“S’sh!” This was to Mally. To the telephone Mr. Mooring remarked courteously, “Hallo!”
Mally darted to his side, covered the mouthpiece with her hand, and whispered fiercely.
“You haven’t seen me—you don’t know where I am! Do you hear?”
Roger glared.
“You’re tickling. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mally still clutched the mouthpiece.
“You haven’t seen me since last night!”
The whisper tickled again. Then she let go of the telephone and clutched Roger’s arm instead. Faintly she heard what he was hearing—faintly but quite distinctly.
“Is Mr. Mooring——”
“Speaking.” Roger’s voice still sounded annoyed.
“Oh, Mooring, it’s Sir George Peterson. We—we are concerned about Miss Lee. Do you happen to have seen her?”
Mally’s fingers sank into Roger’s arm in one of the hardest pinches he had ever felt. He threw her a raging glance and said stiffly:
“She dined with me last night.”
Again the thread of sound that was yet so unmistakably Sir George’s voice, suavely pleasant:
“My dear Mooring, it’s a very delicate matter. We’re all deeply concerned. Er—have you seen Miss Lee to-day?”
Roger jerked the arm that Mally was pinching.
“Why do you ask?”
“Well”—hesitation—“Well, Mooring——”
“What is it?” Roger was becoming exasperated.
“Well, the fact is that something very unpleasant has happened. Miss Lee is a very charming girl, and we all took a great fancy to her—my sister especially. And now, I’m sorry to say, we have all received a shock, a very severe shock.”
Mally’s little nose wrinkled. Her lips formed the word “Beast,” but it remained unspoken.
“What has happened?” It seemed to Roger that it was about time that some one told him. He put the question with a good deal of force.
“Er”—hesitation again—“Really, Mooring, it’s extremely painful to me to have to tell you.”
“What has happened?”
“I will ask you to believe that I’m very hard hit about it all. I could have sworn—but there, one doesn’t know what the temptation may have been.”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at.”
“Well, the fact is I haven’t liked coming to the point. But I’ve got to. Here it is, Mooring. My sister yesterday missed a very valuable ornament containing a jewel known as the Mogul” Diamond. Naturally, no one would have dreamed of connecting Miss Lee with its disappearance, but——” The voice stopped.
“What do you mean by ‘but’?” said Roger Mooring slowly. Mally’s fingers still gripped his arm; he thought they shook as he asked the question.
The voice took up its thread of speech again:
“No one would have suspected Miss Lee if a valuable paper had not disappeared this morning in circumstances which made it impossible that any one else could have taken it. She was searched by my sister’s maid in my sister’s presence, and I regret to say that the Mogul Diamond was found in her possession.”
“What?”
“The diamond was found in Miss Lee’s possession. Believe me, I would rather it had never been found at all.”
There was a silence. Roger lifted his head and looked at Mally, and Mally let go his arm and went a step backwards. If Roger could look at her like that, he could say what he liked. He could——
Faint, very faint, Sir George’s voice:
“Have you seen Miss Lee? We thought she might go to you. Have you seen her?”
“No!” Roger said the word sharply; and as he said it, he thrust the receiver violently back upon its hook.
Mally put her hand out as if she were pushing something away. She said “Roger!” in an angry, shaking voice. Then she stamped her foot and burst into tears.
Roger went on looking at her in a dazed, horrified way. He did not say anything, because for the life of him he could not think of anything to say; besides, Mally was speaking, and sobbing, and blowing her nose, all at the same time and with the utmost vigor.
“Aren’t you going to do anything? Aren’t you going to take me away? Aren’t you going to get your car? The police may be here at any minute. We ought to have gone ages ago—simply ages. Any one—any one would have known I was here from the way you spoke to the wretch. Roger!”
Still Roger did not speak.
