Danger Calling

by Patricia Wentworth

  Lindsay’s heart beat a shade faster. Garratt had arranged to send him necessary information under cover of this code. He wondered what could have happened so soon after their parting last night. He said,

  “Well—he is very much interested in animals—but he sees no one without an appointment.”

  “Then—oh—I wonder—would it be possible for me to see you? Could you make it possible?”

  Lindsay said, “Yes.” Something must have happened. He felt an acute anxiety.

  “Could you come round presently, do you think?”

  “Oh, at once,” said the voice.

  The matter then was urgent.

  He rang off, and waited impatiently until a footman announced Miss Dorrington, and there entered an elderly lady in shabby black, with wispy grey hair, gold pince-nez, and an incongruously new silk scarf brightly striped with yellow, brown, and blue.

  When the door was shut she moved as far away from it as possible and handed Lindsay a note.

  “If you would just glance at some of our literature—” she said in a deprecating voice.

  Lindsay tore open the note, which was in Garratt’s scrawl. It ran:

  “Dear Lin, we have got a line on the Vulture through Manning. This makes those two girls of yours very important witnesses, as we shall have to rely on them to establish Manning’s identity with Drayton. Do you know where Miss Rayne is? She left Paris yesterday with the Mersons, the people she had been staying with. They all arrived at Victoria at eight o’clock. The Mersons took the next train to Ealing. Miss Rayne was to have gone down to her uncle’s place in Surrey—their car was waiting for her at Victoria. She never reached it. Miss Manning is also not to be found. Thurloe doesn’t know where she is and is raising Cain. We’ve collected the picture you spoke of from her rooms. There were papers inside the back of it—marriage certificate of Marian Carr and Lee Abinger—birth certificates of two daughters, Marian Carr and Elsie Lee. So that’s that. Communicate through Miss Dorrington.”

  The blow struck him speechless for the moment. He stared at the note in his hand. Miss Dorrington talked about “our pets”—about animal intelligence—about a bazaar she was hoping to get up—“but people are so terribly apathetic.”

  Lindsay got himself in hand. He must see Garratt, and at once. He said so, speaking low.

  “I must see him, Miss Dorrington.”

  “Inadvisable, unless it is very urgent.”

  “It is very urgent.”

  “Then you had better come to my house. I will let him know.”

  She gave him the address and went away, leaving S.P.C.A. literature strewed upon the table.

  Lindsay burst in upon Garratt an hour later. He found him rather snappy.

  “A bit thick this, Lin, unless you’ve got something to justify it!”

  “I think I have. Will you tell me everything you know about Marian?”

  “Report first. I tell you we don’t know anything about her—there’s no more news. Tell me why you dragged me here.”

  Lindsay told him. Dilling’s drunken babblings, the karaits in his room, his interview with Restow, all seemed a long time ago.

  Garratt listened, with his sharp eyes fixed on Lindsay’s face. After a cut and thrust of question and answer he walked to the end of the room and back.

  “Well, you can call that a night!” he said. “Now, what do you want to know about that girl of yours?”

  “I want to know where she is,” said Lindsay grimly.

  “So do I. I’ve been on to the Ealing police, and they’ve been on to the Mersons. The Mersons say she said good-bye to them as soon as they arrived at Victoria. They saw her go off with a porter and her luggage. We’ve found the porter. He says he missed her in the crowd and never saw her again.”

  “And the luggage?”

  “Still at Victoria. The chauffeur waited till after the last boat train was in and then rang up the Raynes. They rang up the hotel in Paris, and then the police over here. They seem genuinely upset.”

  “And Elsie Manning?”

