The Great Pearl Secret. C. N. Williamson

'Peter' was only a silly nickname I made up for him. 'Peter Pan', because he just isn't the sort who ever grows up!" Emmy explained elaborately. "Of course he was a lot with Algy and me the first year I married—before the war spoilt everything for everyone. And then, when I took up Red Cross work in France, after poor Algy—"

      "I know," Juliet ruthlessly interrupted. "That was where and when I came on the scene."

      "It was," agreed Emmy, in a flat voice. "You came, you saw, you conquered. But we were talking of the Tsarina pearls. I do hope the Duke is 'delivering the goods', as we say in our country. I don't mind confessing to you, my angel child, I dropped in hoping for a private view."

      "Oh, I guessed that the minute Simone told me you were here, and determined to wait!" Juliet laughed like a naughty child who dares a "grown-up" to slap it. Emmy's ears tingled. The girl's tone, though intimate and friendly, told her how unimportant she was in the future Duchess's scheme of things. She had always envied Juliet, and had an old grudge against the heiress for refusing her brother, Bill Lowndes. Now she suddenly hated her. Instead of inflicting a kittenish scratch or two, she wanted to strike at Juliet Phayre's heart.

      "Well," she excused herself, "I never saw the pearls, except—er—at a distance."

      "You have seen them, then?" Juliet exclaimed. "How was that? Pat's mother died years before you knew him, and only the Duchess is supposed to wear the pearls, isn't she?"

      "Only the Duchess is supposed to wear them."

      Juliet sat up straight on the velvet cushion. Her hair was drying beautifully now. The red background of fireglow lit it to flame, so that Lady West saw the slight figure surrounded by a nimbus. "Ever since Pat and I were engaged, you've been hinting at something queer, or secret, about that rope of pearls, Emmy," the girl blazed. "Now, out with it, please! Tell me what you mean."

      The elder woman was taken aback. "Don't you know what I mean?" she temporized.

      "No, I don't," snapped Juliet. "But I'm sure it's something unpleasant."

      "At least, I had no intention of telling you," Lady West snapped back. "I wouldn't distress you for worlds, dear, especially on your wedding eve."

      "Wedding eve be—'jizzled!'" inelegantly remarked the bride-elect. "You sound quite early Edwardian! If you don't tell me, I shall think the thing worse than it is."

      "You had better ask Claremanagh, or Jack Manners, who is a pal of his," said Emmy.

      "I can't, till I have an idea what to ask them about."

      "Ask whether Lyda Pavoya ever—no, I won't say it!"

      "Whether she ever wore the pearls? That's what you were going to say!"

      "So you did know?"

      "I didn't. And I don't now. I only know what you have in your mind. I don't believe she was allowed to wear the pearls."

      "Why should you believe it? And even if she did, it was before you knew Peter—the Duke. Or anyhow, it was before you were engaged. It was when she was dancing for the Polish Relief Fund in Paris, that I saw——"

      "You saw what?"

      "Saw—her."

      "Emmy! You didn't see her wearing the Tsarina pearls? It's not possible."

      "Why, of course you must be right, dear. Even though they are blue, they'd be like any other pearls, wouldn't they, to see at a distance."

      "That's just what you said about Pat's pearls five minutes ago: that you'd seen them only 'at a distance.'"

      Lady West did not reply. She put on a stricken, trapped expression, which went well with her widow's weeds. The two gazed into each other's eyes, each waiting for the other to speak. Neither heard a sound at the door until a respectable voice—such a voice as is never possessed save by a British butler or valet—announced "His Grace the Duke of Claremanagh."

CHAPTER II

       THE EXPLANATION

       Table of Contents

      A perfectly charming young man came in—a young man so delightful to look at that it seemed almost too much that he should be a duke. With that merry brown face (the war had left a scar across cheek and temple), those Celtic grey eyes, that jet-black hair, that "figure for a fencer," and above all that engaging grin of his, the merest Nobody might hope to make his mark as Somebody.

      "Breezing in" (as Emmy had put it), he smiled his nice smile that brought a dimple like a cut line into each thin, tanned cheek. The smile was for Juliet, whose velvet throne was opposite the door, and for her he waved aloft a small, sealed white parcel. Then he saw Lady West, and his expression changed. As the saying is, his "face fell," but in half a second he had controlled his features.

      "How do you do?" he enquired. His voice was as pleasant as his grin, but there was a slight stiffness in his tone for the red-haired war-widow.

      "I'm going strong, thanks! Going in every sense of the word," Emmy assured him. "I should have taken myself off before now, only Juliet pretended not to be expecting you. Of course, the day before the wedding is supposed by old-fashioned folk to be close time for brides, where their loving bridegrooms are concerned, and so——"

      "I'm not old-fashioned," said Claremanagh.

      "Rather not! I've every reason for knowing that. We all have. But Juliet had some story about a 'bad luck' superstition. I thought you were the last man to be superstitious, Irish as you are, but it didn't sound like a joke——"

      "It wasn't a joke. I'm as superstitious as the deuce about one or two things," the man confessed. "Juliet wasn't 'pretending' but"—and he turned to the girl—"I had to come. There was something I didn't want to explain in a letter, and—hang 'bad luck!' It's a cross dog that would dare bite us."

      As Emmy West saw the look he gave Juliet, she felt as though her heart had been sharply pinched between a thumb and a finger. She had believed till now that his "superstition" was an excuse for spending his time with someone whose society he preferred to the bride's. Yet here he was, bouncing in like a bomb, with that eager light in his eyes, and in his hand a packet which might be the pearls!

      When Juliet explained that there "was a reason" why Claremanagh "couldn't give his present till to-day," an exciting thought had tumbled into Emmy's head: What if Lyda Pavoya had refused to return the pearls he'd been teased into lending her, and had taken them to New York, where she was now dancing? Emmy visioned the poor Duke frantically cabling, the moment he had secured the American heiress; or perhaps engaging a lawyer to frighten the Polish siren. Lyda wouldn't be easy to frighten, Emmy imagined, admiringly. (She, in fact, admired the dancer so sincerely, that her own attempts at sirenhood were copied from Pavoya.) Even if Lyda had disgorged the booty, would there have been time for it to arrive from across the Atlantic? Only the opening of that little parcel would show, and Emmy's jealous pain was complicated by curiosity.

      Still, she decided, it would be useless to wear out her welcome by lingering. The chances were that Claremanagh wouldn't break those thrilling seals till she had gone. Besides, Juliet was in a state of suppressed fury, and was capable in that mood of banishing her with rudeness. In some moods, the girl was capable of anything! So Lady West "kissed air" in the neighbourhood of Miss Phayre's burning cheeks, and accepted defeat with one sole satisfaction: If the pearls had come—or if they ever came!—she had pretty well spoiled them for the future Duchess.

      "Au revoir, dearest child," she said. "I shall be in church to-morrow, of course. Au revoir, Peter, and good luck in spite of the Claremanagh curse. I do hope it won't put on seven-league boots and follow you to New York."

      "Leather's too dear since the war for superannuated old curses