“No, sir,” said Jim rather loudly. “I sometimes meet a lady at tea, but—”
“Off you go,” said the old man gruffly. “And give her my love.”
Jim was grinning, but he was very red, too, when he went down the stairs into Marlborough Street. He hurried his pace because he was a little late, and breathed a sigh of relief as he turned into the quiet tea-shop to find that his table was as yet unoccupied.
As his tall, athletic figure strode through the room to the little recess overlooking Regent Street, which was reserved for privileged customers, many heads were turned, for Jim Steele was a splendid figure of British manhood, and the grey laughing eyes had played havoc in many a tender heart.
But he was one of those men whose very idealism forbade trifling. He had gone straight from a public school into the tragic theatre of conflict, and at an age when most young men were dancing attendance upon women, his soul was being seared by the red-hot irons of war.
He sat down at the table and the beaming waitress came forward to attend to his needs.
“Your young lady hasn’t come yet, sir,” she said.
It was the first time she had made such a reference to Eunice Weldon, and Jim stiffened.
“The young lady who has tea with me is not my ‘young lady,’” he said a little coldly, and seeing that he had hurt the girl, he added with a gleam of mirth in those irresistible eyes, “she’s your young lady, really.”
“I’m sorry,” said the waitress, scribbling on her order pad to hide her confusion. “I suppose you’ll have the usual?”
“I’ll have the usual,” said Jim gravely, and then with a quick glance at the door he rose to meet the girl who had at that moment entered.
She was slim of build, straight as a plummet line from chin to toe; she carried herself with a dignity which was so natural that the men who haunt the pavement to leer and importune, stood on one side to let her pass, and then, after a glimpse of her face, cursed their own timidity. For it was a face Madonna-like in its purity. But a blue-eyed, cherry-lipped Madonna, vital and challenging. A bud of a girl breaking into the summer bloom of existence. In those sapphire eyes the beacon fires of life signalled her womanhood; they were at once a plea and a warning. Yet she carried the banners of childhood no less triumphantly. The sensitive mouth, the round, girlish chin, the satin white throat and clean, transparent skin, unmarked, unblemished, these were the gifts of youth which were carried forward to the account of her charm.
Her eyes met Jim’s and she came forward with outstretched hand.
“I’m late,” she said gaily. “We had a tiresome duchess at the studio who wanted to be taken in seventeen different poses—it is always the plain people who give the most trouble.”
She sat down and stripped her gloves, with a smile at the waitress.
“The only chance that plain people have of looking beautiful is to be photographed beautifully,” said Jim.
Eunice Weldon was working at a fashionable photographer’s in Regent Street. Jim’s meeting with her had been in the very room in which they were now sitting. The hangings at the window had accidentally caught fire, and Jim, in extinguishing them, had burnt his hand. It was Eunice Weldon who had dressed the injury.
A service rendered by a man to a woman may not lead very much farther to a better acquaintance. When a woman helps a man it is invariably the beginning of a friendship. Women are suspicious of the services which men give, and yet feel responsible for the man they have helped, even to the slightest extent.
Since then they had met almost daily and taken tea together. Once Jim had asked her to go to a theatre, an invitation which she had promptly but kindly declined. Thereafter he had made no further attempt to improve their acquaintance.
“And how have you got on with your search for the missing lady?” she asked, as she spread some jam on the thin bread-and-butter which the waitress had brought.
Jim’s nose wrinkled—a characteristic grimace of his.
“Mr. Salter made it clear to me to-day that even if I found the missing lady it wouldn’t greatly improve matters,” he said.
“It would be wonderful if the child had been saved after all,” she said. “Have you ever thought of that possibility?”
He nodded.
“There is no hope of that.” he said, shaking his head, “but it would be wonderful, as you say, and more wonderful,” he laughed, “if you were the missing heiress!”
“And there’s no hope of that either.” she said, shaking her head. “I’m the daughter of poor but honest parents, as the story-books say.”
“Your father was a South African, wasn’t he?”
She nodded.
“Poor daddy was a musician, and mother I can hardly remember, but she must have been a dear.”
“Where were you born?” asked Jim.
She did not answer immediately because she was busy with her jam sandwich.
“In Cape Town—Rondebosch, to be exact,” she said after a while. “Why are you so keen on finding your long-lost lady?”
“Because I am anxious that the most unmitigated cad in the world should not succeed to the Danton millions.”
She sat bolt upright.
“The Danton millions?” she repeated slowly. “Then who is your unmitigated cad? You have never yet mentioned the names of these people.”
This was perfectly true. Jim Steele had not even spoken of his search until a few days before.
“A man named Digby Groat.”
She stared at him aghast.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked in surprise.
“When you said ‘Danton’ I remembered Mr. Curley—that is our chief photographer—saying that Mrs. Groat was the sister of Jonathan Danton?” she said slowly.
“Do you know the Groats?” he asked quickly.
“I don’t know them,” she said slowly, “at least, not very well, only—” she hesitated, “I’m going to be Mrs. Groat’s secretary.”
He stared at her.