Small causes sometimes produce quite big results. Shakespeare, Bacon, or Another has remarked on this. It is nevertheless true. If a tuft of Mally’s hair had not hung down over her left eye; if her hat had been poised at its usual becoming angle; and if she had been less drastic in her treatment of a blue Bristol bottle with a gilt filagree top, Roger Mooring would have been less disposed to believe her guilty in the matter of the Mogul Diamond.
“Roger!” said Mally again. There was command, not appeal, in her voice. Perhaps if she had appealed—but she was much too angry to appeal.
She rolled her wet handkerchief into a tight ball, thrust it deep into her coat pocket, winked the last hot tear away, and read Roger’s distrust in Roger’s face.
Up to this moment she had merely thought him maddeningly, idiotically slow; now she saw quite plainly that this slowness was deliberate. He didn’t go and get the car, because he didn’t mean to go and get the car. He didn’t want to take her to Curston. He didn’t want to do anything. He believed Sir George. It had simply never occurred to Mally that Roger would believe Sir George. Roger—he ought to be stamping up and down, using up his very best vocabulary on the entire Peterson household. Alternatively, he ought to be sprinting, simply sprinting, for his car. He wasn’t doing either of these things; he was standing there looking at her with gloomy suspicion.
The room waved up and down under Mally’s feet for a moment. It felt odd, just like being on a ship; all that glitter and sheen of glass ran, and dazzled, and rocked soundlessly. She turned very white, and took three little, careful steps sideways until she came to the table and could catch hold of it. She held the table-edge with one hand and the other, groping, came down on a tall white translucent lustre. The pendants jangled. Mally’s hand closed hard on one of them, and the sharp edge of it cut her palm. The room stopped waving up and down. She faced Roger Mooring and said in a whisper:
“How dare you? Oh, how dare you?”
“Mally!”
“Don’t speak to me! You believe him—I saw you believing him!”
“Mally, why did you do it?”
At this point it becomes impossible to excuse Mally’s actions. She said “Oh!” with a little furious gasp; a wild and whirling rage descended on her like a cyclone. She pulled off her engagement ring and threw it with a remarkably good aim straight at Roger’s face. It hit him on the left cheek-bone, and the diamond drew blood. He swore, and Mally picked up the tall white lustre that had cut her hand.
Roger plunged forward with a shout:
“Look out! Look out! You’ll break something!”
“I’m going to,” said Mally, and flung the lustre with a crash into the midst of the crowded table.
There was an awful shattering sound, the ring and tinkle of falling glass, and hard upon it the slamming bang of the door.
Roger Mooring wiped the blood from his cheek and surveyed the ruins of Lady Catherine Cray’s collection.
CHAPTER XIII
Sir George Peterson turned from the telephone and said briskly:
“She’s there. He lied about it, of course—but damned badly. She’s certainly there.”
“What next? The police?”
“My good Paul! No, get on to Makins and Poole. Tell ’em it’s a confidential matter. Tell ’em about the diamond, and say we don’t want to prosecute in deference to my sister’s feelings, but we’ve reason to believe she’s gone off with important private papers, and we must have ’em back. Offer a reward that will ginger ’em up without making ’em
suspicious. Tell ’em to put a real good man on to the job. And, above all, no publicity.”
Mally Lee ran all the way down the stairs from Lady Catherine’s flat, and when she came out into the dark, wet street, she ran as far as the corner, where she hailed a bus and got the last inside seat. It was only half a seat really, because a very large lady, with a string bag and a beaded mantle trimmed with aged rabbit fur, billowed voluminously over two-thirds of the bench.
Mally sat on the edge and got back her breath. She paid her fare to the conductor, took her ticket, and put it inside her purse. It had for company a half-crown, a shilling, three pence and a bent farthing. Mally shut the purse. She had three and nine-pence farthing in the world.
What can you do with three and ninepence farthing, when the police are after you and you have simply got to get away and hide? How far can you get with three and ninepence farthing?
Mally bit her lip, because the answer was certainly, “Not nearly far enough.”
