“Why couldn’t you?”
“I couldn’t leave Miss Cattermole—or my job—there’s no real reason—”
He said in a harsher whisper than she would have thought possible,
“If you’re counting on Henry Templar, you needn’t. He won’t come.”
“What do you mean?”
She tried to step back, but he held her.
“I said you weren’t a fool, but you’re new to this game. Did you really think he’d let you post a letter?”
Something ran through her like ice. It numbed her.
“But I saw you post it.”
“No, you didn’t. He got out of the car and came after me with a letter of his own—I expect he had it all ready just in case. And that’s what you saw me post.”
Her throat felt quite stiff, and her lips too. She had to try twice before she could get them to say,
“But my letter—what happened to my letter?”
That harsh, exasperated whisper so near her, and his bands so heavy.
“Sarah, you are a fool! He took it back of course—said it was a mistake and you didn’t want it posted after all. He had his back to the car, and he just put it in his pocket and gave me his own letter instead. So it’s no good counting on Henry Templar, who isn’t within forty miles of knowing where you’ve got to.”
“Is that true?”
“Gospel.”
She said very low, “Let me go—I must think—I don’t know what to do. Please let me go.”
“In a moment. But we’ve got to get this fixed.”
“I’ve got to think.”
“All right, you can have till dinner, but I must know then. If it’s yes, keep your handkerchief in your hand when you come downstairs, and I’ll meet you like I said. Better make it yes, Sarah.”
He let go of her suddenly as a door opened below. She ran into her room in the dark and sat down on the bed. She felt as if she had run a long way. She was shaking, and the dark room shook round her. She had the most horrible feeling that the floor was tilting with her, and that presently she, and the bed, and all the other furniture would go sliding down into a black gulf and be swallowed up.
It didn’t last for long. If it had, she would not have been able to keep herself from running after Wickham and begging him to take her away, and then she would never have been able to look herself in the face again.
She got up from the bed, felt her way to the dressing-table, and lighted the candles which stood one on either side of the tall mahogany looking-glass in white china candlesticks bordered with apple green. The candlesticks were part of a set. There was a tray, four china boxes, and a ring-stand like a little tree with jutting branches, all in the same shiny white and green.
Sarah looked between the candles and saw her own face pale against the dark background of the room. She stayed there looking at herself, as if this Sarah in the glass could tell her what to do, but it wasn’t any good.
She went back to the bed and tried to think. If Henry wasn’t coming, it altered everything. She had not really known how much she had been counting on him until she learned that he had never had her letter. Always at the back of her mind there had been the comfortable feeling that Henry knew where she was. Now nobody knew. She had just been whisked off the map and spirited away. She remembered how they had run through Hedgeley and out on the far side and then turned off into lanes and taken a roundabout way back again. She had thought it odd at the time, but now it wasn’t odd any more. It was part of a plan. If the police were looking for Sarah Marlowe—and they very well might be by now—they would trace her to Hedgeley, and the porter at the George and the mechanics in the garage opposite would all be quite sure that they had driven right on through the town and out on the north-east side. It had been quite dark when they passed through the street coming back.
And right there and then Sarah felt how convenient that darkness was for people who wanted to cover their tracks. It was so convenient that she wondered if it had not been planned. Sarah Marlowe had to be got away from town before she could see a paper and communicate with the police. But she mustn’t arrive at Maltings until it was too dark for anyone to see when and where the car left the road. In other words, a forty mile drive had to be made to last for eight or nine hours. Obviously something had to go wrong with the car, and obviously something had gone wrong. Where, then, was John Wickham in all this? Very difficult to suppose that he hadn’t been in it at all. Almost impossible to believe that the exact amount of delay could have been forthcoming without his being in it up to the hilt. Then why turn round now and offer to get her away?
There was a horrifying answer to this. She had told him that she had removed the papers from the oiled-silk packet. She must have been mad. But she had told him, and he would guess that she hadn’t left them in town. She hadn’t told him that, but he would guess. Because of course her room and the whole of the house in town would be ransacked. She couldn’t possibly have found a place where she could be sure that they would be safe. No, he would guess that she had them on her, and if he could get her to go away with him—Her thought broke off.
It was a good argument, but it wasn’t a sound one. There was something wrong with it. It was extraordinarily difficult to believe that someone you had seen every day for months was a criminal. Even if you knew that he had been in prison.
She turned away from John Wickham and began to think about the Cattermoles and the Reverend Peter Brown. This was easier in one way and more difficult in another. It was easier because for some reason she was able to give them a more dispassionate consideration. They had not, so far at any rate, dripped blood upon her carpet or fainted on her hands. But all the same it was difficult to associate such an unusual thing as crime with a benevolent if fussy employer, or with a parson who was writing a book on folk-lore. If it hadn’t been for the Grimsbys she couldn’t have done it. But it was only too easy to believe that the Grimsbys were no better than they should be, and having got as far as that, it was hard to understand why a respectable parson should employ them—only of course he might be a really noble parson with an urge to give criminals a second chance. It really was very difficult indeed. Above and beyond all argument was the fact that John Wickham had been stabbed and Emily Case murdered for papers now in the possession of Sarah Marlowe, and that under Wilson Cattermole’s roof Sarah Marlowe’s room had been searched and an envelope, which was fortunately not the right one, had been taken from her drawer, probably by Wilson’s brother. On the top of that, and in all probability upon finding out that the stolen envelope contained nothing but some blank pieces of foolscap, the telephone had gone out of order, the newspapers had disappeared, and Sarah had been whisked off the map.
