Chapter XVI: Conspirators

Carsdale was not often surprised, but he was so much surprised by Mrs. Walsingham’s frank admission that he dropped his cigar. And when he had picked it up and again confronted her, his eyes were still wide with astonishment.

“You’ve got it?” he exclaimed. “You?”

“I!” answered Mrs. Walsingham, calmly. “I!”

Carsdale took a few pulls at his cigar, regained his composure, and lay back in his chair.

“Oh!” he said at last. “Very well. Now, as we’re quite free from interruption, you’d better tell me all about it. Of course, Sylvie, you--stole it?”

“I took it from Mr. Leverton’s safe--certainly,” she answered. “It wasn’t difficult to do that. What wasn’t easy was to get a duplicate made--a duplicate of such good workmanship as to the setting, and such fine paste as to the stones, as to be a perfect facsimile.”

Carsdale slapped his knee.

“A facsimile--a duplicate?” he said. “I see--I see! Then--it is the duplicate which Burgoyne carried away from Winch’s?”

“Precisely,” she answered.

“You substituted the imitation for the original in Leverton’s safe, then?” said Carsdale, with a nod at the wall. “That was clever. Ah! And the duplicate----”

“Was so good that nobody could have seen any difference between it and the real thing,” said Mrs. Walsingham. “But you know, Jack, all these things come to light in the end, and the first time Burgoyne has that duplicate examined by an expert, or even by a good jeweller, he’ll find out he’s been cheated.”

“Well?” said Carsdale. “Well? I knew that, of course.”

“And he won’t suspect Leverton,” continued Mrs. Walsingham, “and he won’t suspect Frances, nor Winch, and, of course, he won’t suspect the bankers. He’ll suspect--you and me!”

“Good God!” exclaimed Carsdale. “Why us?”

“Because we had free access to Leverton’s room, there, during his illness--and at other times,” replied Mrs. Walsingham.

Carsdale nodded his agreement of this view.

“Yes,” he said, after due deliberation. “Yes, I suppose he will. And then----”

“And then he’ll begin inquiring and investigating, and no doubt setting private agents to work,” continued Mrs. Walsingham, “and a good deal might, or, rather, would be found out that----”

“Yes, yes!” interrupted Carsdale, impatiently. “Cut all that out--I know it by heart. Well, Sylvie?” Mrs. Walsingham looked at him fixedly.

“Well?” she said. “Well, then it wouldn’t be well! It would be all up with my engagement to the boy, and he’d take all his business out of your hands, and----”

“And it seems to me you’ve gone a good way to land both of us in a nice mess!” he broke in, half-angrily. “Why did you do it? It was--theft!”

Mrs. Walsingham’s lip curled.

“Oh, don’t let’s get to fine distinctions,” she said scornfully. “There are all sorts of ways of thieving--you know the delicately polite ones. I took it because--I wanted it.”

Carsdale growled inarticulately and began to look sullen.

“Where is the damned thing?” he asked. “Sold, I suppose?”

“Pawned,” answered Mrs. Walsingham.

“How much?” he asked.

“A thousand,” she said. “It’s a private arrangement, and the thing’s safe. Never mind that--I want us to use our brains.”

“In what way?” asked Carsdale, gazing at her sulkily. “The thing’s done.”

“No!” she said. “It’s beginning. The great thing is to prevent any scandal arising. Now, listen, Jack. It’s evident that Burgoyne believes himself to be in possession of the real thing. He isn’t. How would it be to put him in possession of it--I mean the absolutely, real thing--before his suspicions are aroused?”

Carsdale’s ears pricked at the suggestion of intrigue and craft. He sat up in his chair and threw away his cigar.

“How?” he asked, with newly-awakened interest.

Mrs. Walsingham picked up a sheet of paper from her desk and began to tear it into strips--a sure sign in her, as Carsdale knew, that she was devising plans. He let her take her time, and meanwhile made some mental reflections of his own on her revelations, which had taken him not a little aback.

“Well,” she said, at last, having torn two or three sheets of note-paper into ribbons. “There are ways. I could, for instance, redeem the necklace----”

“Naturally, if you’ve got the money,” said Carsdale. “That’s an important detail, Sylvie.”

Mrs. Walsingham gave him a glance which was intended to warn him not to interpolate irrelevant remarks, and went on.

“I could, I say, redeem the thing and send it to him in such a fashion that he would never know where it came from,” she continued. “But that would never do, because we’re not concerned with making restitution, and, so far, he doesn’t know that he hasn’t got the real necklace. What I want to do is put the real necklace back into his possession before he even finds out that it’s ever been--stolen. Do you see that--do you understand it?”

“Perfectly,” answered Carsdale. “This is the position. The gentleman--we’ll call him B--doesn’t know that he has been robbed. C, who has robbed him, doesn’t want him to know. Therefore C designs to restore to him that of which he has been robbed before he discovers his loss. That’s it, eh?”

“You’ve got it,” said Mrs. Walsingham.

Carsdale lighted another cigar.

“Unfortunately,” he said, dryly, “unfortunately, there’s a serious feature of the case. The gentleman believes himself to be in actual, material, bodily possession of the very article which has been abstracted. In plain English, Sylvie, Burgoyne thinks he’s got the necklace. How’re you going to get over that, eh?”

Mrs. Walsingham laughed gently.

“That’s my great plan, Jack,” she said. “By--substitution.”

“Substitution?” he said. “You mean----”

“I mean by substituting the necklace which I have for the one he has,” replied Mrs. Walsingham. “Giving him the real in exchange for the false, don’t you see?”

Mr. Carsdale did see, and he nodded his head admiringly.