  “Started for work as usual this morning and never arrived at the shop. She has probably gone off for the day, and will make us all look silly by walking in to tea.” Garratt barked out his sharp laugh. “Well, that was quite an interesting bag you brought along. Well, we’ll gather Ibrahim and we’ll pull Dilling in. I don’t suppose Dilling knows anything that’ll be the slightest use, but we’ll go through him with a toothcomb. We are watching the house in Blenheim Square. Drayton will be followed if he tries to get away. Well, I’ve got work to do if you haven’t. I’ll give you a free hand and you can ring up or come round any time now I take it there isn’t much the Vulture don’t know about you by now. Ware snakes—and keep your pecker up!”

  In the room where they were talking the telephone bell rang sharply. Garratt lifted the receiver. His sandy hair bristled and he rapped out a hard,

  “What’s that?”—

  The telephone buzzed.

  Garratt spoke again.

  “Well, he’s here if you want him. Here, Fothering—you’re wanted.”

  The telephone buzzed again. As Lindsay put the receiver to his ear, the buzzing resolved itself into words.

  “Mr Trevor—”

  “Trevor Fothering,” corrected Lindsay.

  Along the line came Drayton’s voice, harsh and grating:

  “Oh no.”

  There was a pause. Lindsay looked at Garratt, who nodded expressively and scrawled upon a bit of paper,

  “I heard. No good bluffing. Get him to talk. Keep him talking.”

  “What is it?” said Lindsay.

  “Nothing, unless I am speaking to Lindsay Trevor.”

  “And if you are?”

  “Something that may interest him.”

  Lindsay’s hand clenched.

  “Trevor speaking,” he said, and waited. The answer came slowly:

  “In the matter of Marian Rayne—”

  “Yes?”

  “You would be interested to have her address?”

  “I should.”

  “I sell things. I don’t give them away.”

  “Yes?”

  “I will sell you Marian’s address for a pass out of England.”

  Lindsay looked round for Garratt, but the room was empty. He guessed that an attempt was being made to locate the place from which Drayton was speaking. It was for him to keep him talking.

  “It’s not for me to give passes,” he said.

  “Why not? You have friends, haven’t you? Some of them are probably hunting me at this moment. If they catch me, it will be very unfortunate for Marian. I should think about that if I were you—I should think about getting that pass.”

  Lindsay felt a sudden rush of hope. Drayton must be hard pressed to ask for terms like this.

  Drayton spoke again:

  “Your friend Garratt could do a little thing like that for you easily. He has only to turn a blind eye, and it will all be very pleasant for everyone. It is a pity that I shall not be able to come to your wedding. I am afraid I shall be in France. Good-bye!” The line went dead.

  Lindsay began to wonder. He wondered whether Drayton had been careless for once. He wondered why he was so anxious to convey an impression that he was in flight for France. He wondered whether he really knew where Marian was.

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  MR MERSON SAT IN the smoking-room of the Luxe. His large globular face wore a startled and offended expression. The little man with the clipped moustache who was leaning towards him raised a well kept hand and let it fall again upon his knee.

  “You’ve got to take your orders like the rest of us,” he said.

  “That’s a word I don’t like,” said Mr Merson.

  The little man laughed.

  “Do you suppose anyone
cares whether you like it or not? I’ve got my orders, and Rayne has got his, and you’ve got yours, and that’s all about it.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Mr Merson.

  The little man swore without heat.

  “If you don’t like it, you can lump it.” Then, briskly, “You’ve practically nothing to do. You cross by the afternoon boat. At Dover you send Rayne a wire telling him what time you get to Victoria and asking him to meet his niece. He will send his car and a chauffeur. You will say good-bye to the girl at Victoria. You understand? You say good-bye on the platform. What happens after that is no concern of yours. She goes off with her luggage and you take the next train to Ealing. Have you got that perfectly clear? You wire to Rayne—and you say good-bye on the platform. Those are the two things that matter. It is all perfectly simple, and you are not involved in any way.”

  Mr Merson’s large face took on an uncomfortable expression.

  “What is the idea?” he said.

  The little man shrugged his shoulders.

  “That’s not your affair. The less you know the better.”

  Mr Merson looked still more uncomfortable.

