“It accompanies me to the bathroom,” said Mannister in a tone of lofty rebuke.
“Oh Lordy Lord! Oh Lordy Lord! Oh Lordy Lord!” said Ananias. He flapped his wings and showed their rose-coloured lining.
“Hush, Ananias!” said Mr Smith from his trance.
Garrett gnawed a thumb-nail.
“Let’s stick to Thursday!” he snapped. “Were you alone with Ware? Where was the other chap, Deane—the one you’ve got perfect confidence in? Why wasn’t he doing this fetch-and-carry business?”
“He was indisposed,” said Mannister. “Had he been on duty, I should naturally have availed myself of his services.”
“You weren’t in the habit of sending Ware to the safe then?”
“No—no. At the same time——”
“And the very first time you do send him, an important letter goes missing?”
“At the same time,” resumed Mannister with the air of a man who is not used to interruption—“at the same time, Colonel Garrett, I wish to emphasize the fact that I am not making any accusation against Mr Ware.”
Garrett laughed his barking laugh.
“Oh, you’re not? But the letter’s gone, and he’s the only person who could have taken it.”
Mannister rose to his feet with an air of dignified offence.
“The implication is yours, Colonel Garrett. I beg to dissociate myself from it. I have made no accusation—I have merely answered your questions to the best of my ability. I fear I have allowed my affairs to trespass upon your time. I did not anticipate that a government department or its advisers—” his glance dwelt upon Mr Smith, who had also risen and was gazing into the fire—“I had not anticipated, I repeat—”
Mr Smith lifted his hand.
“One moment, Mr Mannister.”
Bernard Mannister was arrested in the middle of a sentence. He looked at Mr Benbow Smith in some astonishment.
Mr Smith went on speaking in his leisurely, cultivated voice.
“Mr Mannister, Colonel Garrettt was, I am sure, quite right when he told you that your—er—case is not one which could usefully be the—er—subject of an official investigation. There are, however, unofficial methods——” He paused. He looked over the top of Mannister’s head and waited for him to speak.
Mannister withdrew a pace. Mentally, it would seem, he had already withdrawn.
“I fear I have been troublesome.” He stepped back again and bowed. “I have no wish to accuse anyone—I am merely concerned with the safety of my correspondence, and a little perhaps with my own reputation. I thought it possible that I might have received some help, some advice, as to the possibility of recovering a document which I am forced to believe has been abstracted for the purpose of bringing me into discredit and thus interrupting, or perhaps even terminating, my public activities. I will not trespass any farther upon your time. Good-night, gentlemen.” He bowed again and moved to the door.
Mr Smith rang the bell.
In the doorway Mannister turned and surveyed the room. He made a fine and imposing figure—beyond him the attentive Miller, perfect in his duties, assiduous with coat and hat.
The door closed. The outer door closed too.
Garrett turned a ferocious grin upon his companion.
“Oh Lord! What a gasbag! What do you make of him?”
Ananias removed a chagrined eye from the door. He wanted more Mannister, and more, and more, and more. He recited mournfully:
“Boom—boom—boom!
Walk with care!”
Mr Smith took off his spectacles and held them to the light. Then, producing a white silk handkerchief, he began to polish them.
“Well?” said Garrett impatiently.
“Oh—a—er—gasbag—yes,” he said in an abstracted voice.
Garrett was frowning horribly.
“Why did he go off the deep end like that all of a sudden?” he said.
“You were being so suave,” said Mr Smith. He breathed on an obstinate lens and polished it.
“Rubbish!” said Garrett. “I’d got to ask him questions, hadn’t I? It wasn’t me. I was a lot shorter with him this morning and he didn’t turn a hair.”
Mr Smith put on his glasses and looked over the edge of them benignly.
“I don’t think he wanted to be asked too many questions about Mr Jeremy Ware,” he said.
Garrett looked alert.
“You think it was that?”
Mr Smith shook his head very slightly.