“You never told me this,” he said, and as she dropped her eyes to her plate, he realized that he had made a faux pas. “Of course,” he said hurriedly, “there’s no reason why you should tell me, but—”
“It only happened to-day,” she said. “Mr. Groat has had some photographs taken—his mother came with him to the studio. She’s been several times, and I scarcely noticed them until to-day, when Mr. Curley called me into the office and said that Mrs. Groat was in need of a secretary and that it was a very good position; Ł5 a week, which is practically all profit, because I should live in the house.”
“When did Mrs. Groat decide that she wanted a secretary?” asked Jim, and it was her turn to stare.
“I don’t know. Why do you ask that?”
“She was at our office a month ago,” said Jim, “and Mr. Salter suggested that she should have a secretary to keep her accounts in order. She said then she hated the idea of having anybody in the house who was neither a servant nor a friend of the family.”
“Well, she’s changed her views now,” smiled the girl.
“This means that we shan’t meet at tea any more. When are you going?”
“Tomorrow,” was the discouraging reply.
He went back to his office more than a little dispirited. Something deep and vital seemed to have gone out of his life.
“You’re in love, you fool,” he growled to himself.
He opened the big diary which it was his business to keep and slammed down the covers savagely.
Mr. Salter had gone home. He always went home early, and Jim lit his pipe and began to enter up the day’s transactions from the scribbled notes which his chief had left on his desk.
He had made the last entry and was making a final search of the desk for some scrap which he might have overlooked.
Mr. Salter’s desk was usually tidy, but he had a habit of concealing important memoranda, and Jim turned over the law books on the table in a search for any scribbled memo he might have mis
sed. He found between two volumes a thin gilt-edged notebook, which he did not remember having seen before. He opened it to discover that it was a diary for the year 1901. Mr. Salter was in the habit of making notes for his own private reading, using a queer legal shorthand which no clerk had ever been able to decipher. The entries in the diary were in these characters.
Jim turned the leaves curiously, wondering how so methodical a man as the lawyer had left a private diary visible. He knew that in the big green safe in the lawyer’s office were stacks of these books, and possibly the old man had taken one out to refresh his memory. The writing was Greek to Jim, so that he felt no compunction in turning the pages, filled as they were with indecipherable and meaningless scrawls, punctuated now and again with a word in longhand.
He stopped suddenly, for under the heading “June 4th” was quite a long entry. It seemed to have been written in subsequently to the original shorthand entry, for it was in green ink. This almost dated the inscription. Eighteen months before, an oculist had suggested to Mr. Salter, who suffered from an unusual form of astigmatism, that green ink would be easier for him to read, and ever since then he had used no other.
Jim took in the paragraph before he realized that he was committing an unpardonable act in reading his employers’ private notes.
“One month imprisonment with hard labour. Holloway Prison. Released July 2nd. Madge Benson (this word was underlined), 14, Palmer’s Terrace, Paddington. 74, Highcliffe Gardens, Margate. Long enquiries with boatman who owned Saucy Belle. No further trace—”
“What on earth does that mean?” muttered Jim. “I must make a note of that.”
He realized now that he was doing something which might be regarded as dishonourable, but he was so absorbed in the new clues that he overcame his repugnance.
Obviously, this entry referred to the missing Lady Mary. Who the woman Madge Benson was, what the reference to Holloway Gaol meant, he would discover.
He made a copy of the entry in the diary at the back of a card, went back to his room, locked the door of his desk and went home, to think out some plan of campaign.
He occupied a small flat in a building overlooking Regent’s Park. It is true that his particular flat overlooked nothing but the backs of other houses, and a deep cutting through which were laid the lines of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway—he could have dropped a penny on the carriages as they passed, so near was the line. But the rent of the flat was only one-half of that charged for those in a more favourable position. And his flat was smaller than any. He had a tiny private income, amounting to two or three pounds a week, and that, with his salary, enabled him to maintain himself in something like comfort. The three rooms he occupied were filled with priceless old furniture that he had saved from the wreckage of his father’s home, when that easy-going man had died, leaving just enough to settle his debts, which were many.
Jim had got out of the lift on the fourth floor and had put the key in the lock when he heard the door on the opposite side of the landing open, and turned round.
The elderly woman who came out wore the uniform of a nurse, and she nodded pleasantly.
“How is your patient, nurse?” asked Jim.
“She’s very well, sir, or rather as well as you could expect a bedridden lady to be,” said the woman with a smile. “She’s greatly obliged to you for the books you sent in to her.”
“Poor soul,” said Jim sympathetically. “It must be terrible not to be able to go out.”
The nurse shook her head.
“I suppose it is,” she said, “but Mrs. Fane doesn’t seem to mind. You get used to it after seven years.”
A “rat-tat” above made her lift her eyes.
“There’s the post,” she said. “I thought it had gone. I’d better wait till he comes down.”
The postman at Featherdale Mansions was carried by the lift to the sixth floor and worked his way to the ground floor. Presently they heard his heavy feet coming down and he loomed in sight.
“Nothing for you, sir,” he said to Jim, glancing at the bundle of letters in his hand.