  “I couldn’t be a party to her coming to any harm.”

  “Who said she was coming to any harm?” He swore again. “If you don’t know by now that it’s better to do what you’re told without asking questions—well, you’re liable to get a jolt. I suppose you wouldn’t like that business about the Keeling Oil shares to leak out in your local paper. I suppose you have a local paper?”

  Mr Merson’s discomfort became firmly centred upon himself. He gave no further trouble.

  When Marian Rayne looked back upon the journey afterwards, she tried to remember whether there had been anything which might have aroused her suspicions, but she could discover nothing. Mrs Merson fussed as usual over the luggage, and Mr Merson maintained his accustomed air of stolid boredom. He expected to be bored when he travelled, and he was bored. Paris bored him to extinction. Marian wondered what could possibly have taken him there. She would have been very much surprised to hear that it was herself and her affairs.

  Between Dover and Victoria she dozed a little. The relief from sorrow and strain, and the joy of returning to England now that Lin was there filled her thoughts. Her light sleep was full of happy images.

  She waked with a start to the bustle and confusion of arrival. It appeared that the Mersons wanted to say good-bye to her, to be free to attend to their luggage, and catch their train. Mrs Merson kissed her. Mr Merson touched her hand and let it fall again.

  “Your uncle is sending the car,” he said. “You’ll find it outside.” He did not look at her as he spoke, and the heavy gloom of his manner was intensified.

  She was glad to turn away and move with the moving crowd. She had her dressing-case in her hand, and was looking about for the porter who was to bring up the rest of her luggage, when a chauffeur approached her and touched his cap.

  “I beg your pardon—are you Miss Rayne?”

  Marian said, “Yes.”

  “Mr Rayne has sent me to meet you.”

  Marian looked about her.

  “I was expecting his own car,” she said.

  “He’s had an accident with it, miss—coming up to meet you. Not hurt, he isn’t, but a bit shook about, so he sent me along from the garage to meet you.”

  “Where is he?” said Marian quickly.

  “At the Warminster Hotel—and he asked me to say would you come along at once.”

  “I’ll come just as soon as I can get hold of my luggage.”

  “It’s no distance, miss. I can run you up and come back for the luggage. He’s a bit shook about, and wanting his dinner and not liking to begin without you.”

  Marian thought the man’s manner a little familiar.

  “I’d like to take my luggage with me,” she said.

  “I’ll come straight back for it.”

  She hesitated.

  The man dropped his voice.

  “He’s hurt a bit more than I said. I should come quick if I was you.”

  Why hadn’t he said so at once? Suppose Uncle Robert was badly hurt.

  She followed the man to the car, questioning him as she went. It seemed that he had not seen Mr Rayne himself.

  “They took him off to the hotel, and the boss told me to go and meet the young lady and bring her along as sharp as I could.”

  As they drove away, she reassured herself. If Uncle Robert had been badly hurt, he would have been taken to a hospital. She began to feel that she had allowed herself to be frightened unnecessarily. She ought not to have left her luggage like that. There was something odd about the man wanting her to leave it. What had happened to Maitland, Uncle Robert’s chauffeur? Uncle Robert never drove the Bentley himself.

  She put her head out of the window and spoke to the driver.

  “Was the chauffeur hurt?”

  “All smashed up,” he said laconically.

  She drew back in horror. The man had a wife and children.

  She had not noticed which way they turned, but now, as she stared out of the near window, she saw a lighted tram go by. That must mean they were in the Vauxhall Road. But what hotel was there in this neighbourhood that Uncle Robert would be likely to go to? She had never heard of the Warminster Hotel. Insistently there came the pressure of the thought, “I oughtn’t to have left my luggage like that.”

  She leaned out of the window again and spoke her thought aloud:

  “I oughtn’t to have left my luggage like that. Will you please turn round and go back?”

  “We’re nearly there.”

  “Is the hotel down this way?”

