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Second Latchkey, The

<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> <h3>BEGINNING OF THE SERIES</h3> No man who had not known the seamy side of life could have guessed the effect of Milton Savage's paragraph upon the minds of Lord and Lady Annesley-Seton. "I told you if you bet against me you would bet wrong," Knight said, when the astonished girl handed the letter across the breakfast table. Even he had hardly reckoned on such extreme cordiality. He had expected a bid for acquaintanceship with the "millionaire" and his bride, but he had fancied there would be a certain stiffness in the effort. Lady Annesley-Seton had begun, "My dear Cousin," and her frank American way was disarming. She wrote four pages of apology for herself and her husband, explaining why they had neglected "looking up Mrs. Nelson Smith when she was Miss Annesley Grayle." The letter went on: <div class="blockquot">I hadn't been married long when my husband read out of some newspaper the notice of a clergyman's death, and mentioned that he was a cousin by marriage whom he hadn't met since boyhood, although the clergyman's living was in our county—somewhere off at the other end. My husband thought there was a daughter, and I remember his remarking that we ought to write and find out if she'd been left badly off. Of course, it was my duty to have kept his idea alive, and to have carried it out. But I was young and having such a good time that I'm afraid it was a case of "out of sight, out of mind." We forgot to inquire, and heard no more. It was horrid of us, and I'm sure it was our loss. Probably we should have remembered if things had gone well with us: but perhaps you know that my father (whose money used to seem unlimited to me) lost it all, and we were mixed up in the smash. We've been poorer than any church mice since, and trying to make ends meet has occupied our attention from that day to this. I have to confess that, if our attention hadn't been drawn to your name, we might never have thought of it again. But now I've eased my conscience, and as fate seems to have brought us within close touch, do let us see what she means to do with us. We should so like to meet you and Mr. Nelson Smith, who is, apparently, more or less a countryman of mine. I'm not allowed out yet, in this cold weather, after an attack of "flu"; but my husband will call this afternoon on the chance of finding you in, carrying a warm invitation to you both to "waive ceremony" and dine with us at Valley House en famille. Looking forward to meeting you, Yours most cordially, Constance Annesley-Seton. </div> "Sweet of her, isn't it?" Annesley exclaimed when she and Knight had read the letter through. Knight glanced at his wife quizzically, opened his lips to speak, and closed them. Perhaps he thought it would be unwise as well as wrong to disturb the girl's faith in Lady Annesley-Seton's disinterestedness. "Yes, it's real sweet!" he said, exaggerating his American accent, but keeping a grave face. They were duly "at home" that afternoon, though they had intended to go out, and the caller found them in a private sitting room filled with flowers, suggesting much money and a love of spending it. Annesley had put on Knight's favourite frock, one of the "model dresses" he had chosen for her in their whirlwind rush through Bond Street, a white cloth trimmed with narrow bands of dark fur; and she had never looked prettier. Lord Annesley-Seton, a tall thin man of the eagle-nosed soldier type, wearing pince-nez, but youthful-looking for the forty-four years Burke gave him, could not help thinking her a satisfactory cousin to pick up: and Nelson Smith was far from being in appearance the rough, self-made man he had dreaded. He was delighted with them both—so young, so handsome, so happy, so fortunate, and luckily so well bred. He did not make the short conventional call he had intended, but stayed to tea, and at last went home to give his wife an enthusiastic account of the visit. "The girl's a lady, and might be a beauty if she had more confidence in herself—you know what I mean: taking herself for granted as a charmer, the way you smart women do," he said. "She isn't that kind. But with you to show her the ropes, she'll be liked by the right people. There's a softness and sweetness and genuineness that you don't often see in girls now. As for the man, you'll think him a ripper, Connie—so will other women. Has the air of being a gentleman born, and then having roughed it all over the world. A strong man, I should say. A man's man as well as a woman's. Might 'take' if he's started right." "We'll see to that," said Constance Annesley-Seton, who was not too ill to go out but had not wanted to seem too eager. She was less than thirty, but looked more because she had worried and drawn faint lines between her delicate auburn brows and at the corners of her greenish-gray eyes. There were also a few fading threads in the red locks which were her one real beauty; but she had a marvellous hair-varnish which prevented them from showing. "We'll see to that! If they'll let us. Are they going to let us?" "Yes, I think so," Annesley-Seton reassured her. "They're a pair of children, willing to be guided. They can have anything they want in the world, but they don't seem to know what to want." "Splendid!" laughed Constance. "Can't we will them to want our house in town, and invite us to visit them?" "I shouldn't wonder," replied her husband. "You might make a start in that direction when they come to dinner to-morrow evening." Lord Annesley-Seton had outgrown such enthusiasms as he might once have had, therefore his account of the cousins encouraged Constance to hope much, and she was not disappointed. On the contrary, she thought that he had not said enough, especially about the man. If she had not had so many anxieties that her youthful