When her pennyworth was up, she got out of the bus, and watched it go rumbling and clattering away, with something of the same feeling with which a marooned sailor watches his departing ship. She was at the junction of two streets—one dark and quiet, the other more brightly lighted and full of the roar of traffic. She did not know the names of either of these streets, and she had no idea where she was.
She began to walk down the darker street because it occurred to her that if she stood still, people would notice her and wonder what she was doing. She walked as far as the next crossing, and then turned back again because the road ahead had a deserted look and instinct turned her towards the lights. She walked slowly and tried to think. It was raining, with the sort of icy rain which might turn to snow at any moment; it was very cold.
Mally reached the lighted corner, turned it, and walked on down the street. It was about seven hours since she had had anything to eat. Every time she began to think about her plans, irrelevant visions of hot soup, and penny buns, and muffins, and buttered eggs, and mince pies, kept bobbing up and down and interrupting her train of thought.
It was because of this confusion in her mind that she did not at first perceive that she was being followed. She was waiting on the curb to let the incoming traffic from a side road go by, when some one whispered in her ear. The whisper was sound, not words, to Mally. She said involuntarily, “I beg your pardon,” and turned her head.
A man was standing quite close to her, smiling; and at the sight of his smile Mally ran in front of a taxi, dodged round a bus, collided violently with a stout old gentleman, and narrowly missing a private car, arrived breathlessly on the opposite pavement and fled along it without looking back. She was angry, but she was also frightened. No one had ever looked at her like that before, and it filled her with a shuddering rage.
When she had run about twenty yards, she took a pull on herself and slowed to a walk. “You little fool—little idiot! You’re not to run. You’ll make every one look at you. Stop at once and walk properly.”
She stopped, and began to walk properly. It wasn’t very easy, because she was feeling creepy-crawly all down her back with the thought of what might be coming up behind her. “You’re not to look round—it’s the worst thing you can do—you mustn’t do it.” And at once she did look round. The man with the smile was about a dozen yards behind. Mally’s heart gave a loud, hard thump, and she began to run again.
This part of the street was rather empty. There were houses on either side, which showed no lights; the shops were all shut; and there did not seem to be a policeman anywhere. Mally was fleet of foot, and the man behind her not desirous of making himself conspicuous by running. His idea was to wait until she was out of breath and then come up with her comfortably. It was quite a good idea, but Mally spoiled it by taking cover just as her breath really did begin to fail. She saw, on her right, three steps leading up to an open doorway from which a light was shining. A light meant people, and people meant safety. That, at least, was the way in which it looked to Mally.
She ran up the steps and into a paved and empty hall from which a stone stair wound upwards. There was no one there, and there was no sign of a lift. But it was at least a place where she might take breath. Perhaps the creature who was following would think she lived there and go away.
The thought had hardly come and gone before he was peering round the door. Without an instant’s hesitation Mally ran up the stairs. Once started, she was quite unable to stop. The stair went up and round, and round and up, and up and round again. There were doors with names on them, but Mally never paused to see what the names might be. She ran with all the desperate energy of panic until she had reached the very topmost floor, and there—oh, joy!—was a door that stood ajar.
Mally leaned against the jamb and panted. Her legs felt like the dangling legs of a marionette; they shook and threatened to give way beneath her. She held on to the jamb, and from inside the room she heard a murmuring voice repeating strange words in a sort of fervent whisper. It was a man’s voice, and the words sounded, as Mally said afterwards, “utterly balmy.”
“Spatial,” said the voice in earnest tones. “Spatial; glacial; racial; facial; palatial.” A deep groan followed.
Mally pushed the door a little wider and beheld an attic room, a littered table, and a young man in his shirt-sleeves sitting before a pile of smudgy manuscript. The right-hand cuff of the young man’s shirt was in an extremely disintegrated condition, and would certainly have fallen off if it had not been secured to the sleeve by no fewer than three black safety pins.
