The white countess

“Oh, Gerard, what a long face! What’s the matter? Have you had your pocket picked?”

It was Gerard Angmering’s beautiful young wife who put these laughing questions to him, on the threshold of the modest little flat in West Kensington where, like most young couples of moderate means nowadays, they had set up their tent and expected to find peace and joy and all the comforts of home in a jerry-built “mansion” where they paid a hundred a year for the privilege of hearing the conversation of their underneath neighbour up the chimney, and being overheard in like manner by their neighbours overhead and on each side.

Gerard, whose face had instinctively softened at the very first word from his wife, said “Sh--sh,” pushed her inside their little drawing-room, and shut the door.

“There’s trouble at the bank,” said he. “I didn’t want to have to tell you. But since you’ve found me out, why, I suppose I must.”

“Oh, Gerard, what do you mean? What trouble?”

“There, there, don’t look so frightened, child. It will be all right, all right. At least--I suppose it will, I hope it will. You’ve heard me speak of Sir Richmond Hornthwaite, the old gentleman who gives us so much trouble--always sending imperative messages for us to go and see him, because he’s forgotten something he had to say, or because he wants to have something done for him in a hurry?”

“Yes, oh, yes, the old man who lives at Chislehurst.”

“Yes. Well, he’s just discovered--or thinks he’s discovered, that three cheques have been paid against his account which he never signed, which are, in fact, forgeries.”

“Oh, dear! And the bank people are very much upset about it, of course!”

Gerard, who was very pale, nodded. There was a long silence, and Audrey, who was still clinging to her husband, perceived, with a sickening sense of distress and terror, that she had not yet heard the worst.

“Well,” she said, quite querulously, “and what else?”

Gerard Angmering turned upon her suddenly eyes in which agony revealed itself unmistakably, appallingly. He tried to speak, but could not. Audrey clung more closely to his arm, put her right hand round his neck, held him close to her, comforting, encouraging, knowing with a loving woman’s instinctive knowledge that the worst would be tragically awful to hear.

Not one word did she utter, yet he knew she knew what was coming. So well did he know it that he prefaced his speech, when he got back some remnants of husky, audible voice, by a grave, slow nod of the head.

“Yes,” whispered he brokenly, “yes, he accuses me, Audrey. He says--says--I took the cheques from his cheque-book--says I stole them. Good God!”

He staggered to the little sofa, and fell on it, still with those clinging arms tightening round him, with the beautiful appealing eyes of his wife fixed in passionate tenderness and distress upon his face.

But after the first few moments of dumb horror she rebelled at the thought that they could misjudge her Gerard so wickedly. She raised her head quickly, her eyes flashed, she laughed discordantly, angrily, as she looked into his open and still almost boyish face.

“Gerard, Gerard, why do you trouble yourself about it? It’s ridiculous, you know! It’s farcical! You a thief! You! It isn’t as if they didn’t know you! Why, this old Sir Richmond knows you too! Knows you and likes you! Or why should it always be you he sends for when he wants some one from the bank?”

The young man looked up. Depressed, downcast, overwhelmed as he was, he felt the comfort of this indignation, of this amazement. He turned to her and took her lovely face in his hands, staring down tenderly into the big blue eyes, at the red, parted lips, at the soft waves of golden hair which had got loosened round her forehead.

“Bless your little heart, Audrey, your anger does me good! Upon my word, when they all looked at me as they did, and questioned me as they did, and put it to me that I must have been to blame somehow or other in this awful business, I--I--I almost began to think, at last, that I had!”

“Gerard! How can you?”

“Well, it came upon me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, you know, that I felt as if the heavens had fallen, or that I must be somebody else. I could only stare, and stammer, and behave, I suppose, just as a thorough-paced rascal would have done!”

“Oh, Gerard!”

“Well, I couldn’t help it. I was struck dumb.”

“You should have been indignant. You should have told them what you thought of them!”

“Well, I couldn’t. I was too much occupied with what they thought of me!”

“Tell me just what they said.”

“Well, they asked me who it was that took Sir Richmond his last cheque-book down. I said it was I. Then they asked me when it was, and if I remembered any of the circumstances of the journey. And after a little help--for I’ve been down there so often on one errand or another that it was difficult to find the exact date--I found that it was on a Saturday that I took the cheque-book, and that I came back home to have luncheon on my way. Then came a torrent of questions as to the time I stayed in the flat, and as to the people in it, and so on. They wanted to know whether any one was in the flat except you and me. There wasn’t, was there?”

Audrey was too much disturbed to remember. But the two set their memories to work, and consulted the servant who formed the whole of their modest staff, and finally they ascertained that, if anybody but themselves had been in the flat on the particular Saturday in question, it was either old Mrs. Webster, a neighbour, or Mr. Candover, a rich friend who had a handsome flat in Victoria Street, and who sometimes brought his motor-car round on Saturdays to take them for a spin into the country.

Both these people being beyond suspicion, the young people, after a few moments of silent dismay and perplexity, turned their thoughts again to what had happened at the office.

“Go on with what they said,” said Audrey in a frightened whisper.

“Well, it seems that Sir Richmond, in taking out his cheque-book yesterday, found that a cheque was missing, with the blank counterfoil left in the book. This made him examine the cheque-book, and he found that there were two others missing, in different parts of the book. Then he remembered, or thought he remembered, having noticed, when I gave it to him, that one end of the long envelope it was in was only half gummed. Now he thinks that some one must have opened the envelope--that could be easily done over hot water, of course--and torn out the three cheques.”

“But what does that matter? Cheques are numbered, aren’t they? Can’t they be stopped?”

Gerard shook his head.

“Sir Richmond wired up for his pass-book, and found that the three missing cheques had been paid in, without any doubt being roused as to the genuineness of the signature. One was for five hundred and sixty pounds and the other two for more. Altogether he has been robbed of nearly three thousand pounds.”

“Oh, Gerard, how dreadful! But still he ought not to be so wicked and unfair as to blame you. How could you help it? Of course it’s some one in his own house who has stolen the cheques and forged his name!”

“Well, he denies the possibility of that. He’s an old fidget, and his secretary, a woman, is never allowed to touch his keys, so he says, or to go near the safe where he keeps his cheque-books and his money.”

“And who were the cheques made out to?”

“The names are all unknown, made up, they think. Not one of the cheques was crossed; they were all paid in, all properly endorsed. But the endorsements are not much of a clue, so they say, because they believe the names to be fictitious.”

“And didn’t the large sums excite suspicion?” said Audrey.

“Oh, no. Sir Richmond is well known for his charities, and we cash large cheques of his to people we’ve never heard of often enough. The whole thing is a ghastly mystery, a puzzle from beginning to end.”