The Annam Jewel (14 page)

A man was standing just inside the door of which Miles Banham had spoken. He was big and clumsily built; his head almost bald; his face clean-shaven, with a heavy jowl; his eyes light, and as hard as pebbles. He stood for a moment as if waiting, and then moved to one side. A woman came through the doorway and began to walk slowly down the crowded room, with the man a yard behind her.

Peter put his elbow on the table, rested his chin on his hand, and looked.

Anita Hendebakker was worth looking at—a magnificent creature with a skin of warm whiteness, eyes like dark flowers, and lips and cheeks of a vivid carnation. A great deal of the warm whiteness was visible. Every other woman in the room wore a dress at least ten inches off the ground, but Mrs. Hendebakker's sheath-like garment of black velvet touched the floor as she walked. It was cut extravagantly low, and right across the breast of it there stretched two exquisitely wrought diamond wings. Where the wings met the Jewel flamed.

Miles Banham was the only person in the room whose eyes were not fastened upon the Jewel. He looked at Peter and saw him flush to the very roots of his hair, and saw how he clenched the hand on which his chin was resting. He watched till the flush faded and a deep frown succeeded it.

Peter was conscious of nothing but the Jewel. Here was the Annam Jewel, and it was his by right. He saw it resting between the diamond wings, and he saw nothing else.

Anita Hendebakker came slowly towards them, walking with an indolent grace and ease. She seemed unconscious that all those people were staring at her. She held her head high; it was a small head, smoothly banded with sleek, black hair. Her colour did not vary, but with each step she took, the colours in the Jewel changed, melted, rushed into one another—the red, the blue, the burning emerald, and the inmost, mysterious golden ray. She passed, reached her table and sat down. Virgil Hendebakker also took his seat. All over the room the hum of conversation broke out again.

As Anita Hendebakker passed their table, Miles Banham shifted his gaze, and for a moment looked keenly at Mr. Cowan. Mr. Cowan, like everyone else in the room, was looking at the Jewel. Miles Banham saw his eyes very intent. Then, as Anita was at her nearest, an odd smile just touched Mr. Cowan's lips. He tapped the table lightly with his fingers, and looked away. He began to talk of plays, music, politics. He talked extremely well. The talk became general. No one mentioned Mrs. Hendebakker, and no one mentioned the Jewel.

It was just as coffee was being brought to them that Peter saw Lady Moreland. She was coming towards them alone. Her white dress glittered in the Gold Room. It was no longer the white of the
ingénue
. The filmy material which draped her was entirely covered with a delicate diamond tracery of spiders webs. In the centre of each web lurked a black jet spider. A good many people looked at Sylvia as she crossed the room and stopped at Miles Banham's table.

Peter sprang up to meet her, and she touched him familiarly on the arm.

“Come and be introduced to some friends of mine,” she said: and, as Peter murmured an introduction, she smiled and added, “Will you spare him just for a minute, Mr. Banham?”

“Do you like my frock, Peter?” she said in a confidential voice as they moved away together.

“I think the spiders are perfectly beastly,” said Peter. “I like the glittery white part. What on earth made you have black spiders?”

“They're symbolic,” said Sylvia with a funny, light laugh. “I'm in the web, and the spiders will have me unless—unless, oh, well, here we are.”

Peter had been looking at her. He now saw that they had come to a standstill by the Hendebakkers' table. Before he realized what was happening, Sylvia was introducing him to Anita, and Virgil Hendebakker had risen to his feet with a smooth, “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Waring.”

Peter was experiencing sensations which he had never known before. Anita was wearing the Annam Jewel. She was Hendebakker's wife. Who and what was Hendebakker? How had he come by the Jewel?
Was he Henderson?
These thoughts had been battering themselves against Peter's consciousness during all the time that he had been eating, drinking, and talking. The force of their impact now became terrific. Hendebakker might be Henderson! The heavy build was there. The light eyes suggested that his hair had once been fair. The hand—that was the only certain thing, the scar on the back of the hand I The thought came like a flash.

