“Do you hear what I say? Clear out! We don’t want any spying police girls round here.”
It looked as though he would use physical force to eject her, but his hand had hardly been raised when she said something in a low voice—one word. The big white hand went down; the blotchy red went out of his face, and he blinked at her like a man who was trying to swallow something that would not be swallowed. And then, looking up, she saw a resplendent figure at the head of the stairs. It was Lady Raytham.
“Come up, please.”
The voice was hard and metallic. There was neither cordiality nor welcome in it, nor did Leslie expect any such demonstration. She mounted the stairs, but before she could reach the landing Lady Raytham had turned and preceded her into the drawing room. As she went in, she saw that her unwilling hostess was not alone. Before the fire stood a figure which was not wholly unfamiliar—a square, tall, Eton-cropped figure with a monocle, which fixed her with a keen and penetrating glance.
The contrast between the two women was startling. Lady Raytham had never looked more lovely, more fragile, Leslie thought, than she did at that moment. She also was going out to dinner, and she wore a dress of old gold, and about her neck a magnificent chain of emeralds that terminated in a square emerald pendant which must have been worth a fortune. Anita Bellini was in scarlet, a hard, shrieking scarlet that no other woman could have worn. And yet, for some remarkable reason, it suited her. The godet was of silver lace, decorated by big green and red stones and the thick jade bracelets and ruby necklet gave her an air of barbaric splendour.
“I am sorry you came, Miss Maughan; it is doubly unfortunate. If Druze had been normal, I should have sent you away without seeing you. As it is, I feel that at least an apology is due to you for the disgraceful condition of my servant.”
Leslie inclined her head slightly. What she had to say could not be told before this big, steely-eyed woman who stood with her back to the fire, the inevitable cigarette between her lips, the shining eyeglass fixed upon the visitor.
“I wanted to see you alone if I could, Lady Raytham.”
Jane Raytham shook her head.
“There is nothing you can tell me that I should not wish Princess Bellini to hear,” she said.
Without turning her head, Anita flicked her cigarette ash into the fireplace.
“Perhaps Miss Maughan doesn’t wish to speak before a witness,” she said, in her hard, deep voice. “If I were Lady Raytham I should have reported you last night to your superiors and had you kicked out of Scotland Yard!”
Leslie smiled faintly.
“If you were Lady Raytham, there are so many things you would do, Princess,” she said, “and there would be so many things that it would be quite unnecessary for you to do!”
Anita’s eyes did not waver.
“Such as——” she suggested.
If she expected to frighten the younger woman she must have been disappointed. Leslie’s lips were curved in a fixed smile.
“We have now come to the point,” she said good-humouredly, “where I should not like to speak before witnesses, either—though some day I may speak before more witnesses than you can crowd into a room twice this size; as many, Princess, as can squeeze themselves into Court No. 1 at the Old Bailey.”
She said this without raising her voice, and now for the first time Anita Bellini gave the slightest hint of her emotion. The eyeglass dropped and was caught deftly and replaced with too-elaborate care. The strong mouth drooped a little, but recovered at once.
“That sounds almost like a threat to me,” she said harshly. “Young lady, I think you’re going to lose a job.”
Quick as a flash came the answer:
“Before I lose my job, Princess, you will lose a very profitable source of income.”
She did not wait for the answer, but turned to Lady Raytham.
“Will you see me alone, Lady Raytham?”
Jane Raytham’s voice shook a little; she was a very bewildered woman.
“I brought you here to apologize to you for Druze,” she said breathlessly, “and you have made use of the opportunity to insult my friend—a lady who——”
Her voice grew husky and she stopped as though she could not articulate further.
There was nothing more to be gained here, unless she was prepared to blurt her questions before the very woman who she was anxious should remain in ignorance of the information which had come to her. Leslie had unfastened her coat in coming upstairs; behind her brown fur Lady Raytham saw the silk-clad figure in mauve. Princess Anita Bellini smiled. She had a flair for Paris models.
“They pay you well in the police, my young friend,” she said bluntly. “Who is the lucky gentleman who pays for your clothes?”
“My lawyer until I am twenty-five,” said Leslie.
“Fortunate lawyer! Who is he?”
Leslie smiled.
“You ought to know him. He acted for you in your bankruptcy.”
And with that parting shot she went out of the room, knowing she was a cat, but realizing that a cat was entitled to what pleasure she might find in getting under the skin of a tigress.
Half an hour later, Mr. Coldwell unfolded his serviette and shook his head soberly.
“You are a cat, too! But you’re a clever little cat; and when, Tabitha, did you discover that her highness was a bankrupt? I confess that is news to me.”
The girl laughed ruefully.
“I read gazettes,” she said. “It is depraved in me, but I find them more interesting than the best sex novel that any school girl has ever written! The bankruptcy was arranged ten years ago in the quietest way. The princess took up her residence in a small country town before she filed her petition, and it is easy to keep these country proceedings out of the London papers. On this occasion she described herself as Mrs. Bellini. There is no law compelling you to use a foreign title.”
“Pussy cat, pussy cat,” murmured Mr. Coldwell. “And did she annihilate you?”
“She was slightly withering,” said Leslie carelessly. “But Druze dropped! I’m awfully worried about that.”
“I don’t see why you should be,” said Coldwell, and beckoned a waiter.
When the man had taken the order:
“Do you know, you’re almost persuading me that there is something big behind this Dawlish mystery? I don’t mean the discovery, which is very unlikely to be made, that Druze was the forger after all.”
A tall woman had come into the restaurant and was glaring round through the thick lenses of her horn-rimmed spectacles. She was very straight and spare, her head covered with a mop of white hair, which lent her an almost comical air of ferocity. She nodded curtly to the inspector and went to meet the gesticulating maître d’hôtel.
“That is mamma,” said Coldwell.
“Mamma? Whose mamma?”
“Your interesting convict’s.”
“Margaret Dawlish?” Leslie opened her eyes in astonishment. “This is the last place I should have expected to see her.”
“She dines here every night,” said Coldwell. “I have a good idea why.”
Leslie looked at Peter’s mother again; the square jaw, the thin lips, the deep eyes, all fulfilled the mental picture she had made of her.
