CHAPTER IX.
DRUZE’S HANDICAP
Druze—a woman! It was incredible—almost impossible! Yet that shrewd old man would not have jested with her. She dragged herself up the stairs, her limp body aching for rest, her mind very wide awake and alert.
Druze a woman! She shook her head helplessly. And then she remembered Lady Raytham’s hysterical laughter. “What was Druze to you?” Jane Raytham knew!
Leslie was too sane, too big, to feel foolish. She stopped on the landing and leaning heavily on the balustrade, she recalled the hairless face and figure of the portly butler. All her theories must go by the board. A scaffolding must be erected on a new foundation.
She found Lucretia Brown huddled up in a chair before a dead fire, fast asleep. Lucretia had never been trained out of her habit of “waiting up.” It was her firm conviction that only this practice of hers saved her mistress from a terrible fate. She woke with a start and came reeling to her feet.
“Oh, miss!” she gasped out. “What time is it?”
Leslie glanced at the mantelpiece.
“Three o’clock,” she said, “and a fine morning! Why aren’t you in bed, you poor, knock-kneed girl?”
“I’m not knock-kneed and never was,” protested Lucretia. “Three o’clock, miss? What a time!” She shivered. And then, morbidly curious: “Has anything been up, miss?”
“More things are ‘up’ than will ever come down, I think,” replied Leslie, as she dropped into a chair. “There’s been a murder.”
“Good heavens!” said the shocked Lucretia. And then, with pardonable curiosity: “Who done it?”
“If I knew ‘who done it,’ I’d be a very contented female.”
Leslie stifled a yawn.
“Run the bath, Lucretia, make me some hot milk, and don’t wake me till ten o’clock.”
“If I’m awake then,” said Lucretia ominously. “I never see such a place as this. You turn night into day. Did he have his throat cut?” She returned to the tragedy.
“No. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it was quite ghastly enough.”
She dragged herself to her feet and went to her desk, turning over the letters that had arrived by the night mail. There was one which looked promising. She tore off the end of the envelope, read its contents, and locked the document away in a drawer. A little while later, before Lucretia had run the water from the bath, Leslie Maughan, snug between sheets, was sleeping dreamlessly.
She woke with a dim remembrance of the rattle of teacups and of Lucretia’s calling her. Partly opening her eyes, she saw the cup by her bedside. She was horribly tired; bed was a warm and luxurious place; she must have dozed for the sound of voices wakened her.
Her bedroom led from her sitting room and the door was half open. Two people were speaking—Lucretia and somebody else whose voice was familiar.
“I will wait. Please don’t wake Miss Maughan especially for me.”
Leslie sat up in bed. Through the closing door which the maid was jealously guarding, she saw the big, straight figure of a woman. Lady Raytham! In an instant she was out of bed, thrust her feet into slippers, and pulled her dressing gown about her. She stopped only at the mirror to brush back her hair.
Lady Raytham was standing in the middle of the study, a bright coal fire was burning, and the room, at that early hour of the morning, had a special attraction for its young owner. But Jane Raytham’s presence seemed, for some unaccountable reason, to lend it a new distinction, as a great bunch of Easter lilies, or a bowl of narcissus, might have done.
“Good-morning. I’m sorry to be so early. I hope I did not disturb you?”
She was polite, almost frigidly so, and Leslie could only look at her in wonder. All the evidence of distress and terror that had marked her face on the night before had vanished—all except that dark tint under the eyes.
“Won’t you sit down? Have you had breakfast?” asked Leslie practically.
Lady Raytham shook her head.
“Please don’t bother about me. I have plenty of time and can wait,” she said.
There was a certain resentful admiration in her gaze; she was thinking how few women of her acquaintance were presentable at such an hour and in such circumstances. She had never seen Leslie Maughan in the daytime before, and not only did she stand the test of the cruel morning light, but she looked even prettier. She liked the poise of the girl and the readiness with which she accepted this sensible suggestion and disappeared into the bathroom, the gawky maid, her arms laden with garments, following. By the time she came out, Lucretia Brown had laid a little table; huge blue coffee cups and china racks bristling with crisp brown toast.
“No, I couldn’t eat, thank you.” Lady Raytham shook her head. “I will have some coffee.”
Leslie looked significantly at the door and Lucretia regretfully disappeared.
“Yes, I slept,” said Jane Raytham listlessly. “I don’t know how or why, but I did. I suppose I just couldn’t sleep any more. There is nothing about the murder in the newspapers.”
Leslie made a mental calculation.
“There wouldn’t be; it will be in the evening press. I know all about Druze.”
“You know—about her?” Jane Raytham looked at her steadily.
“What was her name?” asked Leslie, but the other woman shook her head.
“I don’t know; she was always Druze to me.”
“Did your husband know——”
“That she was a woman?” She shook her head. “No. Poor Raytham! He’d have had a fit! But then, he never notices anything.”
She had married the first Baron Raytham when he was a little over fifty, bachelor-minded, a man of set habits, who had found himself most unexpectedly a benedict and was a little aghast at the discovery. For the greater part of a year he had striven to be the model husband, and had been something of a bore. The domestic habit was foreign to him. Society and all its dainty et ceteras he loathed. Before the end of the first year of their married life, he had given up all attempt to interest himself in the new complexities which marriage had brought. Thereafter he devoted his energies and thoughts to his concession—his boards of directors, balance sheets, and all the precious things which were life for him—and Jane Raytham was left very much to her own devices.
“My husband is very seldom in London—probably not two months a year. He has”—she hesitated—“other interests.”
Very wisely, Leslie did not pursue the subject. She too had heard that Lord Raytham had carried into married life a loose string or two that was substantially attached and which he was unwilling or unable to drop. Leslie was too versed in the ways of the world to be shocked at this; too sophisticated to be anything but mildly amused at the inefficiency of man, who finds it so easy to get rid of a wife and so difficult to discharge a feminine attachment.
“Your name is Leslie, isn’t it?” And, when she nodded: “I wonder if you would mind my ‘Leslie-ing’ you? You’re not so formidable as I thought. I—I rather like you. My name is Jane—if you ever feel friendly enough to ‘Jane’ me—I’ve been abominably rude to you, but now I’ve come to ask you for favours.”
Leslie laughed.
“I owe you an apology,” she said, and the other woman was quick to see her meaning.