“That’s a clever notion, Sylvie,” he said, “and you’re a clever woman for hitting on it. And--a mere detail--how are you going to put it into execution?”

Mrs. Walsingham again began to tear up sheets of paper. And, when she next spoke, she bent her eyes over her task instead of looking at her companion. “Haven’t you got some hold over that man, Kedgin, Richard’s valet?” she asked, a little diffidently.

Carsdale laughed--and there was something in his laugh, which she did not like. “Well?” he asked.

“Burgoyne is taking up his quarters with Richard for a few weeks,” she went on, still busied with her task. “Kedgin will valet him.”

“According to what Richard says, Burgoyne always carries that necklace in his pocket,” Mrs. Walsingham continued, “so that I thought that if----”

Carsdale laughed again.

“Let me finish your sentence for you,” he said. “You thought that as I have a hold on Kedgin I could get him to substitute the true necklace for the false one. Good, Sylvie--but it won’t do. And for a very simple reason--it is quite true that I have a hold on Mr. William Kedgin, as you say. But I don’t propose to give Mr. Kedgin a hold on me.”

Mrs. Walsingham looked up and threw away her scraps of paper.

“Very well,” she said. “Then I must do it myself.”

Carsdale nodded approvingly.

“Better, much better, Sylvie!” he said. “But--how?”

“I haven’t quite thought that out yet,” she answered. “But I shall. It can be done. It’s got to be done--and done soon.”

Carsdale got slowly out of his chair and began to stride about the room, puffing out clouds of cigar-smoke.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, after a period of thought. “An idea occurs to me. Didn’t Shrewsbury say something about giving a dinner to Burgoyne, and asking you and me to meet him? Yes--well, get him to give it at his rooms--you can persuade him to anything--tell him we shall be more comfortable--no, tell him you’ve taken a fancy to dine there. He’s floods of wine, and he can have the dinner sent in. That’s point one--d’you see?”

“I see,” she answered.

“Very well. Point two,” continued Carsdale. “We dine. Over the wine and walnuts, or their modern equivalents, we lead the conversation to diamonds, and you express a wish to see the famous necklace which once encircled the throat of--never mind who she was--Marie Antoinette?--oh, Maria Louisa. Very good--Burgoyne cannot refuse a lady. The necklace is produced and handed round--eventually it comes into my hands, Sylvie. Do you remember that I used to amuse myself with conjuring tricks?”

Mrs. Walsingham’s eyes suddenly brightened. She nodded eagerly.

“Yes--yes!” she answered. “I do!”

“Well--I’m still good enough to do a few good tricks at children’s parties,” said Carsdale, laughing. “Now, listen. The imitation necklace, I say, comes into my hands. You have already provided me with the real one. Hey presto!--the thing is done! I change one for the other.”

Mrs. Walsingham rose.

“That seems the plan of campaign, Jack,” she said. “Very good. I’m going to redeem the real thing now, and then I’ll set to work on the dinner business--there’ll be no difficulty about that.”

“You’ve got the money?” asked Carsdale. “If not--”

“Thanks, but I have,” she said, tapping her handbag. “And it’s my own, too. I only pawned it for a thousand--to keep it safe.”

“I’m not yet quite sure why you--annexed it!” said Carsdale.

“For a reserve fund--in case anything ever happened,” she answered, looking steadily at him. “I figured the whole thing out, and I saw that I stood to win. Burgoyne might never have come back, you see.”

“Yes,” said Carsdale. “Yes, of course. It was a good, sporting chance.” He leaned his arms over the top of the desk and smiled at her whimsically. “I’ve a notion,” he said. “If Burgoyne would have sold, why not have let Shrewsbury buy the imitation necklace as the real one? Then you have ’em both in your possession, and you destroy the false and keep the genuine--and diamonds don’t lose much value, you know.”

“Yes, but Burgoyne won’t sell,” she answered. “I’d had some idea like that. At first he thought he would sell, and then, yesterday afternoon, he said definitely, in my presence, that he wouldn’t. But that would have been a good plan. The great thing is to so arrange matters that he never knows--the truth.”

“Ye-es,” agreed Carsdale. “Ye-es, that’s so. I should say, from the looks of him, that if that chap were set on a trail he’d keep his nose to earth until he’d run something down. Better get on with everything as quickly as possible, Sylvie--especially the dinner. And--leave the conjuring to me.”

So Mrs. Walsingham went out, and it being lunch time, she ate and drank with a relieved mind. She had been seriously concerned when she thought of what might--nay, would!--happen if Ralph Burgoyne discovered the truth; now, knowing Carsdale’s powers, resource and coolness in emergencies, she felt that the gods were fighting for her. It would be no difficult matter for a sharp man like Carsdale to substitute one necklace for the other: he would do it easily. And that done, no one would ever know of what she had done, and she would marry Richard and his money--and be safe.

She went off after she had lunched, and redeemed the precious necklace, and she carried it back to Abbotsbury House in her handbag, and there--Carsdale being out--locked it up in a secret drawer until she went home. After which, she condescended to business for the rest of the afternoon.

But at five o’clock Richard came in, and she saw at once, from a mere look at his face, that he had something to tell her.

“I say, Sylvie!” he exclaimed. “I lunched with Burgoyne--he came for me to the club. And, I say, he says that he’ll sell me that necklace, after all--it’s a white elephant to him. And he swears that he won’t take more than ten thousand for it. I told him I wouldn’t do anything without consulting you, so he gave it to me to show you. Here it is!--and you must let me give it to you, Sylvie--you must!” And he placed on the blotter-pad before her the counterfeit of the real thing which lay in security only a few feet away.