Detective and mystery stories; Love stories; Social secretaries -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
She put her hands over her face and collapsed down in her chair, like a
spring that had held her up had broken. That breathing beside me had
grown so loud it sounded as if it came from some one running the last
lap of a race. Now it suddenly broke into a sound—more like a growl than
anything else—and Mrs. Price got up, shuffling and shaking, her hands
holding on to the chair in front.
"She ought to be put in jail," she gasped out. "She’s bad right
through—everything she’s said is a lie. And she’s a thief too."
There was a movement of consternation among them all—getting up, pushing
back chairs, several voices speaking together:
"Keep quiet."
"Mrs. Price, I beg of you—"
"Suzanne, sit down."
But she went on, looking like a withered old witch, with her bird-like
hands clutched on the chair back:
"I won’t sit down, I won’t keep quiet. I’ve sat here listening to all
this and I’ve had enough. I’m crazy; my baby’s gone; she’s taken it,
she’s taken everything—" She turned to her mother. "She took your
jewels—I know it."
Mr. Janney burst in like a bombshell. I never thought he could break
loose that way, with his voice shrill and a shaking finger pointing into
his stepdaughter’s face.
"Stop this. I can’t stand for it—I know something about that—I saw—"
But she wouldn’t stop, no one could make her:
"I saw too, and I’m going to tell you. I don’t care what you say, I
don’t care what you think of me—my heart’s broken and I don’t care for
anything but to have my baby back." She addressed her mother again. "_I_
went to take your jewels that night. Yes, I did; I went to steal
them—not all of them—just that long diamond chain you never wear. _You_
know why; you knew I hadn’t any money and that I had to have it. I was
going to sell it and put what I got in stocks and if I was lucky buy it
back so you’d never know. It was _I_ who took Bébita’s torch—that’s why
it was lost—and I went down to the safe. I’d found the combination in a
drawer in the library and learnt it. And when I opened it everything was
gone. Some one had been there before me, the cases were all together in
their box but they were empty." She clawed at the embroidered purse
hanging on her arm and began to jerk at the cord, pulling it open. "But
I found something, something the thief had dropped, lying on the floor
just inside the door." She drew out a twist of tissue paper, and
unrolling it held it toward the Chief; "I found _that_."
He took it, scrutinizing it, puzzled, through his glasses. Every one of
us except Miss Maitland, all standing now, craned forward to see. It was
a pointed pink thing about as big as the end of my little finger. The
Chief touched it and said:
"It looks like a small rose."
"Yes, a chiffon rosebud," Mrs. Price cried, "and she," pointing to Miss
Maitland, "wore a dress that night trimmed with them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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