“About Druze? It would be a beastly idea, only—women are such queer fools, aren’t they? No, I knew Druze was a woman; that made everything so hideous. I wonder if you will believe me when I say that that was almost my heaviest cross—almost.”
“What was really the heaviest?” asked Leslie quietly.
Lady Raytham fetched a long sigh and looked out of the window.
“I don’t know. It is rather difficult to compare these things.” And then, quickly: “Of course, I know now which is the heaviest, but that is so new and so crushing that I dare not let myself think about it. Something Druze said to me before she went out; something she told me that froze my blood.” She closed her eyes and shuddered, but recovered instantly. “That is why I got my car and went in search of her. She told me a little but not everything, and I had to know! My first thought was—you’ll think I’m a hypocrite—that Peter had killed her. If I thought at all! I don’t think I cared. I had only one idea in my mind, to find something she had boasted about.”
“Not the necklace?”
Jane Raytham smiled contemptuously.
“The necklace! As if I cared for that! I’m making a clean breast of everything—up to a point. The necklace you saw at the house last night was only——”
“Was a copy, I know that,” said Leslie quietly. “An exact replica of the real emerald chain, and, valueless! When you didn’t bother to put it back in the safe, I guessed.”
Eye met eye, each striving to read the other’s thoughts.
“What else did you guess?” asked Jane Raytham, after a long silence, and then:
“No, no, don’t tell me. I want to feel that nobody knows that—nobody! You will tell me that I am trying to create a fool’s paradise myself, and I’m a moral coward. I wonder if I am.” And then, obliquely: “Have you seen Peter?”
“I saw him last night, yes. He knew nothing about the murder—not so much as you,” said Leslie.
The woman ignored this challenge.
“I wonder how much you do know, Leslie?”
It was a strain to ask the question. Even as she had her reservations, so also had Leslie Maughan. The truth must come from Jane Raytham or not be truth at all.
“I know you were being blackmailed; that the necklace you gave was part of the price; the twenty thousand pounds, which I imagine was all you could raise in cash, was the other part. I guess also that Druze was a blackmailer. Am I right?”
Jane nodded. There was a perceptible brightening of her face as though, fearing to hear worse, she was experiencing relief at the limitation of the girl’s knowledge.
“How long have you been paying?”
She did not answer, and Leslie repeated the question.
“I don’t know. Quite a long time.”
Another silence. The truth was not to come yet, then, only a measure of it.
“Do you want to tell me any more?” she asked.
Jane Raytham drooped her head. She wanted to tell—just as much as this frank and friendly girl knew, hoping against hope that the more precious secret would remain with her, and yet almost praying that Leslie Maughan would suddenly drag forth the grisly skeleton and expose it to her eyes.
“Yes, I want to, terribly! But I shan’t. I can’t bring myself to put things into words. And I want your help. How badly I need it! But, my dear, you’re police, part of the machinery of Scotland Yard. I’ve told you too much already. I shall be living in a flutter of fear all day——”
“I’m Leslie Maughan in this flat,” said Leslie, smiling. “Just a sort of little sister of the human race! But I’ll warn you that I am determined, as far as I can, to find the murderer of that wretched woman. Short of that information you can tell me anything.”
Jane shook her head ruefully.
“I don’t know who killed Druze. I will not swear that, but I will tell you on my word I don’t know; I do not even suspect. Anita wanted to know. I called on her this morning. She is like a woman distraught. I never knew she felt so deeply. The police have been there to inquire whether Druze called. I suppose you told them last night that I had told you. Poor Anita! She was terribly fond of Druze, who was once in her service. She always contended that he hadn’t been, and talked about him as though he were the merest stranger. But that, I think, was her pride; she hated the thought that she had ever been so poverty-stricken that she was obliged to let him go—her, I mean. The habit of years takes a lot of breaking! I have thought of Druze as a man and spoken of him as a man so long, that it is difficult to get out of the trick.”
“One question I want to ask you, Lady—Jane, I’d better call you. It will be almost as difficult a habit to get into! Did Druze forge Lord Everreed’s name as Peter Dawlish thinks he did?”
Jane Raytham shook her head.
“That is impossible,” she said simply.
“Why impossible?”
The answer took Leslie Maughan’s breath away.
“Because she could not read or write!”
CHAPTER X.
A DOCTOR’S CONFESSION
“Druze was illiterate, but, like all illiterate people, had acquired a certain form of culture and was very clever to conceal this misfortune. I think, in fact I know, she had the schooling of an average child, but she was just incapable of learning. The Council schools and even the public schools are full of people like that, of girls and boys familiar with the most obscure sciences who have never mastered these elementary arts.”
Leslie thought quickly.
“Her signature was on the passport?”
“I wrote it,” said the surprising woman. “She told me she wanted to go across to France for a week-end trip and asked me if I would sign the passport form. That was only a few weeks ago, so it is fresh in my mind. Now tell me what I am to do? The police will come to me, and I am prepared to tell them the truth, though I cannot see how I can help them.”
“The whole truth?” asked Leslie significantly.
Jane Raytham looked at the girl for a long time before she answered.
“As much as I’ve told you—not as much as you guess,” she said, in her even voice.
Leslie carried her cup of coffee to the desk.
“Would you like me to write down the gist of what you have said, and sign the statement?” she asked. “That might save you an awful lot of trouble.”
Jane hesitated.
“Is it necessary? I suppose it is,” she said. “Yes, if you would be so kind.”
For ten minutes she watched the girl as her pen flew over the paper, and took the pages from her as they were written.
“You have put my case more cleverly than I could have put it myself,” she said with a little smile. “I almost think you’re sympathetic.”
“You don’t know how sympathetic I am,” said Leslie, rising from her chair to make way for the other.
Lady Raytham sat down, read the last sheet again, and had dipped her pen in the ink, when the sound of voices came from outside the door. It was Lucretia’s raised protest, and a deeper voice, which Leslie instantly recognized, and, running to the door, threw it open. The Princess Anita Bellini stood on the landing, glaring through her monocle at the defiant Lucretia.
“You can’t come in—Miss Maughan’s engaged,” she was saying. “I don’t care if you’re a princess or if you’re the Queen of Sheba. When Miss Maughan’s engaged, nobody can——!”
“That will do, Lucretia. Come in, Princess.”
