CHAPTER XVI.
AN OLD RECORD
“I can’t believe it.” Leslie stared at the inspector. “His own mother charged him? How monstrous!”
Mr. Coldwell had reached an age where it was almost impossible to surprise him.
“Queer, isn’t it? But, Lord bless you, mothers do rum things! I’ve known cases—but you’ve heard about ’em, too, Leslie. Peter went down to Wimbledon to raise the devil for some reason or other. It appears his mother had heard the fuss he was making at the door and telephoned for the police before he broke in. It might have been bad for him if he were a convict on license, but fortunately he’s time-expired, and he has only to say that it was a family quarrel to get bound over. I don’t think he will be called upon for defense, anyway.”
Leslie Maughan nibbled at the end of her glove, a devastating habit of hers in moments of perturbation.
“I really can’t believe it, though of course it must have happened. What was his mother doing down there? And why on earth did Peter do such a mad thing?”
Coldwell smiled.
“Go down and ask him,” he said. “I’ll give you a note to the inspector, and you might have a few minutes’ talk with him before he appears in court. It is very unlikely that they will remand him to Brixton. If the princess has got horse sense she will get him acquitted. Mrs. Dawlish is pretty sick and sorry that she allowed herself to charge him. I can tell you that because, as soon as I heard about the case, I phoned up the station and the sergeant in charge told me that Mrs. Dawlish came to the police station at seven o’clock this morning to see if she could get her name taken out of the record. She’d allowed her spite to lead her astray, and she knows that when it comes into court, the story of a mother charging her son is going to make a pretty big newspaper sensation. That is why I think that the charge may be withdrawn.”
When Leslie reached the police station she found that Peter had been transferred to the cells adjoining the court, and her own card was sufficient to obtain an interview. He met her with a rueful smile.
“You see me again in my natural environment,” he said cheerfully.
“Why did you go to Bellini’s?”
“I wanted to learn something,” he said, and he would not explain any more.
She told him of the inspector’s prophecy, but he seemed careless as to whether the charge would be supported.
“It was certainly a facer,” he said. “I didn’t expect my mother to take that line. I suppose until then I had not realized how bitterly she hated me. They may go on with the charge, knowing that in any circumstances I should not tell what brought me to Wimbledon.”
She did not press him for any further particulars. The interview took place in the passage adjoining the court; policemen and prisoners were passing every few seconds, and the conditions were not favourable to confidences. She told him of her own alarming experience, and when she had finished he whistled.
“That explains everything—the chain on the door and old Simms being on guard. I never saw the old devil again after I broke in.”
She made no attempt to hide her astonishment.
“I don’t see why a chain on Anita Bellini’s door explains a little yellow man in my room,” she said.
“It does—most emphatically.”
Just then his name was called by the court usher and she followed him into court. Peter had hardly been put in the steel pen when the detective sergeant who had arrested him stood up, and addressed the bench.
“This case, your Worship, arose from a visit which the prisoner paid to the house of the Princess Anita Bellini last night. The prisoner, who is a very distant relative of the princess’s, had some sort of grievance, and the argument became so heated that Her Highness was compelled to telephone for the police. The princess has no wish to prosecute the prisoner in the circumstances, or to bring a family quarrel into court, and in these circumstances I don’t propose to produce any evidence, your worship.”
“But the charge is attempted murder,” said the presiding magistrate.
“The charge was only taken last night,” explained the detective, “and it was the intention of the police to ask for a remand. But the princess has modified her statement, and I am advised that a conviction could not follow on the evidence that she would offer. In those circumstances I ask your worship to discharge Dawlish.”
The magistrate nodded, and that was the end of the proceedings. Peter walked out of the dock and joined the girl in front of the police court.
At first he refused her invitation to drive him back to town.
“You’re coming with me,” she said firmly. “I have a lot of things to say to you and a list of questions as long as Lucretia’s grocery order. Probably you will not answer them, but that is beside the point.”
They were crossing Putney Common when she leaned over and spoke to the driver, and, slowing down, he brought the car to the edge of the path.
“Let us go for a little walk,” she said, and no sooner were they out of earshot than she asked: “Why did you go to Princess Bellini’s last night, Peter Dawlish?”
“To find out something.”
“What did you want to know?”
Should he tell her? He could not understand himself. Why should he hesitate to take her into his confidence, she who knew so much? And yet he felt an unaccountable shyness. It was as though the confession would make a perceptible difference in their curious friendship. At last he blurted out the truth.
“Jane had a child,” he said.
She stopped, and her deep violet eyes met his.
“Your child—well?”
He was astonished by the coolness with which she received this momentous news.
“Did you guess?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I knew,” she answered quietly. “It was born at a little farm called Appledore, near Carlisle.”
He was momentarily paralyzed.
“You knew—all the time?” he stammered.
“I knew all the time,” she repeated. “I knew you had a child, before I knew you were married. It was at Appledore that I found the book of poems, and your little blank verse. And that was why I wasn’t quite sure you were married. Naturally she would call herself Mrs. Dawlish in the circumstances.”
They were passing a park bench and she caught his arm and drew him down.
“I’ll tell you all about it, shall I?” And when she added: “I was spending a holiday in Cumberland, and I suppose it was fate that led me to this very farmhouse. The old lady, Mrs. Still, who owned the place was a widow, and rather a garrulous old soul, but very kind. It was only natural she should tell me of the interesting people who had stayed with her. One of the most interesting was a pretty girl, whose baby was born in the very room I occupied. She came in February, before the season had started—there is a season in Cumberland, you know—and stayed till the beginning of April. She called herself—it doesn’t matter what she called herself—but it was not Jane Dawlish. The child was born on the seventeenth of March—St. Patrick’s Day. The old lady, who was half Irish, remembered that fact because she had sent a bunch of shamrock up to the pretty lady the morning the child was born.”
“Who was with her?” asked Peter huskily.
“Two women—a nurse, and somebody who was obviously Anita Bellini. No doctor was called in; apparently the other woman was a maternity nurse, and it was not necessary to call for medical assistance. My old Appledore lady never saw the baby; she wasn’t even sure when it was taken away, but she thought it was on the second day following the birth, because that was the day a man came from London. The ‘man’ was obviously Druze. She arrived just before Mrs. Still went into Carlisle to do her midweek shopping, and when she returned Druze had gone. The old lady did not know that the baby had gone, too, until the end of the week, when she asked to be allowed to see it and was told that it had been sent off to a warmer climate. The only thing she knew was that it was a boy; the nurse had told her that, and the Appledore lady was rather disappointed because, as she said, the pretty lady had been praying and hoping for a girl.
