Chapter TWENTY-SIX: Meeting Mrs. Bonsor

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” said Scottie sternly.

“You haven’t grown religious too, have you, Mr. Scottie?” asked Big Martin in some anxiety.

Scottie was sitting on his bed in the little house in Castle Street, and his companion was that same attendant who had scuttled upstairs at the sound of Andy’s knock. He was not naturally of a retiring disposition, but before announcing the arrival of Andrew Macleod he had, in his argot, taken a “dekko” at the visitor through the front-room window. And the “dekko” had produced a slight palpitation of heart.

He was called “Big” Martin because his height did not exceed four feet six inches, and there was a time when there wasn’t a handier man than Big Martin for getting through a small scullery window in the profession.

Of late, however, good living had broadened him sideways and frontways, and, like many another specialist, he found now that his special qualities which had given him an advantage over his fellows had failed, and he was wholly unfitted for the general practice of his calling.

Scottie he had served in many capacities. He was an indefatigable reader of newspapers and a remarkable collector of information, and could reconnoitre a house with greater acumen than anybody Scottie had known in the course of a long and interesting career.

It was Big Martin who peddled buttons at kitchen doors and heard all the domestic gossip which was so useful to his various employers.

Scottie was above this kind of work. He had specialised in dealers in precious stones, and that required a more highly efficient intelligence department than Big Martin could supply. Yet Big Martin was useful. He maintained the establishment in Castle Street during Scottie’s absences, he ran errands, made beds, and could at a pinch cook a simple meal.

“No, I haven’t got religious,” admitted Scottie, breathing on his spectacles and polishing them with a corner of the sheet, “but I have got careful. Have you ever heard the tale about the pitcher and the well?”

“No,” said Big Martin suspiciously. “Is there a catch in it?”

“There is a catch in it,” said the other grimly, and added: “I have made enough money to live quietly.”

Mr. Martin wrinkled his face.

“If you don’t do it somebody else will,” he said. “She’s asking for it, walking about with all them diamonds.”

It was Fate, thought Scottie.

“You needn’t tell me anything about her,” he interrupted the intelligence department. “I’ve met her socially. Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor, near-American. Suite 907, Great Metropolitan Hotel.”

“A bank couldn’t buy her pearls,” urged Big Martin. “They’re as big as that.” He made an “o” of his forefinger and thumb. “Diamonds! You never saw anything like it, Mr. Scottie.”

“I know; but she keeps them in the hotel safe,” suggested Scottie, and the other made a discouraging noise.

“Not she! My cousin’s in the kitchen there, that’s how I got to hear about it. She peels potatoes.”

“Who, Mrs. Bonsor?”

“No, my cousin.”

Scottie was thoughtful. His fingers were busily playing a tune on his knee and his gaze was absent.

“No, I don’t think so, Martin,” he said. “Macleod would know it was me, and besides——” He hesitated and was about to speak, and changed his mind.

Big Martin would not understand his views in relation to Stella Nelson. It would be untrue to say that Scottie was reformed, or, if he was reformed, that he harboured any penitence for his past ill-deeds. The principal factor in whatever reformation had come about was the factor of personal safety. There was really no reason why he should take the risk. He was fairly well off. The Regent Street haul had sold well—one of the purchasers was a witness who helped to prove his alibi—and he had got another nest-egg which, together with his more recent acquisitions, would keep him in comparative comfort all the days of his life.

“I’ll go and have another look at this Mrs. Bonsor,” he said, and Martin rubbed his hands joyously. “Not that I believe she’s such a hell-fired fool as you make her out to be. Where does she come from?”

“Saint Barbara,” said the other.

“Santa Barbara, so she does,” corrected Scottie. “She told me—maybe she knows some friends of mine on the Pacific slope. And talking of friends, Big ’un, I saw you last night coming out of Finnagin’s with a perfect gentleman.”

Big Martin looked uncomfortable.

“He’s a reporter,” he said.

