by Molly Thynne
“I’m sorry, Gillie,” she said, in a voice of mingled distress and perplexity. “I didn’t know you were using it.”
Then her bewilderment changed to surprised recognition.
“Why …” she began, then her voice trailed away into silence.
Lady Dalberry, looking over her shoulder, took in the scene. Instead of being shrouded in dust-sheets, as were all the other rooms on that landing, the nursery was quite obviously in use. It was, as Dalberry had said, a shabby room, but, with the bright fire burning in the grate and the flowers on the much-used round table in the middle, it looked a comfortable one.
And in a big armchair by the fire, a book on her lap and a cigarette between her lips, sat a woman. Lady Dalberry did not miss the look of consternation that Carol’s unexpected entrance brought to her face or the quick, desperate signal which had passed between her and the girl, and had frozen Carol’s exclamation on her lips.
Lady Dalberry was the first of the little party to recover herself.
“I am sorry, Gillie,” she said. “I am afraid that we intrude.”
Dalberry stepped forward.
“Not a bit,” he said quickly. “I’m sure Miss Bruce will excuse us. May I introduce my aunt, Lady Dalberry, and Miss Summers? They wanted to have a look at the old nursery,” he explained.
Then, to Lady Dalberry:
“Miss Bruce is painting the gardens here. She was staying at the lodge, but a burst pipe flooded her out of hearth and home yesterday, and she was obliged to take refuge here. I’m afraid it is rather a makeshift shelter.”
“It would make an excellent studio,” said Miss Bruce. “I wish now I hadn’t left my canvases down at the lodge,” she added swiftly, as though aware of the words that were hovering on Lady Dalberry’s lips.
“I am so sorry,” exclaimed Lady Dalberry regretfully. “I should have so liked to see Miss Bruce’s work. You must show it to me sometime, Gillie.”
“I will,” he assured her, with what seemed to Miss Bruce almost unnecessary fervour.
“Will Miss Bruce not join us at tea?” went on his aunt, her eyes on that lady’s face.
“I’ve just had my tea, I’m afraid,” she said quickly. “And now I must go down to the lodge and rescue some of my things.”
“Then we will leave you in peace,” said Lady Dalberry graciously. “Come, Carol.”
They were a silent party as they made their way down the corridor. At the head of the stairs Lady Dalberry halted, a malicious sparkle in her eyes.
“I am afraid we were indiscreet, Gillie,” she murmured. “You should have warned us.”
Dalberry flushed a rich brick red.
“Not at all, Aunt Irma. She’s very busy, and I wasn’t sure that she wanted to be disturbed, that’s all. I tried to make her join us at lunch, but she wouldn’t. The lodge was in such a state that I had to offer to take her in.”
For the next hour he tried in vain to get Carol for a moment to himself, but Lady Dalberry, wittingly or unwittingly, frustrated him at every turn. It was not until, just as the motor came round, Carol announced her intention of saying good-bye to Nurse Gibbs that he managed to slip away after her, leaving Lady Dalberry struggling with her various wraps in the hall. In desperation he slipped the bolt in the baize door that separated the hall from the servants’ quarters. He found Carol waiting in the passage beyond.
“I say, Carol, I’ve got to explain,” he began urgently.
To his relief there was only amusement in Carol’s eyes. “Gillie darling! why on earth did you say she was an artist? My dear old donkey, haven’t you got eyes in your head? It wouldn’t have taken in a child.”
“You recognized her, then?”
“Of course I recognized her. Mrs. Verrall isn’t the sort of person one forgets. Why on earth didn’t you warn me?”
“I never dreamed we should go into that room. And, come to that, what would you have called her if you’d been in my place?”
Carol’s shoulders shook with amusement.
“I must say she played up beautifully, but if you could have seen yourself solemnly introducing her as an artist to Aunt Irma! It was the most transparent thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, how else was I to introduce a woman who looked like nothing on earth but a cinema vamp? Joking apart, do you think our aunt recognized her?”