“Why she should pray or hope for a baby of either sex is a little beyond me, but I have no reason to doubt the truth of the old lady’s statement. She showed me very proudly a little book that the ‘pretty young thing’ was in the habit of reading, a book of poems; and then I saw your ridiculous acrostic. Just about this time I was rather intrigued by certain things which had happened to Lady Raytham. We had, in fact, information at Scotland Yard that she was paying blackmail, and I naturally connected the two events: her appearance here under an assumed name, the birth of the child, and the fact that she was paying out large sums of money from time to time for some unknown service. When, about an hour before I left the farm, old Mrs. Still said that she had heard one of the women speak about ‘Peter,’ I was pretty sure that I was on the right track.”
“Do you know the name of the nurse? Was it Martha——”
“Martha!” She sprang up and stared at him. “Martha? What do you know about Martha?”
He was a little dumfounded by the effect of his words.
“Tell me—tell me quickly,” she said impatiently, and he produced from his pocket the letter he had received, and which had brought him to Jane Raytham.
She looked at the pencilled words.
“Martha’s servant. That was Druze’s sister,” she said suddenly. “She had the child. Peter, I am going on this new trail, and you mustn’t interfere until I’ve followed this thing to the end.”
“What do you think of me, I wonder?” he asked.
She eyed him steadily.
“What should I think of you? You’re unfortunate, Peter Dawlish. I’ve told you that before.”
He shook his head with a wry smile.
“You don’t know how fortunate I am,” he said, and she laughed in spite of herself.
“Come back to the car, or we’ll find ourselves indulging in an orgy of mutual self-pity.”
It did not occur to Peter that he should ask her why the self-pity should be mutual, but he never forgot her words.
She dropped him in the centre of London and, going on to Scotland Yard, interviewed her chief and received permission from him to take a day off. Her first step was to get into telephonic communication with the chief detective of Plymouth, who promised to call her up as soon as his inquiries were completed. Though she was on a holiday, there were many official interruptions.
First there came the man who had arrested Mrs. Inglethorne to tell her that that unrepentant lady had been remanded, and to expose the red-faced woman’s shocking history. Her maiden name had been Zamosser. She was of Dutch origin, though her parents had lived for many years in England; and with the exception of a very short interval she had been either in the hands or under the observation of the police. She was a receiver, and worse; had been convicted of shoplifting, and, except for one interval in her early youth when she seemed to have lived so respectable a life that the police had no trace of her, she had been in and out of prison since she was a child.
“What about the children?” asked Leslie, anticipating the reply.
The sergeant laughed.
“One of them’s hers; the others are what she calls ‘adopted.’ That is to say, they have been inconvenient children of whom she has taken charge for a small weekly sum or for a larger payment cash down. The only one we have been able to trace is a little boy.”
For a moment wild hopes had surged up into Leslie’s heart, but they were to die at his words.
“Oh, you’ve traced the boy?” she said. She remembered the wizened little fellow who had looked up at her with big, sleepy eyes when she had made her incursion to the kitchen.
“Well, we’ve found his mother, at any rate. The other children mostly belong to poor little working-class girls.”
“Are there many baby farmers in England?”
“Thousands,” said the officer, and her heart sank. “They’re supposed to be under police supervision, but of course they’re not. There is no law to prevent anybody adopting a child, though the actual adoption is not recognized in law.”
“There is no list of them?”
He shook his head.
“There may be a few hundred on the books. You would know that better yourself, Miss Maughan, as you’re at the Yard.”
And then, unconsciously extinguishing her last lingering hope:
“I was once asked to trace a little baby that had been handed over to a ‘farmer,’ but it is like looking for a needle in a haystack, trying to find an ‘adopted child’ after trace has been lost of it,” he said. “A few of them drift into the workhouse schools; most of them die. It doesn’t pay the kind of woman who makes a living out of that sort of thing to feed them properly. There should be a State institution where unwanted children could be taken and cared for and become an asset to the country.”
He had been gone half an hour when the Plymouth call came through and the news was not especially helpful. Martha Druze had qualified as a maternity nurse in the years ’89-’90, and had left the hospital to take up a private position as a general nurse. It was believed she had gone abroad, but there was no actual evidence of this fact except that the present matron, who remembered her, had received a postal card mailed at Port Said a month or two after Martha had gone away. There was also a rumour that she had married very well, to somebody who was variously described as a carpenter of Cape Town and a rancher in Australia. There was only one clue which was faintly promising. Martha was known to have registered herself in the books of a London agency, the name of which Leslie jotted down.
As soon as the conversation was through, she searched the telephone directory for the nurses’ agency. It was not there; possibly it had been overwhelmed by competition and had died, as so many other agencies die, from sheer inanition. To make absolutely sure on this point she called up one well-known woman agent and asked her a question.
“Ashley’s Agency? Oh, yes. It is now called the Central Nurses’ Bureau—in fact, we are Ashley’s Agency, though we never use that title!”
Leslie explained who she was and what she required.
“If you’ll come round, we will show you the old books; we still have them,” was the encouraging reply.
Leslie Maughan put on her hat and coat and went out at once. Halfway down she remembered Mr. Coldwell’s gift and went back to buckle on a most uncomfortable garter. The premises of the agency were off Regent Street, no great distance to walk, and she was there in five minutes.
The secretary, who had replied to her telephone message, was already selecting the books for her inspection, and by great good fortune the first of these she had discovered contained the very information that the girl had asked for.
“Yes, we have her on our books—Martha Druze. She applied to us before she left Plymouth Hospital apparently, for that is her original address, and we placed her in a situation in the early part of 1891.”
The secretary had opened the book and her finger pointed to a line. Leslie read; she found herself gripping tight to the edge of the table. Looking at her, the secretary saw that her eyes were blazing and wondered what there was in this simple record to engender such excitement.
“It was the only job we ever got for her——” she began.
Leslie shook her head.
“She would not want another,” she said.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE TELLTALE PERFUME
When Lady Raytham had begun a letter to her husband the district messenger arrived with Leslie’s note. His lordship, in his aimless way, had gone on to Bombay, and was suffering from an old trouble of his; had written a very long letter describing minutely his many symptoms, and had expressed—this was unexpected—the desire that she should go out to him.
She read Leslie’s note:
Dear Jane: Won’t you come round and see me? I’ve got the whole day off, and there is a tremendous lot that I want to talk to you about, not as a poor apology for a policewoman, but as a very human girl who would love to smooth over some of the rough road you are treading. Lucretia has orders to say that I’m out and to admit nobody. I can give you a home-made lunch, and can promise that you will suffer no ill effects therefrom. Or we can lunch regally at or near the Carlton. Please come.
