The Annam Jewel (17 page)

“Why, yes,” he said with a slight drawl, “so it is, Henders—quite a while.”

It was a mutual declaration of war.

Anita's dark eyes looked with a puzzled expression from one to the other. She came a little closer to her husband.

“Virgilio …” she began timidly.

And then Coverdale had drawn Sylvia's hand within his arm, and was bowing to her again.

“I fear I must take my daughter home,” he said, speaking easily.

Neither he nor Sylvia spoke until they reached the flat. Then, as he pushed open the drawing-room door and switched on the lights, Sylvia hung back.

“I—I don't think I'll sit up tonight,” she said, in a tone which hardly rose above a whisper. “It's pretty late, isn't it?”

She leaned against the jamb of the door. Coverdale drew her into the room.

“I won't keep you very long,” he said. “You'd better sit down. You look tired.”

“Yes, I am—tired.” She was still whispering, but suddenly her voice broke into a sob. “Let me go,
please
let me go.”

Coverdale looked at her curiously. What odd things women were!

“Come, Sylvia,” he said, “pull yourself together. You really needn't look so scared. You know, you women are the most unaccountable creatures on earth. Men have a conscience or they don't have a conscience—or for conscience substitute moral sense. But women have something that they take off and on, as if it were a hat or a frock. It's not there one moment, and they'll lie and steal as cheerfully as the most hardened criminal; and then, half an hour later, on goes the conscience again—and pretty cowards it makes of them. As an affectionate parent, I would advise you, Sylvia my dear, either to wear your conscience always, or to get rid of it altogether.”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Sylvia pettishly.

“Oh yes, you do. You know very well.”

He held out the silver matchbox, open, and shook the twisted screw on to her lap.

“Open it!” he said, in a tone which contrasted sharply with the very quiet one which he had been using.

Sylvia's fingers trembled. The paper rustled. A black satin button fell out upon the carpet and rolled a little way. Coverdale picked it up and balanced it on his forefinger.

“Quite a nice thing in its way, but not the Annam Jewel,” he remarked. Then, still more gently, “And now, perhaps, you will give it back to me.”

He flicked the button into the fire and held out his hand. Sylvia stared at the carpet.

“I don't know what you mean,” she said.

“Don't you? Come, Sylvia, it's no good. Give it back.”

“I haven't got it,” said Sylvia.

He took both her hands, and lifted her to her feet.

“Now, Sylvia!”

“I haven't got it, I tell you.”

“Then what have you done with it? You had it, and you went to The Luxe with it. Henders has a finger in the pie, I suppose. You were going to sell it to him?”

“Oh, you're hurting my hands! I didn't—I didn't give it to him.”

“Simply because you hadn't the chance!” His tone was cool and contemptuous. “But you were going to. Come, Sylvia, the truth! You went to The Luxe to give the Jewel to Henders.”

“I didn't want to. I hated it. He made me.” The words came trembling from Sylvia's lips. “I didn't give it to him—I didn't.”

“Then where is it? What have you done with it?”

“I couldn't help it, I really couldn't—you frightened me so dreadfully—and I thought I was going to faint.”

“What couldn't you help? What did you do?”

Sylvia pulled her hands away. Her white fur wrap fell to the ground.

“I saw him,” she said, “quite suddenly—and it seemed the only thing to do. It was wrapped up in my handkerchief, and I just pushed it into his hand in the crowd.”

“The Jewel? You pushed the Jewel into his hand? Whose hand? What are you talking about?”

“It was Peter—it was Peter Waring,” said Sylvia, with a sob.

Coverdale spread out his hands with a curious gesture. He stood silent for a full minute. Then he said, speaking softly as if to himself:

“So the wheel has come full circle again.”

Peter arose next morning in good spirits. When he had had his breakfast he packed the Annam Jewel up carefully, using a small yellow cardboard box which had contained visiting-cards—he left the cards lying in a heap on his chest of drawers. Then he walked to the Regent Street post office, entered a telephone box, and called up Sylvia's flat. It was a maid who answered.

