Part 7

"I told you once. My key--a little flat key that locks--a box I've got," she finishes distrustfully.

"Have you looked in the shoe-bag, ma'am?"

"Why, of course I have, you little stupid. I want you to hunt other places where I can't easily get. There are other places I might have put it, but I'm positive it was in the shoe-bag."

Well, I looked for that key. Where? Where not? I looked under the rubbish in the waste-paper basket; Mrs. Kingdon often fooled thieves by dropping it there. I pulled up the corner of the carpet and looked there--it was loose; it had often been used for a hiding-place. I looked in Miss Evelyn's boot and in her ribbon box. I emptied Mrs. Kingdon's full powder box. I climbed ladders and felt along cornices. I looked through the pockets of Mrs. Kingdon's gowns--a clever bell-boy it takes to find a woman's pocket, but even the real masculine ones among 'em are half feminine; they've had so much to do with women.

I rummaged through her writing-desk, and, in searching a gold-cornered pad, found a note from Moriway hidden under the corner. I hid it again carefully--in my coat pocket. A love-letter from Moriway, to a woman twenty years older than himself--'tain't a bad lay, Tom Dorgan, but you needn't try it.

At first she watched every move I made, but later, as her headache grew worse, she got desperate. So then I put my hand down into the shoe-bag and found the key, where it had slipped under a fold of cloth.

Do you suppose that woman was grateful? She snatched it from me.

"I knew it was there. I told you it was there. If you'd had any sense you'd have looked there first. The boys in this hotel are so stupid."

"That's all, ma'am?"

She nodded. She was fitting the key into the black box she'd taken from the top drawer. Nat had got to the outside door when he heard her come shrieking after him.

"Nat--Nat--come back! My diamonds--they're not here. I know I put them back last night--I'm positive. I could swear to it. I can see myself putting them in the chamois bag, and--O my God, where can they be! This time they're gone!"

Nat could have told her--but what's the use? He felt she'd only lose 'em again if she had 'em. So he let them lie snug in his trousers pocket--where he had put the chamois bag, when his eyes lit on it, under the corner of the carpet. He might have passed it over to her then, but you see, Tom, she hadn't told him to look for a bag; it was a key she wanted. Bell-boys are so stupid.

This time she followed his every step. He could not put his hand on the smallest thing without rousing her suspicion. If he hesitated, she scolded. If he hurried, she fumed. Most unjust, I call it, because he had no thought of stealing--just then.

"Come," she said at last, "we'll go down and report it at the desk."

"Hadn't I better wait here, ma'am, and look again?"

She looked sharply at him.

"No; you'd better do just as I tell you."

So down we went. And we met Mr. Moriway there. She'd telephoned him. The chambermaid was called, the housekeeper, the electrical engineer who'd been fixing bells that morning, and, as I said, a bell-boy named Nat, who told how he'd just come on duty when Mrs. Kingdon's bell rang, found her key and returned it to her, and was out of the room when she unlocked the box. That was all he knew.

"Is he telling the truth?" Moriway asked Mrs Kingdon.

"Ye--es, I guess he is; but where are the diamonds? We must have them--you know--to-day, George," she whispered. And then she turned and went upstairs, leaving Moriway to do the rest.

"There's only one thing to do, Major," he said to the proprietor. "Search 'em all and then--"

"Search me? It's an outrage!" cried the housekeeper.

"Search me if ye loike," growled McCarthy, resentfully. "Oi wasn't there but a minute; the lady herself can tell ye that."

Katie, the chambermaid, flushed painfully, and there were indignant tears in her eyes, which, I'll tell you in confidence, made a girl named Nancy uncomfortable.

But the boy Nat; knowing that bell-boys have no rights, said nothing. But he thought. He thought, Tom Dorgan, a lot of things and a long way ahead.

The peppery old Major marched us all off to his private office.

Not much, girls, it hadn't come. For suddenly the annunciator rang out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nat looked at the bell-boy's bench. It was empty. There was to be a ball that night, and the bells were going it over all the place.