“What a bit of news!” said Scottie sarcastically. “As if I didn’t know he was a reporter. What did he want?”

“It was about a job I was on four years ago,” said Big Martin. “I got eighteen months for it—Harry Weston’s job.”

“I know it, and if he hadn’t remembered it he would have looked it up. Any cop would have given him particulars and saved him that trouble. Well?”

“He was quite friendly; asked me what had become of Harry. We just chatted.”

Scottie’s lip curled.

“As if he didn’t know that Harry is doing seven years in Parkhurst! Well, you chatterer, what did you chat about?”

Big Martin was now thoroughly alarmed. What _had_ he said?

“If I die this minute I didn’t say anything about you. He knew you were here and asked how your hand was.” Scottie groaned. “But I didn’t tell him. He’s a good friend of yours, Scottie; said that if you was ever in trouble to send for him. Those were his very words.”

“Take ’em, tie ’em up, and hand ’em to him,” said Scottie. “You didn’t tell him that Macleod knew all about it, did you?”

“He didn’t want telling,” said the other with satisfaction.

“You never could hold anything in your head,” said Scottie, resigned, and began to change.

He dressed himself with care, found at the bottom of a box a small case filled with cards, and selected one. It described him as Professor Bellingham, and the address was Pantagalla, Alberta. There was no such town on the map as Pantagalla, but he had once lived in a suburban boarding-house which bore that name, and it seemed sufficiently Canadian.

The reception clerk at the Great Metropolitan discovered that Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor was in and the bell-boy carried his card to her, during which time Scottie sat in an easy chair, seemingly absorbed in his thoughts, but in reality watching every man that entered or left the vestibule. The hotel detective he spotted at once. He wore that strained expression which all hotel detectives adopt, and is never wholly absent from the face of any detective.

Presently the bell-boy came back and conducted him to the third floor, ushering him into an expensive suite (Scottie knew exactly how much _per diem_ that suite cost).

The lady who was standing by the window looking out turned at the entrance of Scottie.

“Good-morning,” she said briskly, “Mr.——”

“Professor Bellingham,” said Scottie deferentially. “We met before, you remember?”

“We surely did. I couldn’t read your card without my glasses,” she said. “Sit down, Professor. Now, isn’t it nice of you to look me up?”

It was Scottie’s experience that nobody was quite like what they were when he met them before, but he was not prepared for the surprising sameness of Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor. If anything she was now more expensively garnished than when he had seen her lolling in her large car. Her jewels were magnificent. When she raised her hand it glittered as a jeweller’s window display. There must have been a ring on every finger, and there was certainly three diamond bracelets on one arm which must have been worth a fortune.

All Scottie’s old predatory instincts were aroused. It was a sin and a shame that this woman should have all these wonderful possessions, whilst he eked out a bare existence.

“I thought I’d come along and see you, Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor,” he drawled. “I’m from Pantagalla, and seeing you were from Santa Barbara, why, I thought it would be neighbourly to come along and say how-do-you-do. I know Santa Barbara very well—knew it before you rich people took it up and spoilt it. Ha, ha! My little joke, Mrs. Bonsor!”

“It’s real kind of you, Professor——”

“Bellingham,” he suggested.

“Professor Bellingham. It is such a nuisance, my maid has mislaid my glasses, and I am as blind as a bat without them. It is a lonely city this. I was here some years ago, but it is all new and strange to me now, and I shall be glad to get back home again.”

“Have you been here long?”

“For a fortnight,” said the woman, “and I haven’t met a single nice person since I have been here. They are a lot of stuck-up people. I guess they haven’t a cent to their names. Why, I called on a woman I met in San Francisco and the Senator was real nice to her, and they didn’t ask me to stay to tea—not that I drink tea,” she added.

Scottie could well understand that Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor was not regarded as a social acquisition in spite of her wealth.

They chatted about Santa Barbara, about people (whose names fortunately Scottie knew) in San Francisco, and Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor returned to her favourite topic, which was the inhospitable character of the people in foreign countries and the deterioration of the servant class.