love of "larks" had been crushed out, she would have "adored" a flirtation with Nelson Smith. It would have been "great fun" to steal him from the pretty beanpole of a girl who would not know how to use her claws in a fight for her man; but as it was, Connie thought only of conciliating "Cousin Anne," and winning her confidence. Other women would try to take Nelson Smith from his wife, but Connie would have her hands full in playing a less amusing game. She thought, seeing that the handsome, dark young man she admired had a mind of his own, it would be a difficult game to play; and Nelson Smith saw that she thought so. His sense of humour caused him to smile at his own cleverness in producing the impression; and he would have given a good deal for someone to laugh with over her maneuvers to entice him along the road he wished to travel. But he dared not point out to Annesley the fun of the situation. To do so would be to put her against him and it. She, too, had a sense of humour, suppressed by five years of Mrs. Ellsworth, but coming delightfully to life, like a half-frozen bird, in the sunshine of safety and happiness. Knight appealed to and encouraged it often, for he could not have lived with a humourless woman, no matter how sweet. Yet he did not dare wake it where her cousins were concerned. Her sense of honour was more valuable to him than her sense of humour. He was afraid to put the former on the defensive, and he was glad to let her believe the Annesley-Setons were genuinely "warming" to them in a way which proved that blood was thicker than water. The girl had wondered from the first why he was determined to make friends with these cousins whom she had never known, and he was grateful because she believed in him too loyally to attribute his desire to "snobbishness." He wished her to suppose he had set his heart on providing her with influential guidance on the threshold of a new life; and it was important that she should not begin criticizing his motives. By the time dinner was over Constance Annesley-Seton had decided that the Nelson Smiths had been sent to her by the Powers that Be, and that it would be tempting Providence not to annex them. Not that she put it in that way to herself, for she did not trouble her mind about Providence. All she knew was that she and Dick would be fools to let the chance slip. It was as much as she could do not to suggest the idea in her mind: that the Nelson Smiths should take the house in Portman Square; that she and her husband should introduce them to society, and that the Devonshire place should either be let to them or that they should visit there when they wished to be in the country, as paying guests. But she controlled her impatience, limiting herself to proposing plans for future meetings. She suggested giving a dinner in honour of the bride and bridegroom, and inviting people whom it would be "nice for them to know" in town. Knight said that he and "Anita" (his new name for Annesley, a souvenir of Spanish South America) would accept with pleasure. And the girl agreed gladly, because she thought her cousin and his wife were very kind. After dinner Annesley-Seton and Knight followed Constance and "Anita" almost directly, the former asking his guests if they would like to see some of the family treasures which they could only have glanced at in passing with the crowd the other day. "Before sugar went to smash, we blazed into all sorts of extravagances here," he said, bitterly, with a glance at the deposed Sugar King's daughter. "Among others, putting electric light into this old barn. We'll have an illumination, and show you some trifles Connie and I wish to Heaven a kind-hearted burglar would relieve us of. "Of course the beastly things are heirlooms, as I suppose you know. We can't sell or pawn them, or I should have done one or the other long ago. They're insured by the trustees, who are the bane of our lives, for the estate. But a sporting sort of company has blossomed out lately, which insures against 'loss of use'—I think that's the expression. I pay the premium myself—even when I can't pay anything else!—and if the valuable contents of this place are stolen or burned, we shall benefit personally. "I don't mind you or all the world knowing we're stony broke," he went on, frankly. "And everyone does know, anyhow, that we'd be in the deuce of a hole without the tourists' shillings which pour in twice a week the year round. You see, each object in the collection helps bring in those shillings; and 'loss of use' of a single one would be a real deprivation. So it's fair and above board. But thus far, I've paid my premium and got no return, these last three years. Our tourists are so disgustingly honest, or our burglars so clumsy and unenterprising, that, as you say in the States, 'there's nothing doing.'" As he talked Dick Annesley-Seton sauntered about the immense room into which they had come from the state banqueting hall, switching on more and more of the electric candle-lights set high on the green brocade walls. This was known as the "green drawing room" by the family, and the "Room of the Miniatures" by the public, who read about it in catalogues. "Come and look at our white elephants," he went on, when the room, dimly and economically lit at first, was ablaze with light; and Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith joined him eagerly. Constance followed, too, bored but resigned; and her husband paused before a tall, narrow glass cabinet standing in a recess. "See these miniatures!" he exclaimed, fretfully. "There are plenty more, but the best are in this cabinet; and there's a millionaire chap, in New York—perhaps you can guess his name, Smith?