“Is Mr. Coverdale there?” Peter asked. “He's left? Can you give me his address? Oh, he's gone back to Sunnings? You're sure? Thank you. No, my name doesn't matter.”

He rang off, and went to the counter, where he bought a registered envelope. Into this he pushed the yellow cardboard box, fastened the flap, and addressed the package to Roden Coverdale, Esquire. He walked away from the post office without a regret. The Annam Jewel was out of his hands. With Sylvia and her affairs he would deal presently. Meanwhile it was a most uncommonly jolly day; Peter was pleased with it and with the world in general.

He met Miles Banham by appointment at the garage where the car was housed. Miles was bursting with pride in his new possession, and mad keen to be off. Peter gathered that he had had three lessons in driving, and was prepared to go anywhere and do anything.

They set off at what seemed to Peter a rather heroic speed. Miles had a way of cutting corners which promised adventure. The rare and belated sounding of his horn suggested triumph over other vehicles successfully left behind, rather than a warning to those which still blocked his way.

“Slow movers some of these people, what? And as for these blighted pedestrians …”

He shaved an errand boy on a bicycle, swerved in the direction of two stout ladies with shopping-baskets, and proceeded swiftly along the King's Road, talking all the time.

“I made my will yesterday,” he remarked conversationally. “Thought I'd let you know that I'd left my bit to you.”

“Good lord, Uncle Miles, don't talk about wills whilst you're driving like this!” said Peter, grinning.

“What? Why not? Rattling good mover, isn't she? I say, that was a near thing, wasn't it? Yes, I've left it all to you.”

“It's frightfully good of you,” said Peter. “I really think you'd better go a bit slower, or we shall be run in. You touched fifty that last spasm—it's a bit steep for the King's Road.”

“What's fifty?” said Miles, with contempt. “All right, I'll go a bit easy; but just you wait till I get a chance to let her rip. Yes, as I say, you'll be a rich man.”

“Oh no, I shan't,” said Peter. “Look here, that's Putney Bridge, and you really must slow down. You'll get married, you see if you don't.”

Miles Banham slowed down with extreme reluctance.

“Well, I don't know about that,” he said. “Of course, I've thought about it; but it's a risk, my boy, a big risk; and I don't like taking risks.”

“Oh, lord, Uncle, mind that perambulator!” said Peter. Miles avoided it by a frantic swerve and continued to talk.

“No, I don't like risks; and it's a big one, as I said. You see, the bother about marriage is that you never know where you are. Women—oh, damn this traffic! By Jove, we nearly took the wheel off that baker's van, didn't we? Women now—the bother about women is that the good ones are too good for any man living, and the bad ones are a damned sight too bad. What I would like is someone I'd been married to for ten years or so and got used to. I don't see starting in at my time of life. By gum, that dog nearly caught it! Sporting little beast, did you see how he jumped clear?”

“Look here, Uncle, you come down to twenty and stay there till we've passed all these shops,” said Peter firmly.

“All right, all right. Now I've sometimes thought that Ruth Spottiswoode and I might hit it off. She's a nice woman, Ruth, and what I call comfortable. But then there's Charlotte—I couldn't live with Charlotte, I'm hanged if I could. Not but what she's a good woman and all that, but … no, I'm hanged if I could live with Charlotte.”

“Perhaps you wouldn't have to,” said Peter cheerfully. “She could live somewhere near, and just come in and out.”

“Ah, but that's the question—could I stand it? Charlotte coming in and out, I mean. I've thought of that, you know; and then I've wondered whether I wouldn't rather have her in the house and be done with it. You see, it would be a bit awkward for me to go to Ruth and say, ‘Look here, will you marry me? But I can't stick Charlotte at any price.' What are you grinning at? I tell you it's dam' serious—getting married's no joke, as you'll find when your turn comes.”

Lunch was a highly successful meal: Ruth Spottsiwoode, beaming and expansive in lavender silk and a new and most poignant kind of scent; Charlotte, grimly genial in a best dress that clinked with jet; and Miles, very much the returned hero. Peter felt himself a little boy again when the cousins addressed him. Charlotte's tone in particular, with its hint of “we mustn't spoil the child”, took him back to the time when he was twelve years old.