“I don’t really think at all. It—er—just occurred to me. Several things occurred to me.”
“Cough ’em up!” said Garrett. He produced a horrible pipe and began to fill it from a pouch which might have been picked up in the gutter.
Mr Smith drifted to the mantelpiece and reclined against it, one arm along the shelf, his fingers beating out a soundless rhythm upon the smooth oak.
“I don’t know,” he said dreamily—“I don’t know—but it seemed to me that there was a lack of—er—continuity somewhere.”
Garrett struck a match on the sole of a heavy boot.
“Meaning?” he said. He drew at his pipe.
“Well, I hardly know. But the Disarmament Conference—it was—er—there to start with, and then it wasn’t there any more. That was one thing. Then I—er—gather that when he saw you this morning he—er—bellowed and—er—talked about his correspondence having been tampered with. This afternoon there is a good deal of—er—dignified restraint, and there isn’t any—er—tampering. There is only a letter, and a safe, and a secretary, and as soon as the—er—limelight is—er—focused upon these three things Mr Mannister takes offence and—er—fades away.”
Garrett flung his match into the fire and blew out a cloud of smoke.
“Limelight?” he said sharply. He broke off, sucked at his pipe, and blew another cloud. His stubby eyebrows drew together in a frown. He repeated his last word, but what had been just an exclamation took on a tone of protest. “Limelight? The man’s always playing to the gallery!”
Mr Smith spoke abstractedly. “The limelight was not—er—focused upon Mr Mannister. That was one of the things which struck me.”
“You think?”
Mr Smith shook his head. His fingers beat out the rhythm of The Congo.
“Not yet—I only wonder—”
“Of course,” said Garrett with an impatient jerk of the shoulder, “as I said to him this morning, if that letter was pinched to order, it’s past praying for—it’ll have reached its destination and been photographed. If the bloke who wrote it really let himself go to any extent, his number is up—Mannister’s too perhaps. You can’t say where that sort of thing’s going to stop.”
Mr Smith looked over the rim of his glasses.
“You forget Mr—er—Ware.”
“No, I don’t. I’m having him shadowed.”
Mr Smith waved that away.
“Mannister’s—er—number wouldn’t be up if the spectacle disclosed by the—er—limelight was that of a trusting and—er—benevolent employer robbed by a thankless secretary.”
Garrett removed his pipe and stared.
“You think it might be that way?”
“There is scriptural precedent for a scapegoat,” said Mr Smith dreamily. “A—er—calculated indiscretion, and—er—someone else to take the blame. I have known it happen. On the other hand, the whole thing may be much simpler. Mannister may merely have been yielding to an instinct for self-preservation in taking cover behind Mr Jeremy Ware. I wonder. Did you ever read the Pilgrim’s Progress?”
Garrett shook his head and drew at his pipe.
“You should—you really should. It is a gold-mine. As I was saying—or rather as I was going to say—there is a gentleman in the Pilgrim’s Progress called Mr Facing-both-ways. He appears to hav
e left a numerous progeny.”
Garrett smoked in silence for a moment. Then he said briskly,
“We’re shadowing Ware, because if he did pinch the letter, he may have done it on the spur of the moment, or anyhow not to anyone’s order, in which case he’s got to find his market. You know how these things are done—people don’t put pen to paper if they can help it—it’s the personal interview and cash over the counter. So there’s just a chance of nabbing Master Ware before he does a deal.”
Mr Smith’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“You think Ware took the letter?”
“Why shouldn’t he have taken it? He’d the opportunity. And he’s broke. And he was with Denny. Something smashed Denny. Ware was Denny’s secretary. Mannister says somebody’s trying to smash him. Ware is Mannister’s secretary. That’s the way things look to me. I can’t see a gasbag like Mannister being as subtle as you want to make out.”
Mr Smith’s fingers had continued to beat out The Congo rhythm. He nodded slightly.