Jane scribbled a note which was delivered to the waiting messenger, locked away her half-finished letter in the bureau, and went up into her room to change. Lucretia had no sooner ushered Jane in to Leslie when she burst out talking.
“Did you see Peter? What happened? I’m so worried about it. I nearly called you up this morning.”
“I shouldn’t have known,” said Leslie. “At least, I should have known he’d been arrested——”
“Arrested?”
This was obviously news to Jane Raytham, for her face went white. Leslie explained what had happened.
“How could she? How could she?” demanded Jane Raytham vehemently. “It was wicked! But how like her! Poor Peter! He lives everlastingly in rough seas.”
And then the note of anger in her voice turned to one of anxiety.
“Did Anita tell him anything?”
“Not what he wanted to know,” replied Leslie.
The visitor was quick to understand the meaning of that reply.
“Do you know why he went?”
“He went to find his child.”
The beautiful face of Jane Raytham flushed a delicate pink, and paled again.
“My child,” she said, in a low voice. “I suppose you despise me, don’t you?”
Leslie shook her head.
“No, why should I? If I despised every woman who had a baby——”
“I don’t mean that. But I allowed them to take it away. I didn’t want to, Leslie. Will you believe that? I wanted to keep the child with me. I fought hard for him. The compromise was a desperately weak one, but at least I gained that point.”
“What was the compromise?”
Lady Raytham smiled faintly.
“If you didn’t despise me before, you’ll despise me now,” she said.
She was at the fireplace in her old attitude: arm along the mantel, forehead resting on the back of her hand, her eyes fixed on the fire.
“They agreed to that. If it was a girl I should keep her; if it was a boy, he should go away. A mad, wicked idea, so grossly unfair to the child! But I’m terribly tender toward girls. I can’t see a girl suffer without experiencing a shrivelled-up feeling inside. I wonder if you know what my girlhood was. If it had been a girl I should have kept her with me and braved everything. But it was a boy—a wonderful boy—they told me of it afterward. I wish I’d seen him, known him, if only for a day, but then I should never, never have allowed him to go.”
She turned her face away and her shoulders shook. Leslie sat at the desk and drew fantastic, meaningless arabesques upon her blotting pad; and when that storm of sobbing had died down she said:
“I suppose it is absurd to ask you if there is any clue by which the child could be traced? Of course you’ve explored every avenue. You’ve discovered nothing?”
Jane was manipulating her handkerchief, her back toward her, and there was finality in the shake of her head.
“No. I’ve already tried. I didn’t tell Anita, but for months I’ve had detectives searching. I thought he was in a happy home, you know; I never dreamed that he’d been left.”
She could not go on. It was quite a long time before she mastered her emotion.
“Druze told me that night—that horrible night she went away. Laughed in my face when I asked her where the child was. That is why I went after her. I guessed that she had gone to Anita’s, and when I found her dead on the path I was frantic. I thought she must have some hidden paper that would tell me. But when I searched, there was nothing—nothing!”
Jane Raytham turned her face away from the girl.
“I have no justification—none,” she said. “I was just wickedly selfish. Even if he’d been illegitimate I could not be excused. Illegitimate!” She smiled bitterly. “Thank God I’ve had no children since I married Raytham! He was not keen about children, or about me for the matter of that. Our married life has been a sort of—modified celibacy!”
She took down a photograph from a mantelshelf and looked at it.
“This is Mr. Coldwell, isn’t it?”
Leslie nodded.
“It would be a great feather in his cap if he—arrested me for bigamy.”
“Mr. Coldwell is not frantically keen on feathers of that kind, Jane,” said the girl loyally.
Jane put down the photograph and dropped into the nearest armchair, curling her legs up under her.
“I’m a beast! I’m putting the worst construction on everything; taking the most uncharitable view of everybody.”
She smiled pitifully, reached out her hand for her bag that lay on the table, and snapped open a diamond-encrusted cigarette case.
“I tried drugging once,” she said; “a white powder you sniff up your nose. For some reason it made me deathly sick, and I didn’t pursue the practice. But I envy people who can find relief and forgetfulness.”
“Another good way,” said Leslie brutally, “is to put your head on a railway track when a large, fat freight train is due! You’d accomplish the same result, and give much less trouble to other people. And presently, when your boy emerges from the mist, as he will, he would come to a mother who was hardly worth finding.”
Jane was laughing quietly.
“You’re a weird girl. How old are you?”
Leslie told her.
“I wish Peter was in love with you. He must find happiness somewhere or other.”
“Do I come into this?” asked Leslie dryly. “Or are Peter and you the only two people in the world whose feelings count?”
She stopped Jane’s penitence with a laughing gesture.
“I’ll tell you something, Jane. I’m rather in love with Peter; do you feel faint?”
“I’m not a little bit faint.” But Jane was more than a little bit curious. “You’re not jesting?”
“I decided this morning that I was very much in love with him,” said Leslie calmly, “but I’ve thought a long time about it, and have reached the conclusion that it is rather my maternal instinct that is operating. I’m loving him in a motherly fashion, in fact. Sooner or later that boy of yours is going to be found, and then you’ve got to go to your husband and tell him the truth.”
She was watching Jane’s face closely, ready to note and spring upon the first visible sign of repugnance. But Jane was listening; and listening, the girl realized her heart sinking with approval.
“And then Lord Raytham must give you up, and Peter and you must start afresh.”
Here was the first note of dissent. Jane shook her head.
“Peter is different,” she said. “I realized it when I saw him last night. He’s not the same man. And can you wonder? Leslie, I never loved him. You’ll think that’s a horrible thing to say of the father of my child. He represented—I don’t know, curiosity, I suppose—adventure—the grand hairpin turn of life, where so much is upset and smashed, so many hopes and ideals die. And he never loved me. He was infatuated and he was fond of me, and had a wonderful chivalrous feeling that he was rescuing me from something. That is half his trouble now, that he knows he didn’t love me, and it makes him feel ugly and ashamed. You think the child may bring us together. I’m becoming quite a thought reader! But that sort of thing really doesn’t happen, does it? Children really do not determine very much. Half the women who are divorced have children who love them and whom they love, but it didn’t prevent—things happening. I think Peter and I might be good friends, and the boy might love us both, even though we were apart, for children give you back what you give to them. I could give him such a lot.”
With an impatient shake of her head she sat up and walked resolutely to the window.
“Let us talk of rabbits,” she said. “How did you break this?” she asked.
For a new and unpainted sash had been put into the window space that morning.