When they were going away, Mrs. Spottiswoode drew him aside.

“Peter my dear, your Uncle Miles—does he wrap up sufficiently when driving in that open car?”

“I don't know,” said Peter. “Shall I ask him?”

“No, no, my dearest boy. No, of course not. He might think it strange. But, of course, we are cousins, though not first cousins—and second half-cousin is not really a very
close
relation—only, of course, I've known Miles all my life, and that does seem to make a difference, doesn't it?”

“I should think it would,” said Peter, putting his arm round her waist. He was very fond of his Cousin Ruth.

“You really think so? Of course, what he wants is someone to look after him, which is a thing no man ever learns to do for himself. No, my dearest boy, you may laugh as much as you like, but I've never yet met a man who could look after himself. You're all alike. It's no good saying you're not. For instance, tell me, Peter, do you ever remember to change your socks when they're damp, or to see that your vests and things are aired when they come home from the wash?”

Peter gave her a squeeze and a kiss.

“I air them with my own hands in front of my landlady's kitchen fire every Saturday night,” he declared. “As for Uncle Miles, you'd better take him on yourself.”

Ruth fluttered, and blushed to the roots of her hair.

Later on, as they drove off, Peter said:

“Cousin Ruth thinks you want someone to look after you. She thinks we both do. She's afraid we don't air our socks before we put them on.”

“What?
Does
she now?
Does
she? Now, Ruth's what I call a real, old-fashioned, womanly woman—and you needn't laugh, my boy, about her wanting things to be aired, because I can remember my dear mother being just the same.” He skidded round a corner in meditative silence, just missed a tradesman's delivery van, and added in a tone of triumph, “I told you Ruth was a nice woman; but then there's Charlotte—there's always Charlotte. I'm pretty sure I couldn't stick Charlotte. Hullo, here's a good stretch of road. Now you just see what she can do.”

They crossed Wimbledon Common at a speed which appeared to gratify Miles a good deal, and then came down to what he called a crawl until they had passed Surbiton.

“We'll run into Guildford for tea,” said Miles. “Splendid road, and I might look up a fellow I used to know in Hong Kong.”

They never reached Guildford. Half a mile out of Cobham they collided with a farm wagon and came off second best. Miles was very much annoyed. He took the simple view that horse vehicles had really no right to the use of the roads; but that, pending their total supersession by something less archaic, it became them to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters, as he himself had been taught in his catechism. That one of these anachronisms should have done in his new thirty-horse-power car was an insult which elicited from him an astonishing flow of Anglo-Oriental language.

In the upshot they were towed ignominiously into Cobham, where they kicked their heels for four or five hours. Peter would not abandon Miles, and nothing would induce Miles to abandon his car.

It was past ten o'clock when Peter reached his rooms. He let himself in. In the passage he encountered his landlady; she wore an air of subdued importance.

“Jones 'as just stepped out,” she explained, “and, 'earing your key, sir, I thought I'd just let you know as your sister's been here waiting for you for quite a while.”

“My sister?” said Peter, in tones of stupefaction.

“Called at three o'clock, she did,” said Mrs. Jones, with a slight sniff. “Jones opened the door, and she asked for you, and when he said you was out, she asked when you would be back. She went away, and come back again, and since six o'clock she's been a-sittin' and a-waitin' for you.”

“My sister?” repeated Peter. He found himself very angry. What on earth could have brought Rose Ellen to town like this, and to his rooms?

“So she said, sir. Miss Waring, sir, she said.” Mrs. Jones sniffed again; this time it was undoubtedly the sniff of feminine virtue.

Peter stiffened.

“Will you call a taxi, please?” he said. “I shall be seeing my sister home. I've been delayed.”

He was not at all pleased with Rose Ellen. She ought to have known better. He would tell her so in no measured terms.

He opened the door of his sitting-room and went in. A woman in black with a long veil was sitting in one of his arm-chairs. She jumped up as he came in. It was not Rose Ellen. It was Sylvia Moreland.

“What on earth …?” said Peter.