“Er—yes,” he said—“an indubitable gasbag. I am just wondering about the nature of the gas. Some kinds are—er—dangerous.”
Ananias began to bob up and down on his perch and to clap his wings. Mr. Smith drifted over to him.
“Say your piece, Ananias,” he commanded, “‘Walk with care—walk with care.’”
“Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM!” shrieked Ananias.
CHAPTER IV
ROSALIND DENNY LEANED BACK in her chair and looked down the Gold Room at the Luxe. It appeared to be quite full. The orchestra at the far end was playing Voices of the Woods, but the sound of five hundred people talking, laughing and dining came near to drowning the music.
Rosalind looked across all these sounds, which seemed to float in the gold light which filled the room, and from the other side of the small table Jeremy Ware looked at her. She was tall and fair. She wore a grey dress. She had been smiling, but now as she looked away, her eyes were horribly sad. The line of her lips was a little harder than it had been eighteen months ago.
Jeremy Ware’s dark, ugly face held an expression of concern. When he frowned as he was frowning now and his black eyebrows made a straight line above the deep-set eyes that looked black too but were really a very dark grey, he seemed a good deal older than his twenty-six years. His hands matched his face. They were square and strong, with the blunt spatulate fingers which are supposed to denote military or criminal characteristics. He was of medium height and powerfully built.
He went on looking at Rosalind Denny for a moment, and then said roughly,
“You’ve eaten nothing, Mrs Denny.”
Rosalind came back from a long way off.
“Haven’t I, Jeremy?” she said.
“You know you haven’t.”
She smiled, and in a flash she was beautiful. She leaned forward.
“Have I been very, very dull?”
Jeremy smiled too.
“What do I say to that?”
“The truth, my dear.”
“You wouldn’t like the truth.”
“Yes, I should.”
“All right—” He paused. “Sure?”
“Is it so dreadful?”
“You asked for it.”
“Well?”
“I was thinking how awfully good of you it was to come, and hoping you didn’t mind.”
He saw her eyes fill with tears and wished that he had held his tongue, but only for a moment. Almost at once she said in a warm, pleased voice,
“How dear of you!”
“Then you don’t mind?”
“What you said? It was lovely. You know I was afraid of coming here. I thought I should find it—I thought it might be—” She paused, and then came out with “unendurable. You know it’s the first time I’ve been anywhere.”
Jeremy did not speak. As a rule he had a flow of words, but something dammed it now.
“I want you to know I’m glad I came,” said Rosalind. “It’s rather like a dream here—the people, and the lights, and the music, and you, and me. It’s so like a dream that I feel as if Gilbert might come into it at any moment. It feels as if it was his dream too, and that is why I’m so glad I came.”
Jeremy’s frown deepened. He felt embarrassment, and a curious surging anger. Why should this thing have come to Rosalind Denny? He remembered her as she had been, and saw her as she was now. She was only thirty-two, and the colour was gone, and the bloom. Her eyes had a haunted look. That she should take comfort from a dream moved him indescribably. He could not find anything to say.
Rosalind said, “Thank you, Jeremy,” and he started and said,
“Why?”
Her smile came out again.
“Did you think I didn’t know what you were thinking? Jeremy—will you promise me something?”
Jeremy said, “Yes.”
“Without knowing what it is? You shouldn’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t with anyone else.”
Rosalind’s eyes smiled this time, very beautifully.
“Dear Jeremy! Do you trust me as much as all that?”
Jeremy said “Yes” again.
“It’s something quite easy. It’s only I want you to talk to me about Gilbert—to let me talk about him. You know, people do at first, and then they stop. Gilbert’s old aunt that I’ve been living with was like that—she didn’t like my speaking about him after a bit. She used to drop her voice and call him ‘poor Gilbert.’ I can’t bear that. I want you always, always to talk about him as if he was in the next room. Will you?”
“He was the best friend I’ve ever had,” said Jeremy. “I can’t believe he’s gone even now.” He spoke with an effort. He thought his words sounded hard and bare.
