Blue Hand

by Edgar Wallace

  “Mrs. Fane,” repeated the girl, “but you told me she was paralysed and could not get up. You said she had never been out of doors for years.”

  Jim swallowed something.

  “She called you ‘Jim,’” said the girl again. “Are you very great friends?”

  “Well, we are rather,” said Jim huskily. “The fact is, Eunice—”

  “How did she come in?” asked the girl with a frown. “She must have let herself in with a key. Has she a key of your flat?”

  Jim gulped.

  “Well, as a matter of fact—” he began.

  “Has she, Jim?”

  “Yes, she has. I can’t explain, Eunice, but you’ve got—”

  “I see,” she said quietly. “She is very pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is rather pretty,” admitted Jim miserably. “You see, we have business transactions together, and frequently I am out and she wants to get to my telephone. She has no telephone in her own flat, you see, Eunice,” he went on lamely.

  “I see,” said the girl, “and she calls you ‘Jim’?”

  “Because we are good friends,” he floundered. “Really, Eunice, I hope you are not putting any misconstruction upon that incident.”

  She heaved a little sigh.

  “I suppose it is all right, Jim,” she said, and pushed away her plate. “I don’t think I will wait any longer. Please don’t come back with me, I’d rather you didn’t. I can get a cab; there’s a rank opposite the flat, I remember.”

  Jim cursed the accident which had brought the lady into his room at that moment and cursed himself that he had not made a clean breast of the whole thing, even at the risk of betraying Lady Mary.

  He had done sufficient harm by his incoherent explanation and he offered no other as he helped the girl into her coat.

  “You are sure you’d rather go alone?” he said miserably.

  She nodded.

  They were standing on the landing. Lady Mary’s front door was ajar and from within came the shrill ring of a telephone bell. She raised her grave eyes to Jim.

  “Your friend has the key of your flat because she has no telephone of her own, didn’t you say, Jim?”

  He made no reply.

  “I never thought you would lie to me,” she said, and he watched her disappear down the staircase with an aching heart.

  He had hardly reached his room and flung himself in his chair by the side of the tea-table, when Lady Mary followed him into the room.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I hadn’t the slightest idea she would be here.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Jim with a wan smile, “only it makes things rather awkward for me. I told her a lie and she found me out, or rather, your infernal telephone did, Lady Mary.”

  “Then you were stupid,” was all the comfort she gave him.

  “Why didn’t you stay?” he asked. “That made it look so queer.”

  “There were many reasons why I couldn’t stay,” said Lady Mary. “Jim, do you remember the inquiries I made about this very girl, Eunice Weldon, and which you made too?”

  He nodded.

  He wasn’t interested in Eunice Weldon’s obvious parentage at that moment.

  “You remember she was born at Rondebosch?”

  “Yes,” he said listlessly. “Even she admits it,” he added with a feeble attempt at a jest.

  “Does she admit this?” asked Lady Mary. She pushed a telegram across the table to Jim, and he picked it up and read:

  “Eunice May Weldon died in Cape Town at the age of twelve months and three days, and is buried at Rosebank Cemetery. Plot No. 7963.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  JIM read the cablegram again, scarcely believing his eyes or his understanding,

  “Buried at the age of twelve months,” he said incredulously, “but how absurd. She is here, alive, besides which, I recently met a man who knew the Weldons and remembered Eunice as a child. There is no question of substitution.”

  “It is puzzling, isn’t it?” said Lady Mary softly, as she put the telegram in her bag. “But here is a very important fact. The man who sent me this cablegram is one of the most reliable private detectives in South Africa.”

  Eunice Weldon was born, Eunice Weldon had died, and yet Eunice Weldon was very much alive at that moment, though she was wishing she were dead.

  Jim leant his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his palm.

  “I must confess that I am now completely rattled,” he said. “Then if the girl died, it is obvious the parents adopted another girl and that girl was Eunice. The question is, where did she come from, because there was never any question of her adoption, so far as she knew.”

  She nodded.

