In the Bishop's Carriage. Miriam Michelson
thief! stop thief! Thief! Thief! Thief!"
May you never hear it, Mag, behind you when you've somebody else's diamonds in your pocket. It sounds—it sounds the way the bay of the hounds must sound to the hare. It seems to fly along with the air; at the same time to be behind you, at your side, even in front of you.
I heard it bellowed in a dozen different voices, and every now and then I could hear Moriway as I pelted on—that brassy, cruel bellow of his that made my heart sick.
And then all at once I heard a policeman's whistle.
That whistle was like a signal—I saw the gates of the Correction open before me. I saw your Nance, Tom, in a neat striped dress, and she was behind bars—bars—bars! There were bars everywhere before me. In fact, I felt them against my very hands, for in my mad race I had shot up a blind alley—a street that ended in a garden behind an iron fence.
I grabbed the diamonds to throw them from me, but I couldn't—I just couldn't! I jumped the fence where the gate was low, and with that whistle flying shrill and shriller after me I ran to the house.
I might have jumped from the frying-pan? Of course, I might. But it was all fire to me. To be caught at the end is at least no worse than to be caught at the beginning. Anyhow, it was my one chance, and I took it as unhesitatingly as a rat takes a leap into a trap to escape a terrier. Only—only, it was my luck that the trap wasn't set! The room was empty. I pushed open a glass door, and fell over an open trunk that stood beside it.
It bruised my knee and tore my hand, but oh!—it was nuts to me. For it was a woman's trunk filled with women's things.
A skirt! A blessed skirt! And not a striped one. I threw off the bell-boy's jacket and I got into that dear dress so quick it made my head swim.
The jacket was a bit tight but I didn't button it, and I'd just got a stiff little hat perched on my head when I heard the tramp of men on the sidewalk, and in the dusk saw the cop's buttons at the gate.
Caught? Not much. Not yet. I threw open the glass doors and walked out into the garden.
"Miss—Omar—I wonder if it would be Miss Omar?"
You bet I didn't take time to see who it was talking before I answered. Of course I was Miss Omar. I was Miss Anybody that had a right to wear skirts and be inside those blessed gates.
"Ah—h! I fancied you might be. I've been expecting you."
It was a lazy, low voice with a laugh in it, and it came from a wheeled chair, where a young man lay. Sallow he was and slim and long, and helpless—you could see that by his white hanging hands. But his voice—it was what a woman's voice would be if she were a man. It made you perk up and pretend to be somewhere near its level. It fitted his soft, black clothes and his fine, clean face. It meant silks and velvets and—
Oh, all right, Tommy Dorgan, if you're going to get jealous of a voice!
"Excuse me, Mr. Latimer." The cop came in as he spoke, Moriway following; the rest of the hounds hung about. "There's a thieving bell-boy from the hotel that's somewhere in your grounds. Can I come in and get him?"
"In here, Sergeant? Aren't you mistaken?"
"No; Mr. Moriway here saw him jump the gate not five minutes since."
"Strange, and I here all the time! I may have dozed of, though. Certainly—certainly. Look for the little rascal. What's he stolen? Diamonds! Tut! tut! Enterprising, isn't he? … Miss Omar, won't you kindly reach the bell yonder—no, on the table; that's it—and ring for some one to take the officer about?"
I rang.
Do you know what happened? An electric light strung on the tree above the table shone out, and there I stood under it with Moriway's eyes full upon me.
"Great—!" he began.
"Just ring again—" Mr. Latimer's voice came soft as silk.
My fingers trembled so, the bell clattered out of them and fell jangling to the ground. But it rang. And the light above me went out like magic. I fell back into a garden chair.
"I beg your pardon, Mr.—was Moriway the name?—I must have interrupted you, but my eyes are troubling me this evening, and I can't bear the light. Miss Omar, I thought the housekeeper had instructed you: one ring means lights, two mean I want Burnett. Here he comes … Burnett, take Sergeant Mulhill through the place. He's looking for a thief. You will accompany the Sergeant, Mr.—Moriway?"
"Thank you—no. If you don't mind, I'll wait out here."
That meant me. I moved toward the gate.
"Not at all. Have a seat. Miss Omar, sit down, won't you?" I sat down.
"Miss Omar reads to me, Mr. Moriway. I'm an invalid, as you see, dependent on the good offices of my man. I find a woman's voice a soothing change."
"It must be. Particularly if the voice is pleasing. Miss Omar—I didn't quite catch the name—"
He waited. But Miss Omar had nothing to say that minute.
"Yes, that's the name. You've got it all right," said Latimer. "An uncommon name, isn't it?"
"I don't think I ever heard it before. Do you know, Miss Omar, as I heard your voice just before we got to the gate, it sounded singularly boyish to me."
"Mr. Latimer does not find it so—do you?" I said as sweet—as sweet as I could coax. How sweet's that, Tom Dorgan?
"Not at all." A little laugh came from Latimer as though he was enjoying a joke all by himself. But Moriway jumped with satisfaction. He knew the voice all right.
"Have you a brother, may I ask?" He leaned over and looked keenly at me.
"I am an orphan," I said sadly, "with no relatives."
"A pitiful position," sneered Moriway. "You look so much like a boy I know that—"
"Do you really think so?" So awfully polite was Latimer to such a rat as Moriway. Why? Well, wait. "I can't agree with you. Do you know, I find Miss Omar very feminine. Of course, short hair—"
"Her hair is short, then!"
"Typhoid," I murmured.
"Too bad!" Moriway sneered.
"Yes," I snapped. "I thought it was at the time. My hair was very heavy and long, and I had a chance to sit in a window at Troyon's where they were advertising a hair tonic and—"
Rotten? Of course it was. I'd no business to gabble, and just because you and your new job, Mag, came to my mind at that minute, there I went putting my foot in it.
Moriway laughed. I didn't like the sound of his laugh.
"Your reader is versatile, Mr. Latimer," he said.
"Yes." Latimer smoothed the soft silk rug that lay over him. "Poverty and that sort of versatility are often bedfellows, eh? … Tell me, Mr. Moriway, these lost diamonds are yours?"
"No. They belong to a—a friend of mine, Mrs. Kingdon."
"Oh! the old lady who was married this afternoon to a young fortune-hunter!" I couldn't resist it.
Moriway jumped out of his seat.
"She was not married," he stuttered. "She—"
"Changed her mind? How sensible of her! Did she find out what a crook the fellow was? What was his name—Morrison? No—Middleway—I have heard it."
"May I ask, Miss Omar"—I didn't have to see his face; his voice told how mad with rage he was—"how you come to be acquainted with a matter that only the contracting parties could possibly know of?"
"Why, they can't have kept it very secret, the old lady and the young rascal who was after her money, for you see we both knew of it; and I wasn't the bride and you certainly weren't the groom, were