These were facts. She contemplated them, and let herself feel instead of think. Much easier this way. Thought flowed strongly and deep. She wanted to get away. She never wanted to see Maltings again. She wanted to put miles between her and the Grimsbys. She didn’t care how many banks John Wickham had robbed.
All at once she felt quite calm and settled in her mind. She put all her things into her suit-case and locked it, and then remembered that she was supposed to be going to bed with a headache. Perhaps better leave her pyjamas on the bed, and her dressing-gown and her slippers where they would catch an enquiring eye. It really wouldn’t take her a minute to pack when they had all gone off to the haunted wing.
When she had washed in some icy cold water, she did her hair again and paid a good deal of attention to her face. But just as she thought it was looking rather nice she remembered about the headache, so the lipstick had to come off. She must have smudges under her eyes and be pale enough to make bed seem reasonable. When she had produced the required effect she made a face at it. Without colour and bloom she thought Sarah Marlowe a very plain Jane. But she did look ill.
She took her largest handkerchief, shook it out, and went downstairs, letting it hang conspicuously against her dark brown skirt.
CHAPTER X
XIV
Half way down the stairs Sarah paused. From where she stood she could see the drawing-room door slanting open. That meant the room was empty. She went back a step or two until she could see the door of Miss Cattermole’s room—a dark closed door with a line of light at the foot where the passing steps of ten generations had worn the threshold down.
Joanna was obviously dressing. Sarah wondered whether she would consider black velvet or blue the correct attire for a séance in a haunted wing. She herself had nothing but what she stood up in, owing to the raging hurry in which Wilson had swept her from his house.
Though her head was not much above floor level, she could see the whole of the landing. The other two doors were open and the rooms behind them without fire or candle-light. The entrance to the passage which led to Wickham’s room and the haunted wing came into the picture as a very black shadow like the dark mouth of a cave. Nobody moved, or breathed, or stirred in the darkness.
She went slowly on down the stairs into the hall. There was no one there. The drawing-room was empty, and the dining-room too.
She moved along the hall towards the den, not with any idea of joining Mr. Cattermole and the Reverend Peter, but because she wanted to know whether they were there or not. If they were, and she heard their voices, she would know from what direction to expect them. Then if Wickham came.… Absurd really, because she wasn’t going to exchange a single word with him—why should she? She was only going to let him see the handkerchief in her hand. But all the same she just had the feeling that she would like to know where everyone was, and then if there were anything he wanted to say to her—But of course there wouldn’t be. Why should there?
She was still some way from the door, when she heard the sound of voices. This surprised her a good deal, because the doors and walls at Maltings were all so heavy and thick. And then in a minute she discovered why she could hear so plainly. The door was not quite shut, and she remembered that the catch had sprung last night.
Well, there it was now, not really ajar but free of the catch—free to be pushed ajar if anyone wanted to listen to what was going on in the room.
All at once Sarah knew that this was what she was going to do. It was an opportunity with a capital O, and if she threw it away it would never come back again. Opportunity never knocks twice at any man’s door. Where had she heard that? This was Opportunity’s door, and she wasn’t going to knock on it, she was going to give it the most attenuated ghost of a push—not enough to let a draught in or the lamplight out, but enough to allow Sarah Marlowe’s very sharp ears to catch what was being said between host and guest.
Not a very nice thing to do, but then kidnapping and stabbing and murdering are not nice things. Tinkler would be shocked. Would she? Sarah wasn’t really very sure. Her own conscience was entirely quiescent as she put the tip of her forefinger upon the panel above the latch and just moved the door. There was now a crack about a quarter of an inch wide between it and the jamb. She heard Mr. Brown say in his deep, booming voice,
“She’s got them, and she’s got them with her. Where else could they be?”
And hard on that John Wickham, very cool:
“You say she lunched with Templar. Suppose she gave him the papers then?”
There was a laugh Sarah knew, loud, hearty, and vulgar—Morgan Cattermole’s laugh.
“Because we shouldn’t be sitting here if she had—that’s why. The police would have been on to her before you could say knife if she’d really spilled the beans. No, she’s got the papers on her—that’s what I say. They’re not in her room in town or anywhere else in the house, and they’re not in her room down here, so if she hasn’t got ’em on her, where are they?”
Sarah felt quite dizzy with the shock. Morgan here—and closeted with Wickham who only an hour or two ago had professed entire ignorance of his existence!
“Dope in the coffee,” said the Reverend Peter Brown cheerfully. “If you’d let me do it last night, she’d have been searched by now and none the wiser. Do it tonight, and we’ll know where we are.”
Wickham’s voice again—such a quiet, pleasant voice:
“And what then? Suppose you get the papers—you don’t know how much she’s read or understood. I gather they’re fairly compromising.”