“I don’t know, but I didn’t like her manner. She’s extraordinarily difficult to fathom sometimes. She only saw her for a moment that day she found me speaking to her on the landing outside the flat, and it’s quite likely she wouldn’t know her again. Whether she did or not, I shall have a horrid drive home, Gillie. She’ll make the most abominable insinuations against you all the way, and I shan’t know how to defend you.”
“Don’t you want to know how Mrs. Verrall got here?” asked Dalberry gently. He had realized suddenly that Carol was taking this astonishingly well.
She laughed.
“Were you waiting for me to ‘feature’ jealous rage?” she asked. “I’m not quite a fool, Gillie dear. Jasper told me he had seen Mrs. Verrall, and that he thought there really might be something in her accusations against Mr. de Silva. I can see his hand behind this. Are you supposed to be hiding her from Mr. de Silva? Because, if so, you’re not doing it very well. If Aunt Irma did recognize her she’ll tell him about her within the next few hours.”
“De Silva’s tracked her already. That’s why I had to move her from the South Lodge. I’ll tell you all about it when we’ve more time. But I’m afraid I’ve made a hash of things.”
Carol’s face was very serious.
“I should get her up to London to-night, if you don’t want him to find her. He’s too clever not to guess that you’d move her to the house, and even if Aunt Irma didn’t recognize her, he’ll smell a rat when she tells him about the woman she found here.”
Dalberry saw Lady Dalberry and Carol into their car and watched it disappear down the drive. Then he had a short interview with Mrs. Verrall. He found her only mildly perturbed by what had happened, but he realized that she had no reason to connect either of her visitors with de Silva. She was more than anxious, however, to accompany him to London. Since the telegram she had received that morning her one idea had been to get away from Berrydown.
He gave the other car an hour’s start before leaving for London. His car was a closed one, and he did not switch on the light inside. It would be practically impossible for any one to see the face of his passenger provided she sat well back in her seat.
He did not leave the park by the usual gate, but drove round by the South Lodge. There he stopped to say a word to the rather surprised old woman who opened the gate to him.
“This is your busy day, Mrs. Baker,” he said pleasantly. “It isn’t often you have to open this gate twice in one day.”
“That it isn’t, my lord,” she answered. “It’s seldom enough any one uses it now. Very worried, her ladyship was this morning. She lost her way, seemingly, comin’ from the church.”
“I expect she admired the garden.”
“Lovely, she said it was. She asked me if I ever let my room at all, seein’ that the lodge is bigger than most. Bearin’ in mind what your lordship said to me this mornin’, I told her I had had a lodger, an artist lady, but that she’d left this mornin’ early.”
“Did she ask where the lady had gone?”
“Yes, she did; and very disappointed she was when I said I couldn’t rightly tell her. It seems that she thought it might be a friend of hers as had talked of comin’ down to these parts.”
“Well, I shall be seeing her again to-morrow, and I can explain,” said Dalberry easily. “Thank you, Mrs. Baker.”
He glanced behind him. Mrs. Verrall, who had not missed a word of the little dialogue, was leaning forward, her face white and startled in the light from the lamp.
CHAPTER XX
Somewhat to Carol’s relief, Lady Dalberry seemed to have reverted to the mood in which she had started from London, and preserv
ed a rather morose silence all through the first part of the journey back to town. Then, just as Carol was beginning to congratulate herself on having avoided the dangerous topic of Mrs. Verrall, Lady Dalberry became as talkative as she had been taciturn before.
She opened the ball by asking Carol point-blank whether she had ever heard any rumours of Dalberry’s entanglement with the “extraordinary woman” they had seen that afternoon. Carol’s suggestion that Miss Bruce was merely what she seemed, an artist who had been staying at the lodge, she greeted with polite incredulity.
“When you have reached my age, my dear,” she assured her, “you will recognize such a situation when you see it. Our poor Gillie’s explanation was amusingly unconvincing. I am afraid he is leading a wilder life than we either of us realized.”