“Never mind about that. A visitor put his head through it. Jane, you’re taking rather a hopeless view of life, aren’t you?”
The woman shrugged.
“My dear, what can happen? If this were a story and it wasn’t real life, I should go away somewhere, contract a malignant fever and die to soft, slow music! But I refuse to offer myself up as a sacrifice in order that my story shall have a smooth and a happy ending! And if I die, Peter will endow me with all sorts of gentle qualities which I don’t possess, and will pass the rest of his life in the twilight of melancholy. I know men!”
Leslie was laughing softly. She had too keen a sense of humour not to appreciate the fact that this entanglement had its funny side. Suddenly she became serious.
“There are only a few questions I want to ask you, that I’ve never asked before. Did you give Druze your emerald necklace?”
Jane nodded.
“Yes. This mythical person wanted thirty thousand pounds. I could only draw twenty without Raytham knowing. The necklace was worth twelve thousand, and I suggested that Druze should sell it. She jumped at the chance. I thought she had taken it away a week before she actually did.”
“You can’t account for the pendant being found in her hand?”
Jane shook her head.
“And you don’t know where the rest of the chain is to be found?”
“I am absolutely ignorant. I can’t conceive how she met her death. It is only reasonable to suppose that she had a life and friends of whom I knew nothing. Where she went, after she left my house, I do not know. I guessed she was going to Anita’s because she would not leave England without saying good-bye: she was very much attached to Anita.”
“How long after your baby was born were you married to Lord Raytham?”
Jane considered.
“About ten months,” she said.
“Did you go to Reno personally?”
“Yes,” Jane said. “That was one of the queer coincidences of it all. My father had a small farm near Reno, just a shack and a few acres of ground, and this was accepted as a residential qualification. Of course, I had to lie desperately and say I was living there all the time, and really I believed the divorce would go through. I even appeared in court and gave my evidence, and I thought that the thing was settled, until Anita saw me outside the court-house and told me that my lawyers had made a bungle and that the divorce could not be granted without serving some papers upon Peter. I went straight away with her; her automobile was waiting, for I was scared of the reporters, who were all the time hunting marriage romances for their newspapers. Besides, the baby was coming. I was frightened that people would know.”
“And you returned immediately?”
Jane nodded.
“Yes; I went to Cumberland from Liverpool. Anita discovered the place. It was some time after Christmas; I remember that I was in New York on Christmas Day.”
“There is one final question, Jane, and then I’ll stop being a mark of interrogation and take you out to lunch. That is, if you don’t mind being seen in public with a Scotland Yard female?”
“If you wish,” said Jane, with the first spark of animation she had shown, “I will eat my lunch out of a paper bag with you, seated on top of one of Landseer’s lions!”
“This is the question,” said Leslie, slowly and deliberately. “Marriage with Lord Raytham was in the air, wasn’t it, and you had discussed it with Anita?”
Jane nodded.
“And did she know of your intention of marrying Raytham whether the divorce was granted or not? Please think very carefully before you answer.”
“There’s no need to think very carefully. I told Anita that I should marry Raytham whether the divorce was granted or not. I salved my conscience by expressing doubt as to the validity of the marriage.”
Leslie leaned back in her chair with a large and happy smile.
“You’re a wicked conspirator, a perfectly horrible mother, and not a tremendous success in any of your matrimonial ventures!” She slipped her arm round the woman’s waist and kissed her on the cheek. “But you’re rather a darling. We’ll lunch at the Pall Mall, which is terribly nice for women, and we’ll occupy the afternoon with a movie. I love the movies—especially the romantic ones!”
She was rather relieved than otherwise when, nearing the end of luncheon, Jane remembered, with some contrition, that she had promised to be at home that afternoon to receive a committee of which she was chairman.
“Child welfare,” she said laconically. “The angels weep every time I sit at the head of that board and dilate upon the duty of mothers! Raytham, in spite of queer little ways, is a dear where these societies are concerned, and he’s fearfully in earnest about them. I drew the line when he wanted me to take control of a committee which helps fallen women. That was stretching my sense of humour to a breaking point.”
They parted in the Haymarket, and Leslie went back to her flat, stopping on her way to wire to Peter. He came when the day was fading and Lucretia was drawing the curtains. Two stout suitcases were ready packed in the hall, and during the afternoon Coldwell had called her up with strict injunction to be ready for him when he came.
“I’m not going to allow you to stay in the flat until this little business is finished,” he said.
Here he had a strong supporter in Lucretia Brown.
“Not for a million pounds would I stay in this place after dark, miss,” she said. “What with burglars and people jumping out of the window and what not, I wonder I’ve got any hair left! When I combed it this morning it came out in handfuls.”
“The remedy for that is shingling,” suggested Leslie, and Lucretia grew sardonic.
“When I want to look like a boy I’ll wear trousers, miss!” she said. “Not that I’ve anything to say against shingling, which suits you very well, because you’ve got the kind of head. And as for these bingles with your ears sticking out all over the place like the Princess Bellorino or whatever her name is—I call that disgusting! The only use for ears is to hear with, not to go pushing theirselves out into the world, so to speak. I was hoping her ladyship was coming back this afternoon, miss. A bit of society does nobody any harm.”
“If she’d only known, I’m sure she’d have jumped at the opportunity of giving us a social lift,” said Leslie, and Lucretia sniffed. She was not very thin-skinned, but she always knew when her young lady was indulging in what Lucretia described as “sarc.”
“I only want to say——” she began.
“There’s the bell,” interrupted Leslie. “If it is Mr. Dawlish, shoot him up.”
“A low convict!” murmured Lucretia, but she murmured it under her breath.
The convict was neither lowly nor humble. Leslie had never seen him look more serious, and the old flippancy of his tone was gone. It was a very determined young man who sat down at the opposite side of her writing table.
He had been making inquiries, he said.
“It is a hopeless business when you don’t know where to start. I thought Jane would give me a hint, but of course the poor girl is as much in the dark as I. Yes, I am awfully sorry for her. I’m afraid I was rather a brute.”
“She doesn’t think you were,” said Leslie lightly.
“Have you seen her?” he asked quickly.
“This morning,” she nodded. “In fact, I lunched with her. We talked over the whole grisly affair from A to Z. Are you very much in love with her?”
He shook his head.
“I’m not in love with her at all. I suppose I ought to be, right down in the deeps of my heart, but I’m not. And she is not in love with me, either. I knew that seven years ago. She was not over-reticent when she came to discuss our marriage before the separation. Did she tell you anything at all about the boy?”
“Nothing. She really doesn’t know.”
He agreed.
