The Green Jacket/Chapter 14
XIV
She heard a heavy tread in the hall and she turned her back and stood surveying the secretary.
Years ago she had come on the discovery that nothing heartens a possible criminal like the chance to look you over first, and nothing is more likely to throw him off his guard. Whenever possible she presented a view of herself for deliberate inspection. She had learned, too, not to flash too sudden a look at a man when at last she turned to him. She merely let her glance slide by him casually. If later the glance returned and dwelt on him for a minute, he did not seem to think it necessary to arrange a rigid countenance for inspection. . . . One of the curious things about people under suspicion—whether innocent or guilty—that often puzzled Milly, was this deep, instinctive desire to present to her a countenance void of all meaning. She did not understand it, altogether; but she accepted and allowed for it.
Batson's footsteps, slow and a little important, came nearer and she went over to the secretary and stood looking up at it reflectively. When the tread entered the room she spoke over her shoulder, carelessly, without looking back:
"Do you think you could move this secretary for me—or is it too heavy?"
Batson's figure had come alongside. She could feel him looking at the sewing-woman who had summoned him in this autocratic fashion.
"Is it too heavy to be moved?" she asked doubtfully.
"Not for you, Miss Newberry," said Batson's voice deeply.
She wheeled—and stared.
"Mr. Batson!" she cried softly. She held out her hand.
He took it in embarrassed friendliness.
"You are the last person—" she said.
"I hope I see you well, ma'am," responded Batson.
"Yes, thank you. How is Sadie?"
His stolid face lighted. "You should see her, Miss Newberry!" he said almost eagerly.
She nodded. "I should like to."
"She come out last week," went on Batson, "to see me and her mother. She's a new girl, Miss Newberry. She's got sense!"
Batson's hands spread themselves and laid the sense before her, largely.
"Good!" said Milly. "I always believed it would come."
"Yes, I know you was always saying to us to have patience with her. But she was terrible trying—with all them dancing idees, and on the go, day and night! . . . And when it came to that last time, and you caught her—with the goods on her!" Batson lowered his voice and glanced cautiously at the doors behind him. "Well, I'll own, ma'am, I give up." He looked down on her in grateful disbelief.
"I never knew, to this day, how you done it," he said solemnly. "But somehow you got her by the skittish place!" His face grew thoughtful.
"I've wondered since then, ma'am, whether all young folks, maybe, don't come to a skittish place like that?"
"They surely do, Mr. Batson," said Milly, laughing. "And if you get them by it, they'll run steady for a long time—perhaps till they're as old as you or me!"
Batson's eye twinkled. "That's what I said to myself. Steer 'em by, I says, with blinders, or most any way that comes handy, and they'll live straight forever after. Seems as if most everybody had to have a time like that sooner or later. It's like the mumps or measles—and the sooner you're over it, the better."
Milly laughed out. "You speak as if you knew all about it, Batson. Did you ever have an attack?"
"Well, ma'am, I won't say I wasn't once there or thereabouts," he replied modestly.
"Ellen will be wanting to see you," he added, as if by chance the two ideas lay near together in his mind.
Milly put out a hand. "No. Don't tell Ellen I am here. Keep it secret for a little while, please, and don't forget that to Ellen and the others I am Miss Brigham, who is doing some sewing for Mrs. Mason."
He looked at her keenly. "You're here for your old work?" he said. And after a minute: "It's them emeralds!" he declared.
She nodded.
"Damn 'em!" said Batson fervently. "I beg your pardon, ma'am. But if you knew what this house has been through, owin' to them emeralds, you'd say the same—and more!"
She smiled. "I'm sure I should. Tell me about it."
"About their disappearing? You know they disappeared, don't you? That's what you're here for?"
"Yes—but I only know they disappeared—hardly more than that. It would help me very much to know how the whole thing appeared to a sensible man like you—if you can spare the time to tell me."
Batson expanded a little. "Oh, I can spare the time." He glanced at the secretary. "Maybe we'd better move that first," he suggested.
"No. That was only an excuse—to see the butler. Go on, please."