“Miss Madge Benson—that’s you, nurse, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” said the woman briskly, and took the letter from his hand, then with a little nod to Jim she went downstairs.
Madge Benson! The name that had appeared in Salter’s diary!
CHAPTER FOUR
“I’m sick to death of hearing your views on the subject, mother,” said Mr. Digby Groat, as he helped himself to a glass of port. “It is sufficient for you that I want the girl to act as your secretary. Whether you give her any work to do or not is a matter of indifference to me. Whatever you do, you must not leave her with the impression that she is brought here for any other purpose than to write your letters and deal with your correspondence.”
The woman who sat at the other side of the table looked older than she was. Jane Groat was over sixty, but there were people who thought she was twenty years more than that. Her yellow face was puckered and lined, her blue-veined hands, folded now on her lap, were gnarled and ugly. Only the dark brown eyes held their brightness undimmed. Her figure was bent and there was about her a curious, cringing, frightened look which was almost pitiable. She did not look at her son—she seldom looked at anybody.
“She’ll spy, she’ll pry,” she moaned.
“Shut up about the girl!” he snarled, “and now we’ve got a minute to ourselves, I’d like to tell you something, mother.”
Her uneasy eyes went left and right, but avoided him. There was a menace in his tone with which she was all too familiar.
“Look at this.”
He had taken from his pocket something that sparkled and glittered in the light of the table lamp.
“What is it?” she whined without looking.
“It is a diamond bracelet,” he said sternly. “And it is the property of Lady Waltham. We were staying with the Walthams for the week-end. Look at it!”
His voice was harsh and grating, and dropping her head she began to weep painfully.
“I found that in your room,” he said, and his suave manner was gone. “You old thief!” he hissed across the table, “can’t you break yourself of that habit?”
“It looked so pretty,” she gulped, her tears trickling down her withered face. “I can’t resist the temptation when I see pretty things.”
“I suppose you know that Lady Waltham’s maid has been arrested for stealing this, and will probably go to prison for six months?”
“I couldn’t resist the temptation,” she snivelled, and he threw the bracelet on the table with a growl.
“I’m going to send it back to the woman and tell them it must have been packed away by mistake in your bag. I’m not doing it to get this girl out of trouble, but to save myself from a lot of unpleasantness.”
“I know why you’re bringing this girl into the house,” she sobbed; “it is to spy on me.”
His lips curled in a sneer.
“To spy on you!” he said contemptuously, and laughed as he rose. “Now understand,” his voice was harsh again, “you’ve got to break yourself of this habit of picking up things that you like. I’m expecting to go into Parliament at the next election, and I’m not going to have my position jeopardized by an old fool of a kleptomaniac. If there’s something wrong with your brain,” he added significantly, “I’ve a neat little laboratory at the back of this house where that might be attended to.”
She shrank back in terror, her face grey.
“You—you wouldn’t do it—my own son!” she stammered. “I’m all right, Digby; it’s only—”
He smiled, but it was not a pleasant smile to see.
“Probably there is a little compression,” he said evenly, “some tiny malgrowth of bone that is pressing on a particular cell. We could put that right for you, mother—”
But she had thrown her chair aside and fled from the room before he had finished. He picked up the jewel, looked at it contemptuously a
nd thrust it into his pocket. Her curious thieving propensities he had known for a very long time and had fought to check them, and as he thought, successfully.
He went to his library, a beautiful apartment, with its silver grate, its costly rosewood bookshelves and its rare furnishings, and wrote a letter to Lady Waltham. He wrapped this about the bracelet, and having packed letter and jewel carefully in a small box, rang the bell. A middle-aged man with a dark forbidding face answered the summons.
“Deliver this to Lady Waltham at once, Jackson,” said Digby. “The old woman is going out to a concert tonight, by the way, and when she’s out I want you to make a very thorough search of her room.”
The man shook his head. “I’ve already looked carefully, Mr. Groat,” he said, “and I’ve found nothing.”
He was on the point of going when Digby called him back.
“You’ve told the housekeeper to see to Miss Weldon’s room?”
“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “She wanted to put her on the top floor amongst the servants, but I stopped her.”
“She must have the best room in the house,” said Groat. “See that there are plenty of flowers in the room and put in the bookcase and the Chinese table that are in my room.”
The man nodded.
“What about the key, sir?” he asked after some hesitation.
“The key?” Digby looked up. “The key of her room?”
The man nodded.
“Do you want the door to lock?” he asked significantly.
Mr. Groat’s lips curled in a sneer.
“You’re a fool,” he said. “Of course, I want the door to lock. Put bolts on if necessary.”
The man looked his surprise. There was evidently between these two something more than the ordinary relationship which existed between employer and servant. “Have you ever run across a man named Steele?” asked Digby, changing the subject.
Jackson shook his head.
“Who is he?” he asked.
“He is a lawyer’s clerk. Give him a look up when you’ve got some time to spare. No, you’d better not go—ask—ask Bronson. He lives at Featherdale Mansions.”
The man nodded, and Digby went down the steps to the waiting electric brougham.
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