“I was sure she didn’t. Bellini knows—no, I won’t call her princess or Anita or anything feminine or human! She’s just a devil—a wicked devil! How my father hated her! I’ve an idea he was a bit afraid of her, too. I remember once he asked me, when we were walking together at our place in Hertfordshire, if I liked her, and when I told him that the sight of her made me ill, he put his hand in his pocket and gave me a golden sovereign! And yet he must have been very fond of her once.”
“Fond of her?” Leslie’s eyebrows met. “Do you seriously mean that?”
“I do. They say she was awfully attractive—not very pretty but very attractive—when she was younger.”
Leslie pushed back her chair.
“This has been a most educational day!” she said. “Produce your evidence, Mr. Dawlish, that your father was ever attracted by that monstrous lady.”
He tried to turn the conversation, but she kept him to it remorselessly.
“I shouldn’t have known, only my mother and the princess quarrelled. I was curled up in a chair in the library—I must have been about seven—reading one of the kind of books that my father used to buy for me—about pirates and cutthroats and the usual exemplar of youth—when they came into the library together. My mother was furious with Bellini. I didn’t understand all it signified at the time, but later, when I came to think it over, it seemed pretty plain. My mother was furious. ‘You’ve had your inning,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t like you any more, and he doesn’t want you in the house. You won’t get him back, anyway.’ There was a lot more said on both sides that I cannot remember. I know that it ended in my mother crying and going out of the room, and in Anita Bellini leaving the house. They must have been on bad terms for two years, probably three. Time has no meaning to a child.”
Leslie was chewing the end of a pen-holder.
“Then your father, in the argot of these days, was a bad lad?” she said.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he protested. “He was a very simple man, attracted by clever women; and Bellini was brilliant. I remember that her husband was alive in those days—a very tall, thin, melancholy Italian who spoke very bad English. My father and he were not very good friends. I think Bellini had borrowed money and hadn’t repaid it, and dear old Donald Dawlish was rather a stickler for commercial honesty.”
And then, with a half-ashamed laugh:
“I don’t know why I should be slandering my father or gossiping when I should have no other thought than of my boy. Did she tell you whether she named it?”
“It was neither named nor registered,” was Leslie’s reply. “From that point of view the child has no existence, and that is why he is going to be so very difficult to trace.”
The pen quivered between her white teeth; she stared out of the window.
“I wonder——” she said softly.
“What do you wonder?”
“If the other two pieces in this jig-saw puzzle are going to be so easy to fit. And I wonder other things, Peter Dawlish. Where is the screw I can turn on Anita Bellini? Give me that letter you had.”
He took it from his pocket and she read it.
“Who sent you this?”
“There was no name attached.”
She looked at the envelope and the postmark.
“This was sent by one who wishes to do either Jane or the princess a pretty bad turn,” she said. “Now if I could only trace the sender——”
She lifted the letter to her nose and sniffed daintily.
“A clever detective would be able to tell in an instant if this perfume was chenel No. 6 or chypre. I, being an ignoramus, only know that Greta Gurden’s bedroom reeked with it!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
ANITA’S FRIGHT
At that moment Greta Gurden’s bedroom reeked with the pungent scent of frying sausages that wafted in from the little gas-ring in her “dining hall.” When Greta was her own provider, she was economical to the point of stinginess. She, who would hesitate languidly between sole Mariner and sole à la bonne femme, who chose the most delicate and expensive of ices, and who had a pretty knowledge of the virtues of relative vintages, when she had an escort to foot the bill, could find, in the intimacy of her flat, the ingredients of complete satisfaction hanging from a hook at the local butcher’s.
She had been allowed to get up that afternoon and found that she could drag herself from room to room without pain or inconvenience. Mrs. Hobbs had gone home, having a husband of her own to serve, and Greta was left alone, and was glad.
Face-saving is a practice which is not wholly Chinese. When she prepared her mean little snacks she liked to be by herself, for she was one of those who desire to be thought well of by the least accountable of people. She was almost cheerful as she speared the sausages from their sizzling bed and laid them on a hot plate, brewed the tea from a kettle placed before the gas stove, and, spreading a cloth across half the table, prepared to enjoy her evening repast.
She had not heard from Anita since the woman’s visit, and she had spent the greater part of the day regretting the spirit of malice which had induced her to send an eight-year-old sheet of paper to Peter Dawlish. Fortunately, Anita would never know; that was the one solace she had. What would Anita say if she discovered? Greta shuddered to think.
Being malicious, she was a coward; and it was cowardice which brought about a revulsion of feeling toward the employer she betrayed. In the processes of reaction, she felt almost tenderly toward the victim of her spite. Nevertheless, the finding of the letter had given Greta an idea. There might be other documents equally valuable, remembering that the day was near at hand when her sole legitimate source of income would perish in the inevitable liquidation of Mayfair Gossip.
It was all very well for Anita to sneer and rail at the paper, but it had been a very good friend of hers. There were two prominent announcements printed week after week in the pages of this scurrilous little organ; the first of these was called “Stories of Real Life,” and it was announced that for the sender of the best material from which such a story could be constructed there was a weekly reward of twenty-five pounds. Stress was laid upon one point, that the material must be authentic, that it must be spicy, and that it must be remarkable. The second announcement was to the effect that contributors who were in a position to secure social items of interest would be well paid.
These two appeals produced a voluminous correspondence, the majority of which was valueless for their purpose; but sometimes an aggrieved servant would reveal matters that were even outside the cognizance of her employer. The maid who found a bundle of old love letters in a secret drawer of her master’s desk was very well rewarded indeed. Those letters went on to Anita, who found an excellent use for them.
Officially, Greta knew nothing of these matters. Officially, she was sending on these letters because they had a piquant interest for her employer. She was never asked to do anything that a lady could not do, or even that Greta could not do. She made a very good use of the smaller and less important items that reached the office, for Greta was an efficient, if one-sided, journalist. She had one formula which she followed in every case.
Dear Anita: The inclosed letters are not, I am afraid, of much use to the paper. We shall be prosecuted for libel if we dare use one tenth of what is in them. They may, however, interest you.
The letter never varied; it had become almost a stereotype.
She contributed special articles to Gossip and because of a sojourn of fourteen days in the United States had become an authority upon the Four Hundred, could talk glibly and inaccurately of the leaders of society, and occasionally would introduce a Long Island colour to her paragraphs. She could write fairly well, had a mordant wit of her own, and in happier circumstances might have become a great journalist. Instead of which she had developed insensibly into a cringing sycophant, dependent upon a wage that was paid in all the circumstances of charity.
