

"You're cheating!" gasped the Devil. "You're working a miracle!"

"Anything's fair with devils!" said that most unjust Angel.

With which words he transferred himself into the sixth dimension, and the Devil, snubbed, angered, disappointed, impotent to revenge himself, burning to be eased by some ill deed, flew through the night to the Duchess's--it was only four miles--and inspired her with the odious thought that she should start yet another league for bothering the poor. After such beastly solace he went back for the moment to his own place.