“If you weren’t here, do you know what I should do?” she asked at last.
“Whatever it is, don’t!” said Coldwell apprehensively.
His relationship with Leslie was a curious one. In the old days of Commissioner Maughan he had been the colonel’s chief assistant; though he was only a sergeant in those days, he was admitted very largely to the confidence of that genius of Scotland Yard; spent long week-ends at Sutton Cawley, and had assumed a sort of guardianship toward Colonel Maughan’s motherless child. There never was a time within Leslie’s recollection that Josiah Coldwell had not figured largely in her life. He was one of her father’s executors, the best trusted of all his friends, and it was only natural, when she conceived the idea of adopting police work as a profession, that he should be her sponsor.
It was not until a very long time after she had put the suggestion to him that he agreed. At first he had pooh-poohed, then he had grown solemn, and then mournful; but in the end she had had her way.
“If you don’t put me there, Uncle Josiah, I shall go into training as a private detective!”
It only needed this threat to force his capitulation, for private detectives were contemptible figures in the eyes of this regular policeman. For him it was a matter of pride that she had succeeded. To-day, if the truth be told, if she had expressed the slightest hint of weariness and a desire to return to the obscurity of what is termed “civilian life,” he would have been thrust in the deeps of gloom.
He did not tell her this in the course of the dinner. She had guessed it easily enough long before, but he did venture to return to a matter which rather worried him. As the band struck up a dance tune and she rose invitingly, he groaned and came to his feet.
“I’ll be awfully glad, Leslie, when you find a young man to dance these infernal jazzes with you. How can you expect the high-class crooks of London to have any respect for a man who dances in public?”
He was over sixty, yet, in truth, no better dancer took the floor that night. But it pleased him to talk of his decrepitude.
“I’m not made right,” said Leslie, as he guided her through the dancers who crowded the floor. “Young men have no appeal for me whatever.”
Mr. Coldwell peered down at her.
“Are you going to be one of those love-is-not-for-me girls?” he asked gloomily. “Somehow I can’t imagine you running a garage of toy poms.”
Leslie’s eyes roved around the room, and presently they rested upon Margaret Dawlish; hard-faced, inflexible, the type of Roman mother who could never forgive the humiliation that Peter had brought upon her. How queer was the average man’s conception of the average woman! The conventional mother, soft, yielding, ready to endure all and forgive all for the sake of her children, was no figment of imagination, but the throw-outs were innumerable. Leslie started to count all the instances she knew, and grew tired of the exercise. She had witnessed, incredible though it might seem, a mother dancing on this very floor while her child was dying in a nursing home a few streets away.
She knew mothers who could not speak of their daughters without growing incoherent with rage. And this was the fourth instance of a mother who could sweep her only son out of memory, out of existence, for some offence he had committed, not against her, but against society. Margaret Dawlish sat alone at a little table, very upright, very forbidding, and when the maître d’hôtel, in the manner of his kind, approached her with a smile, she dismissed him with a few words, and, raising her lorgnette, made an inspection of the dancers.
“That woman is granite,” said Leslie, as the band stopped and they walked back to their table.
“Which? You mean Mrs. Dawlish? Yes. I rather think she is on the hard side. That sort of thing meant a lot to her. She hates this company and this place, but for five years, ever since her son was sent to prison, she has made a point of dining here.”
Leslie nodded.
“A gesture of defiance! Gosh! These respectable people! They dare not leave a room for fear somebody talks behind their backs!”
It was toward eleven o’clock, and Coldwell had summoned the waiter to pay his bill, when a footman came from the vestibule and, bending over, whispered something to him.
“A phone message; I expect it’s from the Embankment,” he said. “Excuse me, Leslie.”
He threaded a way through the dancers on the floor, and was gone ten minutes. When he came back, she saw his white eyebrows were met in a frown.
“The Kingston police think they’ve got a line to those infernal motor-car bandits,” he said.
He referred to a gang which was occupying the public attention at that time—three men who, in hired or stolen motor cars, had been travelling through Surrey, holding up isolated residences at the point of a pistol, and getting away with as much portable property as they could lay their hands upon.
“I’ll see you home,” he said as he paid the bill, “and then I’ll toddle down to Kingston. I wish to heaven the Kingston police would make their discoveries at a reasonable hour.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’m not a bit sleepy, and it’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht!”
He looked at her dubiously.
“I don’t know that you’re dressed for a motor-car journey, but if you wish you can come along. I have phoned for the police car; it will be here in a few minutes.”
She went out into the lobby to put on the woollen spencer she had brought in preparation for a cold journey home, and over that her coat. It was true that she never felt less like sleep; in a sense, she was at a loose end, and the prospect of doing a little work before she went to bed was a pleasing one, though in all probability she would play no other part than that of spectator and audience.
The trip promised to be the more interesting, because she had, that day, been tracing the previous convictions of three men who were suspected of being the motor bandits—and very commonplace individuals they were. That had been the most shocking discovery she made when she came to Scotland Yard—the commonplaceness, indeed the insignificance, of what it described as the criminal class. Out-of-work plumbers, labourers, carters, and clerks, with a painter here and there, formed the bulk of them. The women only had an individuality. There was no habitual woman criminal quite untouched by romance; their stories were altogether different, their lives more varied, and, if the truth be told, their enterprise and inventive qualities more fascinating.
She passed through the swing doors into the street. The night was bitterly cold and the sky overhead was clear. The bright moon which she had recklessly inferred was not in evidence, but there were all the other attractive conditions for a midnight ride.
The car was an open tourer with a plenitude of rugs, and as Mr. Coldwell fixed the rear screen to shield her face from the cutting air, the journey promised no discomforts. The car passed swiftly through Kensington and across Hammersmith Bridge, and in an incredibly short space of time was running down Kingston Vale. The driver pulled up at the police station behind a big touring car which was unattended, and they got down.
In the charge room they found the inspector talking to a middle-aged man who was apparently the owner of the car.
“Sorry to bring you down, Mr. Coldwell,” said the inspector, “but this sounds almost like one of the motor crowd’s little jokes.”
The car owner apparently was the proprietor of a small garage. That afternoon he had been approached by a seemingly decent man, who asked him if he would come to London with the idea of negotiating for an important journey. The garage keeper, as it happened, had some business in town and had met the hirer at a little restaurant in the Brompton Road.