As she ate her three large, indigestible sausages, she decided to tackle that night the last bundle of letters which needed reading and classifying. It was therefore not an inappropriate moment for Anita to call. Mrs. Gurden stood up like a soldier when the woman swung into the room and pulled the door close behind her.
“Your leg’s all right, is it? Good! I want you to come over to Wimbledon to-night.”
“My dear Anita, I couldn’t possibly come to-night,” broke in Mrs. Gurden, a picture of sweetness and delight at seeing this unwelcome visitor. “The doctor says——”
“I don’t care what the doctor says,” replied Anita brusquely. “You’ve got to come over to May Towers.”
Greta murmured something half-heartedly, and made a final fight.
“It may be fatal,” she said in a hushed voice. “The doctor——”
Princess Bellini said something very uncomplimentary about doctors in general, and glanced at the remnants of the humble meal with a sneer which she did not attempt to conceal.
“Pack all your things, everything you want for a long stay,” she said. “I’ll send one of my people up to help you if you like, but it would be better if your own woman—Snobbs or Hobbs or whatever you call her—helped you.”
“How long do you want me to stay?” asked Greta in consternation. She counted the most unhappy days and nights of her life those she had spent as Anita’s guest.
“A month; six weeks possibly—I’m not sure,” said the woman brusquely. “I’m going to pay you very well indeed. As for your leg, I’ve telephoned to your doctor and he tells me that you’re fit to move, and in fact the wound is healed.”
“But the paper——”
“The paper is dead. I’ve written to the printers telling them so. My lawyer will liquidate the business, so that’s off your mind. You’ve got to do something, Greta. Your source of income from that direction has dried up.”
Greta listened in dismay, and offered the weak comment that it “seemed a pity.” And then, with a resolution which was born of her very feebleness, she said:
“I can’t go. I simply won’t go, Anita, until I’ve seen the doctor. You’re most inconsiderate! I haven’t recovered. It isn’t only the wound, it’s the shock of—Druze’s death. I simply won’t risk my life. After all, I have to take care of myself. Gurden doesn’t care a darn whether I’m alive or dead.”
Anita sat squarely before her, her big hands on her knees, her eyeglass fixed in her impassive face.
“Gurden!” she rasped. “You almost make this ghost of yours real! You’ve got to the end of your argument, Greta, when you call on the precious name of Gurden. He belongs to the same order as Mrs. ’Arris.”
“It’s not true, it’s not true!” protested the haggard woman tearfully. “We’re married but we’re separated.”
Nevertheless, she proceeded to give no further details that would elucidate that mystery of her life.
“Whether you are or whether you’re not, you’re to come over to May Towers,” said the princess definitely. “If you want to see a doctor, you can send for any one you like.”
Greta elected for her own doctor, but he was out and not expected back until late that night. She ran her fingers down the directory of the profession, seeking a familiar name, and presently she found one and rang him up. Anita, renovating her toilet before the looking glass in the bedroom, heard Greta speaking in her sugary society voice, and smiled grimly.
“If you please, Doctor. I wondered if you would remember me. It’s most awfully kind of you—no, only a little scratch. The wound has quite healed, I’m sure, but I should like to see you ever so much.”
There was a click as the receiver was hung up. Anita smoothed the powder on her face, gave her large, shapeless lips a touch of a red, creamy stick, and strolled back to the dining room.
“Well, have you found your doctor?”
“Yes, Anita, I have,” said the other. “He’s a very nice man and he won’t let me go out if he thinks that it’s dangerous to my health. And really, I must consider myself, Anita, sometimes. I’m not at all well, and I’ve been thinking for a long time of placing myself in a doctor’s hands——”
“Whom have you sent for?”
“Doctor Elford Wesley. He used to be old Mr. Dawlish’s doctor——”
She heard a growl like the sound of a beast and stared aghast at Anita. Her eyes were wide open; she showed her teeth in an ugly grin.
“You brainless fool!” she exclaimed. “Why did you send for him?”
CHAPTER XIX.
CAPTURED
Demoniacal, terrifying, she towered above the frightened woman, and Greta cowered and held up her hand as though to ward off a blow.
“Get on the telephone, quick, and tell him he needn’t come. Invent any excuse you like! Hurry!”
In a trembling voice Greta called the number.
“He’s gone,” she said, and looked up at her mistress.
“All right, hang up, you fool!” Anita was breathing quickly. New lines showed in her face; she looked like an old woman.
“Send somebody down to the door and tell him he needn’t come.”
“But, Anita,” wailed the other, “I can’t do that! I must see him, Nita. What a stupid thing you are! What difference does it make? If you don’t like him you needn’t show yourself. And if I send down a message like that he’ll be awfully suspicious! You remember how the police came just because my wretched doctor told somebody I had a gunshot wound in the leg?”
There was reason and intelligence in this, and though the woman was quivering between fear and fury, she had no course but to assent, and when, ten minutes later, the doctor’s foot sounded on the stairs outside, Anita Bellini disappeared into the bedroom, but did not go beyond earshot.
He was an elderly man, rather talkative and fussy, short and stout, with a cherubic face and short white side whiskers.
“Bless my soul, I remember you now!” he said. He was one of the loud and jovial race of doctors that is fast dying out. “I remember you very well. You used to be a friend of the Dawlishes, didn’t you? Poor old Donald! What a good sort! Now let me look at this leg of yours.”
He examined the wound, which was little more than a scar, and, to Greta’s dismay, pronounced her fit to travel.
“You’ll have to take care of yourself for a week or two,” he said conventionally, and returned to the topic his examination had interrupted. “Yes. I was with old Donald two days before he died, from morning till night, hoping against hope that I could do something for him. For twenty-four hours I never stirred from his side. Poor old Donald! He died six hours after I left him, with my dear friend, Sir Paul Grayley, one of the best doctors that ever lived.”
Old Dr. Wesley was blessed with this disposition, that all the people he knew were the best people that ever lived, and all who were bereft of his acquaintance came under the generic heading of “poor souls.”
“Very bad business about his boy, poor soul!” He shook his hoary head. “Terribly bad business. I didn’t know Peter personally—never met him. But when I heard of this fearful thing he’d done, I said to myself, ‘My boy, if the news has to be broken to Donald you’re the man to do it.’ ”
He was very talkative, very delightful, very human, but Greta was annoyed with him and gave him little encouragement to stay. As for the woman standing in the darkness of the bedroom, had her wishes materialized, old Doctor Wesley would have been swept from the face of the earth.
Presently he was gone, and she came out from her listening post.
“Apparently you can move without dying,” she said sarcastically.
