"What a shame!" she said. "Tell me all about it."
With a prefatory remark that it was all so ridiculous, really, Aline embarked on the narrative of the afternoon's events.
Joan heard her out, checking a strong disposition to giggle. Her viewpoint was that of the average person, and the average person cannot see the importance of the scarab in the scheme of things. The opinion she formed of Mr. Peters was of his being an eccentric old gentleman, making a great to-do about nothing at all. Losses had to have a concrete value before they could impress Joan. It was beyond her to grasp that Mr. Peters would sooner have lost a diamond necklace, if he had happened to possess one, than his Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty.
It was not until Aline, having concluded her tale, added one more strand to it that she found herself treating the matter seriously.
"Father says he would give five thousand dollars to anyone who would get it back for him."
"What!"
The whole story took on a different complexion for Joan. Money talks. Mr. Peters' words might have been merely the rhetorical outburst of a heated moment; but, even discounting them, there seemed to remain a certain exciting substratum. A man who shouts that he will give five thousand dollars for a thing may very well mean he will give five hundred, and Joan's finances were perpetually in a condition which makes five hundred dollars a sum to be gasped at.
"He wasn't serious, surely!"
"I think he was," said Aline.
"But five thousand dollars!"
"It isn't really very much to father, you know. He gave away a hundred thousand a year ago to a university."
"But for a grubby little scarab!"
"You don't understand how father loves his scarabs. Since he retired from business, he has been simply wrapped up in them. You know collectors are like that. You read in the papers about men giving all sorts of money for funny things."
Outside the door R. Jones, his ear close to the panel, drank in all these things greedily. He would have been willing to remain in that attitude indefinitely in return for this kind of special information; but just as Aline said these words a door opened on the floor above, and somebody came out, whistling, and began to descend the stairs.
R. Jones stood not on the order of his going. He was down in the hall and fumbling with the handle of the front door with an agility of which few casual observers of his dimensions would have deemed him capable. The next moment he was out in the street, walking calmly toward Leicester Square, pondering over what he had heard.
Much of R. Jones' substantial annual income was derived from pondering over what he had heard.
In the room Joan was looking at Aline with the distended eyes of one who sees visions or has inspirations. She got up. There are occasions when one must speak standing.
"Then you mean to say that your father would really give five thousand dollars to anyone who got this thing back for him?"
"I am sure he would. But who could do it?"
"I could," said Joan. "And what is more, I'm going to!"
Aline stared at her helplessly. In their schooldays, Joan had always swept her off her feet. Then, she had always had the feeling that with Joan nothing was impossible. Heroine worship, like hero worship, dies hard. She looked at Joan now with the stricken sensation of one who has inadvertently set powerful machinery in motion.
"But, Joan!" It was all she could say.
"My dear child, it's perfectly simple. This earl of yours has taken the thing off to his castle, like a brigand. You say you are going down there on Friday for a visit. All you have to do is to take me along with you, and sit back and watch me get busy."
"But, Joan!"
"Where's the difficulty?"
"I don't see how I could take you down very well."
"Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"But what is your objection?"
"Well--don't you see?--if you went down there as a friend of mine and were caught stealing the scarab, there would be just the trouble father wants to avoid--about my engagement, you see, and so on."
It was an aspect of the matter that had escaped Joan. She frowned thoughtfully.
"I see. Yes, there is that; but there must be a way."
"You mustn't, Joan--really! don't think any more about it."
"Not think any more about it! My child, do you even faintly realize what five thousand dollars--or a quarter of five thousand dollars--means to me? I would do anything for it--anything! And there's the fun of it. I don't suppose you can realize that, either. I want a change. I've been grubbing away here on nothing a week for years, and it's time I had a vacation. There must be a way by which you could get me down--Why, of course! Why didn't I think of it before! You shall take me on Friday as your lady's maid!"
"But, Joan, I couldn't!"
"Why not?"
"I--I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"Oh, well!"
Joan advanced on her where she sat and grasped her firmly by the shoulders. Her face was inflexible.
"Aline, my pet, it's no good arguing. You might just as well argue with a wolf on the trail of a fat Russian peasant. I need that money. I need it in my business. I need it worse than anybody has ever needed anything. And I'm going to have it! From now on, until further notice, I am your lady's maid. You can give your present one a holiday."