  “I’m cutting up through Vincent Square.”

  “Please go back. I would rather get my luggage first.”

  They were held up for the moment behind a van. The man turned his head.

  “’Tisn’t worth going back, miss—honest it isn’t,” he said with so much of the manner of the respectful servant that Marian, unaccustomed to authority, sat back again.

  As she did so, some trick of the light gave her the man’s face in the driving-mirror, with a look upon it that turned her cold. She couldn’t have described the look, but it was wholly evil. He had deceived her, and he was gloating over it. She felt frightened, and weak, and very cold. And then suddenly a despairing courage blazed up in her. She tried the handle of the door on the left, but before she could get it open the car was moving again and next moment had turned off from the broad lighted road.

  Marian struggled with the handle. She was quite determined now that she would not go on. At the worst, she could go back to Victoria, pick up her luggage, and take a taxi to the Warminster Hotel. Could she? The car was now going so fast that it was madness to think of jumping out, but she had turned the handle and next time they slowed down she would risk it. She sat on the edge of the seat, holding her dressing-case in one hand and the door in the other, her foot all ready to take the step.

  Her opportunity came when a car came out of a side street just in front of them. Both drivers braked sharply to avoid a collision, and in a moment Marian was on the pavement. She had the presence of mind to shut the door noiselessly behind her. Then she picked up her feet and ran down the side street.

  It was so dark that it was like running into a tunnel. She put out her hand in front of her and ran, keeping to the middle of the street. She had run into a lamppost once as a child, and the instinct to shield her face sprang from that old memory. The dressing-case dragged heavily at her left arm and shoulder.

  Suddenly on her right a point of light showed against the dark—a candle flame high up at an uncurtained window, not in her street, but in a narrow alley running out of it on the right. She would never have seen the alley if someone had not showed the light.

  She turned and ran up the
alley, and as she did so, she heard a car coming down the street behind her. The little point of candle light went out before she reached the house where it had showed. Marian went on running, and listened with straining ears for the sound of footsteps behind her. She judged the alley too narrow to take a car.

  No footsteps came.

  The alley came out into a wider street. Presently she stopped running. She did not want to attract attention, and she wanted time to think. She was in a well lighted road and felt safer. She put her dressing-case down for a moment, stretched her arm, and then went on again. She did not know what to do.

  Under a lamp she looked at her watch. The last train to Oakshot had gone. She might get a train to Guildford and drive from there, but it was a long way. She shrank from the idea of the seven mile drive alone. She felt shaken, and she wanted to get into touch with Lindsay and tell him what had happened. This on the surface. Underneath, a shrinking dread of what might have been behind this attempt to carry her off. The Mersons’ decision to cross had been hastily taken. Who knew about it? The Mersons themselves and—the Raynes. Who knew that she was arriving at Victoria, and when? Again the Mersons, and the Raynes.

  She didn’t want to go down to Oakshot. She wanted to get clear away from these people who took orders from Drayton, and she wanted to keep away. But she hadn’t enough money to go to an hotel. She remembered with something like panic that her purse contained about twenty francs and an English sixpence. There were plenty of people in town who would take her in, but there was not one of them who would not at once ring up the Raynes and tell them where she was. Her heart smote her hard; but stronger than anything else was the growing instinct to hide.

  Her thoughts turned to her unknown sister. Lindsay had refused to give her Elsie’s address, but she knew that she worked in a hat-shop. After a little hesitation Lindsay had given her the name of the hatshop. What was the good of that? The shop would have closed hours ago, and besides, she had no idea where it was.

  She walked on slowly. It was not raining, but the road was dark and wet, and round every street-lamp a pool of spilled light made the pavement shine. At a crossing she went up to the policeman on duty and asked where she was. She had lost all sense of direction and had no idea what street she was in. When he said “Victoria Street,” it was just as if a blind went up. Lin’s flat—she could go to Lin’s flat—it was quite close—Poole would take her in.