“Apparently I can, if I want to move.” Greta’s voice was husky. She was back in her last trench, conscious of a great shortage of ammunition. “And I don’t want to move, and that’s flat! I can’t understand why you hate that dear old man. I admit he’s fearfully chatty, but that’s no reason why you should throw a fit at the mention of his name.”
“When I want your opinion about my peculiarities I will ask you for it,” bullied Anita, and it was a wrong move, as she realized.
Mrs. Gurden shrugged her shoulders rapidly.
“If that’s the tone you’re going to adopt,” she said, with an heroic assumption of boldness, “the sooner we part the better, Anita. You’ve stopped the paper, but I think I’m entitled to some money instead of notice; and if it comes to that, I’ve had no salary for a month. And as to going down to your beastly old Towers, I simply won’t, so there!”
The princess forced a smile.
“My dear Greta, you’re getting theatrical. But I realize you’re not quite yourself. Now don’t be a little fool. Come and rest with me for a week or two. There are one or two big schemes I want to talk over with you, and afterward we’ll pack up and go to Capri or Monte Carlo or somewhere’s a little more cheerful than Wimbledon.”
“I won’t!”
It required a tremendous amount of courage to utter those two words of defiance, but it was zero hour to Greta Gurden, and for the moment she had all the ferocity of a mad sheep.
“I simply won’t! If I’ve got to earn my own living, I’ll earn it. I can get a job on Fleet Fashions. I was offered one last week. I’m tired of your domination and your bullying, and—well, I simply won’t go to Wimbledon, and that’s a fact!”
Here was a resistance which Anita Bellini had never anticipated. There was not the stuff of sweet reasonableness in her. She had made her way in the world by the force of her character, and her simulations had been confined to hiding her too-frequent fits of anger. It was not in her to persuade; she must command or do nothing.
“You’re going to make me look foolish. I’ve promised——”
“I don’t care what I make you look.” Greta’s head was quivering with determination. “It’s not my fault. And whom have you promised?”
Without waiting for a reply, she said:
“You know how I loathe that house at Wimbledon and those awfully creepy Japanese men of yours.”
“Javanese. They’re quite nice people. If you refer to your encyclopædia you will discover they are inoffensive, peace loving, and domestic.”
But sarcasm was wasted on Greta.
“That may be or may not be,” she said. “All I know is that I’m not coming with you.”
“Stay and be—stay till to-morrow!” exclaimed the elder woman. “I shan’t waste my time or go down on my hands and knees to you. You owe me a lot, Greta——”
“You owe me a month’s salary,” said the spirited Greta, with admirable courage, “and three months’ notice.”
Her hands trembling with rage, Anita tore open her bag and flung a packet of one-pound notes on the table. Without another word she strode out of the room and shut the door so violently that the whole house shook.
Greta Gurden sat bolt upright, shivering with triumph, yet with a sinking sense of terror at what the morrow would bring forth. She had charred her boats but she had not burned them. Her shaking hand grabbed the telephone.
“Put me on to Scotland Yard,” she said.
She heard the weary sigh of the operator.
“Is Scotland Yard blessed with a number?” she asked.
Greta hung up the phone and looked round in search of the directory. But apparently Scotland Yard had no number, nor did there seem to be such a place on the face of the earth. She was to learn later that the official designation was New Scotland Yard, but she did not dream of looking under the “N’s.” And then she remembered Leslie Maughan, and the “M’s” yielded a good result. She waited for a while after she had given the number, and then:
“Yes. I want to speak to you.”
“Yes, Mrs. Gurden.”
Greta started.
“How did you know?”
She heard a laugh.
“I always remember voices, especially nice voices like yours,” said the mendacious young lady from Scotland Yard.
“I want to see you very much—very badly, I mean—tremendously.”
“In fact, you want to see me,” said Leslie. “I’ll come along.”
It required some persuasion to induce Lucretia to wait for the arrival of Mr. Coldwell.
“Very well, then,” said Leslie patiently. “Wait in the street. You’ll catch your death of cold, but I don’t suppose that will worry you very much. You might even hobnob with a policeman. I trust you.”
“I should jolly well say you did!” said the indignant Lucretia.
She compromised by sitting on the baggage in the passage, the door being propped open with a weight. She found it a little more drafty than the street.
Greta’s boats seemed a little more burned than she could have desired when she surveyed the desolation just before Leslie’s arrival. She had little stamina for quarrelling, and already her mind was a confusion of fear and penitence when Mrs. Hobbs, who had returned for her evening duties, showed the girl into the dining room.
“It’s awfully good of you to come.” Greta was her conventional self; grabbed the girl’s hand in both of hers; used that old and artless trick of looking up pleadingly into her visitor’s face. “I’m so worried, my dear. The truth is, I’ve quarrelled with Anita. Definitely and finally,” she said, recovering a little of her lost ground. “The paper is dead, as you’ve probably heard—you know everything at Scotland Yard. That means I’m out of a job, though I can get one to-morrow by asking. Anita has behaved abominably. I should never have dreamed, after all I’ve been to her, the thought and care and experience I have devoted to her, as it were—— Do take your hat and coat off. Shall I ask the maid to make you a cup of tea?”
Leslie, secretly amused, shook her head. She guessed that the woman had changed her mind since she first sent for her. It was hardly likely that she would trouble to telephone about one of those quarrels which, if her information was accurate, were not an infrequent occurrence between Greta Gurden and the princess.
“Of course, I’ve nothing to tell you that would harm Anita.” Mrs. Gurden planted one foot firmly on shore, and prepared, figuratively, to splash the waves of her venom with the other. “But she’s so peculiar—and such a temper! I shouldn’t be surprised if she goes off in a fit of apoplexy one of these days.”
“What is her trouble now?”
Greta could tell her this much, she decided, without disloyalty to her late employer. The very thought that she was “late” filled her with dismay.
“She wanted me to go to Wimbledon to stay there for a month, and I hate the place, I simply loathe it! I’m rather temperamental; I suppose all artists are—I mean artists and literary people. And May Towers gives me the horrors. And, of course, she was terribly rude to me, in spite of the fact that I am far from well and my leg aches excruciatingly. Anita is the most unreasonable person. You’ve no idea, Miss Maughan. Of course we quarrelled, and I simply told her that I’d have no more to do with her. And then she made a fearful scene because I asked old Doctor Wesley to come up and see me and tell me whether I was fit to be moved. She practically cursed me for calling him. Really, I thought she was going mad. And he’s such a dear old soul—awfully talkative, of course, but a perfect gentleman, and a kind man.”
Leslie was sitting at the other side of the table, her hands folded patiently, waiting for the real story to come. Now she leaned forward, her eyes upon the woman’s face.