The big woman strode into the apartment without a word of thanks, not even deigning to look at the defiant maid.
“Where is——” she began, and then she saw Lady Raytham at the desk. “What are you writing, Jane?” she demanded loudly. “You’re not being such a fool as to make a statement to the police, are you?”
“Lady Raytham is merely telling me as much as I already know,” said Leslie.
“Jane, you must not sign it. I forbid it!”
There was a tremor of anger in the hard voice, and, looking at the woman, Leslie saw how deeply the tragedy must have affected her. She seemed ten years older. The big slit of a mouth was turned down at the ends, the eyes red and inflamed.
Very calmly Lady Raytham affixed her signature.
“Don’t be foolish, Anita,” she said quietly. “The police are entitled to know certain things about Druze.”
“What have you told them? Can I see this precious document?”
She reached out her hand, but Leslie was before her.
“Let me read it to you, Princess,” she said, and placed the desk between herself and her furious visitor. That Princess Bellini was in a cold tremble of rage was patent.
She read without interruption to the end.
“Jane Raytham, you’re a fool to sign a thing like that!” stormed the woman. “Let them find things out without committing yourself to paper. This girl has tricked you into a confession——”
“Confession?” said Leslie, with a smile. “How absurd! Lady Raytham knew that Druze was a woman; it was impossible that she should not. And, as she says, she has only told us what we already knew, and what you already knew.”
“I knew nothing,” said Anita Bellini harshly, her baleful eyes fixed on the girl, “except that you have tricked Lady Raytham into making a statement which will involve her in considerable trouble.”
Leslie faced her squarely, and for the first time Anita Bellini became dimly and uncomfortably conscious of the strength of this inconsiderable person. They had met before, and the honours of that meeting had not rested with the princess. But she had thought of Leslie as a girl with a certain glibness of tongue, a gift of smart repartee, but without any of the especial qualities that she might expect in a foe worthy of her heaviest metal. But now it had dawned upon her that, whether she was “Coldwell’s pretty typist,” as she had contemptuously referred to her, or whether she was “a Scotland Yard underling,” she was certainly a factor to be considered and forestalled. And if she had had any doubt on the subject, Leslie Maughan’s first words would have dispelled it.
“Lady Raytham has made a statement, and you also will make a statement, Princess,” she said, “either before or after the inquest.”
The woman surveyed her with an oddly sly look that was unnatural in her.
“I don’t know how you can bring me in,” she began, and her tone was milder than it had been.
“You employed Druze. Apparently you knew she was a woman, and are acquainted with her early history,” said Leslie quietly. “That is quite sufficient to bring you into any inquiry which the police set afoot.”
Anita Bellini took out her monocle, polished it on her handkerchief and returned it to her eye.
“Possibly I was rather precipitate,” she said. “But I think you should make allowance for my—whatever I have said. I have been awfully upset by Druze’s death. Would you read the statement again?”
It was a very simple record of the information which Lady Raytham had given to the girl, and, when she had finished reading:
“No, there is nothing in that,” said the princess. “I suppose this evidence has to come out. Does it mean that we shall be called at the inquest? I couldn’t stand that, I couldn’t!”
In that instant Leslie detected a tremor in the woman’s voice. Anita Bellini, the formidable, had a weak spot, after all. But she recovered herself very quickly.
“If everybody had his due, Peter Dawlish would be under arrest,” she said, and, ignoring the protests of Jane: “The man hated Druze; you know that quite well, Jane. He threatened her; I can prove it!”
And then, in a conciliatory tone:
“I hope we’re not going to be bad friends, Miss Maughan. If I can help you I will. Is there any more you can tell me than appears in the evening newspaper?”
“Nothing,” said Leslie shortly.
They left together soon after, but before they departed, Leslie found an opportunity of speaking a few words to Jane Raytham.
“I don’t want you to tell anybody about the necklace,” she said in a low voice, as she accompanied her down the stairs. “Especially about the emerald that was found in Druze’s hand. You promise me? Or have you already told?”
Jane Raytham shook her head.
“I wondered why you hadn’t put that in the statement,” she suggested. “But you may trust me. I shall not speak about it, even to Anita.”
At that moment the voice of the princess hailed her from the foot of the stairs and further conversation became impossible.
Leslie arrived at Scotland Yard just before twelve, and was mounting the stone stairs as Peter Dawlish came down.
“A clean bill,” he said with a smile. “At any rate, that is the impression Coldwell gives me. It seems that your detective man’s search was a very thorough one; I suppose you know that he searched me also? And, by the way, Belinda sends her love.”
“Belinda?” Leslie was momentarily bewildered. “Oh, you mean that little child, Elizabeth. How wicked! I had almost forgotten her!”
“She hasn’t forgotten you,” said Peter, and with a cheery wave of his hand went on.
She found Mr. Coldwell in his big, comfortable office, the stub of a cigar between his teeth, his bristling brows gathered in thought.
“Just going to phone you,” he mumbled. “I’ve seen that man of yours, and I’m satisfied that he had nothing to do with the crime.”
“ ‘That man of mine’ being Peter Dawlish?” she said calmly. “You give me quite a proprietorial feeling!”
From her bag she took the statement that Lady Raytham had signed and laid it on the table before him. He read it through carefully, folded it up and slipped it into a drawer.
“Did you tell Anita Bellini about the emerald we found in Druze’s hand?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “That’s the last thing in the world I should have told her; I asked Lady Raytham not to tell either. Why?”
He smiled grimly.
“Thought you hadn’t,” he said. “Her Serenity called me on the phone five minutes ago, and said she’d read in one of the newspapers that something very valuable had been found on Druze’s person. I haven’t seen all the newspapers, but those I’ve read make no mention of the emerald, and I don’t see why they should, unless they are psychic. The princess suggested, rather than said, that you had confirmed this mythical newspaper report.”
Leslie shook her head in admiration.
“That woman is certainly a quick worker,” she said. “What did you tell her?”
Mr. Coldwell relit his cigar with the exasperating deliberation of his age.
“I told her that we had found something valuable—a packet of money. She seemed kind of disappointed.”
The telephone bell shrilled; he picked up the receiver, listened in silence for a time, and then:
“All right, I’ll come down,” he said.
“The Lambeth police have got a quaint clue—a kind of ready-made one, but it should be investigated, as it has to do with your Peter. Would you like to come along?”