“He seemed all right to me,” the garage keeper continued his narrative. “It was only after I got home that I began to smell a rat. He wanted me to pick him up at the end of Barnes Common, near the Wimbledon Road, at a quarter past ten to-night, and drive him to Southampton. He asked for a closed car, but I told him I hadn’t got one that could do the journey, and I didn’t like the idea, anyway. But as he offered me double the fare I should have asked, and paid half of it down, I agreed.”
“Did you ask him why he wanted to go to Southampton at a quarter past ten?”
“That was the first question I asked,” said the man. “He told me he was dining with some friends, and that that would mean he would lose the boat train—the Berengaria pulls out at five o’clock to-morrow morning, and all the passengers must be on the ship overnight. I’ve had that job before, so it wasn’t unusual. The only queer thing about it was that, instead of asking me to pick him up at a house, he fixed this place on Barnes Common. But he told me he didn’t want his friends to know that he was leaving the next day. At any rate, I fell for him, but as time went on I began to get suspicious and communicated with the police.”
“What sort of looking man was he?” asked Leslie.
“A middle-aged man, miss,” said the chauffeur-owner, a little surprised at a question from this quarter. “It struck me that he’d been booz—drinking a little, but that’s neither here nor there. He was well dressed, and that’s all I can tell you about him except that he was clean-shaven, had rather a big face, and wore a soft felt hat.”
Coldwell turned to the girl.
“Does that describe any of the people we have been looking over?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said quietly, “but it rather accurately describes Druze!”
“Druze?” he said incredulously. “You’re not suggesting that Druze is one of the gang?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” she said, biting her lip thoughtfully. “Did you notice his hands, Mr.——”
“Porter,” said the chauffeur. “Yes, miss, I did notice his hands when he took off his gloves to pay me. They were very white.”
She looked at Coldwell.
“That is an even more accurate description,” she said.
“You didn’t go to the Common, did you?” asked Coldwell.
“No, sir. The inspector went up in my car with a couple of policemen.”
“He must have smelled a rat,” said the local inspector. “There was no sign of anybody at a quarter past ten, and apparently he was very particular about his being there absolutely on time. He told Mr. Porter: ‘If I’m not there by twenty-five minutes past, don’t wait for me.’ That sounds rather like the gang, Mr. Coldwell,” he added. “It is an old trick of theirs to hire a car and arrange to be picked up in some quiet spot——”
The telephone bell tinkled in another room and he went to the instrument. He was gone five minutes. When he came back:
“The gang ‘busted’ a house the other side of Guilford at nine o’clock,” he said. “The car smashed into a ditch and two of them have been caught by the Surrey police.”
Coldwell pursed his lips.
“That disposes of your theory,” he said.
Driving back up Kingston Vale, Coldwell expatiated upon his favourite theme, which might be headed, “No effort is wasted when you’re dealing with law-breakers.”
“A lot of men would grouse about being brought out in the middle of the night on a fool’s errand, but it isn’t possible to investigate the reason why a condensed milk tin has been found in an ashpit without learning something valuable. And if that hirer was friend Druze——”
“As it was,” said Leslie promptly.
“Well, we’ve learned something,” continued Coldwell. “It brings him into a new list, so to speak. He’s in the people-who-do-strange-things class, and that makes him stand out from the mass of law-abiding citizens.”
They passed swiftly down Roehampton Lane, climbed the little slope that carried them over the railway bridge, and had reached the middle of the Common when Chief Inspector Coldwell began to enlarge and illustrate his theory. Just ahead of them, Leslie saw the rear lights of a car moving out from the side of the road.
“Never despise little cases,” he began, “because——”
There was a grinding of brakes; the car stopped so violently that Leslie’s nose touched the glass screen painfully.
“What’s wrong?” asked Coldwell sharply. He, too, had seen the car ahead, and his first thought was that his driver was avoiding a collision.
The police chauffeur was looking round.
“I’m sorry, sir, I was rather startled. Did you see a man lying on the sidewalk?”
“No, where?” asked the interested Coldwell.
The driver reversed and the car moved slowly backward. They saw a black something in the darkness, and then, as the machine moved back a few more feet, the headlamps showed the figure of a man.
Coldwell got down from the car slowly.
“It looks like a drunk,” he mumbled. “You’d better stay where you are, Leslie.”
But his foot had hardly touched the ground before she had followed.
Well enough Inspector Coldwell knew that this was no drunk. The attitude, the outstretched arms, the legs slightly doubled, told him, before he saw the little pool of crimson on the sidewalk, that there was no life here.
For a second the two stood gazing down at the pitiable figure.
“Druze,” said the girl quietly. “Somehow I expected it.”
It was Druze, and he was dead. The heavy overcoat was buttoned across his chest; there was no sign of a hat, and his hands, ungloved, were tightly clenched. As she looked, Leslie saw a queer green glitter in the light of the motor lamps.
“He has something in his left hand,” she said in a hushed voice, and, kneeling down, Inspector Coldwell pried loose the fingers, and the thing that the dead man held fell with a tinkle to the gravelled path.
Coldwell picked it up and examined it curiously. It was a large, square emerald in a platinum setting, one edge of which was broken, as though it had been torn forcibly from a large ornament.
“That is queer,” he said.
She took the emerald from his hand and carried it nearer to the lamp. Now she knew that she had made no mistake. It was the pendant on the chain she had seen that evening glittering on Lady Raytham’s neck!
In a few words she told her companion. For his part he was too worried about her presence to comprehend fully.
“You had better get into the car, Leslie. Driver, take Miss Maughan——”
“I’ll stay here,” said Leslie in a low voice. “I’m not very shocked. And please don’t touch that overcoat.”
He was stooping to unfasten the button when she spoke.
“Not till you let me see it.”
Mr. Coldwell hesitated a moment and then stepped aside, and the girl bent over the figure, keeping her eyes averted from that white face.
“I thought so,” she said. “The second button has been fastened to the third buttonhole. Whoever killed him, put on his overcoat and buttoned it. Now you can unfasten it.”
