He opened the back door on the farther side, threw the suit-case in, and went back again across the yard. By this time I knew what I wanted. I wanted a lift down the drive and out of the gate past the police. I had to think quickly and take a bit of a risk.
As soon as I saw the headlight strike his back, I nipped round the garage door and got behind the car, opening the door on that side as I passed. The garage was in darkness, and it was a hundred to one against his noticing anything unless he came round that side-and I had to risk something.
He came tramping back, threw something heavy into the car, and slammed the door on it. Then he got in on the near side himself and slipped across into the driver’s seat.
As he put her into gear, I came round and got in by the door I had left open. I timed it so that my weight came on the running-board as she moved off. You can’t make thirteen stone feel like a feather, but I did my best, and he never turned his head.
I crawled in about an inch at a time. The suit-cases were on the seat, which was all to the good, because I badly wanted the floor for myself. I left the door flapping, and as we passed the arch and swung out to take the corner, he heard it, swore, reached back, and banged it to. I began to feel rather pleased with myself.
We went softly down the drive, and then, at the gate, checked suddenly. I couldn’t see anything because I was lying particularly low with a rug over me; but I could hear Arbuthnot getting out, and I guessed that the police in an access of zeal had shut the gate. I heard it creak, and then I heard voices. I couldn’t hear what they said, and I didn’t need to. The constable was telling Arbuthnot how he’d chased a dangerous criminal over his garden wall; and Arbuthnot was telling the constable to go to blazes-at least that’s what I thought at the time, but after a minute Arbuthnot got in again, still talking, and to my amazement he was being as polite as pie.
“And you’ll keep a watch on the house?” he said. “I’ve some valuable pictures I shouldn’t like to lose.” And after that it was, “Good-night, constable,” and all the compliments of the season.
We came slowly out of the gate and turned up the Crescent, I heard Arbuthnot whistle through his teeth, and as I looked out from under my rug, I saw him take out his handkerchief and mop his brow.
I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t in a frame of mind to meet the police without getting a nasty jar, and I wondered all over again whether he wasn’t Fosicker after all.
We ran along Churt Row and turned out of it to the left. Presently we were on a main road. After a bit I got cautiously on my knees and took a look out of the window. I didn’t want to get carried out of my way-and my way lay in the direction of Linwood. I wondered if he was making for Croydon. If he was, I had better see about getting out.
I threw off the rug, got up, and said,
“Thanks very much for the lift. I think I’ll get off here.”
I must say I admired his nerve. He swerved about six inches, and it was a minute before he said anything. He slowed down, drew in to the side of the road, and stopped. Then he said,
“What the devil are you doing in my car?”
I got out and stood by his window. It was open. I could see him like a big smudge of shadow leaning forward over the wheel.
“Do you want to call in the police?” I said.
It was a stupid bit of bluff, but I made pretty sure he’d be as anxious to keep clear of them as I was.
“ Fairfax?” he asked; and then, “They are looking for you in my garden, aren’t they? As far as I am concerned, they can go on looking. Do you mind telling me why you were striking matches there about half an hour ago? It was you, wasn’t it?”
I said, “Yes.”
“And how much of our conversation did you overhear when Anna and I came out to look for you?”
“Oh-some.”
“Enough to congratulate me?”
“On your marriage?” I said.
He laughed.
“Where were you? In the bushes?”
“I was nicely placed for listening in,” I said.
He moved round to face me.
“You’re going to Linwood, I suppose? Will you give Anna a message for me? I don’t particularly want to wire or ring up.”
“Well?” I was waiting for the message.
“Give it to her when she’s by herself.” He had an easy, commanding manner. “Tell her she’ll have to cross alone after all-I’m going on. Tell her some one will meet her. That’s all.”
He turned to the wheel. Then suddenly he jerked his head back over his shoulder.
“Anna’s got it in for you. I suppose you know that?”
I said it was beginning to dawn on me.
“Did you ever hear of a thing called the Queen Anne bow?” he asked.
I laughed.
“To the best of my belief, I’ve got it sewn into the hem of my coat at this moment,” I said.
“Oh, you know?” He seemed surprised.
“Yes, I know. That is why I’m going to Linwood.”
He waited for a moment. Then he laughed too.
“All right-that’s all-I thought I’d just let you know. You’ll give Anna my message?”
I said, “Yes.” Then I watched him drive away.
I walked on to the nearest lamp. I was considering what I was going to do. I had enough money to go to an hotel, but I wondered whether they would take me in, grimy, disheveled, torn, and without a stick of baggage. I thought a railway hotel would be my best chance. I stood under the lamp and dived for my wallet, just to make sure how much money I had.
My wallet was gone.
XLI
Dr. Monk was having a most uncomfortable quarter of an hour. He sat on one side of the library table and looked across it at his old friend Mr. Carthew, who was not looking at him in at all a friendly manner. At the end of the table stood Anna Lang, one arm resting on the back of the chair from which she had just risen. She was very pale. The other arm hung at her side, the hand white and ringless.
