Juliet Armstrong - Isle of the Hummingbird

by Juliet Armstrong

  'Did you get the police on the phone?'

  Bryony shook her head. 'It's out of order. When I've managed to see who they are I shall creep across to Laura's and get her to let me use her phone.'

  'Well, I think you're mad,' Sally told her. 'But I'm coming with you.'

  'No!' Bryony's tone, though low, was vehement. 'You're to do nothing of the kind. I absolutely forbid you.'

  And she went quietly into Peregrine's room, and opening a drawer in his desk, took out the small revolver he had once shown her.

  If only Peregrine was here, she thought—or Hugh. Or even if she could have contacted Solomon, fast asleep, no doubt, in his quarters at the very end of the garden. But it was no good giving in to futile regrets. She must creep along as quietly as she could and see what was happening, and who was down there getting into the surgery building.

  She moved along, noiseless in her thin sandals, the gun held firmly in her hand. She had left her torch behind, for dawn was beginning to streak the sky with gold and rose, and she could see well enough for her purpose.

  It was soon evident that the intruders were now inside the buildings. Indeed, a rim of light showed that the door was ajar. Step by step she came nearer, and peering through the crack, saw two men methodically removing containers from the high shelf where the dangerous drugs were kept.

  One was standing sideways to her, and she recognised him at once—Leoni. The other had his back turned to her, but suddenly, as though a sixth sense told him that he was being watched, he wheeled round. And she saw to her horror that she was looking straight at Hugh.

  CHAPTER TEN

  So great was the shock she could not move. He, too, was startled, but only for a moment. While she still stared at him incredulously, he stepped forward, seized her arm and pulled her into the building, closing the door behind her.

  'Well, my dear,' he said, 'the first thing is to get rid of this.' And with a twist of her wrist he sent the revolver spinning to the floor. 'Now we haven't time to listen to recriminations. But I'm going to put a proposition to you—that you come in with us on this little affair. From the moment I met you I could see you working with me—though I didn't visualise your learning about it in this way. That innocent look————— !' He turned to Leoni. 'Don't you agree, man?'

  Leoni nodded. He didn't seem quite so calm as Hugh, and kept looking at his watch.

  'We're leaving Trinidad tonight,' Hugh went on, 'and going to South America, and I suggest you come with us—and that we get married at the first possible moment. You know the way I feel about you——-'

  She tried to speak, but her lips were dry. She could only stare and stare at him as though she couldn't believe her eyes, couldn't trust her ears.

  'I'm sorry you won't be able to nip back and get that gold bracelet. It's too dangerous. We should be going now.'

  'You've said it.' Leoni's voice was rough—and nervous.

  Bryony managed to speak then.

  She said: 'You must be out of your mind. How could you ever think that I could touch you with a barge-pole, after this?'

  He smiled, not very pleasantly.

  'You're up to your eyes in the affair yourself, my dear,' he told her. 'Those lipstick cases you've got are a little different from ordinary ones. They can hide quite interesting things—interesting from the point of view of the police, that is. And that bracelet—I lifted that, my lovely, from a ship on which I was travelling a year ago, and it's a sure thing Scotland Yard would like to put their hands on it.'

  'You can't frighten me like that.' Bryony had recovered a little by now, and her eyes were angry.

  'Now, listen,' he said. 'You won't come in with us? Well and good. But if you dare betray us to the police you'll regret it.'

  She went white, and he laughed.

  'Oh, no acid-throwing or anything like that. I don't deal in violence. But I shall denounce you to the police—and tell them that you're an illegitimate nobody, posing as being related to a well-known English family. That won't help to establish your innocence.'

  He opened the door.

  'Now go—straight back to the house. Any tricks and you'll be sorry. We shall watch you right into the house—and if you dare switch a light on—;—'

  He stooped and picked up the revolver, pocketed it, and leaning forward, kissed her derisively, before she could shrink away.