  “I have already cabled to my agent to ask him to inquire on this question of adoption,” she said, “and in the meantime the old idea is gaining ground, Jim.”

  His eyes met hers.

  “You mean that Eunice is your daughter?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “That circular scar on her wrist? You know nothing about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “It may have been done after “—she faltered—“after—I lost sight of her.”

  “Lady Mary, will you explain how you came to lose sight of her?” asked Jim.

  She shook her head.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “Then perhaps you will answer another question. You know Mrs. Groat?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you know a woman named Weatherwale?”

  Lady Mary’s eyes opened.

  “Mary Weatherwale, yes. She was a farmer’s daughter who was very fond of Jane, a nice, decent woman. I often wondered how Jane came to make such a friend. Why do you ask?”

  Jim told her what had happened when Mrs. Weatherwale had arrived at Grosvenor Square.

  “Let us put as many of our cards on the table as are not too stale to exhibit,” she said. “Do you believe that Jane Groat had some part in the disappearance of my daughter?”

  “Honestly I do,” said Jim. “Don’t you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I used to think so,” she said quietly, “but when I made inquiries, she was exonerated beyond question. She is a wicked woman, as wicked as any that has ever been born,” she said with a sudden fire that sent the colour flying to her face, “but she was not so wicked that she was responsible for little Dorothy’s fate.”

  “You will not tell me any more about her?”

  She shook her head.

  “There is something you could say which might make my investigations a little easier,” said Jim.

  “There is nothing I can say—yet,” she said in a low voice, as she rose and, without a word of farewell, glided from the room.

  Jim’s mind was made up. In the light of that extraordinary cablegram from South Africa, his misunderstanding with Eunice faded into insignificance. If she were Lady Mary’s daughter! He gasped at the thought which, with all its consequences, came as a new possibility, even though he had pondered it in his mind.

  He fixed upon Jane Groat as one who could supply the key of the mystery, but every attempt he had made to get the particulars of her past had been frustrated by ignorance, or the unwillingness of all who had known her in her early days.

  There was little chance of seeing Septimus Salter in his office, so he went round to the garage where he housed his little car, and set forth on a voyage of discovery to Chislehurst, where Mr. Salter lived.

  The old gentleman was alone; his wife and his eldest son, an officer, who was staying with him, had gone to Harrogate, and he was more genial in his reception than Jim had a right to expect.

  “You’ll stay to dinner, of course,” he said.

  Jim shook his head.

  “No thank you, sir, I’m feeling rather anxious just now. I came to ask you if you knew Mrs. Weatherwale.”

  The lawyer frowned.

  “Weatherwale, Weatherwale,” he mused, “yes, I r
emember the name. I seldom forget a name. She appears in Mrs. Groat’s will, I think, as a legatee for a few hundred pounds. Her father was one of old Danton’s tenants.”

  “That is the woman,” said Jim, and told his employer all that he had learnt about Mrs. Weatherwale’s ill-fated visit to London.

  “It only shows,” said the lawyer when he had finished, “how the terrific secrets which we lawyers think are locked away in steel boxes and stowed below the ground in musty cellars, are the property of Tom, Dick and Harry! We might as well save ourselves all the trouble. Estremeda is, of course, the Spanish Marquis who practically lived with the Dantons when Jane was a young woman. He is, as obviously, the father of Digby Groat, and the result of this woman’s mad passion for the Spaniard. I knew there was some sort of scandal attached to her name, but this explains why her father would never speak to her, and why he cut her out of his will. I’m quite sure that Jonathan Danton knew nothing whatever about his sister’s escapade, or he would not have left her his money. He was as straitlaced as any of the Dantons, but, thanks to his father’s reticence, it would seem that Mrs. Groat is going to benefit.”

  “And the son?” said Jim, and the lawyer nodded.

  “She may leave her money where she wishes—to anybody’s son, for the matter of that,” said the lawyer. “A carious case, a very curious case”—he shook his grey head. “What do you intend doing?”