Batson chuckled. "Well, I must say I never suspected who you was—not from the first minute you come. . . . When Ellen was making words about having to fix up a tray three times a day, I said to her: 'For the Lord's sake, Ellen, if there's anything Mis' Mason takes an interest in, let her have it.' But I no more suspected than a babe unborn when you sent for me, that you was another one of them detectives!" Batson relaxed to the delight of free speech.
"You don't know what I suffered with 'em, Miss Newberry, them detectives! Why, some of 'em pretty near put me through the third degree before they was done with me. There was one spell there, I kind o' had to make up things. Seems as if nothing else would satisfy 'em, really!"
"Well, I am not going to put you through a third degree. And it will be a comfort to know that I can trust you and rely on what you say."
"Same to you, ma'am," said Batson. "I've had a feeling some days here that you couldn't trust anybody. Why, there was one day I got to wondering if maybe Ellen had done it!"
He looked at her askance and shook his head. "I don't ever want to feel much worse than I felt that day, I guess!"
"Sit down," said Milly, "and tell me everything."
Batson tiptoed to the window and looked importantly out.
"We don't want to be seen talking together," he said cautiously, and Milly smiled at the far-off echo of the Corbin methods repeated with the muffled emphasis of Batson's expansive calm. . . . He looked to right and to left and he leaned forward and peered out through the window. A horn sounded among the trees.
"Maybe the new car," said Batson. Then his face lost interest.
"It's the mail, ma'am. Excuse me, please. I'll have to get it."
He stepped out of the window and hurried across the terrace, with bulky importance, and down the steps to the car, holding up his hands for the budget of mail the postman doled out. When he turned back, his hands overflowing with papers and letters, he did not return to the sewing-room, but passed directly to the front of the house; he deposited the mail on the hall-table, bending over and arranging it in neat little piles, and stopping now and then to peer down at a letter or card before his fingers released it. One letter he held for a full minute before he laid it on the pile. He lifted his head and looked toward the stairs. Mrs. Mason was coming swiftly down and he handed her the letter he had just placed on its pile.
She tore it open with eager fingers and stood reading it breathlessly.
Batson went on sorting letters, glancing now and then with a kind of respectful sympathy at his mistress's absorbed face. He gathered up a small handful of the sorted mail and departed to the back of the house.
Mrs. Mason, standing by the hall-table, read on and turned a page hastily—and broke away with a little gesture to seize a parasol from the rack by the stairs. She passed swiftly out of the open door.
Milly saw her cross the terrace and beckon to her husband, who had finished talking with the man on the machine and was coming toward the terrace. The rapid clicking of the machine resuming its course across the lawn came to Milly's ear as she watched the man and woman meet on the edge of the terrace.
The woman held up the open page, speaking rapidly, and the man reached his hand to it.
From her place in the window Milly could see the look of the wife bent upon him eagerly, with waiting happiness. The reddish glow cast by the parasol on her head and shoulders gave her a radiant look. But the glow in her face seemed to come as much from some inner light as from without.
The man finished the letter and handed it back to her and they stood a minute, talking. Then she turned back to the house. It seemed to Milly as she came toward her that the face had lost a little of its warm glow.
But when the woman looked up and saw the seamstress through the window she nodded with a little smile and came toward her, holding up the letter.
"My boy is coming!" she called even before she reached the window. "Stephen is coming! I have not seen him for a year!" She stood outside the window, the parasol behind her head and shoulders lighting her radiantly. "I cannot believe it!" she said softly.
"When does he come?" asked Milly.
She opened the letter in her hand. The mere action seemed to give her pleasure. "The 9th," he says. "That's to-morrow, isn't it? 'I shall arrive the 9th' . . . He doesn't say what train. . . . I must go and tell Margaret. There will be so much to do!" She nodded happily and moved away. Even her step was different, it seemed to Milly, watching her as she passed out of sight. . . . And presently through the whole house ran quickening life. Doors opened and closed, feet hurried, voices rose—a little excited and eager—and called to each other, up and down the stairs.
The son of the house was coming home.
