The Annam Jewel (16 page)

Presently, when her father had finished his letter and had come back to the fire, she said:

“Let me see it again. You simply snatched it away, you know; and it's much, much too beautiful to take in all in a moment. Do let me have another look at it.”

He dropped the matchbox into her outstretched hand, and watched her with a rather sardonic smile as she unwrapped the Jewel.

“Where have you had it put away all this time?” she said. “Was it at Sunnings, or have you had it stuck away in the bank? It's a perfectly frightful waste, anyhow.”

Coverdale laughed a little.

“It wasn't at Sunnings,” he said, “and it wasn't at the bank. I think, on the whole, that I won't tell you where it was. But this is the first time it has seen the light for twenty years; and tomorrow it goes back again.”

“What
a waste!” said Sylvia, sighing. “Why don't you give it to me, Father?” She spoke very lightly.

“You're a great deal better off without it, my dear,” he said. “Don't look at it too long, or you won't be able to give it up; and, as I said, you're really better without it. Come, let me have it back.”

Sylvia smoothed out the little square of paper, laid the Jewel in the middle of it, and slowly, regretfully, folded the paper over the stone, and twisted up the ends. Just as she finished doing so, the twist slipped down into her lap and was hidden for a moment under her handkerchief. The next instant she was pressing a little white screw into the silver matchbox, and was handing back the matchbox with a “There, take it whilst I can give it up.”

Coverdale fished a thin steel chain out of his pocket, and snapped it on to the box with a spring catch. Then he began to talk of other things.

Sylvia sat with the Annam Jewel in her lap, listening to his voice as one listens to a distant sound like the hum of traffic. She was in a state between terror and triumph.

Coverdale talked of Sunnings, and his financial position. He spoke of selling the property and going East again. Sylvia said sometimes, “Yes,” and sometimes, “No.” Her colour, which had been bright, died slowly. The evening dragged like a dull play. Coverdale had had enough of it by half past ten. He remarked that Sylvia looked as if she had been having too many late nights, and they said good night.

In her room Sylvia stood listening, her handkerchief clasped tightly in her left hand. When the hand trembled she could feel a little rustling movement from within the handkerchief. She kept saying to herself, “It's the Annam Jewel. I've got the Annam Jewel.” She heard Coverdale's door close, heard him moving in his room, and waited until the sounds of movement ceased. Then she slipped a warm wrap over her thin black dress, and let herself noiselessly out of the flat.

CHAPTER XIX

Sylvia Moreland paid off her taxi at the door of The Luxe hotel, and passed into the brilliantly lighted lounge.

In answer to her inquiry, the hall porter asserted that Mr. and Mrs. Hendebakker had not yet returned.

“I'll wait,” said Sylvia. “Tell them as soon as they come in, please—Lady Moreland.”

She sat down on a sofa which commanded a good view of the entrance. The golden lights in the roof shone upon a moving crowd of people; but all this outside world of colour, gaiety, and movement became to Sylvia something at which she looked from a great way off. She had a sense of separation, of distance, of the irrevocable. Her triumph was cold. A realization that she had taken a step of which she could not measure the consequences swept over her, and chilled her to the very bone. What had she done? What had she done? What would happen next? She began to be very much afraid. She had stolen the Jewel at Hendebakker's bidding. She had stolen it because she was so much afraid of Hendebakker; but now, with this new chill upon her, she began to be afraid of Roden Coverdale. If he knew—
when
he knew! Her heart began to beat heavily. She leaned back against the sapphire velvet of the settee and closed her eyes.

When he knew,
if
he knew! She clenched her hand. Why should he know? He had not looked at the Jewel for twenty years. Why should he look at it again before it went back to its hiding-place? And in that hiding-place it might lie unseen for another twenty years. What a fool she was! She had done brilliantly. Hendebakker would pay all her debts. She would be free; and it was safe, quite safe; her father would never know.

She lifted her head, opened her eyes, and saw Roden Coverdale come into the lounge.

