“I haven’t got the pearl collar,”
I protested. “I think you are crazy.
Where did you get that bracelet?”
He edged away from me, as if he expected me to snatch
it from him and run, but he was still trying in an
elephantine way to treat the matter as a joke.
“I found it in a drawer in the pantry,”
he said, “among the dirty linen. And if
you’re as smart as I think you are, I’ll
find the pearl collar there in the morning—and
nothing said, miss.”
So there I was, suspected of being responsible for
Anne’s pearl collar, as if I had not enough
to worry me before. Of course I could have called
them all together and told them, and made them explain
to Flannigan what I had really meant by my delirious
speech in the kitchen. But that would have meant
telling the whole ridiculous story to Mr. Harbison,
and having him think us all mad, and me a fool.
In all that overcrowded house there was only one place
where I could be miserable with comfort. So I
stayed on the roof, and cried a little and then became
angry and walked up and down, and clenched my hands
and babbled helplessly. The boats on the river
were yellow, horizontal streaks through my tears, and
an early searchlight sent its shaft like a tangible
thing in the darkness, just over my head. Then,
finally, I curled down in a corner with my arms on
the parapet, and the lights became more and more prismatic
and finally formed themselves into a circle that was
Bella’s bracelet, and that kept whirling around
and around on something flat and not over-clean, that
was Flannigan’s palm.
I was roused by someone walking across the roof, the
cracking of tin under feet, and a comfortable and
companionable odor of tobacco. I moved a very
little, and then I saw that it was a man—the
height and erectness told me which man. And just
at that instant he saw me.
“Good Lord!” he ejaculated, and throwing
his cigar away he came across quickly. “Why,
Mrs. Wilson, what in the world are you doing here?
I thought—they said—”
“That I was sulking again?” I finished
disagreeably. “Perhaps I am. In fact,
I’m quite sure of it.”
“You are not,” he said severely.
“You have been asleep in a February night, in
the open air, with less clothing on than I wear in
the tropics.”
I had got up by this time, refusing his help, and
because my feet were numb, I sat down on the parapet
for a moment. Oh, I knew what I looked like—one
of those “Valley-of-the-Nile-After-a-Flood”
pictures.
“There is one thing about you that is comforting,”
I sniffed. “You said precisely the same
thing to me at three o’clock this morning.
You never startle me by saying anything unexpected.”
He took a step toward me, and even in the dusk I could
see that he was looking down at me oddly. All
my bravado faded away and there was a queerish ringing
in my ears.