Mr. Carthew thumped the table.
“What cock-and-bull story is this?” he- said in a loud, intemperate voice.
“My dear Carthew-”
“I asked you a question, Monk.”
“I can only say-” Dr. Monk was not allowed to say it.
“And I want an answer!” said Mr. Carthew, and thumped again.
Anna Lang stood quite still. She was looking down at the table edge.
“If you will allow me to speak-” said Dr. Monk with some offense.
Mr. Carthew pushed back his chair and flung himself into the corner of it.
“Oh, speak-speak-speak! Let’s have the whole thing out and have done with it!”
“It was on the evening of September the seventeenth,” said Dr. Monk, frowning. “Miss Lang rang me up and told me you’d given her a fright-she said she’d found you unconscious on the floor-she seemed to think you’d had a shock. She asked me to come up and have a look at you. I came along at once, and in the street just outside Turner’s I saw Car Fairfax.”
Mr. Carthew snorted.
“In the dark?” he said.
“Really, Carthew! He was holding a torch for a man who was doing something to his car. Just as I passed, the man reached up for the torch, and as he took it, the light shone in Car’s face.”
“Go on,” said Mr. Carthew combatively.
“I came up here. Miss Lang told me that you didn’t remember anything at all about your attack.”
Mr. Carthew snorted again.
“I didn’t remember anything about it because I never had it!”
Anna went on looking at the edge of the table. Her black lashes lay without moving upon the pale, even skin of her cheek.
Dr. Monk, leaning a little forward upon the arms of his chair, cleared his throat and went on:
“I found you sleeping comfortably”-Mr. Carthew gave a loud, angry laugh-“but Miss Lang was in a state of considerable distress. She had found the library window open. I came in her
e with her to see whether anything had been taken.”
“Well?” said Mr. Carthew explosively.
Dr. Monk turned in his chair and pointed past Anna at the tall bureau which stood between the windows.
“That top drawer was open. Some one had been rummaging in it-the papers had all been turned about, and your check-book was lying across the top of them, open.”
“Is that all?”
“No,” said Dr. Monk. “No-not quite. I pulled down the flap of the bureau, and some one had been making hay there too-everything had been turned out of the pigeon-holes, and your keys were lying straggling on the top of the pile.”
Mr. Carthew got very red in the face.
“And why wasn’t I told all this before, pray?”
Dr. Monk looked uncomfortably at Anna. She spoke for the first time, in a low, colorless voice.
“I said I would tell you.” She paused, then repeated, “I told Dr. Monk that I would tell you.”
“I thought Miss Lang had told you,” said Dr. Monk. He hesitated a little. “I didn’t think that I should refer to what might be a-a-well, a painful family matter.”
“Painful!” said Mr. Carthew angrily. “Family!”-more angrily still-“Upon my word, Monk-a painful family matter! What put it into your head that there was anything painful-what? Or that it concerned my family? I say what put such a thing into your head?”
Dr. Monk sat back in his chair. He had said his say, and was glad to get it over. He saw no reason for holding anything back now.
“Miss Lang’s distress,” he said. “When I mentioned having seen her cousin, she was-er-very much affected. It was impossible not to notice it, impossible not to draw one’s conclusions-especially when she begged me not to tell any one that I had seen Car Fairfax.”
Mr. Carthew turned towards Anna, rapping sharply on the table.
“Why was that? Why did you ask him that?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna in a whisper.
“You did ask Monk not to tell any one he had seen Car?”
“Yes.”
“Why? You must know why you did it! Come-out with it-what!”
Anna drew a long sighing breath. It seemed to send a tremor over her from head to foot.
“I was afraid.”
“What were you afraid of? Of Car?” He laughed harshly. “You won’t ask me to believe that, I hope?”
“Not of him--for him,” said Anna.
“Good Lord! Can’t you speak up?” A mounting exasperation big fair to choke his utterance.
With a sudden tragic gesture Anna hid her face in her hands.
“Oh!” she said. Her breath caught on a sob. “I was- afraid-afraid-he-” Her voice stopped.
“Out with it!” said Mr. Carthew. “Say what you were afraid of and have done with it-what!”
“I can’t,” said Anna, only just audibly.
Dr. Monk looked reproachfully across the table. Very affecting, this distress. Young scamp in a scrape. Lovely, tender-hearted girl. Old playfellow. Very distressing and affecting.
Mr. Carthew restrained himself, moderated his voice, and controlled a strong desire to take his niece by the shoulders and shake her.
“What were you afraid of?”
Anna shrank, but made no sound.
“You thought Car was a thief? Car Fairfax -your cousin- my nephew-a thief-what? You let Dr. Monk think so? You want to make me believe that he stole the Queen Anne bow? What, I say-what?”
Anna’s hands dropped from her face. Her face was wet.
Then she heard a sound from behind the heavy leather screen that masked the door. The door was opening-some one was coming in. She turned blindly to the window.
