Dinner waited that night while everybody went to the coal cellar and
stared at the hole in the wall, and watched while Max took a tracing of
it and of some footprints in the coal dust on the other side.
I did not go. I went into the library with the guilty watch in the fold
of my gown, and found Mr. Harbison there, staring through the February
gloom at the blank wall of the next house, and quite unconscious of the
reporter with a drawing pad just below him in the area-way. I went over
and closed the shutters before his very eyes, but even then he did not
move.
"Will you be good enough to turn around?" I demanded at last.
"Oh!" he said wheeling. "Are YOU here?"
There wasn't any reply to that, so I took the watch and placed it on the
library table between us. The effect was all that I had hoped. He stared
at it for an instant, then at me, and with his hand outstretched for it,
stopped.
"Where did you find it?" he asked. I couldn't understand his expression.
He looked embarrassed, but not at all afraid.
"I think you know, Mr. Harbison," I retorted.
"I wish I did. You opened it?"
"Yes."
We stood looking at each other across the table. It was his glance that
wavered.
"About the picture--of you," he said at last. "You see, down there in
South America, a fellow hasn't much to do in the evenings, and a--a chum
of mine and I--we were awfully down on what we called the plutocrats,
the--the leisure classes. And when that picture of yours came in the
paper, we had--we had an argument. He said--" He stopped.
"What did he say?"
"Well, he said it was the picture of an empty-faced society girl."
"Oh!" I exclaimed.
"I--I maintained there were possibilities in the face." He put both
hands on the table, and, bending forward, looked down at me. "Well, I
was a fool, I admit. I said your eyes were kind and candid, in spite of
that haughty mouth. You see, I said I was a fool."
"I think you are exceedingly rude," I managed finally. "If you want to
know where I found your watch, it was down in the coal cellar. And
if you admit you are an idiot, I am not. I--I know all about Bella's
bracelet--and the board on the roof, and--oh, if you would only
leave--Anne's necklace--on the coal, or somewhere--and get away--"
My voice got beyond me then, and I dropped into a chair and covered my
face. I could feel him staring at the back of my head.
"Well, I'll be--" something or other, he said finally, and then he
turned on his heel and went out. By the time I got my eyes dry (yes, I
was crying; I always do when I am angry) I heard Jim coming downstairs,
and I tucked the watch out of sight. Would anyone have foreseen the
trouble that watch would make!