V
It was some time before Sigsbee H. Waddington could bring himself to do so. There exist, no doubt, married men of the baser sort who would have enjoyed the prospect of a tête-à-tête chat with a girl with snapping black eyes who gesticulated at them through windows: but Sigsbee Waddington was not one of them. By nature and training he was circumspect to a degree. So for awhile he merely stood and stared at Fanny. It was not until her eyes became so imperative as to be practically hypnotic that he brought himself to undo the latch.
“And about time, too,” said Fanny, with annoyance, stepping softly into the room.
“What do you want?”
“I want a little talk with you. What’s all this I hear about you asking people to perpetrate crimes for you?”
Sigsbee Waddington’s conscience was in such a feverish condition by now that this speech affected him as deeply as the explosion of a pound of dynamite would have done. His vivid imagination leaped immediately to the supposition that this girl who seemed so intimate with his private affairs was one of those Secret Service investigation agents who do so much to mar the comfort of the amateur in crime.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he croaked.
“Oh, shucks!” said Fanny impatiently. She was a business girl and disliked this beating about the bush. “Freddy Mullett told me all about it. You want someone to do a job for you and he turned you down. Well, take a look at the understudy. I’m here, and, if the job’s in my line, lead me to it.”
Mr. Waddington continued to eye her warily. He had now decided that she was trying to trap him into a damaging admission. He said nothing, but breathed stertorously.
Fanny, a sensitive girl, misunderstood his silence. She interpreted the look in his eye to indicate distrust of the ability of a woman worker to deputise for the male.
“If it’s anything Freddy Mullett could do, I can do it,” she said. She seemed to Mr. Waddington to flicker for a moment. “See here!” she said.
Before Mr. Waddington’s fascinated gaze she held up between her delicate fingers a watch and chain.
“What’s that?” he gasped.
“What does it look like?”
Mr. Waddington knew exactly what it looked like. He felt his waistcoat dazedly.
“I didn’t see you take it.”
“Nobody don’t ever see me take it,” said Fanny proudly, stating a profound truth. “Well, then, now you’ve witnessed the demonstration, perhaps you’ll believe me when I say that I’m not so worse. If Freddy can do it, I can do it.”
A cool, healing wave of relief poured over Sigsbee H. Waddington’s harassed soul. He perceived that he had wronged his visitor. She was not a detective, after all, but a sweet, womanly woman who went about lifting things out of people’s pockets so deftly that they never saw them go. Just the sort of girl he had been wanting to meet.
“I am sure you can,” he said fervently.
“Well, what’s the job?”
“I want someone to steal a pearl necklace.”
“Where is it?”
“In the strongroom at the bank.”
Fanny’s mobile features expressed disappointment and annoyance.
“Then what’s the use of talking about it? I’m not a safe-smasher. I’m a delicately nurtured girl that never used an oxyacetylene blowpipe in her life.”
“Ah, but you don’t understand,” said Mr. Waddington hastily. “When I say that the necklace is in the strongroom, I mean that it is there just now. Eventually it will be taken out and placed among the other wedding-presents.”
“This begins to look more like it.”
“I can mention no names, of course. …”
“I don’t expect you to.”
“Then I will simply say that A, to whom the necklace belongs, is shortly about to be married to B.”
“I might have known it. Doing all those bridge problems together, they kind of got fond of one another.”
“I have my reasons for thinking that the wedding will take place down at Hempstead on Long Island, where C, A’s stepmother, has her summer home.”
“Why? Why not in New York?”
“Because,” said Mr. Waddington simply, “I expressed a wish that it should take place in New York.”
“What have you got to do with it?”
“I am D, C’s husband.”
“Oh, the fellow who could fill a tank with water in six hours fifteen minutes while C was filling another in five hours, forty-five? Pleased to meet you.”
“I am now strongly in favour of the Hempstead idea,” said Mr. Waddington. “In New York it might be difficult to introduce you into the house, whereas down at Hempstead you can remain concealed in the garden till the suitable moment arrives. Down at Hempstead the presents will be on view in the dining-room, which has French windows opening on to a lawn flanked with shrubberies.”
“Easy!”
“Just what I thought. I will, therefore, make a point tonight of insisting that the wedding take place in New York, and the thing will be definitely settled.”
Fanny eyed him reflectively.
“It all seems kind of funny to me. If you’re D and you’re married to C and C is A’s stepmother, you must be A’s father. What do you want to go stealing your daughter’s necklace for?”
“Say, listen,” said Mr. Waddington urgently, “the first thing you’ve got to get into your head is that you’re not to ask questions.”
“Only my girlish curiosity.”
“Tie a can to it,” begged Mr. Waddington. “This is a delicate business, and the last thing I want is anybody snooping into motives and first causes. Just you go ahead, like a nice girl, and get that necklace and pass it over to me when nobody’s looking, and then put the whole matter out of your pretty little head and forget about it.”
“Just as you say. And now, coming down to it, what is there in it for me?”
“Three hundred dollars.”
“Not nearly enough.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
Fanny meditated. Three hundred dollars, though a meagre sum, was three hundred dollars. You could always use three hundred dollars when you were furnishing, and the job, as outlined, seemed simple.
“All right,” she said.
“You’ll do it?”
“I’m on.”
“Good girl,” said Mr. Waddington. “Where can I find you when I want you?”
“Here’s my address.”
“I’ll send you a line. You’ve got the thing clear?”
“Sure. I hang about in the bushes till there’s nobody around, and then I slip into the room and snitch the necklace. …”
“… and hand it over to me.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be waiting in the garden just outside, and I’ll meet you the moment you come out. The very moment. Thus,” said Mr. Waddington with a quiet, meaning look at his young friend, “avoiding any rannygazoo.”
“What do you mean by rannygazoo?” said Fanny warmly.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Mr. Waddington with a deprecating wave of the hand. “Just rannygazoo.”