"Yes."
"What! – little Bella who used to caper around in such airy garments at the Alhambra?"
"The very same. I only wish I could be mistaken," with a despairing groan. "It seems she married money and retired from the stage. By some means she disposed of her husband, and is now a rich and probably good-looking widow. She has purchased an estate within half a mile of here, and is going in heavy for style. She wants to make me the stepping-stone to social success; she sighs for the purple penetralia of the plutocracy. See what a predicament I am in! To introduce her in this house would plant the most unjust suspicions in Ethel's Vassarian mind, while her mother, Mrs. McGoozle, might institute awkward inquiries into the dear, dead past" – with a shiver of anticipation. "Now, my dear Vandeleur, that woman means mischief. She has got about a hundred of my letters breathing the most devoted love: if dear Ethel got a glimpse of a line she would go into hysterics. Bella has hinted, even politely threatened, that unless I show her some attention, which means introducing her to my wife's circle of friends, she will publish those letters to the world or send them to the dramatic papers. Now you must help me out of this scrape."
"Delighted to be of any service, I'm sure," tapping his boots impatiently with a jaunty little cane. "But, really, you know, I don't see – "
"Why, it's easy enough. Don't you remember we were once the pride of the school because we robbed watermelon patches so skilfully? What a narrow shave that was in the apple orchard the night before commencement, when you – "
"Yes, yes, I remember, deah boy; but what have those childish pranks got to do with the present case? We don't want to rob an apple orchard" – by way of mild protest.
"It is another kind of fruit that we are after – the fruit of youthful follies. Here," opening a cupboard and throwing out two pairs of overalls somewhat the worse for paint, two jumpers ditto, and several muddy overshoes, "Vandeleur, if you love me put these things on."
I fancy I can see him now adjust his glass and survey me with bulging eyes. I certainly did have nerve to ask that famous clubman, so irreproachable in his dress, to assume such inartistic and plebeian garments.
It took a great deal of palavering before I could persuade him that I was lost unless he consented. How he grunted as he reluctantly laid aside his silk-lined white kersey coat and evening dress, and tried to put on the overalls with one hand while he held his aristocratic aquiline nose with the other.
"Really, I hope I shan't be found dead in these togs," he remarked ruefully, as he surveyed himself in the glass. "What would Flossy say? and how the chaps at the Argentine would wonder what I'd been up to!"
I cut short his speculations by thrusting a soft slouched hat on his head and dragging it down over his eyes.
"There now!" I said, standing off and contemplating him critically and admiringly; "you have no idea, my boy, how becoming this costume is. One might imagine you had been born a stevedore."
He looked rather sour at this doubtful compliment, and hitching up his baggy trousers, asked, "Well, what is the next misery?"
"It is twelve o'clock," I said, referring to my watch. "My wife has gone to bed. Like Claude Duval, we will take to the road."
After a stiff libation of brandy and soda we stole softly downstairs and found ourselves in front of the house. Only one light glimmered in the black pile, where Ethel was going to bed.
"Where away?" asked Vandeleur, as I turned the path.
"To storm Bella's bureau," I cried, leading the way through the dark.
SCARE THE SECOND
With much difficulty we found ourselves at last in the spacious grounds of Bella's estate. I had laid my plans carefully the day before, and there seemed no possibility that they would miscarry. By liberal fees I had learned from her butler that she was to spend that night in New York with a friend, and for a further consideration he offered to leave one of the drawing-room windows open so that we should have a clear field.
Everything seemed to be working beautifully, and I already felt the coveted letters in my grasp. We found the French window ajar, and with tremulous hearts stepped over the sill and into the room. After several collisions with the furniture, of which there seemed to be what we thought an unnecessary amount, we finally scraped our way into the hall.
Here was a quandary. We were in a hall, but what hall? Whether the stairs led in the right direction there was no one present to consult. We walked or rather crawled up them, nevertheless. I tried the first door on the landing, and was rewarded with "Is that you?" by a female voice that sent us scuttling along the passage in undignified haste.
Well, at last, after many narrow escapes from breaking our necks, we reached Bella's room. I knew it the moment I saw the closet full of shoes. Bella was always proud of her feet, and had, I believe, a pair of boots for every hour of the day.
To make things even more sure that I had arrived at the chaste temple of my former flame, there was the famous bureau of ebony inlaid with ivory – that bureau which contained enough of my inflammatory letters to reduce it to cinders.
"Can you regard that bureau with equanimity?" I exclaimed, unconsciously assuming a dramatic attitude. "Does it not recall your vanished youth – the red horizon of your adolescence? Ah," I cried, overcome by the sight of that familiar bit of furniture, "how often have I slid a piece of jewelry into that top drawer as a surprise for Bella! Her delighted shriek which followed the discovery rings in my ears even now. Oh, halcyon days of happy holiday, mine no more, can a lifetime with a funded houri wholly fill your place?"
"That's all very well," cried Vandeleur, who can assume a disgustingly practical tone when he wants to. "While you are rhapsodizing here over your poetical past, some stalwart menial may arrive with a blunderbuss, and fill our several and symmetrical persons with No. 2 buckshot. Perhaps Bella may have missed her train or her friend. She might return here at any moment and surprise us" – looking around him uneasily.
"Anybody would think that you had never been in a boudoir at this time of night," I retort savagely.
I begin to pull out the drawers of the bureau, breaking locks in the most reckless way, and tossing the contents of these dainty receptacles about in the most utter confusion. Vandeleur, with his eyeglass adjusted, is poking into everything in the closet as if he were looking for a mouse, only pausing now and then to glare around with an apprehensive shiver.
"Dear me," I soliloquize, while the contents of those bureau drawers are tossed here and there in the fever of my search. "How everything here reminds me of the past! She has even preserved the menu card of that memorable dinner at Torloni's; and here – here is a lock of brown hair tied with a pink ribbon! I really believe it must be mine!"
"My deah boy," howls Vandeleur, shaking me by the arm vigorously, "will you cut short your soliloquy? Is this a time for poetry, when we might get ten years if we were found burglarizing this house?"
I pay no attention.
"And here is the steel buckle from her shoe that fell off the night we danced together at the French ball. Poor dear Bella! that was not the only dance we led where folly played the fiddle!" – with a thrill of reminiscence.
"If you don't find those letters in just two minutes," interrupts the dreadful Vandeleur, "I shall post for home."
"In one second, my boy – one second."
Now I examine the bureau carefully for a concealed drawer. I seem to have ransacked every corner of that precious article in vain. Visions of Bella's vengeance flash before my eyes. I can see the demoniac smile on her face as she gloats over my downfall. The white wraith conjured up by the thought of those fateful letters fills me with a mad fury, and I long to dash that hateful bureau into a thousand pieces and flee the house.
But the demolition could not be executed noiselessly, and the situation is perilous enough already for a man of my delicately organized constitution, with a heart that runs down with a rumble like a Waterbury movement; so I think I won't break the bureau.
I renew my mad search for the missing drawer, that seems to