Aline met her eyes waveringly. The spirit of the old schooldays, when nothing was impossible where Joan was concerned, had her in its grip. Moreover, the excitement of the scheme began to attract her.
"But, Joan," she said, "you know it's simply ridiculous. You could never pass as a lady's maid. The other servants would find you out. I expect there are all sorts of things a lady's maid has got to do and not do."
"My dear Aline, I know them all. You can't stump me on below-stairs etiquette. I've been a lady's maid!"
"Joan!"
"It's quite true--three years ago, when I was more than usually impecunious. The wolf was glued to the door like a postage stamp; so I answered an advertisement and became a lady's maid."
"You seem to have done everything."
"I have--pretty nearly. It's all right for you idle rich, Aline--you can sit still and contemplate life; but we poor working girls have got to hustle."
Aline laughed.
"You know, you always could make me do anything you wanted in the old days, Joan. I suppose I have got to look on this as quite settled now?"
"Absolutely settled! Oh, Aline, there's one thing you must remember: Don't call me Joan when I'm down at the castle. You must call me Valentine."
She paused. The recollection of the Honorable Freddie had come to her. No; Valentine would not do!
"No; not Valentine," she went on--"it's too jaunty. I used it once years ago, but it never sounded just right. I want something more respectable, more suited to my position. Can't you suggest something?"
Aline pondered.
"Simpson?"
"Simpson! It's exactly right. You must practice it. Simpson! Say it kindly and yet distantly, as though I were a worm, but a worm for whom you felt a mild liking. Roll it round your tongue."
"Simpson."
"Splendid! Now once again--a little more haughtily."
"Simpson--Simpson--Simpson."
Joan regarded her with affectionate approval.
"It's wonderful!" she said. "You might have been doing it all your life."
"What are you laughing at?" asked Aline.
"Nothing," said Joan. "I was just thinking of something. There's a young man who lives on the floor above this, and I was lecturing him yesterday on enterprise. I told him to go and find something exciting to do. I wonder what he would say if he knew how thoroughly I am going to practice what I preach!"
In the morning following Aline's visit to Joan Valentine, Ashe sat in his room, the Morning Post on the table before him. The heady influence of Joan had not yet ceased to work within him; and he proposed, in pursuance of his promise to her, to go carefully through the columns of advertisements, however pessimistic he might feel concerning the utility of that action.
His first glance assured him that the vast fortunes of the philanthropists, whose acquaintance he had already made in print, were not yet exhausted. Brian MacNeill still dangled his gold before the public; so did Angus Bruce; so did Duncan Macfarlane and Wallace Mackintosh and Donald MacNab. They still had the money and they still wanted to give it away.
Ashe was reading listlessly down the column when, from the mass of advertisements, one of an unusual sort detached itself.
WANTED: Young Man of good appearance, who is poor and reckless, to undertake a delicate and dangerous enterprise. Good pay for the right man. Apply between the hours of ten and twelve at offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole, 3, Denvers Street, Strand.
And as he read it, half past ten struck on the little clock on his mantelpiece. It was probably this fact that decided Ashe. If he had been compelled to postpone his visit to the offices of Messrs. Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole until the afternoon, it is possible that barriers of laziness might have reared themselves in the path of adventure; for Ashe, an adventurer at heart, was also uncommonly lazy. As it was, however, he could make an immediate start.
Pausing but to put on his shoes, and having satisfied himself by a glance in the mirror that his appearance was reasonably good, he seized his hat, shot out of the narrow mouth of Arundel Street like a shell, and scrambled into a taxicab, with the feeling that--short of murder--they could not make it too delicate and dangerous for him.
He was conscious of strange thrills. This, he told himself, was the only possible mode of life with spring in the air. He had always been partial to those historical novels in which the characters are perpetually vaulting on chargers and riding across country on perilous errands. This leaping into taxicabs to answer stimulating advertisements in the Morning Post was very much the same sort of thing. It was with fine fervor animating him that he entered the gloomy offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole. His brain was afire and he felt ready for anything.