Mr. Coldwell sent the chauffeur for assistance and resumed his examination of the body. The man had been shot at close range through the heart; the waistcoat had been burned by the explosion. There were no other injuries that he could see. One side of the figure was yellow with dust, as though it had been dragged some distance along the ground.
“I wish you wouldn’t——”
Coldwell looked round in helpless distress. He had taken an electric flash light from the car before he sent it away, and this he had placed on the path so that the rays spread fan-shape over the body.
“Couldn’t you wait at a little distance?”
“Please don’t worry about me, Mr. Coldwell,” said Leslie. There was no tremor in her voice, he noted with satisfaction. “I am not going to faint. You seem to forget that the majority of nurses are women; and death isn’t so horrible to me as some expressions of life. Can I help you at all? I’ve got a tiny little pencil lamp in my bag.”
He scratched his chin.
“I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “You might look in the road and see if you can find any marks of a body being dragged, and then search around a bit.”
She got out the lamp, which, in spite of its smallness, gave a very bright light, and carried out his instructions methodically. She had not to look far before she found the traces she sought: a serpentine smear that reached from the centre of the road to the sidewalk. There were stains—little red smudges that were still wet when she put her finger to them.
The conditions were favourable to an undisturbed search, for Barnes Common was unusually free from traffic. One motor bus lumbered past, a homeward-bound limousine from town was succeeded by another, and if the chauffeurs were interested in the spectacle of a man kneeling by what looked like a heap of rags on the sidewalk, the occupants of the cars did not apparently share their curiosity.
She paced the trail, judged it to be between twelve and thirteen feet from the place where the body was found. On the other side of the footpath was rough, common land: grass and bushes in irregular patches. She began to search the ground; and here she had an unusual reward, for, passing round a thick, low bush, she saw, lying together on the grass, a number of objects. The first was a flat pocketbook that had been opened and its contents pulled out, for round about was a litter of papers, which she collected quickly. Fortunately, it was a still night, and there was no wind to carry them away. The second package was a brown envelope, and she made a brief examination.
There was a steamship ticket issued to “Anthony Druze, First Class Saloon, Southampton to New York.” In this envelope was a new passport. The third object was also a pocketbook—brand-new—the perfume of the Russian-leather cover told her that. This also had been opened in such a hurry that the strap about it had been broken. It was stuffed tight with thousand-dollar notes.
She collected the three packages and sought for more, but there was none. And then she took stock of the place where she had found them. It was immediately behind a big bush which effectively screened all view of the road. She put her lamp close to the ground and moved it slowly. Here was a curiously mottled patch of grass; in some places it was gray with frost, in others wet and crushed. The ground was too hard for footprints, but without their aid she could reconstruct all that had happened here less than an hour ago. Somebody had come behind this brush to examine the contents of the pockets; the papers had been taken out one by one, examined and thrown away, and the object had not been robbery. The tightly filled pocketbook proved that. It could not have been a chance thief who came upon the body; no honest person would have made this search. It had been somebody looking for a definite thing.
She went back to Coldwell with her discoveries just as the police car came flying over the railway bridge, followed by a motor ambulance. She told Coldwell hurriedly what she had found, and he was not surprised.
“I’ve been searching his pockets; most of them are inside out,” he said. And then, abruptly: “Where is Peter Dawlish?”
She stared at him open-mouthed.
“Peter Dawlish? What has he got to do——”
And then she remembered Peter’s threat, and saw that it was inevitable that suspicion should attach to him.
“He hadn’t a pistol yesterday,” she said, “and I doubt whether he’s got one now. If Druze had been shot dead in the street I should think he’d be under suspicion, but Peter Dawlish would hardly shoot a man, put him in a car, and drive him to Barnes.”
The old man nodded.
“I agree with you, Leslie, but we shall have to pull him in and make inquiries. Druze has been shot three times; that’s rather a queer thing, and he has been shot through the heart! We shan’t know exactly until the pathologist has seen him, but I think I am right. And listen, did you see the footprints?”
He pointed to the smooth granite curb, and she saw for the first time the indubitable impressions of a bare foot; the ball of the foot and toe prints were unmistakable.
He put the three packages Leslie had found in his overcoat pocket.
“Go along and see Lady Raytham and tell her what has happened. Take this with you, and for the love of Mike don’t lose it!”
He put the square emerald in her hand, and she dropped it into her bag.
“If it’s the pendant, as you say, find out what has happened to the rest of the necklace.”
He bundled her into the police car, and she was glad to escape, because by now the large force of police on the spot had been augmented by that curious crowd which sooner or later gathers from nowhere on the scene of any tragedy.
The windows were in darkness when she drove up to the house in Berkeley Square, and instead of ringing she wielded the heavy knocker. She had to wait a little time, and then it was a footman who opened the door, and his manner and mien were both respectful and a little nervous.
“Do you want to see her ladyship, miss?” he said. “She’s upstairs with Mrs. Gurden; there is Mrs. Gurden now.”
Greta was coming down the stairs. She was in that peculiar style of evening dress which she affected. Greta made most of her own clothes from the latest Paris models and usually in the most unsuitable material. Their “home-madeness” was never blatant. They did not proclaim but hinted it.
Leslie looked up at the rouged face and the black, staring eyes, and it required no particular acumen on her part to detect Greta Gurden’s agitation.
“Oh, my dear Miss whatever-your-name is,” she said, “do come up and see Lady Raytham! You are Miss what-is-your-name? Maughan, isn’t it? I’m so glad! Druze has been a perfect beast.” She held out her hand dramatically; it was shaking. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”
Her eyelids were blinking up and down with a rapidity that fascinated and would have amused Leslie in any other circumstances.
“What has Druze been doing?” she asked.
“Won’t you come up and see Lady Raytham?” begged Greta. “She’ll tell you so much better than I. My dear Jane can put everything into the most understandable terms. Druze has been simply awful: made a terrible scene and walked out quite suddenly. It’s dreadful what servants are coming to, isn’t it? I think it must be the war or——”
A cool voice from the darkness above interrupted her flow of disjointed explanation.
“Ask Miss Maughan to come up. I want to see her—alone.”
Leslie went up the stairs, and as she reached the first turn, she saw that the drawing-room door was open. There was no light on the stairs, save for that which came from the open door. In one corner of the spacious landing she saw a small-wheeled table.