“Why, this room is supposed to have been dusted this morning,” she said, flicking a piece of fluff from the chair on which she was sitting. “Look at that—not a brush has touched it!”

Scottie was silent.

Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor could not read his card because of her defective eyesight and yet she was picking minute specks of fluff from the chair without any visible effort. Some curious eye disease, he decided, and never gave the matter another thought.

He made himself agreeable to such an extent that he was invited to come to dinner that night.

“I dine in my suite,” she said. “The trash that you find in hotel dining-rooms certainly gets my goat.”

As he came down the steps of the hotel, a little jubilant with the success of his preliminary visit, somebody tapped him on the arm, and he looked round into a familiar face.

“Andy wants you,” said the detective. “He told me to ask you to step up to headquarters.”

Scottie gave an impatient click of his lips but said nothing.

“Hullo, Scottie. Better? Take a seat, won’t you? One of my men saw you were calling on Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor, the rich American woman at the Great Metropolitan. What’s the idea?”

“Can’t a man have his social recreations?” said Scottie, grieved.

“All that you want, and more,” said Andy brightly, “but I am acting in your own interests when I pull you in. This woman is a walking Kimberley diamond mine, and I hate to see you fall into temptation. By the way, I’ve just come back from Beverley Green,” he added carelessly. “Miss Nelson was asking kindly after you.”

Scottie licked his lips.

“That is very good of Miss Nelson,” he said slowly, “and about this diamond woman, Macleod. My intentions are strictly honourable. You don’t know what a comfort it is to get near to so much money or you wouldn’t grudge me these few emotions.”

“I grudge you nothing, Scottie,” said Andy quietly, “but we’ve had her under observation since she came to town. We’ve already warned off two old friends of yours, Harry Murton and Dutch John, and it wouldn’t be fair to you if I let you think you were working free from the observations of guardian angels.”

Scottie was silent.

“Does that mean I can’t go and see her again?”

“You can go and see her as often as you like,” said Andy, “but if she comes here with a squeal about the diamond tiara that you were admiring only a few minutes before you left, and which has mysteriously disappeared, why, Scottie, I shall put you on the file!”

A slow smile dawned on Scottie’s face.

“Hasn’t anybody told you I am reformed?” he asked innocently.

“I’ve heard about it,” replied Andy with a laugh. “Scottie, I’m serious. I don’t want to see you get into trouble, and I think, in the circumstances, that Mrs. Bonsor is a dangerous acquaintance. Your morals are my first consideration,” he said piously. “You can certainly see her as often as you like, but it is a little dangerous, isn’t it? Suppose some other hook gets busy and there is a lacunæ in the jewel case——”

“What’s that fellow ‘lacunæ’?” asked Scottie interested.

Andy explained.

“So you see.”

“Thank you, Macleod,” Scottie gathered up his hat and got up. “I still think I’ll see her. She is fascinating. Apart from her jewellery, I mean. Have you met her?”

“No, I have not met her. She is not in my department,” said Andy. “Steel is away on a holiday, and I am taking his place, luckily for you, because Steel wouldn’t have given you half a chance.”

“Thank you,” said Scottie again, “and by the way, Macleod, that reporter Downer is alive and active.”

This was no news to Andy.

“So I know,” he said. “He has returned to Beverley—or rather, to a village a mile or two out. Has he been after you?”

Scottie nodded.

“He’s pumping a friend of mine. You know that he’s wise to Miss Nelson at Castle Street? You do? What a sleuth you are, Macleod. So long.”

That night he walked boldly into the Great Metropolitan, though he knew he was being watched, and the evening was a pleasant one. Mrs. Bonsor had taken to him, and laid herself out to give her professor a good time. He learned incidentally that the “Senator,” her husband, was not really a Senator at all. He gathered it was a name bestowed ironically by certain citizens of California. This information cleared the way to a better understanding. Scottie had been puzzled to account for an educated man having married a woman of this character. She talked about her palatial home in Santa Barbara, of her cars, her servants, her garden-parties, and every time she moved she scintillated.