  “I am going down to Somerset to see Mrs. Weatherwale,” said Jim. “She may give us a string which will lead somewhere.”

  “If she’ll give you a string that will lead Mr. Digby Groat to prison,” growled the old lawyer, “get hold of it, Steele. and pull like the devil!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WHEN his alarm clock turned him out at six in the morning, Jim was both sleepy and inclined to be pessimistic. But as his mind cleared and he realized what results the day’s investigations might bring, he faced his journey with a lighter heart.

  Catching the seven o’clock from Paddington, he reached the nearest station to Mrs. Weatherwale’s residence soon after nine. He had not taken any breakfast, and he delayed his journey for half an hour, whilst the hostess of a small inn facing the station prepared him the meal without which no Englishman could live, as she humorously described it, a dish of eggs and bacon.

  It seemed as though he were in another world to that which he had left behind at Paddington. The trees were a little greener, the lush grasses of the meadows were a more vivid emerald, and overhead in the blue sky, defying sight, a skylark trilled passionately and was answered somewhere from the ground. Tiny furry shapes in their bright spring coats darted across the white roadway almost under his feet. He crossed a crumbling stone bridge and paused to look down into the shallow racing stream that foamed and bubbled and swirled on its way to the distant sea.

  The old masons who had dressed these powdery ashlars and laid the moss-green stones of the buttresses, were dead when burly Henry lorded it at Westminster. These stones had seen the epochs pass, and the maidens who had leant against the parapet listening with downcast eyes to their young swains had become old women and dust and forgotten.

  Jim heaved a sigh as he resumed his trudge. Life would not be long enough for him, if Eunice…if I—

  He shook the thought from him and climbed steadily to his destination.

  Hill Farm was a small house standing in about three acres of land, devoted mainly to market garden. There was no Mr. Weatherwale. He had been dead for twelve years, Jim learnt at the inn, but the old lady had a son who assisted in the management of the farm.

  Jim strode out to what was to prove a pleasant walk through the glories of a Somerset countryside, and he found Mrs. Weatherwale in the act of butter-making. She had a pasture and a dozen cows, as she informed him later.

  “I don’t want to talk about Jane Groat,” she said decisively, when he broached the object of his visit. “I’ll never forgive that boy of hers for the trouble he gave me, apart from the insult. I gave up my work and had to hire a woman to take charge here and look after the boy—there’s my fare to London—”

  “I dare say all that could be arranged, Mrs. Weatherwale,” said Jim with a laugh. “Mr. Digby Groat will certainly repay you.”

  “Are you a friend of his?” she asked suspiciously, “because if you are—”

  “I am not a friend of his,” said Jim. “On the contrary, I dislike him probably as much as you do.”

  “That is not possible,” she said, “for I would as soon see the devil as that yellow-faced monkey.”

  She wiped her hands on her apron and led the way to the sunny little parlour.

  “Sit ye down, Mr. What-you-may-call-it,” she said briskly.

  “Steele,” murmured Jim.

  “Mr. Steele, is it? Just sit down there, will you?” She indicated a window-seat covered with bright chintz. “Now tell me just what you want to know.”

  “I want to know something about Jane Groat’s youth, who were her friends, and what you know about Digby Groat?”

  Mrs. Weatherwale shook her head.

  “I can’t tell you much about that, sir,” she said. “Her father was old Danton who owned Kennett Hall. You can see it from here “—she pointed across the country to a grey mass of buildings that showed above the hill-crest.

  “Jane frequently came over to the farm. My father had a bigger one in those days. All Hollyhock Hill belonged to him, but he lost his money through horses, drat them!” she said good-humouredly, and apparently had no particular grievance against the thoroughbred race-horse.

  “And we got quite friendly. It was unusual, I admit, she being a lady of quality and me being a farmer’s daughter; but lord! I’ve got stacks of letters from her, or rather, I had. I burnt them this morning.”

  “You’ve burnt them?” said Jim in dismay. “I was hoping that I should find something I wanted to know from those.”

  She shook her head.