She walked in, closing the door behind her. Lady Raytham was standing behind a little table near the fireplace. She wore a dark day dress without ornamentation, and Leslie’s quick woman’s eyes saw that she had changed her stockings; the very fine-textured, flesh-coloured hosiery she had seen on her earlier that evening had been replaced by a slightly darker pair. But only for a second did the details of the dress interest her. What a change had come to Jane Raytham’s face! She was made up, that was clear. The delicate flush of her cheeks was neither natural nor normal in her; she had helped her lips toward a verisimilitude to a healthy red. Her eyes, however, defied all artificial aid; they seemed to have sunk into her head; great dark circles, which even careful powdering could not disguise, surrounded them.
“Have you brought me any news?” she drawled out. It was not like Lady Raytham to drawl. “I telephoned to you about an hour ago, but unfortunately I could not catch you. On the whole, I think I prefer that a woman officer should deal with this case.”
“Has he stolen anything?” asked Leslie bluntly, and to her amazement Lady Raytham shook her head.
“No, I’ve missed nothing; I shouldn’t imagine he would steal. He may have, of course, but I shall be able to tell you more about that to-morrow. He was grossly insulting and left me at a second’s notice.”
“Have you been out?”
“Yes, I went to a dinner with Princess Anita Bellini; we intended going on to the theatre, but I had a headache and decided to return.”
“What time did you come back?” asked Leslie.
Lady Raytham raised her eyes to the ceiling.
“It may have been half-past nine—probably a little earlier,” she said. “We dined at a little restaurant which the princess knows——”
“And then you came back and had another dinner!” said Leslie steadily. “The table is still on the landing—set for two, so far as I could see.”
For a second the woman was staggered out of self-control. Her hand went up to her lips.
“Oh, that?” she said awkwardly. “My friend Mrs. Gurden came later, and—and we gave her some supper.”
Leslie shook her head.
“I wish you would be frank with me, Lady Raytham,” she said. “The truth is, you didn’t go out to dinner at all, did you?”
For a second the woman made no reply.
“I don’t know what I did,” she said.
Between despair and suppressed anger her voice was a wail.
“He drove everything out of my mind. Oh, if I had known! If I had known!”
She covered her eyes with her hands, and Leslie heard the sobs she could not stifle.
“What did he say to you before he went?” she asked inexorably.
Lady Raytham shook her head.
“I can’t tell you. He was dreadful, dreadful!”
Leslie had waited this opportunity to fire her shot.
“He is in our hands,” she said. “Shall we bring him here?”
The woman uncovered her eyes and stepped back with a little scream.
“Here? Here?” she said huskily. “My heavens, not here! He must go to the mort——”
She stopped herself, but too late.
“How did you know he was dead?” asked Leslie sternly.
Under the rouge the woman’s face was gray.
“How did you know he was dead?” asked Leslie again. “Who told you?”
“I—I heard.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.
“Who told you? Nobody knows but the inspector and me, and I have come straight away from the place where he was found. I left him three minutes ago.”
“Three minutes? I don’t understand.” And then, as she saw that she had been trapped for the second time, the colour came and went in Jane Raytham’s face.
“I don’t wonder that you are surprised, Lady Raytham! You know that Barnes Common is a little more than three minutes away, don’t you?”
The woman looked round like some hunted animal seeking an avenue of escape.
“I know he is dead,” she said desperately.
And then she faced the girl with a new resolution and a courage which Leslie could only admire.
“I know he’s dead!” she exclaimed. “I know he’s dead! Heaven knows who killed him, but I found him there. I saw him as my car was passing—on the sidewalk. I somehow knew it was he and got out. That is how I know. I should have told the police, I suppose, but I was frightened, terribly frightened. I thought I should faint.”
“Where were you going when you found his body?”
Leslie’s grave eyes were fixed on the woman.
“To—to the Princess Bellini. She has a house in Wimbledon.”
“But you couldn’t have parted with her for very long, when you decided to follow her.”
Jane Raytham licked her dry lips.
“She left something behind—the night was rather pleasant—I wanted the air, so I drove——”
“Won’t you sit down, Lady Raytham?” said the girl gently.
The woman looked ready to drop. With a little nod she sank down into an easy-chair that was near at hand.
Humanity was at the back of Leslie Maughan’s suggestion, but there was something else. She had learned at Scotland Yard never to interrogate either a prisoner or a possible witness while you are on the same level with them. It was a piece of information that had been conveyed to her by the greatest of the criminal counsel of the Bar. “Put a witness on a lower level,” he said, “and he’ll tell you the truth.”
Now she looked down at the broken woman who was nervously fingering the arm of the chair, and a wave of pity swept over Leslie Maughan, such as she had never experienced before.
“You were not going to Princess Bellini’s, Lady Raytham,” she said gently. “You were looking for Druze; he had taken something of yours.”
Lady Raytham gazed at her without answering.
“You thought he had gone to the Princess Bellini’s. Is that the way, across Barnes Common?”
“It is—a way—yes.”
“Then you saw the body and recognized it? Saw it in the light of your headlamps, as we did? You weren’t on your way to Wimbledon at all; you were coming back. I saw the rear lights of your car!”
Lady Raytham was breathing quickly.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t have seen the body otherwise. It lay on the left-hand footpath as you came toward London, on the farther path as you came from London. What kind of a car have you?”
Jane told her.
“So you had been to Princess Bellini? And what did Princess Bellini tell you?”
“She was not at home.”
Instinctively Leslie Maughan recognized that Jane Raytham was speaking the truth now.
“So you came back, and you found the body? Searched it?”
The woman nodded.
“What were you seeking?”
Again the quick movement of tongue across parched lips.
“I can’t tell you.”
Suddenly Leslie looked round. Noiselessly crossing the floor, she turned the handle quickly and jerked open the door. Mrs. Gurden nearly fell into the room.
“Are you fearfully interested?” asked Leslie. Her tone was almost sweet.
The discomfited eavesdropper grimaced and tittered hysterically.
“I was just coming in—really, it was very awkward. My shoe lace came unfastened and I was just stooping. I don’t know whatever you think of me, but you really must believe me, Miss Maughan, you really must! I think prying and spying people are simply dreadful, don’t you, dear?”