  'Whether it's loaded or not, it's a neat little job,' he said. 'But I wouldn't use it to go hunting night intruders again! You've neither the knowledge nor the nerve to fire it—nor even to use it as a threat. And now, off with you.'

  In spite of his words, she expected every moment to get a shot in her back, but she reached the shelter of the house safely and found Sally as she had left her, sitting on her bed.

  'What's happened?' the girl demanded, her teeth literally chattering. 'I thought you were never coming back—though I know it's only a few minutes, really.'

  'It's the longest five minutes I've ever spent,' Bryony told her. 'I found thieves there, all right. Though whether they'll dare to take anything away with them now I can identify them, I don't know.'

  'Will they come up here?' Sally was trembling worse than ever.

  'Not if we stay quietly in the dark. Once we hear their car go we can do something.'

  As she spoke, there was the low sound of a car engine being started up, then a purring noise as it was driven away.

  They waited for a few moments, and then Bryony said quietly: 'I'm going over to telephone from Laura's.'

  'Please let me come too this time. I can't bear to be left alone any more.'

  Bryony hesitated.

  'What about Aunt Isabel?'

  'She'll be all right. Once she gets off to sleep, nothing wakes her before six o'clock.'

  'Very well. Slip something over your pyjamas, and we'll go.

  'We'll go round the back and call through her window,' Bryony said.

  She got the car out, and in three minutes they had left the road and were going up the drive that led to Laura's house.

  It was much lighter now, but the house was wrapped in silence. And then suddenly they caught sight of someone creeping across the grounds from the direction of their own garden. A small thin woman whom Bryony recognised instantly—Lucy!

  She jumped out of the car and ran over to her: saw that she was trying to conceal something which she was holding.

  'What have you got there, Lucy?' she demanded sharply. 'And what are you doing wandering about at this hour?'

  Lucy, stammering excuses, tried to run away, but

  Bryony, certain she was in collusion with Leoni and Hugh, forced her to open her thin little hand, and saw that she was holding a wire-cutter.

  Sally, out of the car by now, exclaimed under her breath: 'She obviously cut our telephone wires. I bet she was going to do the same here. We'd better take her in to Laura.'

  She had hardly finished her sentence when Lucy had, in a split second, taken to her heels and was running across a lawn at the side of the house and forcing her way through a hibiscus hedge bordering a piece of waste ground. She was moving at almost incredible speed, as though her life depended on it, and it would plainly have been impossible to catch up with her. Also it was of far more importance to contact the police.

  Sally ran up to Laura's bedroom window and called through.

  'Mrs. Forrest, it's Sally and Bryony! We've had burglars. We want to telephone.'

  After a short wait and a repeated summons Laura appeared in a dressing-gown, her head in a scarf.

  'Come to the side door and I'll let you in.' She sounded more annoyed and incredulous than frightened. And when they were inside and the door shut behind them, she asked shortly why they hadn't telephoned from their own house.

  'Because our wires have been cut,' Sally told her, equally curtly. 'So would yours have been, in a minute—by Lucy. We just stopped her.'

  'Lucy? There you are!' Laura flung Bryony an indignant glance. 'Anyway, let's not waste time. The te
lephone's here in the passage.'

  In a few moments Bryony, to her deep relief, was in touch with someone at the police station, and having reported that she had found two men in the dispensary, stealing drugs, and that yes, she could give a description of them, she was informed that a police car would be up at the house as quickly as possible.

  'Meanwhile,' she was asked, 'can you give us any other helpful details?'

  'One of the men came from Polydore's boutique,' she told them. 'His name is Leoni.' And then, ignoring the gasp that came from Sally, she went on: 'They told me that they were leaving for South America.'

  'Which means, of course, that they'll go somewhere else,' the man barked, and rang off.

  'Why didn't you tell them that this woman Lucy was in league with them?' Laura asked sharply. 'Not still trying to protect her, are you?'