But Rosalind was satisfied.
“I’m so glad I came,” she said. “Now tell me about you. How are you getting on with Bernard Mannister?”
“We bear and forbear,” said Jeremy with a sombre gleam in his eye.
“Which does which?”
“I bear, and he forbears—with an air of massive gloom.”
“Oh, Jeremy, doesn’t he like you?”
“Not to any marked extent.”
“Oh, but why? Gilbert was terribly fond of you.”
“Mannister isn’t,” said Jeremy. “He’d like me better if I’d play up to him a bit. You know the sort of thing—buckets of butter, and how marvellous his last speech was, and a lot of gas about ideals. Deane’s a marvel at it—he’s the other secretary. You should just see the old boy lapping it up and exuding high-mindedness and public spirit. He likes Deane all right. I’m a disappointment with a capital D. He told me so this morning, and talked about the Hireling Spirit, and the Decay of Enthusiasm in the Young.”
“My poor Jeremy! He sounds awful.”
“He’s all sound,” said Jeremy gloomily. “But I shall have to hang on if I can. Jobs are uncommon hard to come by.” He stopped suddenly and smote his brow. “Oh Lord!”
“What is it?”
“I’m a first-class prize idiot—that’s all.”
“What have you done?”
Jeremy looked perturbed.
“Mannister dictated a long screed this morning—a draft for a speech he’s making at Bournemouth on Saturday—and I was to type it out fair for him, look out one or two quotations and all that.”
“Well?”
“Well, I forgot to bring it away with me.”
“Don’t you live in the house?”
“No—I’ve got a room out, thank the Lord. He’ll want the beastly thing to-morrow. I can’t think how I came to forget it, but he suddenly took it into his head to have the safe turned out, and there we were, sorting and scrapping and tidying, with the old boy going off at a tangent every ten minutes or so. He kept taking out letters and rea
ding bits of ’em aloud. And then he dug up one of his old speeches and walked up and down the room spouting it at me. And when we’d got everything out, he said the thing he wanted wasn’t there, and I had to put everything back again. And then he sent me out for something, and when I came back he rowed me about something else, and—well, there it is. I don’t forget things as a rule.”
Rosalind pushed back her chair.
“You must go straight away and get it now.”
“It’s half-past twelve,” said Jeremy. “Mannister’s household goes to bed at ten sharp. If he’s out, he lets himself in. As a matter of fact he wasn’t going out.”
“What will you do? Does it matter?”
“Well, I hate him to score me off.” He laughed, and when he laughed he looked much younger. “I shall burgle the house.”
“Jeremy!”
He dropped his voice to a melodramatic whisper.
“There is a scullery window. Did you know that the scullery window is the burglar’s friend? I won’t tell you how it’s done, but it’s quite easy. I shall climb a wall, crawl over a sink, creep into the library, and get away with the swag.”
Rosalind laughed almost as she used to laugh.
“It sounds dreadfully bad for your clothes!”
“I shall dress the part,” said Jeremy. “If you hear I’ve been arrested in a pair of bags that has given at the knees, you can come forward and testify that I have others without a stain on their character.”
Rosalind got up. She looked taller, but that was because she was so thin. She had always been slight, but the beautiful curves were gone. Jeremy felt that anger again.
“There’s no hurry,” he said. “All the best burglaries are done between one and three.”
She moved towards the door, and he followed her. She smiled from over her shoulder and said,
“I don’t know what’s done any more. I’m a country cousin and I’m not used to sitting up late.”
As she turned to smile at him, a high, sweet voice spoke her name,
“Rosalind! Darling!”
Rosalind took a step back, and Mimosa Vane arrived rather breathlessly between her and Jeremy.
“Rosalind darling—this is marvellous! When did you get back? Are you going to stay now? Janet said you were taking her flat. My dear, it’s too marvellous to see you!”
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