As Hendebakker rose, his right hand rested on the table; he leaned upon it as he made his polite speech. Peter looked at the hand and saw what Henry Waring had seen and described twenty-five years before—a round white scar, the size of a threepenny-bit, half-way between the wrist and the middle knuckle. The hand was plump and smooth-skinned. The mark showed up distinctly.

“It's Henderson!” said Peter to himself. “It's Henderson!” And, as he said it, Hendebakker swung round and held out the hand with the scar.

“Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Waring,” he repeated. His light eyes looked hard at Peter's face.

Peter had grown so pale that Anita, glancing at him lazily over her white shoulder, wondered what was the matter. Peter looked for a moment at Hendebakker, but made no movement to take his hand. The one thought which at that moment filled his mind was that this very hand had done murder upon his uncle and his father. He knew that he must say or do something; but he did not know what he would say or do. He heard Sylvia say, “Peter”, and then he heard himself speak in a voice that was not at all like his ordinary voice, but sharper and colder. He heard himself say:

“Mr. Henderson, I believe—or is it Henders?”

Hendebakker raised his eyebrows, dropped his hand, stepped back half a pace.

“My name, sir, is Hendebakker—Virgil P. Hendebakker at your service—tolerably well known, too.”

“Perhaps,” said Peter, “there is a mistake somewhere.”

Anita's lazy stare had become tinged with boredom.

“Sylvia, Mr. Waring, why do you not sit down?” she said. “They will take coffee with us, will they not, Virgilio?”

“I'm afraid,” said Peter, “that I must be getting back to my party.” He spoke gravely and quietly now; his self-control had returned to him.

He bowed and walked away. Mr. Hendebakker resumed his seat.

“And now,” he said, speaking genially, “now I think we know where we are. Sit down, Lady Moreland, and have some coffee. Anita's been wild to see you all day.”

Peter found his uncle and Mr. Cowan on their feet.

“Come up to my room,” said Miles as he joined them. “Can't talk here—too many people.”

They went up to the second floor where Mr. Banham had a private suite, no less. When the door of the sitting-room was closed, all three men remained standing. Miles was the first to speak.

“Now, Cowan,” he said, “let's have it. That was one of the best dinners I've ever sat down to, and it was absolutely clean wasted on me. Out with it, man, out with it!”

Mr. Cowan seemed amused.

“What am I to come out with, my friend?”

Miles shook his fist at him.

“I saw it in your face,” he said, “and I've been on thorns ever since.” He turned to Peter. “Cowan knows more about precious stones than any man between this and China. That's why I asked him here tonight. That's why I asked you. Come to think of it, you'd better own up first, Peter. The thing that lovely lady had got stuck on the front of her frock—well, in one word, is it the Annam Jewel, or isn't it?”

“How should I know?” said Peter. He laid his arm along the mantelshelf as he spoke, and leaned on it. The room seemed to be quivering about him. He did not know that his face was ghastly.

“My good man, if it isn't, what's making you look as if you'd seen a ghost? You needn't be shy in front of Cowan or in front of me. I know a little more about the Jewel than most people do, though that's not saying much; and, as for Cowan, he's all solid moral worth, and probity, and cast-iron trustworthiness.”

Mr. Cowan interposed.

“I think Mr. Waring has had a shock,” he said. “It will be better if he says nothing until he is sure that he wishes to do so. As for what I have to say, it is very simple. I am, as my friend Banham says, an expert, or, as I prefer to put it, a specialist in precious stones.”

He addressed himself to Peter.

“I am really a consultant. If it is a question of just how much cutting a great stone will bear, they do me the honour to send for me. Now, Mr. Waring, for years—yes, perhaps for thirty years—I have heard of a stone that is not like any other stone at all. The first I heard of it was in China when I was a youth. I was told there was mention of it in a very ancient Chinese manuscript. Since then I have heard, here and there, of this stone. I have never seen it. I have never met anyone who has seen it, or who has ever known a person who has seen it. I am interested; but I put it down, you understand, as one of those myths or legends which pass from one to another in the East and are as insubstantial as a mist. Then my friend Banham tells me a little more. He tells me, to be quite frank, the history of your family connection with the Jewel. You need not be troubled, Mr. Waring. I do not, perhaps, deserve all the pleasant things which my friend has said of me, but I certainly do not betray a confidence. Well, Banham tells me that; and then he tells me two other things. He says it is his belief that you will receive the Jewel when you are twenty-five, and he says the Jewel has appeared in London in possession of an American millionaire. I am naturally interested. He asked us both to dinner, and there enters a very beautiful woman, wearing something that I do not quite know how to describe.”