Carol suppressed a smile with difficulty. Annoyed though she felt, she could not help being amused at Lady Dalberry’s tone of solicitude.
“If Miss Bruce is what you think, he would hardly have put her into the least presentable room in the house,” she suggested.
“It is the room we were least likely to look into.”
The truth of this was so incontrovertible that Carol was reduced to silence.
“I have only just learned what happened at the Terpsychorean,” went on Lady Dalberry portentously. “Juan de Silva has been admirably discreet, but he let fall something in a careless moment, and I made him tell me exactly what caused the breach between you and Gillie. I can imagine how distressing it was for you, my dear.”
“Gillie was ill, as it afterwards turned out,” said Carol quickly. “If I’d realized that, I should never have deserted him as I did.”
If Lady Dalberry’s object was to antagonize Carol she succeeded admirably. Laying her hand on the girl’s, she patted it gently.
“My poor little Carol,” she murmured, her voice vibrant with emotion, “it is better to face facts now than later, when it is perhaps too late.”
Carol released her hand at the earliest opportunity, and for the rest of the drive the conversation languished.
That night Lady Dalberry departed, as usual, to her club, and Carol spent the evening alone. She felt unaccountably tired, and went early to bed. But she could not sleep. She was happier, she told herself, than she had ever been in her life.
To-morrow she would leave the flat for good, and, once she was at the Carthews’, she and Gillie could meet as often and as freely as they liked. Owing to Lady Dalberry’s vigilance they had been able to make no definite plans for the next day, but she knew that she would find him there when she kept her appointment with Mellish in the afternoon, and they would no doubt spend the evening together.
For a long time she was content to lie awake, absorbed in the thought of her own happiness. It was not until the little clock by her bed struck three that she realized that sleep had become out of the question. She turned on the light and stretched out her hand for a book. The table was empty, and she remembered that she had taken the book she was reading to her sitting-room, meaning to finish it before leaving the flat, and had then spent the evening dreaming in front of the fire.
She got up, slipped on a dressing-gown, and made her way down the passage to her sitting-room to fetch it. She moved softly, fearing to wake Lady Dalberry, whose bedroom she had to pass on her way. The utter stillness of the flat oppressed her, and she instinctively hastened her steps, anxious to get back to the security of her bedroom.
She had reached the door of her aunt’s room when she heard a sound from within that made her stop short and put all thoughts of her errand out of her head.
As she turned the angle of the passage her attention had been caught by the unmistakable sound of her aunt moving about her room. This was now followed by a curious rumbling noise, quite unlike anything she had ever heard in the flat before. In the daytime she might have taken it for the creaking of the lift, but she knew that the lift did not work at night, and besides, owing to the stillness of the flat, it was easy to locate the sound. It came unmistakably from Lady Dalberry’s room.
It was followed by a sharp, metallic click, like the closing of a spring lock.
For a moment Carol stood listening, but the noise was not repeated. Instead, there was utter silence behind the closed door.
She knocked softly. There was no response. And yet, a moment ago, she had heard her aunt moving. She knocked again, more loudly, with the same result.
Then, with a sudden sick feeling of terror, she remembered a burglary that had taken place some time before in the flat below. The thieves had climbed a gutter pipe and had managed to reach a balcony, from which they had got into one of the bedrooms. Supposing her aunt had been attacked and was unable to answer!
She did not dare to knock again, but stood straining her ears for the faintest sound from behind the closed door. But the silence remained unbroken. Since that last metallic click there had been no movement from within the room.
She hesitated for a moment, then, very gently, turned the handle of the door. Even if the thieves were still in the room she might manage to open the door sufficiently to look in without attracting their attention. But the door would not move, and the fact that it was locked only added fuel to her anxiety.
One thing was obvious to her. She could not go back to her room until she had assured herself that all was well with Lady Dalberry. She might, of course, ring for the night porter, but the possibility that she was merely the victim of her own nerves daunted her. She could see the expression of ironical compassion with which Lady Dalberry would greet an unnecessary incursion on her slumbers.