—who has offered a hundred thousand pounds for the thirty little bits of ivory in it." "I think that must have been the great Paul Van Vreck," Knight hazarded. "I thought you'd guess! There aren't many who'd make such an offer. Think what it would mean to me if it could be accepted, and I could have the handling of the money. There are three small pictures in the little octagon gallery next door, too, Van Vreck took a fancy to on a visit he paid us from Saturday to Monday last summer. We never thought much of them, and they're in a dark place, labelled in the catalogue 'Artist unknown: School of Fragonard'; but he swore they were authentic Fragonards, and would have backed his opinion to the tune of fifteen thousand pounds for the trio, or six thousand for the one he liked best. Isn't it aggravating? In the Chinese room he went mad over some bits of jade, especially a Buddha nobody else had ever admired." "He's one of the few millionaire collectors who is really a judge of all sorts of things," Knight replied. "But, great Scott! I'm no expert, yet it strikes me these miniatures are something out of the ordinary!" "Well, yes, they are," Annesley-Seton admitted, modestly. "That queer one at the top is a Nicholas Hilliard. I believe he was the first of the miniaturists. And the two just underneath are Samuel Coopers. They say he stood at the head of the Englishmen. There are three Richard Cosways and rather a nice Angelica Kauffmann." "It was the Fragonard miniature Mr. Van Vreck liked best," put in Constance. "It seems he painted only a few. And next, the Goya——" "Good heavens! where is the Fragonard?" cried Dick, his eyes bulging behind his pince-nez. "Surely it was here——" "Oh, surely, yes!" panted his wife. "It was never anywhere else." For an instant they were stricken into silence, both staring at a blank space on the black velvet background where twenty-nine miniatures hung. There was no doubt about it when they had reviewed the rows of little painted faces. The Fragonard was gone. "Stolen!" gasped Lady Annesley-Seton. "Unless one of you, or some servant you trust with the key, is a somnambulist," said Knight. "I don't see how it would pay a thief to steal such a thing. It must be too well known. He couldn't dispose of it—that is if he weren't a collector himself; and even then he could never show it. But—by Jove!" "What is it? What have you seen?" Annesley-Seton asked, sharply. Knight pointed, without touching the cabinet. He had never come near enough to do that. "It looks to me as if a square bit of glass had been cut out on the side where the lost miniature must have hung," he said. "I can't be sure, from where I stand, because the cabinet is too close to the wall of the recess." Dick Annesley-Seton thrust his arm into the space between green brocade and glass, then slipped his hand through a neatly cut aperture just big enough to admit its passage. With his hand in the square hole he could reach the spot where the miniature had hung, and could have taken it off the hook had it been there. But hook, as well as miniature, was missing. "That settles it!" he exclaimed. "It is a theft, and a clever one! Strange we should find it out when I was demonstrating to you how much I wished it would happen. Hurrah! That miniature alone is insured against burglary for seven or eight hundred pounds. Nothing to what it's worth, but a lot to pay a premium on, with the rest of the things besides. I wish now I hadn't been so cheese-paring. You'll be witnesses, you two, of our discovery. I'm glad Connie and I weren't alone when we found it out. Something nasty might have been said." "We'll back you up with pleasure," Knight replied. "What was the miniature like? I wonder if we saw it when we were here the other day, Anita? I remember these, but can't recall any other." "Neither can I," returned Annesley. "But I am stupid about such things. We saw so many—and passed so quickly." "I wonder if Paul Van Vreck was here in disguise among the tourists?" said Dick, beginning to laugh. "It would have been the one he'd have chosen if he couldn't grab the lot." "Oh, surely no one in the crowd could have cut a piece of glass out of a cabinet and stolen a miniature without being seen!" Annesley cried. "Dick is half in joke," Constance explained. "It would have been a miracle, yet the servants are above suspicion. Those horrid trustees never let me choose a new one without their interference. And, of course Dick didn't mean what he said about Mr. Van Vreck." "Of course not. I understood that," Annesley excused herself, blushing lest she had appeared obtuse. "All the same, to carry on the joke, let's go into the octagon room and see if the alleged Fragonard pictures have gone, too," said Annesley-Seton. He led the way, turning on more light in the adjoining room as he went; and, outdistancing the others, they heard him stammer, "Good Lord!" before they were near enough to see what he saw. "They aren't gone?" shrieked his wife, hurrying after him. "One of them is." In an instant the three had grouped behind him, where he stood staring at an empty frame, between two others of the same pattern and size, charming old frames twelve or fourteen inches square, within whose boundaries of carved and gilded wood, nymphs held hands and danced. "Are we dreaming this?" gasped Constance. "Thank Heaven we're not!" the husband answered. "The two paintings are on wood, you see. So was the missing one. Someone has simply unfastened it from the frame, and trusted to this being a dark, out-of-the-way corner, not to have the theft noticed for hours or maybe days. By all that's wonderful, here's another insurance haul for me! What about the jade Buddha in the Chinese room?" They rushed back into the green drawing room, and so to the beautiful Chinese room beyond, with its priceless lacquer tables and cabinets. In one of these latter a collection of exquisite jade was gathered together. And the Buddha which Paul Van Vreck had coveted was gone! <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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