I
“Say, listen!” said Sigsbee H. Waddington.
“Proceed,” said Hamilton Beamish.
“Say, listen!”
“I am all attention.”
“Say, listen!” said Mr. Waddington.
Hamilton Beamish glanced at his watch impatiently. Even at its normal level of imbecility, the conversation of Sigsbee H. Waddington was apt to jar upon his critical mind, and now, it seemed to him, the other was plumbing depths which even he had never reached before.
“I can give you seven minutes,” he said. “At the end of that period of time I must leave you. I am speaking at a luncheon of the Young Women Writers of America. You came here, I gather, to make a communication to me. Make it.”
“Say, listen!” said Sigsbee H.
Hamilton Beamish compressed his lips sternly. He had heard parrots with a more intelligent flow of conversation. He was conscious of a strange desire to beat this man over the head with a piece of lead-piping.
“Say, listen!” said Sigsbee H. “I’ve gone and got myself into the devil of a jam.”
“A position of embarrassment?”
“You said it!”
“State nature of same,” said Hamilton Beamish, looking at his watch again.
Mr. Waddington glanced quickly and nervously over his shoulder.
“It’s like this. You heard Molly say yesterday she was going to sell those pearls.”
“I did.”
“Well, say, listen!” said Mr. Waddington, lowering his voice and looking apprehensively about him once more, “They aren’t pearls!”
“What are they, then?”
“Fakes!”
Hamilton Beamish winced.
“You mean imitation stones?”
“That’s just what I do mean. What am I going to do about it?”
“Perfectly simple. Bring an action against the jeweller who sold them to you as genuine.”
“But they were genuine then. You don’t seem to get the position.”
“I do not.”
Sigsbee H. Waddington moistened his lips.
“Have you ever heard of the Finer and Better Motion Picture Company of Hollywood, Cal.?”
“Kindly keep to the point. My time is limited.”
“This is the point. Some time ago a guy who said he was a friend of mine tipped me off that this company was a wow.”
“A what?”
“A winner. He said it was going to be big and advised me to come in on the ground floor. The chance of a lifetime, he said it was.”
“Well?”
“Well, I hadn’t any money—not a cent. Still, I didn’t want to miss a good thing like that, so I sat down and thought. I thought and thought and thought. And then suddenly something seemed to say to me ‘Why not?’ That pearl necklace, I mean. There it was, you get me, just sitting and doing nothing and I only needed the money for a few weeks till this Company started to clean up and … well, to cut a long story short, I sneaked the necklace away, had the fake stones put in, sold the others, bought the stock, and there I was, so I thought, all hotsy-totsy.”
“All—what?”
“Hotsy-totsy. It seemed to me that I was absolutely hotsy-totsy.”
“And what has caused you to revise this opinion?”
“Why, I met a man the other day who said these shares weren’t worth a bean. I’ve got ’em here. Take a look at them.”
Hamilton Beamish scrutinised the documents with distaste.
“The man was right,” he said. “When you first mentioned the name of the company, it seemed familiar. I now recall why. Mrs. Henrietta Byng Masterson, the president of the Great Neck Social and Literary Society, was speaking to me of it last night. She also had bought shares and mentioned the fact with regret. I should say at a venture that these of yours are worth possibly ten dollars.”
“I gave fifty thousand for them.”
“Then your books will show a loss of forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety. I am sorry.”
“But what am I to do?”
“Write it off to experience.”
“But hell’s bells! Don’t you understand? What’s going to happen when Molly tries to sell that necklace and it comes out that it’s a fake?”
Hamilton Beamish shook his head. With most of the ordinary problems of life he was prepared to cope, but this, he frankly admitted, was beyond him.
“My wife’ll murder me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I came here, thinking that you would be able to suggest something.”
“Short of stealing the necklace and dropping it in the Hudson River, I fear I can think of no solution.”
“You used to be a brainy sort of gink,” said Mr. Waddington reproachfully.
“No human brain could devise a way out of this impasse. You can but wait events and trust to Time the great healer eventually to mend matters.”
“That’s a lot of help.”