“I do, dear!” said Leslie dryly, and pointed to the stairs. “Would you mind sitting on the bottom step until I come down?”
Greta went tittering down the stairs.
“Was she listening? Was she?” Lady Raytham asked the question with unusual energy.
“No, I don’t think she had been there long. I have an uncanny knowledge when I am being overheard. I had it just at that moment. Lady Raytham, where is your emerald necklace?”
If she had struck the woman she could not have produced a more startling effect. Jane Raytham sprang to her feet with a low cry and put out a hand as though she were warding off some terrible menace. For a second her beautiful face was distorted with fear.
“Oh!” she gasped out. “Why do you say that?”
“Where is your necklace? Can I see it?”
Jane Raytham thought for a moment, her chin on her breast, and then slowly raised her eyes.
“Yes. Will you come with me?” she said in a whisper. Leslie followed her out of the room into the bedroom on the right that opened from the landing.
She switched on the lights, and they crossed to a corner of the room where on the wall hung, apparently, a small Rembrandt in a gilt frame. The picture must have been a very good copy, but it was no more. When Jane Raytham touched the frame it swung open like a door and showed behind a small, square safe set in the wall. Lady Raytham turned the key with a hand that shook—not even her iron nerve could conceal her emotion. Taking out a jewel box, she carried it to a table, pressed a hidden spring, and the lid flew open. And there the dumfounded Leslie saw the emerald chain—intact! Intact even to the square emerald pendant!
Leslie picked up the jewel and surveyed it in bewilderment. Then, opening her bag, she brought to light the emerald that had been found in the dead hand of Druze and placed it by the side of the pendant of the chain.
They were exactly alike.
“Are there two chains?” she asked.
“No,” said Jane Raytham.
“Is that the one you wore to-night?”
She nodded.
Her eyes were flaming. Even under that terrible strain, she could not restrain her natural curiosity.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“We found it in Druze’s hand,” replied Leslie.
The woman’s mouth opened in astonishment.
“You found—nothing else? No other——” Again she stopped quickly.
“No other part of the chain—no. Wasn’t it this you were looking for?”
Leslie saw her expression change. Was it relief she detected? Certainly her tone was lighter and less strained when she spoke.
“No, I wasn’t looking for that. Who killed him?”
“Who do you think?”
Eye to eye they stood, silent for the space of a second.
“Why should I suspect anybody?”
Leslie Maughan fired her second shot.
“Shall I suggest a name?” she asked. “Peter Dawlish!”
Again that quick upward jerk of the chin, as though she were meeting some sickening pain.
“Peter Dawlish?” she said loudly. “Peter Dawlish! You’re mad—mad to think Peter Dawlish——”
Without warning, she stumbled forward and Leslie had only time to throw out her arms and take the weight of her as she fell in a swoon to the ground.
In a second Leslie had pressed the bell and had thrown open the door. The footman came running up.
“Open one of those windows, and get me some brandy.”
He gaped down at the white-faced woman on the floor.
“Is her ladyship ill?” he asked.
“Don’t ask questions! Open the window! Hurry.”
And as the French windows were thrown violently open, she said:
“Now get the brandy.”
Before the man had come back, Jane Raytham had opened her eyes and stared inquiringly up into the face that was bent to hers.
“What happened? I fainted. I’m a fool! Let us go out.”
With Leslie’s assistance she rose unsteadily to her feet.
“I’d better put your jewel case back in the safe, hadn’t I? Or perhaps you’d rather do it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the woman listlessly.
And in that moment Leslie Maughan guessed why Anthony Druze had died.
Slipping her arm round Jane Raytham’s waist, she took her back to the drawing room, insisted upon her lying on the couch, propping a pillow under her head, and throwing a heavy silken scarf that drooped on a chair back over her feet.
“You’re very good,” murmured Lady Raytham, “and I loathe you so much!”
“I suppose you do,” said Leslie, “And yet you shouldn’t, because I haven’t been at all unpleasant.”
Jane nodded her head in agreement.
“Will you keep very quiet when I tell you this? I haven’t suggested that you will be under suspicion of shooting Druze.”
She had no need to be a reader of faces to realize that this possibility had never occurred to Jane Raytham.
“I?” she said incredulously. “But how absurd! Why should I shoot? Oh, but that is impossible! It is impossible that anybody should think such a thing!” And, in spite of Leslie’s warning, she struggled erect. “You don’t think so, do you?”
She was on her feet, peering into the girl’s face, her hand gripping Leslie’s wrist fiercely.
“You don’t think so? I hated Druze! I hated him, hated him!” She stamped her foot in her fury. “You don’t know what it has meant to me—every morning to see his face, every minute liable to his presence. Do you realize what that meant? I had to school myself so that I didn’t shudder at the sight of him, and the mock humility of his ‘yes, my lady’ and ‘no, my lady’ that I might sit unmoved at my own table and face my own husband, and appear oblivious to the horrible masquerade——”
She stopped, exhausted by her own vehemence.
Leslie waited a moment and then:
“What is Anthony Druze to you?”
Lady Raytham stared at her.
“To me—you mean—— What do you mean?”
Suddenly she burst into a paroxysm of laughter. It was dreadful to see her.
“Oh, you fool! You little fool! Can’t you guess? Don’t you know?”
And then suddenly she ran out of the room. Leslie heard her bedroom door slam and the snap of the turning key and knew that her interview was ended.
It was two o’clock when a taxicab stopped in Severall Street, Lambeth, and a very weary girl alighted. The detective whom she had asked by telephone to meet her was waiting at the corner of the street and ran toward her.
“You want Mrs. Inglethorne’s, don’t you, miss? The house is on the opposite side of the road.”
He hurried across the street and knocked at a door. Twice and three times he knocked before a sash went up and the voice of Peter Dawlish asked:
“Who is it?”
He had hardly asked the question before he recognized the girl.
“I’ll be down in a second!”
But before he could descend, the landlady herself made an appearance. She was a little tremulous of voice, more than a little whining, when she recognized the familiar countenance of the detective.
“Whatcher want? There’s nobody here except my young man lodger and he’s straight. A policeman recommended him.”