William came in with a note. She heard her uncle say,
“What’s this-what? I’m busy.” And then, with an exclamation, “No, not in here-the study!”
William’s footsteps retreated. She heard Mr. Carthew jerk himself up.
“I’ll say good morning, Monk. I’ve got business waiting for me, and you’d better be getting along-what? Leave her to find her tongue.”
He went out, taking Dr. Monk with him.
A faint wonder as to what was happening crept into her mind and disturbed it. She stood looking out, her thought clearing momentarily. She had felt a real fear under her uncle’s battering questions. A sense of having come to an end was upon her. Anna Lang was dead. She would never live here again. She would never see Car again. It was all over. Everything would go on without her after this. They would not remember her, or be troubled by anything that she had done. Car would not remember her when he had married Isobel. She couldn’t touch him, really. Burning up from the depths of her, came the desire to reach him, touch him, hurt him-force him to remember her. Like cold drops of this burning, fell the thought, “I shall never see him again.”
She heard the door open behind her, and turned from the window.
Car Fairfax was coming into the room.
XLII
Car Fairfax ’s diary:
When I found my money was gone, there was only one thing to do, and that was to get away from streets and paving-stones and houses, and find somewhere to lie down for an hour.
I was pretty well all in when I reached what I was looking for, a heathery common with clumps of trees here and there. It had kept dry, thank goodness; the damp in the air which had made the roofs wet and slippery a few hours ago had gone. The heather was dry enough. I flung myself down on it and fell into a deep pit of sleep. I didn’t dream and I didn’t move, for I woke in the very same position in which I had thrown myself down.
I opened my eyes and sat up feeling stiff, dirty, and ragingly hungry. I must have slept for a good many hours, for by the sun it was getting on for ten o’clock.
There was a sun shining over low mist. Some of the heather was still in bloom, the rest burnt red and brown. There were birches here and there, and young pines lifting out of the mist. The sky overhead was a very jolly pale blue. I glanced at my wrist watch. It was ten minutes to ten.
I did my best to clean myself up. My suit was in a frightful state. Besides the tear I knew about, there was another on the outside of my left sleeve. My hands looked as if I’d been cleaning a chimney with them. I found all that the drought had left of a pond, and got the worst of the grime off my face and hands. Then I had to find out where I was and get to Linwood.
I got there at eleven, and walked up to the front door feeling a good deal like a tramp. I wondered who would answer the bell. I was most awfully pleased when I saw William, because of course every one in the house might have changed for all I knew.
William hadn’t changed a bit-same red hair, same freckles, same crooked nose. He seemed most awfully pleased to see me.
I had looked at my watch just before I rang the bell, and I thought that if it was eleven o’clock, I had better give Anna her message from Arbuthnot Markham before I did anything else, because she’d probably be catching the twelve-fifteen, so I asked for her.
He said she was in the library, and then put in,
“Mr. Carthew’s just gone into the study, sir. Shall I tell him you’re here?”
I said, “No, wait a minute. I want to see Miss Anna first.” And then I crossed the hall and opened the library door.
Anna was over by the window. I got the impression that she had turned round in a hurry, and I’m sure I was the last person in the world she was expecting to see. She looked as if she had been crying.
I shut the door behind me and walked over to her.
“Good morning, Anna,” I said.
She didn’t say anything for a moment. She looked at me. I think she was trying to register shock, or something of that sort-or perhaps, for once in a way, she wasn’t trying.
Come to think of it, it really must have been a bit of a shock to see me walk in like that, when she’d been picturing me safely put away in a nice quiet police cell.
“How did you get here?” she said at last.
“On my f
eet,” I answered; and then, “I’ve got a message for you.”
“You have?”
“Yes-from your husband.”
She walked past me when I said that, until she came to Uncle John’s chair with the high carved back. She took hold of it and leaned there.
I went on giving her the message:
“He told me to tell you you’d have to cross alone. He’s gone on. He said some one would meet you. That’s all.”
I didn’t want to stop there and talk to her, so I turned round and began to walk to the door. I hadn’t gone a yard before she called me back.
“Is that all you’ve got to say to me?”
“Yes, that’s all of it-he didn’t tell me anything more. I’ve given you his message.”
She didn’t ask how he had come to tell me that. She stood holding the chair and looking at me across it. She had a bright color in her cheeks, a very bright color. I wished myself well out of the affair.
“A message!” she said in a deep, scornful sort of way. “Haven’t you anything to say to me from yourself?”
“I don’t know that I have, Anna,” I said.
“Nothing?”
“Or too much,” I said.
She pushed the chair away from her.
“Say it then!” she said violently.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Why should I? You’d better be thinking about catching your train.”
“There’s time for that,” said Anna-“and there’s time for us to talk.”
I looked at my watch.
“Not so very much, if you’re going to leave Croydon at three.” I didn’t say it to provoke her. She hadn’t even got her hat on, and I thought she’d better not miss that train.
She took offense of course. I don’t know why, because she couldn’t really think I should have anything to say which she would enjoy hearing.
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