House in Charlton Crescent by Annie Haynes Read Free Book Online Page B

the remains of early good looks.
    â€œI can’t believe it, my lady! Your lovely pearls gone, that I have always been so proud of. I have always wanted you to put them in the Bank, your ladyship knows, and now I suppose everybody will be saying that I have taken them, though I’m as innocent as a babe unborn.”
    â€œNow may Heaven grant me patience with a fool!” Lady Anne groaned in her exasperation. “Please wait to protest your innocence until you are accused, Pirnie!”

CHAPTER V
    â€œDetective Inspector Furnival will be here as soon as possible,” Lady Anne announced.
    She had come into the small study where Bruce Cardyn was working, walking with her stick as usual, and disdaining all proffered help. She waited before closing the door, and spoke apparently for the benefit of those behind her:
    â€œI wish you to receive him, Mr. Cardyn, and to do what you can to help him.”
    Then she shut the door very carefully and came forward totteringly to the chair the young man placed for her.
    â€œWell?” she said interrogatively. “Is this robbery of the pearls connected with the work you have in hand?”
    Bruce Cardyn shrugged his broad shoulders.
    â€œI don’t quite see the connexion, Lady Anne, since, if the thief were already in possession of the pearls, it is difficult to understand why he should wish you out of the way.”
    â€œUnless he—or she,” Lady Anne said very deliberately, “wished to possess himself—or herself—of the diamonds.”
    â€œAnd that, as they were at the Bank, he was hardly likely to do,” Bruce remarked. “Unless they came to him by inheritance. And Mr. Daventry—”
    â€œMr. Daventry will not inherit my diamonds,” Lady Anne said sharply. “I have left them to my niece, Miss Dorothy Fyvert.”
    â€œThen that settles the question of any connexion, of course,” Bruce said indignantly.
    â€œNaturally it does,” Lady Anne agreed with a far-away look in her eyes. “Well, Mr. Cardyn, it is no use your or my spending time in guessing. What I came to you to say is, I wish no faintest hint of the work you are really here to do to reach Inspector Furnival’s ears, until I give you permission.”
    Bruce sat silent for a moment.
    â€œThat will be extremely difficult, Lady Anne! Inspector Furnival does not know me personally, it is true, but he is sure to discover who am, and then how am to account for my presence here?”
    â€œI do not care, you must invent something,” Lady Anne said in her most autocratic manner. “What is the good of your being a detective if you cannot?” 
    â€œIt seems to me,” Cardyn went on, “that the two cases are so interwoven that he would find the knowledge a help in his task.”
    â€œI do not care about that,” Lady Anne snapped. Then, her manner growing more impressive, “Don’t you understand, Mr. Cardyn, that I called you in instead of the regular police because, when you have discovered my would-be murderer, I may wish the whole affair hushed up—-for the sake of my family?” Her voice sank to a whisper and she got up, carefully averting her eyes from Bruce Cardyn’s face.
    He got up too, and mechanically offered her his arm, one conclusion forcing itself upon him—“Then she has some suspicion after all! But who?”
    It was not an hour yet since the loss of the pearls had been discovered, and had thrown the usually peaceful household at the house in Charlton Crescent in a ferment. Bruce Cardyn and John Daventry had searched the escritoire together carefully, but had found no trace of the missing jewels and had only made themselves certain of what Lady Anne had said at first—the locks and springs that guarded the pearls had not been tampered with. Everything had been opened and reclosed in the ordinary way. Some one had found out the secret of the escritoire—but