She heard Mr. Brown take a sucking pull at his pipe. He said,
“Not necessarily. She wouldn’t make much of them.”
“She’d connect them with Emily Case,” said Morgan Cattermole. “That’s the snag. It isn’t the lists that matter, but what the Case woman may have said to her, and the fact that she’s bound to link them up with the murder. No, I wouldn’t dope her tonight. There’s time enough for that. What we’ve got to do is to find out what she knows—make her talk. Scare her stiff, and she’ll talk all right. That’s the plan—rattle her, get her on the run, and then in comes Wickham to say his piece—‘Let me take you away from this horrible place, my darling. Trust your John, and he will save you.’ I tell you it’s a cinch! Good as a play—what?” He broke into his uncontrolled laugh again.
All the blood in Sarah’s body seemed to have gone cold and heavy in her veins. She did not think that she could move. But she must move. She must get away.
She heard the Reverend Peter say in a meditative tone,
“Yes—it might do the trick. What about it, young man—feel like taking it on? Can you do your stuff?”
John Wickham said, “Oh, easily.”
She could tell from his voice that he was smiling. Of the three he was the nearest to the door. He was so near that there was not much more than the thickness of the panel between them. The thought sickened her to the very core of her heart. Her inability to move became an inability to stay. She turned from the door and groped her way along the wall to the drawing-room. She was so sick and faint that she felt as if she must fall. She mustn’t fall.
She reached the drawing-room. She reached the sofa corner and sat down there.
A pale, prim room in the lamplight. A wood fire burning cheerfully. In the next room three men talking about a woman they had murdered and a girl they were going to betray.
The girl was Sarah Marlowe.
The handkerchief was still in her hand. She pushed it up her sleeve and out of sight.
CHAPTER XXV
Sarah had come to the end of being able to think. It was too much effort. It hurt too much, and it wasn’t worth while. It was as if everything she knew and lived by had sustained so severe a wrench that the planes had been broken up and all the channels along which thought had been wont to run were twisted and turned out of course. There was a picture in her mind of the wreckage of a house after a bomb explosion. It was something she had seen in a film, and it came back now, black and distinct—roof fallen in and walls at a crazy slant, a tangle of wires and pipes like torn muscles and broken bones, one whole floor wrenched from its place and sent driving down to batter the foundations. And over it all a film of smoke, and tongues of fire licking the ruins of what had been a home.
A horrible picture. It stayed there in her mind.
Joanna Cattermole came in trailing her black velvet, wrapped in her blue and silver scarf. Her light hair was floating wildly and there was colour in her cheeks. She shivered as she took the sofa corner by the fire, but the hand she laid on Sarah’s was burning hot and dry.
“Just now,” she said, “after you went upstairs—he came through. Such a lovely message! Mr. Brown came and sat down beside me. I am afraid he is rather a sceptic about planchette, but he was most kind, and as soon as he put his fingers on the board it began to move. It is like that sometimes, you know—a fresh person coming in. I believe one may be too intent too anxious to get results, instead of being merely the vehicle. Now Mr. Brown has of course no personal interest, and we got such a lovely message, and written so plainly that there couldn’t be any mistake about it at all—not like some of the times when one has really just had to guess. Look—I have kept the paper to show you!”
&
nbsp; She laid the sheet on Sarah’s knee. In a bold legible scrawl were the words, “I only think of you—you are my guiding star.” Joanna gazed at them in an ecstasy.
“So then I said, ‘Who is it? Are you Nathaniel?’ And look—there’s the answer, ‘Nat to you’! So then I thought I would ask him about the colours—whether it mattered my not having brought anything purple with me. I asked Mr. Brown if he thought I could, and he said, ‘Why not—why not?’—really in the very kindest voice. So then I did. And look what he wrote!”
At the bottom of the sheet the same scrawl proclaimed, “Green’s forsaken, yellow’s forsworn, blue is the luckiest colour that’s worn—all poppycock about purple.”
“Such a relief,” said Miss Joanna—“and so very, very kind of him to set my mind at rest. My dear, is anything wrong? You look pale. Or is it the light?”
Sarah said, “The light—it’s a ghastly light.”
She put up a hand and rubbed her cheeks until they burned. Then she remembered that she was to look pale, and have a headache and go to bed. But not now—oh, no, not now. Because that would all be part of the plot. It was part of the plot that she should be frightened, and that Wickham should pretend to save her. She heard Morgan’s odious voice again, “Trust your John!” and Morgan’s odious laugh. She heard John Wickham say, “Oh, easily,” and she burned through and through with shame. She had come so very near to trusting him. The black picture of wreckage stood out—all black, all spoiled, all twisted.
The Reverend Peter Brown came in, large, shapeless, and untidy in the baggy old clothes which were his only wear. Wilson Cattermole followed him, hair brushed to a halo, hands newly washed and smelling of lavender soap. A black velvet smoking-jacket replaced the coat he had worn all day. Sarah watched to see Morgan follow him, but no one came.
The gong sounded, and they crossed the hall to the dining-room. But as soon as she sat down Joanna discovered the loss of her handkerchief.
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