Peter had dined with Miles Banham, done a theatre, and walked back to The Luxe with him. Once there, he declined supper, but stood by the lift for ten minutes or so talking. He had just turned away, and was crossing the lounge, when a gap in the moving stream of people gave him a glimpse of Sylvia Moreland that brought him to a standstill. It was Sylvia, but Sylvia as he had never seen her. He moved out of the crowd, and took a step or two towards her. She was leaning back, her black dress almost hidden by a long wrap of white fur. Her face was white too, and her eyes were closed.

Just for a moment Peter wondered if she had fainted. As the thought crossed his mind, she sat up and looked, not at him, but at the entrance. Instantly an extraordinary change came over her. She sprang to her feet, and then stood rigid, her eyes wide, her face so expressionless as to have lost all impress of thought or personality. Peter knew that look for what it was—terror, sheer, mindless terror. But Sylvia—what in the world could bring that look to Sylvia's face? He swung about and turned towards the entrance.

Anita Hendebakker had just come in. One hand held her lace mantilla together at the breast. All eyes rested upon her.

As Peter turned, Virgil Hendebakker came through the door and joined her. But Sylvia—Sylvia was not looking at the Hendebakkers. Peter, glancing over his shoulder at her, was aware of this. She wasn't looking at the Hendebakkers, but at a man who was standing by himself away on the right, a slight, dark man with an air of distinguished melancholy. Peter recognized him at once. It was Roden Coverdale.

He looked back at Sylvia and saw that she had begun to move. Very slowly she was edging towards one of the fluted gilt pillars which supported the roof. There was a bank of flame-coloured azaleas at its foot. Sylvia kept her face towards the entrance, and moved slowly, slowly. What in the world …? He crossed the floor quickly, and spoke her name:

“Sylvia, what on earth's the matter?” he said. “Are you ill?”

When Sylvia opened her eyes and saw her father come into the lounge she ceased to see anything else; there were a lot of lights; there was a room full of mist; there was her father's face. She couldn't see anything else. In an extremity of terror she began to move without any idea of where she was going. Under her fur wrap her stiffened fingers still clutched the handkerchief which held the Jewel. She took a few uncertain steps, and the mist grew thicker. She no longer saw anything at all. She did not know that her father had seen her and was beginning to move in her direction, or that the Hendebakkers were also coming towards her. She saw nothing till Peter touched her arm and she heard his voice, full of concern, asking if she were ill. And then the mist lifted, and she saw his face. It was Peter, kind, safe Peter—the relief, the blessed relief!

On the impulse her hand went out to him, the hand that held the Jewel. At her touch Peter looked down. Sylvia was pushing a handkerchief into his hand, a handkerchief that held something hard. And then, before he could speak, she had turned her back on him and was moving through the crowd. He heard Anita's voice say, “Ah, Sylvia, you will have supper with us. Will she not, Virgilio?” And then, as he himself moved forward, he saw Coverdale come up to his daughter and put a hand on her arm.

He had no wish to become any further involved with the Hendebakkers. From where he stood he could see the flash of the diamond wings on Anita's breast, and, between the wings, the glow of the Jewel. Cowan said it was a fake. If Cowan was right, what must the real Jewel be like? No, he must avoid the Hendebakkers. Sylvia was all right, since she was with her father. He put the handkerchief which she had given him into his pocket, and walked out of the hotel.

It was a fine, starry night. He speculated for a moment as to what had frightened Sylvia, and then, looking up at the sky, hoped that the day would be fair after such a fine night. Miles Banham, who had just bought a car, was going to drive him down to lunch at Wimbledon with Ruth Spottiswoode and her sister Charlotte. It would be a pity if it rained.

He let himself into his rooms, switched on the light, and fished out the handkerchief which Sylvia had given him, his thought casual and just tinged with amusement. “Wonder what she was playing at!” was the nearest it came to being formulated.

The handkerchief was crumpled up round something hard. Peter spread it out, wondering how anything so flimsy and so small could be of the slightest use. And then he burst out laughing. Sylvia must have been playing him a practical joke. He did not know what he had expected the handkerchief to contain, but he had certainly not guessed that it would be a sweet—one of those peppermints or caramels which are sold done up in a screw of paper. It was rather a stupid joke, anyhow—not much point in it.

He took up the screw of paper and untwisted it. Three twists—and something hard fell out upon the table and lay there under the unshaded light. It was the Jewel!