Milly sewed a little while. Then she took up her knitting. She was glad of the ad vent of the son. . . . She had been gazing into a deep, dusky pool, trying to pierce through the obscurity to something that lay hidden beneath, deep in the slime and ooze, perhaps—or floating free, and nearer the surface, if she could focus her eyes to it. And now, as if over her shoulder, some one had cast a stone into the pool, and the ripples were spreading on every side. . . . No use to look while the surface was disturbed like this. Perhaps when the disturbance ceased and the pool subsided a ray of sunshine would strike across it and she would see for a minute deep into it. . . . She only hoped Batson would not be too busy to come to her. She wanted to hear the story of the theft from Batson's lips. She had an idea that Batson's view of it would be more revealing than that of many more intelligent persons, and she could trust him to give her the truth—so far as he knew it. . . . The last time she had seen Batson his face had been blanched with fear and filled with a look of pathetic, wounded pride. He had come, with his daughter, at Milly's request to the up-town office. The girl had been taking petty articles of finery from a dry-goods shop. The case had been put in Milly's hands with the usual stipulation, on her part, that the culprit when discovered should be hers to deal with.
The result had been Batson and his daughter in the up-town office, Batson shivering with misery and possible disgrace, the girl a little flippant and defiant. That was nearly two years ago. She had known that the father and mother were in service in the country; but she had not known where. She had called in the father only because something in the girl's attitude when she spoke of him suggested to her that the fear of hurting her father might have influence with her. The guess had proved a happy one. The sight of her father's abject humiliation had seemed to steady the girl like a shock. . . . Milly had no fear that Batson would not serve her in every way he was capable of. If what he was able to tell her was of little use, it would not be Batson's fault.
She saw him through the distant rooms hurrying about and giving directions, guiding his staff with anxious and important air.
Presently he approached the door of the sewing-room and looked in.
"I am free now, ma'am, for a little while if you would like me to tell you—what we were speaking of," he said discreetly.
Milly nodded and he came in with deft clumsiness, closing and locking the door, and moving to the other doors and locking them in swift succession. He crossed to the window and looked out in either direction. Milly, watching him, smiled at the elaborate reminder of the Corbin method.
Batson spoke to her over his shoulder, from his place at the window. . . . "If any one comes to the door, ma'am, I'll slip out here while you're unlocking it, and nobody can get at us this way without me seeing 'em." He waved his hand across the open space. "If anybody steps on the terrace, I'll slip out o' the door before they're on to me."
Milly nodded with amused eyes. "That sounds safe! I was afraid you might not be able to come—with all the preparation for the son's arrival."
He turned to her. "You've heard, then?"
"Mrs. Mason told me." She had taken up her knitting and was absorbed in complicated stitches.
Batson sighed. "I hope it's a good thing—his coming." He sighed again and looked at her a little askance.
"Sit down, won't you?" said Milly.
He sat down, half-facing the window, his glance free to cover the range outside. He placed his hands across the amplitude of his stomach, as far as it permitted, and leaned back and sighed again reflectively.
"I don't hardly know where to begin!" he said.
"Why not begin at the beginning?"
"Well—I guess the beginning was about five years back when me and Ellen first come here. . . . Mis' Mason had seen us at the employment office, and she liked us—and we liked her.
"We knew there was four in the family we was coming to work for—a son and a daughter. We didn't know till we got here that the daughter was adopted—and we shouldn't 'a' known then except for the other servants. The father and mother treated her more like their own than most folks do. She had her little riding horse and clothes and about everything a girl could have."
"Jewelry?" asked Milly quietly. She had just turned the row and was adjusting her needle. She was not noticing him.
Batson regarded her slowly. "I don't know as I ever thought of that before—I don't believe she did have many jules. Mr. Mason was always buying 'em and giving 'em to his wife. She'd be wearing a new ring or pin or something every day or two. . . . But I don't seem to remember as Miss Marian ever had more'n one or two little trinkets." He seemed to consider it a minute. "It couldn't 'a' been because they stinted her. She had everything—and more, too. I reckon it might 'a' been because he wanted to keep something special for his wife. He was always fond of his wife."
"‘Was'?" repeated Milly.
Batson looked a little embarrassed. "Well, ma'am, it seems a queer thing to say about the folks you're working for—and not being supposed to notice anything that goes on—but it does seem as if Mr. Mason had changed a good deal "
"How has he changed? What do you call changed?" asked Milly.