She looked at him steadily.
“If you refer to him as my Peter again, I shall be very offensive to you, Mr. Coldwell,” she said, and Coldwell scratched his chin.
“Somehow he seems to belong to you; I don’t know why I get that impression.”
Her eyes wandered to a corner of the room and for the first time she saw the two big travelling trunks. They were new and bore the label of the Cunard Steamship Company.
“Druze’s,” he said laconically. “We’ll go through those when we come back.”
It was at the corner of Severall Street that the taxicab stopped. The local subdivisional inspector was waiting, and with him a detective.
“Let me have a look at that paper,” said Coldwell immediately, and Leslie, who had not heard the one-sided conversation on the telephone, wondered what was coming next.
The inspector took a dirty slip of paper from his pocketbook and placed it in Coldwell’s hand. He fixed his glasses and read, then passed the slip to the girl. The message was written in pencil and in an illiterate hand:
Dawlish keeps his gun under a loose board in his bedroom just as you go inside the door.
“Where did this come from?” asked Coldwell.
“It was delivered at the station just before I telephoned to you. A street lad brought it along. He said it had been handed to him by a man, who gave him a few coppers for his trouble. I thought it best that you should know.”
They walked down the street toward Mrs. Inglethorne’s house and the door was opened immediately by that lady, who was surprisingly clean and spruce. She seemed surprised, but was certainly not agitated by the appearance of the police officers.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Dawlish has just come in. Shall I call him down?”
“No, thank you; we’ll go up.”
Coldwell mounted the stairs and knocked at the door of the front room, and a voice bade him come in. Over the inspector’s shoulder, Leslie saw that Peter was sitting at a deal table, pen in hand, a stack of addressed envelopes before him. He shifted his chair round and his eyebrows rose in astonishment.
“Hello!” he said, obviously taken aback by the character of the call. “Do you want to see me again, Inspector?”
Coldwell took in the room at a glance.
“I have information that you’ve a gun concealed under this floor,” he said. “If you don’t mind I’ll make another search.”
“Fire ahead,” said Peter, without a moment’s hesitation.
Coldwell turned back to the door, lifted a corner of the faded carpet and saw the loose board immediately. To lift it up was the work of a second. Thrusting in his hand, he pulled out a long black Browning pistol. Peter’s face went white; his jaw dropped in an amazement that could not have been simulated.
“Anything more here?” asked Coldwell, and, kneeling, thrust in his hand and groped about. Presently he found a small package wrapped in cloth and brought it to the light. He unwrapped it slowly.
“My stars!” gasped out a hollow voice.
Mrs. Inglethorne had crept up the stairs and was an interested spectator. There was reason enough for her astonishment, for in the centre of that dirty rag lay three large diamond rings, the least valuable of which must have been worth a hundred pounds.
“Do you know anything about these, Dawlish?”
Peter shook his head.
“No, I’m not a burglar,” he said, with a return of his old good spirits. “That branch of the profession is not my forte, and that little find has every appearance of being the proceeds of a very old burglary.”
Coldwell looked at the wrapper; it was thick with dust. Even as he turned back one corner of the rag, a fine cloud arose.
“Do you know anything about these, Mrs. Inglethorne?”
She shook her head.
“Or the pistol?”
The woman was paralyzed; her face had gone a ghastly gray as she realized the enormous significance of that find. There they had lain month after month, at least five hundred pounds’ worth of jewellery, the results of one of her lodger’s little coups, and she none the wiser.
“Never—seen—it!” Mrs. Inglethorne found a difficulty in breathing.
“This has been used as a hiding place before,” said the inspector, as he laid the pistol and rings upon the deal table.
He examined the Browning, noted its make and number, and, having carefully removed the magazine and dislodged the cartridges from the chamber, smelled at the barrel.
“It has been fired recently, I should imagine: it still smells of cordite. Is this yours, Dawlish?”
“No, sir: I’ve never seen it before.”
“Humph!” The inspector sat down on the bed in exactly the place where the girl had sat the night before. He looked round for Mrs. Inglethorne, but that woman had vanished.
“Nobody told you about that hiding place?”
“No, sir.”
“Hello, Elizabeth!” It was Leslie’s interruption. The frail child stood in the doorway, shyly smiling at the beautiful lady of her dreams.
She whispered something that the girl could not catch, and Leslie went nearer to her, took the two thin hands in hers, and, stooping, kissed the pale cheeks.
“Tea?” she said with a laugh. “No, dear, I don’t think we want tea. It was very nice of you to come.”
The child’s eyes were fixed on the table; they were wide open, and in their depths Leslie saw a look of fear.
“What is it?” asked Leslie.
“That big gun,” whispered the child. “Mother had it this morning, and I was so frightened.”
The sharp-eared Coldwell heard.
“Your mother had it this morning, my dear?” he said kindly. “Where did she have it?”
“In the kitchen. A gentleman left it—a little gentleman with a yellow face. Mother brought it into the kitchen and said we all ought to be killed.”
She clapped her hands to her mouth with an exclamation of fright, for only then did she remember the strict injunctions laid upon her. Coldwell strode out of the room to the head of the stairs and called Mrs. Inglethorne in a stentorian voice. It was a long time before he had an answer, and then by the tremulous voice he guessed that part of the conversation between himself and the child had been overheard.
“Come up here,” he said curtly, and Mrs. Inglethorne came lumbering up the stairs.
“This pistol came to your house this morning. From whom?”
The woman’s mouth was dry with terror. She blinked from one to the other.
“A gentleman brought it,” she gasped out. “He said it belonged to Mr. Dawlish, and would I put it under the floor—without a word of a lie, sir—if I never move from here.”
Coldwell’s gimlet eyes searched her unwholesome face.
“You told me you had never seen the pistol before. Who sent it?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve never seen the man before in my life—if I never move——”
“You’ll move!” said Coldwell grimly. “And darned quick, if you don’t tell me the truth!”
But to her story she stuck, swearing by numerous gods, some of whom were unfamiliar to Leslie, that she knew nothing whatever of the pistol except that it had been brought there by a perfect stranger who she thought was a friend of Peter Dawlish.
To Leslie Maughan’s astonishment the inspector appeared to accept this story, and to find nothing venal in the act of concealment.
“You did a very foolish thing, Mrs. Inglethorne. The next time a perfect stranger comes and asks you to conceal firearms in your lodger’s room, you had better notify the police.”