Peter felt exactly as if he had been hit. It was the Annam Jewel! But how? How on earth? Why, he had seen it blazing between the diamond wings on Anita Hendebakker's breast not a quarter of an hour ago. He put out his hand and touched it gingerly, moving it a little, and the four great colours leaped in it like flames—leaped, rushed together, melted, burned.

Peter turned from it with a jerk and walked to the window. Cowan—Cowan had said that the Hendebakker Jewel was a fake; and Cowan had said, “I wonder if there is a real Jewel at all.”

Peter laughed. He heard his own laugh, and it startled him; it was so harsh and strained. “I wonder if there is a real Jewel at all.” Good old Cowan, he wouldn't say that now—unless, unless all this was a dream. He walked back to the table and looked soberly and long at the Jewel. It was real. It was the Annam Jewel; the only one in the world. He looked at it, frowning. It was the Annam Jewel; and Sylvia Moreland had pushed it into his hand in the lounge at The Luxe hotel. How? Why? What had Sylvia to do with it at all?

Again Peter saw himself with a book in his hand, a book bound in Imperial Chinese yellow. Again he read the author's name, Roden Coverdale. And then the book was another book, a shabby old exercise-book; and he was looking at what were probably the last words that his father had ever written:

“
N.B
.—To find out the real name of the man who calls himself Roden Dale …”

Peter stood for a long time, frowning at the Jewel. As the tide of confused thoughts and fancies ebbed, it left bare these main facts. The Jewel before him was not the Hendebakker Jewel. Sylvia had pushed it into his hand; and from whom would Sylvia have got it except from her father—from Roden Dale? Sylvia had stolen it! The blank terror on her face was explained; she had taken the Jewel, and then suddenly, in the lounge at The Luxe, she had seen the man from whom she had stolen it—she had seen her father.

Peter's frown became a scowl. It was pretty beastly when you came to think of it, a girl robbing her father; but that, undoubtedly, was what Sylvia had been doing—how or why Peter had no idea; he merely came gloomily to the conclusion that it was a pretty rotten sort of show.

He stared at the Jewel with something like aversion. For years and years it had been at the very centre of his dream; and now here it was under his hand, beautiful beyond all his thought of it. The glory of the dream was gone, the glamour and the romance. He was conscious of a cold distaste. He put out his hand and touched it again, pushing it away with a little jerk of the finger. Once more the colours leapt and mingled, fused and dissolved. It was like watching the flow of light. He saw the blue burn to a deep blood-red, and the emerald flame into gold. His thought became more definite. There was the Jewel People had done some pretty beastly things because of it—battle, and murder, and sudden death. Peter had had enough of that sort of thing. It was beastly; he hated it. And now Sylvia—Sylvia with the look of panic on her face—why had she pushed the Jewel into his hand? What on earth did she expect him to do with it? Of one thing he felt quite sure—he wasn't going to be mixed up in any rotten sort of business like a girl stealing from her own father. The Jewel should go back to Coverdale in the morning. He wasn't sure whether the Jewel really belonged to Coverdale or not. If it belonged to him, let him keep it. If it was his, Peter's, he might try to get it away from Coverdale, or he might not. He would have to think that out. But, in any case, Sylvia mustn't be mixed up in the affair. It was between him and Coverdale. Sylvia had nothing whatever to do with it.

Having arrived at this conclusion, Peter felt much lightened in spirit. He left Sylvia's handkerchief lying on the table, swept the Jewel off into the palm of his hand, and went into his bedroom, where he dropped it casually into the box which held his studs. Then he went to bed and slept the sleep of the single-minded.

CHAPTER XX

Roden Coverdale touched his daughter on the arm.

“Are you ready, my dear?” he said pleasantly.

He felt her quiver. Then Anita's voice broke in, “But you stay—you sup with us, Sylvia, do you not—and perhaps your friend also?”

Coverdale looked at her, smiled charmingly, and bowed as Sylvia murmured what might pass for an introduction. Then he turned a little, coming face to face with Hendebakker, and stopped smiling.

“Hullo, Dale!” said Hendebakker. “Quite a while since we met, isn't it?”

Coverdale's face was a blank.