Peter had been recovering himself. The room had become solid again. He looked at Mr. Cowan, frowned deeply, and said:

“She was wearing the Annam Jewel.”

Miles Banham gave his knee a resounding slap. “Of course she was,” he said triumphantly. “But how did she get it? That's the rub, how did she get it? And what did you get, Peter my boy?”

“I got a bit of glass,” said Peter, “a fake—this.”

He held out his hand with the sham Jewel in its palm.

Mr. Cowan nodded gravely.

“That was left you by your father?”

“That was left me by my father.”

“Yes, that's very interesting,” said Mr. Cowan, “very interesting indeed, because—and now I'm going to surprise you—the Jewel which Mrs. Hendebakker was wearing tonight—” he paused, and made a very slight gesture with his right hand—“that also is a fake.”

Peter stood upright with a jerk. Miles Banham leaned forward, a hand on either knee, his withered brown face a-quiver with excitement, his eyes as bright and restless as a monkey's.

“What's that? What's that?” he said; and then, “By gum! By gum!”

“A fake?” said Peter. He lifted his arm from the mantelpiece and leaned back. “How could it be a fake? How could you tell?”

Mr. Cowan smiled.

“Ah, Mr. Waring,” he said, “if I could tell you that—” he paused, and again made that slight gesture—“it is my
métier
, you see.”

“But are you sure, Cowan, sure?” said Miles quickly.

Mr. Cowan nodded.

“I am sure,” he said.

“Without handling it? Without any test?”

“Why, yes. I cannot explain—at least I think I cannot explain; but I will try. In all the great jewels there is something, something beyond the colour, the water, the fire—whatever you like to call it; I do not wish to be technical. This something, it is not life as we understand life, and yet it is the life of the stone. When Mrs. Hendebakker passed us, I looked for this something, and I did not find it. It is not there. No, I cannot explain; it will not go into words; but I am sure.”

“If it's a fake, who made it?” said Miles quickly.

“That is it,” said Mr. Cowan. “I know all the men who make such things, and I know of no one who could have made the stone we saw tonight.” He nodded at Peter. “It
is
a stone, you know—a stone that has been made, not glass, or paste. Michel, now, he might have done it—”

Peter stood upright, his shoulders clear of the mantelpiece.

“Oh, Hendebakker made it,” he said.

“Impossible!”

“No, sir, not impossible. You mentioned Michel. Now, I can't prove this, but Hendebakker's name used to be Henderson, and my father believed that it was Henders before that, and that he was Michel's assistant before the smash came.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Cowan gently. “Yes, that is very interesting; it would account for a great deal.”

Miles Banham flung himself into a chair.

“By gum, what a mix-up!” he said. “Interesting evening we're having, aren't we? But what I want to know, my dear Cowan, and my excellent Peter, is—where is the real Jewel?”

Peter said nothing. Mr. Cowan pulled a chair into a comfortable position and seated himself.

“I wonder now,” he said quietly, “whether there ever was a real Jewel!”

CHAPTER XVII

Rose Ellen came up to town next day. Peter got her letter at breakfast.

Dearest wants me to look at coats for Jimmy, and I want hats and frocks. I'm sure you'd love to shop with me; and, anyhow, I thought we might have lunch somewhere. Would you like to meet my train?

Peter met the train. He was uncommonly pleased to see Rose Ellen. He didn't want to think about the Jewel, or Roden Coverdale, or Sylvia's money matters, or Virgil P. Hendebakker; most particularly he did not want to think about Virgil P. Hendebakker. It was extraordinarily pleasant to see Rose Ellen get out of the train. He thought she looked so cool, and fresh, and pretty.

They shopped coats for Jimmy—Jimmy being, of course, the Gaisford baby—and Rose Ellen bought two hats and three frocks, after which severe exercise they had lunch.