He slipped the pistol into his pocket, and looked round for Elizabeth, but she had vanished.
“That lets you out, Dawlish,” he said. “At least, it does for the moment. If I were you, I would make an inspection of the room and see if there are other likely hiding places where stuff could be planted.”
He had a consultation with the local inspector, and then he and Leslie walked back to their cab.
“You’ve let her down rather lightly, haven’t you, Mr. Coldwell?”
He gave her a quick sidelong glance.
“Minnow fishing never did appeal to me,” he drawled, “especially while one of the big pikes is hovering around, and it’s the pike I’m after. And if this minnow doesn’t lead me to him, I’ll be astonished.”
“You accept Peter Dawlish’s story?”
He nodded, as he helped her into the cab. When he had followed and had slammed the rackety door and the machine was in motion, he explained.
“The detective who searched the house last night found that loose board and the hole underneath. He might have missed the diamond rings, but he couldn’t have missed the gun. Therefore I knew it had been planted since. Peter might have put it there, of course, but the odds were all against that theory. The true story was the one told by the child. The little yellow-faced gentleman was probably one of the three who attacked Dawlish.”
For the first time she learned of that surprising outrage which had been committed in Severall Street the night Peter had visited her.
He admitted a little irritably that the case had gone outside his own experience.
“Here’s a woman who has been masquerading as a man for the past fifteen years, found dead, with an emerald in her hand, worth, at a rough guess, a thousand pounds. She was shot at close quarters with the pistol I have in my pocket——”
She gasped.
“You don’t mean that?”
He nodded.
“I do mean it. I’d like to bet a month’s pay that I’m right. You think a murderer would be crazy to put the very weapon in the hands of the police, knowing that the pistol has a number and its purchase can be traced—unless it was bought in Belgium, which is extremely likely. You haven’t seen Druze since she was found, have you? Well, I’m not advising you to; all the details about her can be passed on. There’s a big black-powder burn at the base of her right thumb, that is to say on the back of her hand. First thing I noticed when I examined the body was that powder burn.”
“How did that come there?” asked Leslie.
“She fired an automatic—five or six shots in rapid succession—and got the backfire. One shot wouldn’t have burned her; it must have been at least five. Look!” He showed his own hand, and a raw red mark, faintly tinged with black. “I was firing an automatic this morning to see what would happen, and I’ve got exactly the same mark as she has. I’m only making a guess, Leslie, but my guess is that Miss or Mrs. Druze was killed in self-defense; that she started the gunplay and got the worst of it.”
Leslie caught her breath.
“Then where is the other body?” she asked quickly.
He stared at her open-mouthed.
“Other body?”
“She killed somebody first,” said Leslie quickly. “Killed or desperately wounded. Such a woman as Druze would not carry a pistol unless she knew how to use it. If she knew how to use it and fired first, then somebody was badly hurt.”
The old man took off his hat and scratched his head.
“That’s the natural conclusion to reach,” he said, “and I didn’t reach it! And why I didn’t reach it I don’t know! Just let me think this out, will ye?”
The silence was unbroken until they reached Scotland Yard.
“I’m still thinking it out,” he said dismally as he stepped out of the cab behind her and paid the taxi man.
There was a bearded man in the hall, doctor written in every line of him. He was talking to the officer at the desk, and evidently Coldwell was being pointed out to him, for he walked to the door to meet the inspector as he entered.
“You’re Mr. Coldwell? My name is Simmson. I am Doctor Simmson of Marylebone Road.”
“Yes, Doctor?” said Coldwell, politely attentive.
“A friend of mine has suggested that I should go to Scotland Yard and report rather a curious circumstance,” he said awkwardly. “I have never done such a thing before, and I’m a little at sea as to how I should begin. But I have a patient who is suffering from a gunshot wound, and I am not quite satisfied as to how she received her injury, which is a slight one.”
Coldwell was all attention now.
“Through the calf; no artery has been injured. And really, I feel I’m being terribly disloyal to a patient——”
“What is her name?” asked Coldwell.
“Mrs. Greta Gurden,” was the reply.
CHAPTER XI.
THE DOCUMENT
The apartment that Greta Gurden occupied was on the first floor of a house in Portman Crescent. Hers was one of those artistic little flats that reflected every taste but her own. She slept in a red lacquer bed, ornamented by golden devils, a bargain acquired many years before in the Caledonian Market, and renovated by her own hands. Life is rather a tragedy for the lonely woman; there was a shadowy husband very much in the background, but he had either run away from her or was in a lunatic asylum or something equally unsatisfactory. She was one of the thousands who were endeavouring to keep an expensive establishment on an insufficient income. By profession she was a journalist; edited a mildly scurrilous little paper called Mayfair Gossip which enjoyed a very limited circulation, and in truth took up very little of her time. It was certainly not in the paper’s interest that she fostered the delusion that her life was one of hectic gayety. For she was to be seen occasionally at the most exclusive night clubs; more frequently at less exclusive establishments of the same order, her visitations being governed entirely by the wealth and taste of her escort. And numerically she had many friends. Her expansiveness and lack of reticence had been tersely and uncharitably condemned into the vulgar word “gush.” Still, however it might sicken the more sophisticated, it was very pleasant to those who discovered from her for the first time how important or good looking or well dressed they were, what taste, discrimination, or tact they displayed upon every conceivable occasion, and how anxiously or impatiently Greta was looking forward to their next meeting.
There were young men who took her out to dinner or to supper or to dances. There were middle-aged men, fathers of families, whose hearts she fluttered with the promise of adventure never to be fulfilled, who escorted her to the less expensive places of popular amusement. There were, too, women who hovered everlastingly on that no-man’s-land between Suburbia and Mayfair, who courted her society and influence, under the mistaken impression that she had the entrée to the most select circles.
