Sutton didn’t try to deny it. He stared hopelessly at the wiper blades moving like twin robots back and forth across the dry glass, monotonously repeating their accusation of guilt.
The Wagstaff Pearls
by Mignon G. Eberhart
Jewels are meant for beautiful women. That is why, sometimes, a beautiful woman will do anything for... pearls.
At midnight the telephone rang and a woman’s voice said, “Mr. Wickwire?”
I had been asleep. I was only half awake. I said, “Yes? Who... who is...?”
She cried, in an agitated, incoherent way, “This is Frances Dune. I’m sorry to call you now but — I can’t wait. I’ve got to tell you. My conscience—” She took a long rasping breath, “It’s the Wagstaff pearls—”
There was a thud and clatter as if the telephone dropped, a kind of dull crash, and then a scream. It was a terrible scream, which gradually, as if from an increasing distance, died away. Then there was nothing.
I pressed the telephone against my ear. Frances Dune was my secretary, and the Wagstaff pearls were in my care. I knew that something was very wrong and I didn’t like that scream. Suddenly I heard rapid breathing, and somebody began to dial.
I cried, “Miss Dune! What is it? Miss Dune!”
The dialing stopped. “Oh, Mr. Wickwire, I didn’t know you were still on the phone. Miss Dune — I tried to stop her — I couldn’t—”
She sounded hysterical. I snapped, “Who is this?”
“I’m... I’m Muriel Evans. I work in the bank. Mr. Wickwire, she killed herself—”
The scream echoed horribly in my ear, put an edge to my voice. “Where are you?”
“Her apartment,” she quavered.
“Give me the address.”
She gave it to me in a voice that was still shaking.
“Call the police. I’ll be right there. Don’t let anybody else come into the place. Call them — wait a minute. How did she kill herself? Are you sure she’s dead?”
Miss Evans seemed to swallow hard. “She jumped out the window. It’s the ninth floor.”
With another cold wave of horror I realized that there wouldn’t be much use in calling a doctor.
Ten minutes later I was dressed and in a taxi. My house is in the upper sixties; we hurtled down Park Avenue. I was all too certain that I knew what had happened. Rarely but sometimes, things like that do happen in a bank. The trusted teller walks away with cash; the reliable cashier disappears with negotiable bonds. This time my perfect secretary had stolen the Wagstaff pearls.
My name is James Wickwire. I am a banker, a bachelor. I am indeed elderly enough to be one of the senior vice presidents. The Wagstaff pearls had been in my care for some twelve years since Mrs. Wagstaff had died. Her estate was left to minors; its administration was in the care of trustees. I was one of them and I had a power of attorney for the estate.
I was under the authority of the other trustees, but I could open the Wagstaff Estate safe deposit boxes. In one of those boxes, enclosed in a flat box of blue velvet, lay the Wagstaff pearls, wasting their beauty.
They were rather a nuisance because, twice a year, they had to be taken out of the vault and worn for one entire day.
Banks do many odd chores for old and valued clients and this was one of those chores. Twice a year one of the girls in the bank was sent down to the vault, the pearls were clasped around her neck (next to her skin, one of Mrs. Wagstaff’s requirements), and there she sat, reading a book for the entire day.
At closing time the pearls were returned to their blue box and to the vault for another six months. I could never see that their lustre was in any way improved thereby, but that had been Mrs. Wagstaff’s idea. She had charged me directly with the pearls.
It was a cold, raw night with the traffic lights reflected in eerie streaks on the wet pavement, yet I could see Mrs. Wagstaff against the night as clearly, almost, as I had seen her during what proved to be my last talk with her. I could see her bedroom, luxurious with feminine fripperies. I could see her sitting up against the pillow, with her white hair neatly arranged and her veined, small hands caressing the pearls. “They must be worn, you understand,” she told me. “Otherwise they lose their lustre. They must be worn by a woman and, Jim—” She was one of the few women who have ever called me Jim — “one of the girls in the bank will have to do it. I’m glad you have such pretty girls working in the bank.”
Prettiness is not exactly a qualification for any bank employee. Perhaps my face showed perplexity for she smiled.
“Pearls are meant for beautiful women. I was — they said I was beautiful once,” she smiled, and a luminous quality of beauty flashed out and touched something in my heart. “My husband used to say that only beautiful women really love pearls. Beauty calls for beauty.” She laughed, but rather sadly. “Of course he didn’t mean it, but he said that is why, sometimes, a beautiful woman will do anything for jewels — for pearls like these.” She sighed. A nurse rustled forward. I kissed her small hand before I went away; I don’t know why.
It was my last talk with Mrs. Wagstaff. But I had seen to it that her wishes about the pearls were observed. That is, they were worn regularly. I did not subscribe to her notion about beauty and pearls. I put that down to sentiment. Certainly I could not hold, in effect, beauty contests in the bank. Frances Dune had worn the pearls that day.
That, too, was my own direct responsibility. I had had occasion to be out of the office from noon till after the bank closed. I had returned to my own house about 11. Miss Dune, looking at my calendar that morning, had reminded me of the pearls, and I had sent her to wear them because I should not require her services. Miss Dune had been my secretary for nearly ten years. She was a tall, extremely plain woman of about 40, very neat, rather meagre somehow, fussy and overconscientious in a way, but efficient. I had trusted her.
Yet as soon as she spoke to me in that frenzied way over the telephone I knew what had happened. I had left it to her to check in the pearls with Mr. Wazey, manager of the vaults; I had overstepped my power of attorney to the extent of giving him my key, without which he could not have opened the safe deposit box. Obviously, Mr. Wazey had taken the velvet box, without looking inside it, returned it to the safe deposit box, and gone home. Miss Dune had taken the pearls.
Then, overcome by remorse, she had telephoned to confess it and had jumped out of the window rather than face the consequences. It was tragic and it was pathetic — this plain, hard-working woman conquered by the beauty of a strand of pearls.
And they were beautiful; no question of that. But times have changed. When Mrs. Wagstaff — young then — had been given the pearls, her husband had paid nearly a quarter of a million for them; I knew that. I also knew that their value was nothing like that now. The old-time high market for pearls is no more. The popularity of cultured pearls — flawless, too, but plentiful — has done that.
We arrived at an apartment house not far from the river. Already the street was lighted up. Police cars and an ambulance were there, and there were lights from windows all around and heads craning out of them.
A lieutenant of police, a big, burly fellow who looked rather strained and white, asked me to identify the body, and I did. The night seemed very cold; my gray topcoat was insufficient to keep out a chill that seemed to clutch my very bones. Then the ambulance moved closer. I went with the lieutenant to Miss Dune’s apartment on the ninth floor.