  'They didn't give me time,' Bryony said, controlling herself with an effort. And then turning to Sally, who was as white as a ghost, she said, in a very different tone: 'Come along, darling. We've left Aunt Isabel alone in the house for long enough.'

  'I'd better come with you and see you're all right.' Laura, too, had changed her tone. 'I owe that to Peregrine.'

  But Bryony had had enough. She wasn't going to tell the police about Hugh with Laura Forrest there, listening.

  'No, thank you,' she said. 'Very kind of you. But it's not at all necessary. Thank you for your help.' And with that she and Sally went hurrying back to the car.

  On the brief drive home Bryony told Sally in a frozen sort of way that it had been Hugh, of all people, who had been with Leoni in the dispensary, stealing.

  'Bryony, are you sure?' Sally was aghast. 'Did you see him properly?'

  'I did. And talked to him. Now I have to talk about him to the police.'

  Sally let out a groan.

  'But, Bryony, how frightful!'

  'Well, it must have been a shock for you when I told the police about Leoni.'

  'It was. But I already knew quite a lot about him.

  And though I was sort of fascinated by him at first, I wasn't in love with him, as you were with Hugh. It's quite a different thing, being attracted—and being in love—I'm sure of it.' And then she added impulsively: 'Darling Bryony, I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am—how sorry, too, that I've been such a pest, given you so much worry.'

  'It's all right, dear. Now we've got to get our brains clear. Let's go into the kitchen and brew some tea.'

  They were still drinking tea in the drawing-room when the police car arrived—and by that time Bryony had heard the whole story of Sally's adventures. How the debonair and amusing Leoni whom she had encountered more or less accidentally at the bar of that little hotel had taken her to a friend's flat, where she had been given what had been described as a perfectly harmless drug—just for a kick. And how, on the second occasion, he had given her a purple heart, which made her happy and very excited, and then, to calm her down, something called a 'blue bomb', and she had stopped singing and dancing and gone fast asleep. It had infuriated everyone that she couldn't keep awake, in spite of threats, and shakings, and water dashed in her face. And she had heard dimly, as she was finally passing out, that a word to the police and it wouldn't be water thrown at her.

  'Well, we've both got to have courage to talk to the police now,' Bryony said, as she opened the veranda door.

  But the first thing the officers wanted was to examine the scene of the burglary. And leaving Sally with Miss Fanier, who had woken up now, and was enquiring nervously what was the matter, she took them up the colonnade and into the dispensary.

  The first thing that aroused their comment was that the lock of the door of the building had not been forced, nor that of the dispensary itself. Someone, at some time, had taken wax impressions; there were traces of this at the keyholes. It had probably been done within the last day or two, they said—and Bryony remembered then how she had left Hugh alone for a few minutes while fetching him the brandy-and-soda for which he had asked. What a fool she had been!

  Then they took notes, with Bryony helping them as best she could, of what had been stolen.

  'And now,' the senior officer asked, 'can you describe the intruders to us?'

  'I can even tell you who they are,' Bryony said, trying hard to keep her voice steady. 'Leoni—you know about him already. The other man is called Hugh Woods, and he is a representative for Mills and Mills, wholesale chemists of London.'

  The man nodded.

  'We know the fellow. Wanted badly in Rio for drug- peddling. We've already got our people watching at the airport and down at the harbour. They won't get out of the island very easily.'

  'What about the Polydore boutique?' Bryony asked. 'You've been keeping an eye on that, I know.'

  'They've cleared out of that—without making it at all obvious they'd gone. Incidentally, a coloured girl who's a servant round here seems to have been working for them.'

  'She certainly has. We caught her with a wire-cutter in her hand. She'd dealt with our telephone, and was on her way to fix things at the house nearest to us—the house where she happens to be employed. She ran off, and we couldn't follow her.'

  The man who had been taking fingerprints came up to his superior now.

  'Too many different fingerprints to be much good,' he said. 'At least I'm afraid so. But I've done what I can.'