Mayfair Gossip was entirely the property of Anita Bellini, and it was an unprofitable concern, a fact Anita never failed to emphasize, when Greta called on a Friday for her weekly stipend, her only regular source of income. The princess was good to Greta in other ways. She gave her an occasional dinner, a discarded dress or two, marched her off to afternoon concerts, and employed her as a sort of unpaid secretary. Occasionally, windfalls came the way of Greta Gurden—fifty pounds here and there for some little service which she had rendered. And she had always a use for the money. There were new curtains to buy, a fascinating Chinese cabinet, or something that looked like a fascinating Chinese cabinet, a carved ivory Madonna—a fair copy of a master’s art. She had a passion for picking up entirely useless articles. Her dining room was cluttered up with imitation oak. Birmingham-made suits of chain armour, Benares brass from the same enterprising city, a gutted spinet that served only as a sideboard for the display of imitation Bristol ware. There was even a pair of antlers over the doorway, and Greta was not above suggesting to her awe-stricken visitors that the twelve-pointer had been shot by her when she was the guest of the Duke of Blank at his little hunting box in Inverness-shire.
She enjoyed the services of one who was charlady in the morning and maid in the afternoon, and only to this unemotional lady was the real Greta ever revealed.
Mrs. Gurden lay in bed with a bandaged leg. Torn between terror that memory brought and fear of blood-poisoning and its horrible consequences—among other duties she contributed the health notes to Mayfair Gossip—she was a difficult patient.
Greta could not afford to neglect her daily duty to herself. Her face was indistinguishable under a mud pack, designed to preserve the face from the ravages of age, and her hands were inclosed in complexion gloves. Two dark eyes glared oddly from the mask of gray, and she spoke with some difficulty, due to the dried earth that plastered her cheeks. Just now she had an additional reason for annoyance.
“Tell her I can’t see her and I won’t see her. Tell her to come back at twelve o’clock.”
“She’s from Scotland Yard, ma’am.”
“I don’t care; I won’t see her.”
The obedient charlady disappeared into the outer room. Greta heard the murmur of voices, and after a while the woman came back.
“She says she’ll wait till you’re ready. She wants to know how you hurt your leg.”
Greta had no need to stifle her fury. A sudden panic descended upon her.
“Bring me some hot water.”
It took some time to remove the renovating mud, a little longer time to substitute perfumed creams and powder. A brief glimpse through an open door had revealed to Leslie Maughan the cause of the delay. She waited patiently, having some sympathy with woman’s losing fight against the ravages of time and care. When at length she was admitted, it was the old Greta who smiled ecstatically.
“My dear! How wonderfully good of you to come! So sweet of you! I was so hoping that I should have another opportunity of meeting you. The princess is rather difficult, isn’t she? I did so want to have a little chat with you the last time we met. I admire your style awfully. Won’t you sit down somewhere? Yes, I’ve had an awful accident. I was cleaning my husband’s pistol and it went off, but fortunately no bones were broken.”
“Where did this happen?”
It was on the tip of Greta’s tongue to say “here,” but she thought better of it.
“At a country house where I was staying for the week-end. People are so careless. Imagine leaving a pistol loaded! I nearly died of fright!”
“What country house was this?” asked Leslie.
Greta knit her brows.
“What was the name of the place? I don’t know the people very well. Somewhere in Berkshire.”
“Was your husband there, Mrs. Gurden?”
“Er—no—but he had been staying at the place; left his box behind. I was rummaging through it and found his pistol, and it looked so awfully rusty and dirty that I thought I would clean it.”
“Who else was hurt besides you?” asked Leslie quietly.
Greta shot a swift, suspicious glance at the girl.
“Nobody, thank goodness!” she said.
Leslie waited a second, then:
“Was this before or after Druze was killed?”
Under the rouge Greta’s face went suddenly gray and pinched. She sat bolt upright in bed and stared at the girl.
“Dead?” she said huskily. “Druze is dead? It’s a lie!”
“Druze is dead! She was found last night on Barnes Common—shot!”
“ ‘She?’ ” The woman’s forehead was puckered into lines. “ ‘She?’ What are you talking about? I was speaking of Druze.”
“So was I,” said Leslie. “Druze was a woman; you know that.”
The open mouth, the wide eyes, every visible expression of amazement revealed without question Greta Gurden’s ignorance of the “butler’s” sex.
“A woman! Good heavens!”
She sank back on the pillows, exhausted by her emotion, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. But for those wide-open pools of darkness, Leslie would have thought that the woman had fainted. Presently she spoke.
“I’ve nothing to tell you. I shot myself by accident. I know nothing about Druze—nothing. Why should I? The accident occurred when I was in the country. I won’t talk to you! I won’t!”
She almost screamed the words.
Leslie realized that it would be cruel to question her more closely; the woman was so distressed that she might have hesitated even if she had not feared the effects of a further cross-examination upon one who was in the surgeon’s hands.
“I will come along and see you when you’re a little better, Mrs. Gurden,” she said.
Greta made no answer.
As Leslie’s cab turned out of the street, it passed a big car swinging round to enter the unpretentious thoroughfare, and the girl had a glimpse of the princess. She wished now that on some pretext or other she had stayed, that she might see the meeting between these two.
Anita Bellini mounted the stairs and, entering the apartment without knocking, summarily dismissed the charwoman, and Mrs. Hobbs, not unused to such cavalier treatment, departed meekly.
“Has Maughan been here?” she demanded, as she strode into Greta’s room.
Her eyes narrowed as she caught sight of the haggard face.
“I see she has,” she said grimly. “What did she come about?”
Greta raised herself on her elbow and pushed up her pillow to support her; she was trembling so that after a second she rolled back on the pillow with a groan.
“She wanted to know how I was wounded,” she said at last.
“What did you tell her?” asked the princess impatiently. “For Heaven’s sake pull yourself together, my good woman! How did she know you were wounded, anyway? Did you send an announcement to the newspapers?”
“I don’t know how she knew, but she did. I told her that it was an accident, that I was cleaning my husband’s pistol and it went off. Anita, is it true?”
“Is what true?” asked the princess roughly.
“Is it true that Druze is dead?”
“Yes.”
“And that she was a woman?”
“I thought you guessed,” said the Princess Anita. “Of course she was a woman.”
“My stars, how awful!”
Anita Bellini’s cold glance transfixed the invalid.
“What is the matter with you?” she demanded harshly. “Druze was——”
She stopped short.
“How long are you going to be in bed?”
Greta shook her head.
“I don’t know; the doctor says another week at least.”
“Did you tell her anything more? Really, Greta, you’re not to be trusted, though I never dreamed that nosy little devil would find out about your being shot. I suppose the doctor reported it.”
She stared down at the woman speculatively.