The oddness of seeing three black safety pins together had an extremely calming and reassuring effect upon Mally. She stepped into the room, closed the door behind her, and said “Please.”
The young man lifted his head. He bore an astonishing resemblance to a half-grown sandy cat, and it was out of eyes of a milky blue that he looked vaguely at Mally and repeated tentatively:
“Peaks glacial; æther spatial; torrents facial.”
There was a slight tinge of defiance about the last word; the pale-blue eyes held a hint of obstinacy.
“Torrents what?” said Mally. She was now feeling completely reassured. This was an authentic poet in an authentic garret, and poet and garret were both as harmless as could be.
“Facial,” said the young man. “I said facial.”
“I know you said it. But what on earth does it mean?”
“It means torrents that run down the face of rocks.”
Mally sat down on a very rickety chair and began to laugh.
“Torrents do run down the face of rocks,” protested the injured poet.
Mally groped in her coat pocket for her handkerchief. It was still soaking wet with the tears of rage which she had shed in the flat. She made it a little wetter still with tears of pure laughter. Then she shook her head.
“Ah,” said the poet moodily. “It’s always the same. Anything original, anything distinctive, and the disintegrating tooth of destructive criticism battens on it—positively battens.”
“Don’t!” said Mally. “Don’t!” She clutched her side. It was better to laugh than to cry. But she didn’t really want to do either; she wanted something to eat.
The young man took up his pile of manuscript and cast it passionately on the floor.
“All right—have it your own way—have it your own way! Why do I write? Why does any one write? What’s the good of it? Why didn’t I go into an office?”
“I don’t know,” said Mally politely.
With startling suddenness the injured poet became a humanly inquisitive young man. He looked at Mally as though seeing her for the first time, said “Hallo!” in a puzzled tone, and inquired:
“I say, do you want anything?”
“Yes,” said Mally, “I want something to eat.”
“Something to eat?”
Mally repeated her remark in tones of most creditable firmness:
“Something to eat—E—A—T, eat.”
> The poet’s mouth dropped open on one side. It was ten o’clock at night; Castleby was out, and wouldn’t be back this side of midnight; he, Wilfrid, was alone, absolutely alone and unprotected; and here was a strange girl blowing in from nowhere at all and wanting something to eat. It was a most extraordinary situation. It was so extraordinary that the glacial peaks, the spatial æther, and all the rest of it faded away and were not.
For one insane moment Wilfrid Witherby actually wished that his Aunt Judith were present. His nerve failed him and, reverting to the stammer so severely checked by Aunt Judith in his childhood, he said:
“What s-s-s-sort of thing t-to eat?”
A hopeful gleam brightened in Mally’s eye.
“Anything. I’m starving.”
“St-t-tarving!”
“Yes. I am. Have you any soup—or coffee—or sardines—or—or bully beef—or buns? Because I could eat them all.”
“B-b—buns?”
“Anything,” said Mally desperately. She began to have a low opinion of his intelligence.
“We haven’t got any b-b-buns.”
Mally sprang up and beat her hands together.
“Don’t keep on saying buns, or I shall scream. Have you got anything to eat, or haven’t you?”
“C-c-castleby has some b-b-biscuits.”
Mally uttered a cry of joy.
“Where are they?”
As in a trance, Mr. Witherby rummaged in a corner of the room and produced a tin box without a lid. He set it on the table.
“They’re g-g-gingernuts. Castleby likes ginger-nuts. Personally I think they’re foul.”
Mally drew the rickety chair up to the littered table and began to eat gingernuts. They were not good gingernuts, being soft and no longer in their first youth; but there were plenty of them. Mally ate about a pound and a half, and then demanded something to drink.
“There isn’t anything to drink.”
Wilfrid had recovered his speech, but was still conscious of feeling rather dazed. Whilst Mally ate biscuits, he watched her with a fixed stare and the feeling that the whole thing was probably part of one of his odder dreams, and that at any moment Mally might melt into thin air or dissolve into somebody else.
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