Hamilton Beamish shrugged his shoulders. Sigsbee H. Waddington regarded the stock-certificates malevolently.
“If the stuff’s no good,” he said, “what do they want to put all those dollar-signs on the back for? Misleading people! And look at that seal. And all those signatures.”
“I am sorry,” said Hamilton Beamish. He moved to the window and leaned out, sniffing the summer air. “What a glorious day.”
“No it isn’t,” said Mr. Waddington.
“Have you ever by any chance met Madame Eulalie, Mrs. Waddington’s palmist?” asked Hamilton Beamish dreamily.
“Darn all palmists!” said Sigsbee H. Waddington. “What am I going to do about this stock?”
“I have already told you that there is nothing that you can do, short of stealing the necklace.”
“There must be something. What would you do if you were me?”
“Run away to Europe.”
“But I can’t run away to Europe. I haven’t any money.”
“Then shoot yourself … stand in front of a train … anything, anything,” said Hamilton Beamish impatiently. “And now I must really go. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye. Thanks for being such a help.”
“Not at all,” said Hamilton Beamish. “Don’t mention it. I am always delighted to be of any assistance, always.”
He gave a last soulful glance at the photograph on the mantelpiece and left the room. Mr. Waddington could hear him singing an old French love-song as he waited for the elevator, and the sound seemed to set the seal upon his gloom and despair.
“You big stiff!” said Mr. Waddington morosely.
He flung himself into a chair and gave himself up to melancholy meditation. For a while, all he could think of was how much he disliked Hamilton Beamish. There was a man who went about the place pretending to be clever, and yet the moment you came to him with a childishly simple problem which he ought to have been able to solve in half a dozen different ways in five minutes, he could do nothing but say he was sorry and advise a fellow to stand in front of trains and shoot himself. What on earth was the use of trying to be optimistic about a world which contained people like Hamilton Beamish?
And that idiotic suggestion of his about stealing the necklace! How could he possibly … ?
Sigsbee H. Waddington sat up in his chair. There was a gleam in his eyes. He snorted. Was it such an idiotic suggestion, after all?
He gazed into the future. At the moment the necklace was in safe custody at the bank, but, if Molly was going to marry this young Pinch, it would presumably be taken from there and placed on exhibition among the other wedding-presents. So that ere long there would undeniably be a time—say, the best part of a day—when a resolute man with a nimble set of fingers might. …
Mr. Waddington sank back in his chair again. The light died out of his eyes. Philosophers tell us that no man really knows himself: but Sigsbee H. Waddington knew himself well enough to be aware that he fell short by several miles of the nerve necessary for such an action. Stealing necklaces is no job for an amateur. You cannot suddenly take to it in middle life without any previous preparation. Every successful stealer of necklaces has to undergo a rigorous and intensive training from early boyhood, starting with milk-cans and bags at railway-stations and working his way up. What was needed for this very delicate operation was a seasoned professional.
And there, felt Sigsbee H. Waddington bitterly, you had in a nutshell the thing that made life so difficult to live—the tragic problem of how to put your hand on the right specialist at the exact moment when you required him. All these reference-books like the Classified Telephone Directory omitted the vital trades—the trades whose members were of assistance in the real crisis of life. They told you where to find a Glass Beveller, as if anyone knew what to do with a Glass Beveller when they had got him. They gave you the address of Yeast Producers and Designers of Quilts: but what was the good of a producer of yeast when you wanted someone who would produce a jemmy and break into a house or a designer of quilts when what you required was a man who could design a satisfactory scheme for stealing an imitation-pearl necklace?
Mr. Waddington groaned in sheer bitterness of spirit. The irony of things afflicted him sorely. Every day the papers talked about the Crime Wave: every day a thousand happy crooks were making off in automobiles with a thousand bundles of swag: and yet here he was, in urgent need of one of these crooks, and he didn’t know where to look for him.
A deprecating tap sounded on the door.
“Come in!” shouted Mr. Waddington irritably.
He looked up and perceived about seventy-five inches of bony policeman shambling over the threshold.