“I suppose I’d better give you some money,” she said, with no great enthusiasm. “You look awful, you know that? You’re not wearing well, Greta. All the mud in the world will not take those wrinkles from under your eyes. Why, you’re old.”
The red in Greta Gurden’s face was natural: it came and went. Fury blazed in the dark eyes, for now Anita Bellini had touched her upon the rawest place of Greta’s self-esteem and put into words, at this incongruous moment, all that this poor little poseuse feared. But it was Anita Bellini’s way, to go off at spiteful tangents, to sting and hurt those from whom she expected unswerving loyalty. It was characteristic of her that at this moment, when her mind and spirit were tensed to meet the very real dangers which threatened her, she could go out of her way to humiliate her creature.
“You aren’t able to attend to Gossip, of course. You’re having the letters sent here?” she asked, and, when the woman nodded silently: “The last batch were valueless; there was a little bit about the Debouson woman, but I knew all about that. She isn’t worth a penny; in fact, there’s a bankruptcy petition out against her husband. You had better write a spicy paragraph about her; that is all the information is worth.”
She was walking about the room as she spoke, stopping now and again to look, with a contemptuous lift of her lips, at the tawdriness of the imitations with which the room was stocked.
“I’m going to Capri in the spring,” she said. “The new villa has been bought; I suppose I’d better take you along with me.”
She did not see the malignity that shot from the dark eyes.
“The paper will have to go. It is becoming more and more useless. If you had had a spark of genius in you, Greta, you would have made that into a property. You are sure you told that detective girl nothing?”
“Nothing,” said Greta, regaining control of her voice.
“What is this?”
Anita had stopped before a big secretaire, pulled down the flap and was examining a number of letters neatly tied in bundles.
“Are those the papers of mine that I asked you to put in order?”
“Yes.”
The princess detached one letter from a bundle, read it and tossed it back.
“Most of these things can be burned,” she said. “You found nothing of importance?”
“No, nothing.”
Something in Greta’s tone made the other turn her head.
“What’s the matter with you?”
And then the pent-up fury of Greta Gurden burst forth. She was sobbing with rage, almost unintelligible in her anger.
“You treat me as if I was a servant—patronizing! I hate your beastly way of talking to me! I’m not a dog. I’ve served you like a slave for twelve years, and I won’t be talked to as you talk to me. I won’t! I’d sooner starve in the gutter! I suppose I am getting old. I know I am, but you needn’t throw it in my face. You’re always talking about my looks. If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all. I’m tired of it.”
“Don’t be a fool!” scoffed the princess. “And don’t be hysterical. You’ve got your future to consider and you’re not going to help by quarrelling with me. You can’t go back to the chorus.”
“That’s the sort of horrible thing you would say,” stormed Greta. “I think you’re loathsome! I won’t do another stroke of work for you.”
She ended in a passion of weak tears, and Anita Bellini did not attempt to mollify her. She knew from past experience that in an hour or two she would have a penitent message from her slave asking forgiveness for this outburst; for this was not the first time that Greta had revolted, only to come to heel at the snap of Anita’s whip.
With this assurance she took her ungracious leave, and had hardly left the street before all thought of Greta was out of her mind. The Princess Anita Bellini had other matters, more weighty, to think of.
There was very little for Leslie Maughan to tell to her chief, but he did not seem greatly disappointed.
“We’ll leave her alone for a while. If you once start badgering these people, they build up an unbreakable alibi, and that’s bad for trade.”
He looked glumly at the trunks in the corner of his room.
“We’d better dispose of these,” he said. “I’ll get in a clerk to write down the inventory as you call them out.”
He rang for his secretary, the girl who had taken Leslie Maughan’s place on her promotion, and, stooping before the first of the cabin trunks, he unlocked it and threw back the lid. For half an hour Leslie was lifting out articles of wearing apparel, and one little mystery was solved when she came upon a parcel of men’s clothing. They were of the ready-to-wear type, the parts roughly tacked. One of them, however, must have been fitted, for it was partly sewed, and a small tailor’s roll in a pocket of the trunk explained how Druze had avoided the embarrassment of a tailor’s fitting. She was evidently a good sewing woman, for the half-finished garment was beautifully tailored. There was nothing, however, in the first trunk that threw any light upon the mystery of her death.
The second box held a surprise: it was filled with women’s clothing.
“She was going to drop her disguise when she got to the United States,” Leslie concluded, and with this view Mr. Coldwell agreed.
At last the second box was emptied, but again there was nothing that could afford the slightest clue.
“There’s a suitcase; we only discovered it this morning; it was in the parcels office at Waterloo,” said Coldwell.
He opened a cupboard and took out a crocodile skin travelling grip and put it on the table. It was locked, but suitcase locks respond to almost any key, and at the second attempt it was opened. Here the girl found such articles as she would expect an ocean traveller to carry: sponge bag, soap, a small jewel case containing a gold watch and guard, a diamond-encircled wrist watch, and a small diamond bar brooch. A silk dressing gown, a pair of slippers, and a few odds and ends completed the contents.
“Nothing here,” said Leslie.
She ran her hand round the silken lining of the case and suddenly her fingers stopped. She felt a thin, oblong package under the silk. Reaching out, she took Coldwell’s scissors from his desk and cut through the silk. Inserting her fingers, she drew forth an envelope. It was closed and bore no inscription. She tore off the end and drew out an oblong document. It was a marriage certificate, performed apparently by the Reverend H. Hermitz, of Elfield, Connecticut.
“Good heavens!” said the startled Coldwell, reading over her shoulder.
For a moment the words swam before the eyes of the girl, and then out of the blur they appeared with staggering clearness. It was a document certifying that Peter James Dawlish had been joined in holy matrimony with Jane Winifred Hood—and Hood was Lady Raytham’s maiden name!
She read it again, then put the document into the inspector’s hands.
“Then they were married!” she said evenly. “That was the thing I wasn’t sure about.”
CHAPTER XII.
PETER’S MOTHER
Peter found it very difficult to concentrate his mind upon his work, and although his task was purely mechanical he stopped from time to time and allowed his thoughts to wander. Inevitably they wandered toward that gray building on the Thames Embankment, and a room somewhere in its dark interior where a girl was sitting. He could see her face very clearly. He sighed and took up his pen again, and cursed himself for the folly of dreams.