“This lady is from Scotland Yard and she wishes to see him, Mrs. Inglethorne,” said the detective soothingly. “Don’t get worried.”
“Worried! Me workin’ my fingers to the bone and my old man in ‘stir’ though as innocent as a babe unborn——”
By this time Peter Dawlish had descended.
“Do you wish to see me?”
She nodded.
“Where can I see you? Can you come out and sit in the cab for a few minutes?”
“Certainly.”
“There is another favour I want to ask you. Will you be very annoyed if I ask you to allow this police officer to search your room?”
He was struck dumb for a second.
“Certainly! Why, is something lost?”
“Nothing.” She turned to the detective and gave him instructions in a low tone; he pushed past the frightened landlady and went upstairs.
“Now come into the cab. You won’t catch cold?”
He laughed irritatedly.
“I’m so hot with righteous indignation that I would melt an iceberg!” he said.
He stepped into the taxi and pulled the door tight.
“Now, Miss Maughan!”
She looked sideways at him; the white face of the lantern illuminating the taximeter formed a reflector that gave some light to the interior of the car.
“What have you been doing all evening?” she asked.
“From what hour?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“I’ve been in the house. A job came to me this morning addressing envelopes and I’ve been working since seven till within a few minutes of your arrival. About two thousand of them are already addressed; I think that accounts for my time. I only had the envelopes and lists at six-thirty. Why, what has happened?”
“Druze is dead.”
“Dead?”
“Murdered! His body was found on Barnes Common some time between eleven forty-five and midnight.”
He whistled softly.
“That is a bad business. How was he killed?”
“Shot—at close range.”
He was silent for a time.
“Naturally, after my wild and woolly threats, you suspected me. Come up and see the envelopes. My bedroom is the only decent room in the house.”
She hesitated, then, stretching out her hand, pulled back the lock of the door.
Mrs. Inglethorne was past surprising. She stood at the foot of the stairs, an old ulster over her dressing gown, and watched the two go up without comment.
“There is nothing here, miss,” said the detective before he caught sight of Peter. “Nothing except these.” He indicated with a wave of his hand a deal table covered with small envelopes neatly packed.
Leslie smiled.
“You needn’t have told me you’d been working here, Mr. Dawlish,” she said. “It is like a smoke room!”
The aroma of cigarettes still hung about in spite of the open windows; the tin she had sent to him was on the table, only half full.
“I’ve been a little extravagant,” he said apologetically, “but the temptation was great.”
The detective still lingered by the door, evidently in two minds as to whether it would be proper to leave them in this peculiar environment. Leslie saved him the responsibility of a decision by:
“Thank you very much. I will be down in a minute or two,” she said.
She sat at the foot of the bed, her arm over the rail, and looked at Peter. She would not have recognized him; he was clean-shaven, spruce. There was a certain buoyancy in his attitude which was new to her. Good-looking, too, and in spite of his approaching thirty years and all that he had suffered, remarkably youthful. It added a piquant interest to her scrutiny that she knew so much about his past—so much more than he guessed.
A husky voice hailed them from the foot of the stairs.
“Would you like a cup of tea, miss?”
Peter Dawlish looked at the girl with a smile.
“She really makes rather good tea,” he said in a low voice.
“I should love one,” she nodded, and he called softly down the stairs and came back.
“I’m scared of waking Elizabeth,” he said, and added: “You look fagged!”
“Which means that I look hideous,” she retorted with a frank smile. “I won’t bandy compliments with you, or I would congratulate you upon the marked improvement which the barber has brought about. Did you know Druze very well?”
“Not very well,” he said.
“Tell me something about him—all that you know.”
He frowned at this, evidently trying to remember matters that had passed, facts that had gone out of his recollection.
“He came to Lord Everreed’s place soon after I took up my post,” he said. “My aunt the Princess Bellini recommended him——”
“The princess recommended him?” she said quickly. “Why? Was he in her service?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “He was with Aunt Anita in Java for years. Her husband held some sort of minor post on one of the plantations: he was, I believe, a fairly poor man. After his death she came to England, and Druze came with her; in Java she had afforded the luxury of a butler; living is rather cheap there, but when she came to England she got rid of him. I have a distinct recollection of the letter she wrote to Lord Everreed, which I answered. I call her ‘aunt,’ ” he explained, “although she was only the half sister of my father, and in reality no relation to me at all. How long Druze remained with Lord Everreed, of course I do not know. From the date of my conviction that page of history is closed. But a few years after I had gone to prison I heard in a roundabout fashion—I think it was in a letter which an old servant of ours wrote—that he had gone into the service of Lady Raytham.”
She thought over this for some time.
“When were you arrested?”
“Seven and a half years ago.”
She looked up in surprise.
“Then you served the full sentence?”
He nodded.
“Yes. I am not on ticket-of-leave. The truth is, I was rather a troublesome prisoner. I suppose most prisoners are who have the delusion of innocence. Why do you ask?”
“I have reason to believe that the princess thought you only served five,” said the girl. “But that really doesn’t matter. I suppose she’s of an age that—— I’m being cattish! Now, tell me something more.”
“You look a very sleepy cat,” he said, and at that moment there came through the door a strange little figure.
How old she was it was difficult to tell, but Leslie guessed her to be six, though she was tall for that age. She was painfully thin, and her little arms, which carried with solemn attention a cup of tea, were hardly more than of the thickness of the bones that showed through the flesh. Her face, pinched and thin and translucent, had a beauty which made the girl catch her breath. She raised two big eyes to survey the visitor, and then the long lashes fell on her cheeks.
“Your tea,” she said.
Leslie took the cup gently from the child’s hand and set it down.
“What’s your name?” she asked, and as she put her hand on the yellow head, the little creature shrank back, her face puckered with fear.
“That’s Belinda!” said Peter, with a smile.
The child wore a ragged old mackintosh over a nightgown that had once been of red flannelette, but which had washed to the palest of pinks. Her hands, lightly clasped before her, were almost transparent.
“I’m Mrs. Inglethorne’s little girl,” she said in a low voice. “My name is ’Lizabeth—not Belinda.”
She raised her eyes quickly to the man and dropped them again. The gravity of her tone, the low sweetness of her voice, amazed Leslie Maughan. For a second she forgot that she was too tired to be interested even in the bizarre.