* * * * *

“Scottie’s been to see that Bonsor woman three times,” reported a watcher. “He dines with her every night and took a joy-ride with her this afternoon.”

Andy nodded.

“Put a man on to Big Martin and see if there’s a job in progress.”

He liked Scottie as an individual, but officially Scottie was a possible menace to human security. One afternoon a police officer called on Mrs. Bonsor, and when Scottie came to dinner that night, resplendent in a new dress-suit, her manner was cold and her attitude distinctly distant.

“I nearly didn’t let you up at all, mister,” she said. (It was ominous that she called him “mister.”) “But I thought I would have a little talk with you. The bulls are after you.”

“After me?” said Scottie.

He was annoyed, but not resentful. It was the duty of the police to warn this woman, and he had rather wondered how long Andy would let him go before he did his duty.

“They say you are a crook called Scottie.” She shook her head reprovingly. “I can only tell you that I am very much hurt.”

“Why?” asked Scottie calmly. “I haven’t stolen anything of yours, and I would never take so much as a hairpin from your beautiful head.”

Yes, Scottie said this, and, in a sense, meant it.

“I admit that I am called Scottie. It is not my name, but it is good enough to identify me in two or three countries. I admit that I am a crook, but do you realise what it means, Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor,” he said with a quaver in his voice, “for a man like myself to meet a woman like you, a woman of the world, young, comparatively speaking, certainly in the prime of life, who takes an interest in a—a—an adventurer? It isn’t your money or your jewels. They don’t mean anything to me. I could have got ’em the first day I met you, lady,” he went on recklessly. “I came to see those stones of yours. Everybody was talking about them, and I’m a geologist by profession. I admit it. But when I’d seen you and talked to you—it was like a dream. A man of refinement and taste in my profession doesn’t meet a lady like you—not often.”

“I’m nothing much, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor, unwilling to interrupt the smooth flow of Scottie’s comfortable eloquence, and yet feeling that modesty demanded such an interruption.

“I knew you weren’t American the first time I spoke to you. They don’t raise people like you on the Pacific slope” (which was true), “and when I’d seen you once I knew that I’d have to see you again. I fought with my foolishness, but every day you lured me back.”

“Not intentionally,” murmured Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor.

“Don’t I know it?” said Scottie wearily, as he rose and held out his hand. “Good-bye, Mrs. Bonsor. It has been like living in another world.”

She took his hand, reluctant to end an interview which was not unpleasing.

“Good-bye, Mr. Scottie,” she said. “I’d like to see you again, but——”

“I understand,” said Scottie bitterly. “It is what the world would think of you—what all these la-d-da people in the hotel would say.”

Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor stiffened.

“If you think I care two cents for their opinions,” she said shrilly, “why, you’re wrong! Come up to dinner to-morrow night.”

Her words were a command, her mien a little majestic. Scottie did not speak. He bowed and went out quickly. She might have changed her mind if he hadn’t.

Half-way down the stairs he tried to recall the conversation in its entirety.

There were certain good books circulated amongst convicts designed to bring them to an appreciation of a virtuous life. He had made mention of these to Stella Nelson on one occasion. In these books there was recorded inevitably a speech delivered by the reformed lag usually to the gentle woman who had, by her sweet influence, brought about his reformation.

In the main the thief of fiction expressed very much the same sentiments as the Scottie of fact. But he had forgotten something——Then he remembered, with a “Tut” of impatience.

“I didn’t say anything about my mother!” he said.

Considering this omission later, he decided that on the whole it was well that he had forgotten. It would be advisable to hold something in reserve for the second interview. Nevertheless, he must take no chances, and, turning into the nearest railway-terminus, he made for the news-stall.

“Have you got a book called _Saved by a Child_, or one called _Only a Convict_?”

“No,” said the youth in charge, “we don’t sell kid books.”

“‘Kid’ is exactly the word, my son,” said Scottie.