Far better for him, he thought, that, if he could not concentrate upon his work, he let his mind go roving westward to the bleak moor and those ugly prison buildings that are set in a fold of it; to the carved sneer on the stone arch under which he had walked heavy-footed toward the golden-bearded warder who stood by the iron gates and counted the prisoners in and out; to the long, smelly “ward,” and the vaultlike cells with their gayly coloured blankets; to the stretch of bog land from which the convict workers returned soaked to the skin to their lukewarm dinners; to the barnlike laundry, the silent punishment cells, and the cracked asphalt where the prisoners walked in a ring on Sunday mornings. An ugly memory, but at least one of accomplishment, and substantially past. It was much better than letting your fancies go straying toward the straight figure of a girl with violet eyes and red lips that curved everlastingly in laughter.
He had reached the S’s in the list, the Simpsons and Sims and Sinclairs. It was ill-paid work, his employer being a bookmaker of dubious probity; but so far as he was concerned, he had been paid something in advance, and he had been promised another job to follow.
Very resolutely he had dismissed from his mind all thought of his mother. Even in Dartmoor he had excluded her from his thoughts. If he remembered at all, it was by the letter that had come to him on the day of his conviction. His father had died that week; he had been sinking for months and had never been conscious of his son’s shame. That had been Peter’s one comfort, until he received his mother’s letter, telling him that in a lucid hour of consciousness old Donald Dawlish had struck his name from his will. So Peter went down from the dock with the bitterness of death in his heart; beside that knowledge of his father’s last act, the seven years’ sentence was as nothing.
At six o’clock Elizabeth brought him his tea. She was unusually solemn and silent, and when he attempted to start a little conversation with her, she was so embarrassed that he did not attempt to pursue this course.
He went out for an hour, strolling through the Lambeth Cut amid a medley of hawkers’ stalls with their glaring acetylene lights. He had some comfort from this contact with his fellows. As he returned, he was opening the door of the house with a key which the woman had given him that day, when he remembered that he had not seen Mrs. Inglethorne since the visitation of the police.
He went upstairs, lit the oil lamp and, putting a paper bag full of biscuits which he had bought on the table before him, he settled down to his task. Eight o’clock was striking when he heard the squeaking of brakes as a motor car stopped before the door, and, going to the window, he pulled aside the shade and looked down. It was too dark to distinguish the visitor, but his heart leaped at the thought that it might be Leslie Maughan and he opened the door and waited. This time he heard Mrs. Inglethorne’s voice and after a while she called up to him sourly:
“A lady to see you, Mr. Dawlish.”
“Will you ask her to come up, please?”
He went back into the room and waited. The step on the stairs was slower and heavier than Leslie’s. And then there came through the open doorway the last woman in the world he expected to see—his mother.
Her cold eyes went from him to the littered table.
“Fine work for the son of a gentleman!” she said in a hard voice.
“I’ve known worse,” he replied coolly.
She closed the door behind her, as though she knew something of Mrs. Inglethorne’s irrepressible curiosity.
“I never expected I should see you again,” she said, declining with a gesture the chair he pushed forward to her; “but having given the matter a great deal of thought, I have decided that I ought to do something for you. I am buying and stocking a small farm for you in western Canada, and I am making you a small allowance to enable you to live, even if the farm fails, as it probably will. You will leave for Quebec on Saturday week; I have booked a second-class passage for you.”
And, when he was about to speak:
“I don’t want you to thank me. I shall feel happier when you have left the country. You have brought everlasting disgrace upon your father’s name, and I do not wish to be reminded constantly of the fact.”
Here she stopped.
“You were altogether wrong when you thought I was about to thank you,” he said quietly. “In the first place, I have no intention of accepting your charity, and in the second place I have no aptitude for farming either in Canada or in England.”
“I have booked your passage,” she said, with an air of finality.
“Then there will be a vacant bed going cheap on the Atlantic Ocean!” replied Peter, with a smile.
She looked round the room contemptuously and again her eyes went to the table.
“So you’d rather do this waster’s work?”
“Waster’s work, I agree,” he said, “but infinitely more intellectual than mending boots or washing convicts’ laundry—my last occupation. I expect nothing from you, Mother. For some reason which I have never quite understood, you have hated me ever since I was a child. I have no wish to reproach you with being ‘unnatural.’ You have been under the thumb of Anita Bellini ever since I can remember.”
“How dare you!” Her voice was vibrant with anger. “ ‘Under the thumb!’ What do you mean?”
“I only know that Anita Bellini has withered every good feeling in every good woman who has been brought into contact with her. I only know that she is evil; what hold she has over you, Heaven knows. It has been sufficiently strong to rob me of the one gift which is every man’s right—a mother’s love. I dare say that sounds a piece of sickly sentimentality, but it is a big thing—a very big thing.”
“You have had what you deserved,” she interrupted brusquely. “And I did not come here to discuss my duty. If you prefer to go to Australia instead of Canada——”
“I prefer Lambeth to either place at the moment,” he said coldly.
She shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly.
“You have made your bed and you must lie on it. I have done all that is humanly possible, more than could be expected, remembering how you have humiliated me and made my name——”
“My father’s name,” he corrected.
He got under her guard there, and to his wonder the comment to which irritation drove him produced a remarkable effect. Her face flushed; the hard mouth grew harder.
“Your father’s name is my name,” she said harshly.
Her eyes were blazing; he had never seen her so moved.
“I will give you twenty thousand pounds to leave the country,” she said. “That is my final offer.”
He shook his head.
“I shall never want money from you,” he said, and, walking to the door, opened it and she left the room without another glance at him.
Why had she come? He wasted half an hour of precious time puzzling over this extraordinary action on her part. He had spoken no more than the truth, when he had said that from his childhood she had displayed an antagonism toward him which in maturity had puzzled him more than any other experience in his life. Antagonistic? She hated him! And, curiously enough, his father had known of her feeling, and though he had never made any direct reference to the enmity, had gone out of his way to make up for the affection the mother denied him. It was his father with whom he had corresponded throughout the days of the war; his father who had met him when he came home from France on leave; his father who had come day after day to the hospital to sit by the bedside of his wounded son; and when Peter had been discharged from the army, it was Donald who found him the secretaryship and had planned for him a great career in the world of politics. It was a puzzle beyond unravelment. Peter took up his pen again and tried, by a concentration of his exigent present, to forget the bitter past.