"Going to his room and shutting himself up—hours at a time," said Batson, "that's what I'd call changed. Why, it used to be—he couldn't bear to let her out of his sight, not hardly."
"When did he begin to change—could you tell that?"
"It was along about the time the trouble come on, I guess." He spoke slowly, as if trying to place the things he recalled. . . . "Pretty soon after we heard there'd been a robbery in the house, it must have been, that I first begun to notice anything queer."
"And when was that?"
"Two years ago—just about this time of year, it was. . . . Mis' Mason called me up to her room one day. She was sitting by the window and I could see she had been crying. Things was all kind of tumbled up, as if folks had been hunting and mussing around the room. And she said to me, she says: 'Batson, something very unhappy has come to us.' Them was just her words, ma'am. 'My emerald necklace has disappeared,' she said. . . . I just stood with my mouth open, looking at her."
Batson shook his head slowly. "I didn't mistrust anything then; but afterward I see that the detective must 'a' been watching me all the time from the dressing-room door."
He smiled shrewdly. "Well, he didn't see anything but me standing there looking like a dum fool!"
"Then, after a minute, Mis' Mason told me the detectives was there in the next room searching, and that they wanted to talk with me when they was through. She'd told them they'd better question me, but I was not to tell the others. . . . I reckon she always trusted me—whether the detectives did or not. . . . Well, when they come out, they questioned me, up hill and down. And after that, as I told you, they kep' it up—having me in every day or two and tackling me. Of course the other servants got wind of it. You can't have men in, ripping up your carpets and measuring windows and running up and down stairs, without folks, getting to know something is up."
"But they did not discover anything?"
"Not so far as I know," said Batson. "I don't believe they ever really got a notion of how the thing was done, or knew any more about it than I did."
He shook his head gloomily, and his eyes gazing through the window seemed to look upon something incredible and unsolved.
"You never saw a house change the way this did after that," said Batson slowly. "First Miss Marian got kind o' pindlin' and unhappy, and finally she went away. Nothing was ever said that she wasn't coming back, and her room was always ready for her, up-stairs—fire laid and some of her little things around. But she never did come back." He looked at the detective. "You knew she died a couple of weeks ago?"
"Yes. I knew Mrs. Mason was in mourning for her."
"Yes—she's in mourning for her," said the old butler. His glance rested on hers a minute, and looked hastily away.
"Everything went wrong after that," he said. "Mr. Stephen he finally left home and went out West. . . . He'd been keeping pretty steady, too, for a while. He was kind of a high buck," explained the old man simply. "I reckon he tried all he could. But he couldn't seem to stand it any longer.
"I don't know as I blame him, either," he added after a little pause in which he seemed to turn it over.
"Why not?" asked Milly curiously.
"Well, I felt some that way myself," said Batson. "As if somebody was always watchin' and suspectin' me—and always waiting for something that was going to happen—only it never did! It wa'n't any real thing either—just the way things felt when you went around the house. . . . Of course I've got used to it now. Some days I don't hardly know I'm feeling that way. . . . But this morning when the news come—and seeing Mis' Mason's look and the way she went stepping around the house so light, it brought it all back to me somehow. . . . And then knowing you was here on the same old business, I've been remembering how things used to be."
"You've made me see it very clearly, Batson. I thank you," said Milly.
"You're welcome, I'm sure. It seems as if I'd kind of jumbled things together, telling 'em; but that's the way they seem to me in my mind—all kind of jumbled up. I never could see straight what it was happened. It seemed as if there was always some little thing that was hid, that I couldn't see, and if I could see it, it would make a difference."
"You have given me just what I wanted," said Milly. "I don't need to keep you any longer. I know you are busy to-day."
"Thank you, ma'am." He got to his feet. "I heard a car just now. I shouldn't wonder if it's the new one they're talking about buying." He looked at his watch and off through the trees—and a beautiful car flashed into sight, speeding noiselessly up the drive.
"I guess I'll go out and have a look at her," said Batson. He stepped softly through the window. Then he turned and looked back.
"Better unlock them doors," he said with a gesture of mysterious and efficient caution as he moved away.