“Won’t you come and talk to me?”
The child glanced at the door.
“Mother wants me.”
“Talk to the lady!”
Evidently Mrs. Inglethorne at the bottom of the stairs had good ears. The child started, looked apprehensively round and came sidling toward Leslie.
“What do you do with yourself?” asked Leslie. “Do you go to school?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“I think about Daddy most of the time.”
Leslie remembered that Daddy was at that moment serving his country in Dartmoor.
“I keep him in a book; he’s very nice—ever so nice.” The child nodded soberly.
“In a book?” asked Leslie. “What kind of a book?”
A voice outside the door supplied an answer. Mrs. Inglethorne must have crept up the stairs to listen better.
“Don’t take no notice of her, miss; she’s a bit cracked! Any good-looking feller she sees in a book she says is her father! Why, she used to take the king once, and then Lord what’s-his name; and when I think of her own poor dear father that worked his fingers to the bone and got a ‘stretch’ for nothing, as innocent as a babe unborn—it’s very hard——”
Elizabeth was tense now; her big eyes narrowed, her ear turned to the door. It was an attitude of apprehension, and Leslie’s heart ached for the child. She smoothed her hair, and this time the little girl did not shrink.
“I’ll send you some wonderful pictures and you’ll be able to make up fathers and uncles and all sorts of nice things from them.”
Stooping, she kissed the child, and with her arm about her painfully thin shoulders led her to the door. On the landing the unhealthy-looking Mrs. Inglethorne smirked and squirmed, a picture of gratitude for the lady’s condescension.
“I’m going to be very interested in Elizabeth,” said Leslie, her steady eyes on the woman. “You won’t mind if I come round sometimes to see how she is getting on?”
Mrs. Inglethorne made a fearful grimace which was intended to express her pleasure.
“How many children have you?”
“Five, miss.”
The woman was looking at her curiously, possibly fascinated by her first meeting with the female of the hated species.
“Five in this little house?” Leslie raised her eyebrows. “Where do you keep them all?”
Again the woman wriggled, this time uncomfortably.
“In the kitchen, miss, except the two girls; they sleep in my room.”
“I’d like to have a look at your kitchen.”
“It’s a bit late and you’d wake ’em up,” said Mrs. Inglethorne after hesitation.
But Leslie waited, and reluctantly Mrs. Inglethorne went down the stairs, the girl following. The kitchen was at the back of the house, approached by a narrow passage. It was a room barely ten feet square, cold and miserably furnished. In the unsatisfactory light of the oil lamp the woman carried she saw not three but four little bundles; one, a child which could not have been three years old, slept in a soap box on the floor. Its coverlet was a strip of dusty carpet which had been roughly cut to fit the shape of the box. Two children were huddled together under the table, wrapped in an old army overcoat. The fourth lay in a corner under a flour sack, so still that she might have been dead: a girl of eleven, sandy-haired, sharp-featured, who shivered and groaned in her sleep as the light of the lamp came upon her face.
“It’s very ’ard on a woman who’s got five mouths to fill,” complained Mrs. Inglethorne, “but I wouldn’t part with ’em for the world! And it’s warm in the kitchen when we’ve had a coke fire going all evening.”
Leslie went out of that sad little room sick at heart. Poverty she had seen and understood. Possibly these unfortunate children were as well off as thousands of others in the great metropolis. The weaklings would die; the fittest would survive and drag their stunted bodies to a free school where they would be taught just enough to enable them to write their betting slips and read the football reports intelligently.
Peter was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs.
“I think I’ll go home now. I’m rather tired,” she said. “Most likely you will be interrogated to-morrow either by Mr. Coldwell or an officer from the Yard. I think the best thing you can do is to go up and interview him.”
And then, abruptly:
“Have you seen your mother since you have been free?”
He shook his head.
“My parent has expressed her wishes on the matter in unmistakable terms. We were never en rapport, so to speak, and perhaps it is a little too late now to attempt to arrive at a mutual understanding.”
She looked down at the floor, her lips pursed.
“I wonder,” she said, and held out her hand. “Good-night, Peter Dawlish.”
He took the hand, held it for a second, and then:
“You’re rather wonderful. I’m getting a new angle on life,” he said.
She had one more call to make. Inspector Coldwell had promised to wait at Scotland Yard until she returned with her report, and she found him sipping coffee in the lobby, and told him briefly the result of her visit.
“I never thought Peter knew much about it. What does he know of Druze?”
He listened intently until she had finished.
“Rum! All the paths in this maze lead back to the Princess Bellini. Yes, I’ll see Peter; I’ll wire him in the morning,” he said, yawning. “It is time all honest people were in bed. I’m going to take you home.”
Her cab was waiting, and though she had no need of an escort, he pointed out that her way was largely his.
“What we’re going to do about Lady Raytham I don’t know. I’m taking it for granted that you have discovered a whole lot that you haven’t told me.”
“Not a whole lot, a little,” she admitted.
Mr. Coldwell scratched his head.
“That little is usually crucial. However, I am not going to discourage you. Keep your mystery; a little romance in police work has a wonderful tonic value.”
The cab carried them across deserted Trafalgar Square, and a few seconds later stopped before the door of Leslie’s flat.
“I suppose you know all that is to be known about the case?” he said, with a touch of the sardonic, as he handed her out of the cab. “Whilst I, a poor old muddle-headed copper, am groping round like a blindfolded man in a fog!”
“I think I know a lot,” she admitted, with a tired smile.
Coldwell was amused.
“The complacency of the woman! Here she is, keeping all her clues up her sleeve, ready to spring them out and reduce police headquarters to a bewildered pulp! Know all about Druze, do you?”
“I know a lot about him.”
“Fine!” said Coldwell.
She had the door open now, and he waited until she was in the passage before he dropped his bombshell.
“Promise me you won’t come out and ask questions, but will go straight up to bed, if I tell you something?”
“I promise,” she said.
He put his hand on the knob of the door, ready to shut it.
“Arthur or Anthony Druze, as he was variously called, was a woman!”
The door slammed on her; before she recovered from her stupor she heard the rattle of the cab as it moved away.