“Doctor Wesley? Was he the Dawlishes’ doctor?”
“A very charming old man but awfully fond of Mr. Dawlish. Except for six hours just before his death, he was with old Mr. Dawlish for a whole day and a night—never left his side.”
Leslie hardly heard the next five minutes’ complaint, but when she came to bring her understanding to bear upon her hostess, Greta was not much nearer to the reason for her telephone message.
“If anything comes out I can always say, and Anita must bear me out, that I never knew this wretched man was a woman. The first thing I saw was Anita and this man struggling, and I wanted to send for the police. And then those wretched men came in and tried to drag the pistol out of Druze’s hand—her hand, I mean. And there was I, lying on a sofa—fainted, my dear, and with simply not a notion in the world that I was wounded. It may sound strange to you, but it is true. When I woke up, Anita was going on like somebody who had lost her head. It was simply ghastly.”
“Did you see Druze again?”
Greta shook her head.
“No—the language she used before the shooting started!” Greta shuddered. “I simply couldn’t repeat half the words she employed. Of course, Anita sent me out of the room; said she didn’t know I was there; but just as I started to go out, my dear—bang!” Mrs. Gurden grew dramatic and illustrative. “Bang! And then everything went dark. You know how it does, my dear.”
“I can’t understand quite,” said Leslie. “A few hours after the shooting I found you at Lady Raytham’s.”
“She sent me—Anita,” Mrs. Gurden broke in. “ ‘Go to Jane, but tell her nothing,’ said Anita. ‘Find out all that you can about Druze—how they parted, if she threatened her.’ Those were her words. You know Anita—she’s—what is the word? Imperious! I didn’t know whether I was on my head or my heels—like that Mr. What’s-his-name who’s written a story about women. I simply had to! And not an idea in my head that a beastly bullet had gone into my leg. The doctor said that if I hadn’t run about the wound would have healed right away. It was only when I got home, my dear, I nearly died!”
She paused to take breath.
“I suppose she’ll come to-morrow and ask me to go back. I’m such a forgiving nature.”
“If there is anything in life that you value, you will stay here, Mrs. Gurden,” said Leslie quietly. “I don’t want to frighten you, but I think it is my duty to warn you that the Princess Bellini’s course is nearly run. As to Druze——”
She had never thought that Druze was murdered; always she had had at the back of her mind the possibility of a struggle in which the shots were accidentally fired. There was a good and sufficient reason why Anita Bellini should not shoot the mock butler.
When she reached her flat, the front door was closed. She opened it and turned on the passage light. Lucretia and the grips were gone, she saw with satisfaction. In the letter box was a blue-lettered cablegram and she snatched it out and opened it. This was a reply to one she had sent on her way back from lunch, and she read the message and could have sung in her joy.
She ran up the stairs, her mind divided between this blessed message and her interview with Greta Gurden. Greta was in revolt; that much was clear. But how far would her rage and venom carry her toward a complete betrayal of her employer? As she passed the hall window, she noticed that the new safety catch was in place. Really it was ridiculous to leave the flat at all, she thought. After that one attempt it was not likely that a second would be made.
She almost regretted now that she had agreed to Mr. Coldwell’s plan. Throwing open the door of her sitting room, she put out her hand and turned the light switch. But the room remained in darkness. Had they replaced the fuses? she wondered, and walked into the room.
There was no sound, no warning. A great hand suddenly gripped her throat, another covered her mouth. She felt the pressure of a knee in her back and struggled desperately but unavailingly.
“You scream—you killed!” whispered a voice in her ear, and, summoning all her strength, she tried to nod in agreement with the unspoken demand of her captor.
The door closed softly behind her. There were two men. She felt her ankles gripped and lifted, and she was carried into the bedroom and laid on the bed.
“You scream—you killed!” said the voice again.
The grip about her throat relaxed, but the evil-smelling hand was still on her face.
“I won’t scream,” she managed to mumble, and the stifling palm was removed.
“You scream, I cut your t’roat. You not scream, I not cut your t’roat—not hurt.”
“I shan’t scream,” she said in a low voice. “May I get up, please?”
There was a whispered consultation in a language which held some gutturals, and then the man who had first spoken said:
“You sit on a chair, keep very quiet, long time, long time.”
He gripped her by the arm and assisted her back to the dining room, guiding her to a chair, though there was enough light from a street lamp for her to pick her way.
There were two men—little men; their heads were not much above her shoulder. Broad, squat, and, as she had reason to know, immensely strong. She could not see their faces; by accident or arrangement their backs were to the window. He who was evidently chief of the two said something in an unknown language, and his companion withdrew to the landing, and the hall and landing lights went out. Presently he came back, and, to her surprise, he was joined by a third. Again there was a whispered consultation, and the third man disappeared, the other two squatting on the carpet before her, impassive, silent, watching, as she guessed, with eyes that did not leave her for a second. A quarter of an hour they sat thus, and then:
“I speak English liddle bit. I hear English well,” said the man. “I tell you trut’. Last night you get t’roat cut. This night no hurt.” He added a phrase she could not understand.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Presently by and by,” said the little man, after he had repeated her words slowly and had grasped their meaning, “you and me walk into car. While you walk you see peoples. If you speak to peoples I cut your t’roat.”
Very definite, but the repetition of the phrase amused her mildly.
“You’re rather monotonous, aren’t you?” she asked. “And after I get into the car what happens?”
There was a pause while he took this in.
“By and by you see,” he said.
The third man came back now, and she gathered that he was in reality the leading member of the gang, for on his word the two others vanished through the door and he took their place.
“You won’t be hurt unless you give us trouble,” he said. To her surprise he spoke in perfect English. “My patron requires you.”
“Who is your patron?”
It gave her a sense of comfort to know that this queer little shape could understand all she said, and could converse intelligently. It made him less of a strange and menacing animal, and removed some of the terror from the situation. And it delayed the moment when she would find her cumbersome garter a vital safeguard.
“I cannot answer your questions, miss,” he replied. “But you will not be hurt. Last night you would have been killed—I myself would have killed you—but that is not the order to-day. If you are sensible and quiet, nothing will happen.”
He stood up and looked out of the window; neither the shades nor the curtains had been drawn, and he could see to the opposite side of the road.
“I must tell you what will occur,” he said. He had a trick of pedantry which might have amused her at any other time. “This house is being watched by the police. After a while they will grow tired and careless, and then my friend will signal to me that they have walked away. When that happens we will go.”
She could not see him; she could only guess that his “friend” was one of the two. She had noticed that all three were dressed in correct European garb, and the incongruity of their overcoats and derby hats added a touch of the bizarre.