  “There’s nothing there you would find, except a lot of silly nonsense about a man she fell in love with, a Spanish man.”

  “The Marquis of Estremeda?” suggested Jim.

  She closed her lips.

  “Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t,” she said. “I’m not going to scandalize at my time of life, and at her time of life too. We’ve all made mistakes in our time, and I dare say you’ll make yours, if you haven’t made them already. Which reminds me, Mr.—I don’t remember your name?”

  “Steele,” said Jim patiently.

  “Well, that reminds me there’s a duck of a girl in that house. How Jane can allow a beautiful creature like that to come into contact with a beast like Digby, I don’t know. But that is all by the way. No, I burnt the letters, except a few. I kept one or two to prove that a boy doesn’t change his character when he grows up. Why, it may be,” she said that good-humouredly, “when Digby is hanged the newspaper reporters would like to see these, and they will be worth money to me!”

  Jim laughed. Her good-humour was infectious, and when after an absence of five minutes she returned to the room with a small box covered with faded green plush, he asked; “You know nothing of Digby Groat’s recent life?”

  She shook her head.

  “I only knew him as a boy, and a wicked little devil he was, the sort of boy who would pull a fly’s wings off for the sport of it. I used to think those stories about boys were lies, but it was true about him. Do you know what his chief delight was as a boy?”

  “No, I don’t,” smiled Jim. “It was something unpleasant, I am sure.”

  “To come on a Friday afternoon to Fanner Johnson’s and see the pigs killed for market,” she said grimly. “That’s the sort of boy he was.”

  She took out a bundle of faded letters and fixing her large steel-rimmed spectacles, read them over.

  “Here’s one,” she said; “that will show you the kind of kid he was.”

  “I flogged Digby to-day. He tied a bunch of crackers round the kitten’s neck and let them off. The poor
little creature had to be killed.”

  “That’s Digby,” said Mrs. Weatherwale, looking over her glasses. “There isn’t a letter here which doesn’t say that she had to beat him for something or other,” she read on, reading half to herself, and Jim heard the word “baby.”

  “What baby was that?”

  She looked at him.

  “It wasn’t her baby,” she said.

  “But whose was it?” insisted Jim.

  “It was a baby she was looking after.”

  “Her sister-in-law’s?” demanded Jim.

  The woman nodded.

  “Yes, Lady Mary Danton’s, poor little soul—he did a cruel thing to her too.”

  Jim dare not speak, and without encouragement Mrs. Weatherwale said: “Listen to this, if you want to understand the kind of little devil Digby was.”

  “I had to give Digby a severe flogging to-day. Really, the child is naturally cruel. What do you imagine he did? He took a sixpence, heated it in the fire and put it on the poor baby’s wrist. It left a circular burn.”

  “Great God!”-said Jim, springing to his feet, his face white. “A circular burn on the wrist?”

  She looked at him in astonishment.

  “Yes, why?”

  So that was the explanation, and the heiress to the Danton millions was not Digby Groat or his mother, but the girl who was called Eunice Weldon, or, as the world would know her, Dorothy Danton!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EUNICE was Lady Mary’s daughter! There was no doubt of it, no possible doubt. His instinct had proved to be right. How had she got to South Africa? He had yet to find a solution to the mystery.

  Mrs. Weatherwale’s rosy face was a picture of astonishment. For a moment she thought her visitor had gone mad.

  “Will you read that piece again about Digby Groat burning the baby’s wrist,” said Jim slowly, and after a troubled glance at him, she complied.

  “The little baby was lost soon after,” she explained. “It went out with a nurse; one of Jane’s girls took it out in a boat, and the boat must have been run down by some ship.”

  And then a light dawned upon Jim.

  What ships passed to the east of the Goodwins (for it was near there that the disaster must have occurred) on the day of the tragedy? He must find it out immediately and he must take the letter from Jane to her friend in order to place it before Septimus Salter. Here, however, the woman demurred, and Jim, sitting down again, told her plainly and frankly all his fears and suspicions.