Then she remembered that the balcony outside her aunt’s window ran past her own sitting-room. She hurried back to her bedroom and slipped a dark fur coat over her dressing-gown, then she went down the passage once more and, without switching on the light, felt her way across the sitting-room to the window.
She managed to get the window open with a minimum of noise, though even the slight sound she made in raising the catch seemed to her to re-echo through the flat. Then, moving very carefully, she stepped on to the balcony and peered along it. The rooms lying, as they did, at the back of the house, she had not even the reflected light of the street lamps to help her, but, moving carefully along the dark balcony, she was soon able to assure herself that it was empty. She reached the window of Lady Dalberry’s room confident that she had not made a sound which could have betrayed her. The French window was half-open, and from where she stood she could see almost the whole of the room. All that was cut off from her view was the door into the passage and the wall in which it stood. She could see the door into the dressing-room, which stood open. The room beyond was in darkness, whereas the bedroom was brilliantly lighted, both from a centre lamp and two hanging lights over the dressing-table. Carol, after a moment’s scrutiny, shifted her position so that she could command a view of the whole room, and discovered, to her amazement, that she had been right in her first impression.
The room was empty.
She glanced at the bed. It had not been slept in, and though the fur cloak her aunt usually wore in the evening was lying over a chair, where she had evidently thrown it on coming in, there was no sign that she had removed any of the rest of her clothes. Carol stood transfixed, her mind trying to grapple with two unassailable facts. Lady Dalberry was not in her room, and the door was locked from the inside.
Then, as she stood hesitating whether to enter the room or not, she heard a sound that made her shrink back instinctively into the protective shadows of the dark balcony.
The sharp click she had heard before repeated itself, followed immediately by the rumbling sound that had so puzzled her. She could trace it now to the heavy, carved wardrobe that stood close to her aunt’s bed.
She stared at it, her throat dry and her heart beating wildly.
The doors of the wardrobe stood open, and she could see the sheen of the reflected light on the silk of the dresses that hung in it. Suddenly the light shifted, and she
almost cried out as she realized that the dresses had moved.
Then they were thrust aside, and Lady Dalberry, fully dressed and carrying some papers in her hand, stepped out of the wardrobe into the room. Before closing the doors she pushed aside the dresses once more and, reaching behind them, released some hidden mechanism in the back of the cupboard, for there was a repetition of the odd scraping sound, followed at once by the click of a latch.
Carol watched, spellbound, her mind working mechanically the while. This, then, was where her aunt had been the night before when she had been unable to find her in her room. She realized now that behind her aunt’s bed must be the party wall that divided her flat from de Silva’s. The passage which ran past her own bedroom took a sharp turn when it reached the tiny hall, continuing first past Lady Dalberry’s bedroom and dressing-room, then on past Carol’s sitting-room and an extra bedroom. Lady Dalberry’s room was, therefore, the first in the row of rooms to the left of the front door. The corridor outside the flats had no window at this end, the two flats meeting across the end of the passage.
It took Carol’s brain but a second to register these facts while her eyes took in every detail of Lady Dalberry’s movements. She saw her throw the papers on the table by her bed. Something seemed to be worrying her, for she stood staring at them, frowning, her fingers beating an impatient tattoo on the wood of the little table. Then she strolled over to the fireplace and lighted a cigarette. Once she glanced quickly at the window, and Carol, panic-stricken, concluded that she had been seized with the desire to finish her smoke on the balcony. In her fright she almost abandoned her watch altogether, and it was only the intensity of her curiosity that kept her from creeping back to the safety of her own sitting-room.
When Lady Dalberry suddenly threw her cigarette into the fire and turned towards the window she wished with all her heart that she had done so. But her fears proved groundless. Her aunt stopped short at the dressing-table, which stood at right angles to the window, and sat down.
Her back was turned to Carol, but the girl realized that the window behind which she stood was probably reflected in the mirror, and she drew back against the outside wall until her view of the room was limited to the dressing-table and the woman who sat in front of it.
