The Datchet Diamonds
Copyright© 2024 by Richard Marsh
Chapter 12: A Woman Roused
Almost as soon as Mr. Franklyn touched the knocker of the house in Medina Villas, the door was opened from within, and he found himself confronted by Miss Strong.
“Oh, Mr. Franklyn, is it you at last?” She saw that some one was standing at Mr. Franklyn’s back. “Cyril!” she cried. Then, perceiving her mistake, drew back. “I beg your pardon, I thought it was Mr. Paxton.”
The man in the rear advanced.
“Is Mr. Paxton here?” He turned to Mr. Franklyn. “Unless you want trouble, if he is here, you had better tell me.”
Mr. Franklyn answered.
“Mr. Paxton is not here. If you like you may go in and look for yourself; but if you are a wise man you will take my assurance as sufficient.”
Mr. Hollier looked at Mr. Franklyn, then at Miss Strong, then decided.
“Very well, sir. I don’t wish to make myself more disagreeable than I can help. I’ll take your word.”
Directly he was in the hall and the door was closed Miss Strong caught Mr. Franklyn by the arm. He could feel that she was trembling, as she whispered, almost in his ear--
“Mr. Franklyn, what does that man want with Cyril?”
He drew her with him into the sitting-room. Conscious that he was about to play a principal part in a very delicate situation, he desired to take advantage of still another moment or two to enable him to collect his thoughts. Miss Wentworth, having relinquished her reading, was sitting up in her armchair, awaiting his arrival with an air of evident expectancy. He looked at Miss Strong. Her hand was pressed against her side; her head was thrown a little back; you could see the muscles working in her beautiful, rounded throat almost as plainly as you may see them working in the throat of a bird. For the moment Mr. Franklyn was inclined to wish that Cyril Paxton had never been his friend. He was not a man who was easily unnerved, but as he saw the something which was in the young girl’s face, he found himself, for almost the first time in his life, at a loss for words.
Miss Strong had to put her question a second time.
“Mr. Franklyn, what does that man want with Cyril?”
When he did speak the lawyer found, somewhat to his surprise, that his throat seemed dry, and that his voice was husky.
“Strictly speaking, I cannot say that the man wants Cyril at all. What he does want is to know if I am in communication with him.”
“Why should he want to know that?” While he was seeking words, Miss Strong followed with another question. “But, tell me, have you seen Cyril?”
“I have not. Though it seems he is in Brighton, or, rather, he was two hours ago.”
“Two hours ago? Then where is he now?”
“That at present I cannot tell you. He left his hotel two hours ago, as was thought, to keep an appointment; it would almost seem as if he had been starting to keep the appointment which he had with you.”
“Two hours ago? Yes. I was waiting for him then. But he never came. Why didn’t he? You know why he didn’t. Tell me!”
“The whole affair seems to be rather an odd one, though in all probability it amounts to nothing more than a case of cross-questions and crooked answers. What I have learnt is little enough. If you will sit down I will tell you all there is to tell.”
Mr. Franklyn advanced a chair towards Miss Strong with studied carelessness. She spurned the proffered support with something more than contempt.
“I won’t sit down. How can I sit down when you have something to tell me? I can always listen best when I am standing.”
Putting his hands behind his back, Mr. Franklyn assumed what he possibly intended to be an air of parental authority.
“See here, Miss Strong. You can, if you choose, be as sensible a young woman as I should care to see. If you so choose now, well and good. But I tell you plainly that on your showing the slightest symptom of hysterics my lips will be closed, and you will not get another word out of me.”
If by his attempting to play the part of heavy father he had supposed that Miss Strong would immediately be brought into a state of subjection, he had seldom made a greater error. So far from having cowed her, he seemed to have fired all the blood in her veins. She drew herself up until she had increased her stature by at least an inch, and she addressed the man of law in a strain in which he probably had never been addressed before.
“How dare you dictate how I am to receive any scraps of information which you may condescend to dole out to me! You forget yourself. Cyril is to be my husband; you pretend to be his friend. If it is anything but pretence, and you are a gentlemen, and a man of honour, you will see that it is your duty to withhold no tidings of my promised husband from his future wife. How I choose to receive those tidings is my affair, not yours.”
Certainly the lady’s slightly illogical indignation made her look supremely lovely. Mr. Franklyn recognised this fact with a sensation which was both novel and curious. Even in that moment of perturbation, he told himself that it would never be his fate to have such a beautiful creature breathing burning words for love of him. While he wondered what to answer, Miss Wentworth interposed, rising from her chair to do so.
“Daisy is quite right, Mr. Franklyn. Don’t play the game which the cat plays with the mouse by making lumbering attempts to, what is called, break it gently. If you have bad news, tell it out like a man! You will find that the feminine is not necessarily far behind the masculine animal in fibre.”
Mr. Franklyn looked from one young woman to the other, and felt himself ill-used. He had known them both for quite a tale of years; and yet he felt, somehow, as if he were becoming really acquainted with them for the first time now.
“You misjudge me, Miss Strong, and you, Miss Wentworth, too. The difficulty which I feel is how to tell you, as we lawyers say, without prejudice, exactly what there is to tell. As I said, the situation is such an odd one. I must begin by asking you a question. Has either of you heard of the affair of the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet’s diamonds?”
“The affair of the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet’s diamonds?”
Miss Strong repeated his words, passing her hand over her eyes, as if she did not understand. Miss Wentworth, however, made it quickly plain that she did.
“I have; and so of course has Daisy. What of it?”
“This. An addle-headed detective, named John Ireland, has got hold of a wild idea that Cyril knows something about it.”
Miss Wentworth gave utterance to what sounded like a half-stifled exclamation.
“I guessed as much! What an extraordinary thing! I had been reading about it just before Mr. Paxton came in last night, and when he began talking in a mysterious way about his having made a quarter of a million at a single coup--precisely the amount at which the diamonds were valued--it set me thinking. I suppose I was a fool.”
For Miss Wentworth’s quickness in guessing his meaning Mr. Franklyn had been unprepared. If she, inspired solely by the evidence of her own intuitions, had suspected Mr. Paxton, what sort of a case might not Mr. Ireland have against him? But Miss Strong’s sense of perception was, apparently, not so keen. She looked at her companions as a person might look who is groping for the key of a riddle.
“I daresay I am stupid. I did read something about some diamonds being stolen. But--what has that to do with Cyril?”
Mr. Franklyn glanced at Miss Wentworth as if he thought that she might answer. But she refrained. He had to speak.
“In all probability the whole affair is a blunder of Ireland’s.”
“Ireland? Who is Ireland?”
“John Ireland is a Scotland Yard detective, and, like all such gentry, quick to jump at erroneous conclusions.”
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