  'Good. Then we'll leave you now, Miss————— '

  'Moore is my name.'

  'Well, thank you, Miss Moore, for your help. Now you needn't be afraid they'll come back here. Their one idea will be to get out of Trinidad. So we'll leave you for the present, and contact you later in the morning.'

  And with that they took their departure.

  It was an exhausted trio that met for breakfast next morning—Aunt Isabel, for once in a way, preferring the company of Bryony and Sally to her own at this meal.

  None had had any more sleep, and still felt that they were living in a nightmare.

  'We shall have to have police protection,' Aunt Isabel declared, making an effort to nibble some toast. 'Without it there'll be no safety for us until those brutes are caught. But to think that Leoni and Hugh, with their good looks and charming manners———————- ! It tempts one to lose all faith in human nature.'

  Bryony reflected sombrely that there seemed little chance of their making a getaway. The police would be watching the airport and harbours, and to hide would be difficult in an island of the size of Trinidad —for any length of time. It was true that at certain points the coast of Trinidad was only a few miles from the Venezuelan mainland, but to cross there would be to find oneself practically in jungle country.

  She could not bring herself to discuss the matter with the others. The less said to Sally the better, she thought, looking across the table and seeing the girl's white face and haunted hazel eyes. And she herself preferred to keep as silent as she could without offending Miss Fanier.

  She would never, she thought, get over the shock of her discovery of Hugh's true character.

  Maybe she hadn't been really in love with him, but she had been very near it, for always there had been in her mind the memory of his kindness and sympathy to her on board ship. For two years she had had, locked up in her heart, what she had felt was the disgrace of her birth, had refused stubbornly to discuss it even with her adoptive mother—the woman to whom she owed so much.

  It was Hugh who had helped to break down that hard streak in her, with his light assurance that she was absurd to worry over something so unimportant— that no man who loved her would think less of her because she had been born out of wedlock.

  And to find now that he was capable of one of the worst crimes possible—of making money from the eventual degradation of people too weak or too foolish to withstand the lure of 'drugs for a kick'!

  She felt terribly sorry for Solomon when he came, pop-eyed, to clear the table. He was bound to hear, sooner or later, of Lucy's share in the raiding of the dispensary—and p
oor Tina, too!

  Recalling that occasion when May Wicker had seen Hugh bestowing a tip on Lucy's children, she could work out very well what had been happening. But how unfortunate that she had persuaded Laura to keep her on. What an idiot people would think her, when Laura spread that around.

  Armed with the knowledge she now had, she could look back on her friendship with Hugh, and call herself a complete simpleton. There were so many tiny incidents which would have roused her suspicions, had she not been half in love with him. Some happenings, indeed, had done so, but he had been so plausible in his explanations.

  His choosing to dance with the Venezuelan woman, for instance, after having spoken of her in the most contemptuous terms. His being met at the airport by Leoni, on the occasion of the Gilberts' Carnival visit. The fact that he had lied about the value of the gold and pearl bracelet he had given her.

  The thought of that gift brought her to a swift decision. When the police reappeared, she asked to see the senior officer alone for a moment, and handed him over, with a quick explanation, the bracelet, and the box of cosmetic containers which Hugh had brought her as a present.

  He thanked her quietly and pocketed them without comment; then told her that he and his men wanted to make a further examination of the outside of the house, and of the interior of the surgery building before any sweeping or dusting was done.

  After an hour's search, during which a number of onlookers had turned up from nowhere to stand in the road and peer through the gates, the police moved on to Laura's house, and Bryony and May Wicker, who was still almost speechless with horror and amazement at the news which had greeted her on her arrival, started to think about clearing up the disorder in the dispensary.

  May's first terrible fear was that she was responsible for the thieves getting in so easily. She couldn't have locked up properly. Why, there wasn't a sign of damage on the keyholes!

  Shown the remains of the wax, she now felt free to cry a little over the revelation of Hugh's infamy.