Her voice broke as though her emotion overpowered her, and a burst of low weeping followed. Jim heard a movement in the arbour and some stumbling words of comfort from his brother. After awhile, the sobbing died away and there was silence, broken occasionally by murmurs of inarticulate tenderness. Then at last, very clearly, Mrs. Laxford’s voice was raised in a halfhearted protest:
“No, Johnnie. . . . No, you mustn’t, dear. . . . No, please!”
Instantly, as though at a signal, an electric pocket-lamp flashed in the darkness beyond the arbour. Then Hay’s voice, jeering and triumphant, broke in:
“Caught you, have I? I knew there was some funny business goin’ on to-night. Wish I’d a flashlight camera with me. ’Twould have made a pretty picture, wouldn’t it?”
Then, as he switched off his lamp, he added:
“So that was why you signed that thing, eh? For value received? That’s a good joke on my pal Laxford, isn’t it?”
Jim, separated from the others by the hedge, could not have intervened effectively even had he given no promise to Una. He heard a sudden movement in the arbour as though Johnnie had sprung to his feet and then a vehement whisper from Mrs. Laxford:
“No, Johnnie. We can’t risk a row. We must talk to him. Sit down. Sit down, do you hear?”
Evidently Johnnie reluctantly obeyed, for when she spoke again it was to Hay:
“Well, what are you going to do?”
Her voice was quite firm and showed no trace of the recent emotion. She did not even seem shaken by the rudeness of the surprise which Hay had given them. Jim began to think that he had under-estimated her character.
“What am I going to do?” Hay repeated out of the darkness. “There’s one question comes before that. What is there in it for me? That’ll take a bit of thinkin’ over, that will.”
“Be quiet, Johnnie!” Mrs. Laxford exclaimed with almost savage emphasis. “Leave me to manage this.” Then she continued in a more even tone. “You mean, Mr. Hay, that you’ll tell my husband about this if it pays you, and that you’ll refrain from telling him if that pays you better?”
“You’ve hit it at once,” Hay concurred.
Mrs. Laxford seemed to ponder for a moment or two.
“Very well,” she said at last, “we’ll have to think this out. Suppose you go away now and leave us to talk it over. In the meantime, you’ll say nothing to my husband, of course?”
“Not likely,” Hay assured her. “But just you remember this, young Mr. Brandon. You may swallow all that talk about free love that Laxford’s been givin’ you. But Laxford’ll look at it a bit harder if he finds it on his own doorstep, I can tell you. He won’t be so airy-fairy about it when he finds you’ve been cuddlin’ his wife. I know him. Just you make a note of that, for the good of your health.”
And with this parting shot he moved off in the darkness.
“Let’s get out of this,” Jim heard Johnnie suggest in the tone of a nervous schoolboy. “We can walk about, Di. I don’t want to stay here any longer.”
“Very well,” Mrs. Laxford agreed without protest.
Jim heard them rise and move out of the arbour. He paused for a moment or two, in order to let them get out of earshot, and then he made his way back to where he had left Una. When he rejoined her, she asked only one question:
“Well, are you satisfied?”
“I heard my young brother making love to Mrs. Laxford, if that’s what you mean, and then Hay came and caught them at it.”
“I don’t want to hear anything about it,” Una interrupted angrily. “The only interest I have in it is on Johnnie’s account. . . . Oh, I’m not jealous of Mrs. Laxford. You needn’t imagine that. I’m interested in Johnnie, but not in that way at all. Get that quite clear in your mind.”
Then, after a momentary pause, she added:
“You didn’t give yourself away, I hope.”
“No, they didn’t guess I was there.”
Una seemed to ponder for a while before she spoke again.
“If you take my advice, Mr. Brandon, you’ll make no move until to-morrow.”
“Why?” Jim demanded bluntly.
This girl seemed to imagine that she could dictate to him as she pleased. She had been helpful, of course; but that didn’t entitle her to carry on like a commander-in-chief.
“Haven’t I given you sound advice, so far?” she queried in her turn, with a tinge of disdain in her tone. “Would you have got wind of this affair if you’d taken your own course and stayed at the Talgarth Arms? Not a bit of it! You’d have been stumbling about, playing your game in the dark, if I hadn’t helped to open your eyes.”
“I’ll admit that,” said Jim curtly. “But why shouldn’t I speak to Johnnie about it to-night?”
“For three reasons,” the girl replied coolly. “First, because you’re a bad diplomatist and you’d probably make a bungle of the business. It needs very careful handling. Second, because you’ve no plan ready. That’s true, isn’t it? You’ll need a night to think the thing out in all its bearings and make up your mind on the best line to follow. And, third, because I’ve called up reinforcements that may be useful.”
Jim felt the contempt in her first two statements, and he winced the more since he recognised that there was some basis for it. To rush in to-night, with no settled plan, would be the worst kind of diplomacy. He let this go by default and fastened on her third reason.
“Reinforcements? What sort of reinforcements?”
“Something that may help to turn the scale.” Una seemed nettled by his attitude. “And as you aren’t calling them up it’ll be time enough to discuss them when they appear. You’re not a very grateful person, Mr. Brandon, it seems to me.”
She had a remarkable knack of putting one in the wrong, Jim reflected ruefully. It was true enough that he had forgotten to thank her for the help she had already given him. He had been so intent on the main problem that he had spared no thought for graces or even for simple courtesy to her. And now she was paying him back by this bit of petty mystery-mongering. He shrugged his shoulders angrily in the dark. Let her keep her twopenny little secret if she wanted to! He didn’t intend to crawl to her, merely to learn it.
Una had paused, evidently to allow him a chance of putting himself right. As he did not seize it, she went on smoothly, but with that assumption of command which irritated him:
“I’m going to leave you here. It won’t do for us to go back together to the house. Someone might see us and put two and two together, though it’s not likely. I’ll go first and get in by the side door, through the conservatory. You’ll wait here for five minutes and then follow up, but you’d better go in by the front door. I’d go straight to my room, if I were you. You’d better not meet any of these people to-night.”
She bade him no formal good night but slipped away abruptly into the darkness. Jim gave her the five minutes’ grace and then made his way back to the house in leisurely fashion. As he passed the french window of the drawing-room he noticed that it was now closed, and through the uncurtained panes he caught a glimpse of Hay and Laxford sitting there, deep in consultation, with glasses of whisky and soda beside them. Hay seemed to be doing most of the talking, whilst Laxford listened, cheek on hand and elbow on the arm of his chair, his face betraying nothing of his thoughts.
Jim found the front door ajar and entered with caution. No sound of conversation reached him through the closed drawing-room door as he passed it on his way to the stairs. He had an impulse to listen for a moment or two; but eavesdropping there was too risky. There was always the chance that a servant might come into the hall and catch him at it. He climbed the stair and went along a corridor towards his own room. As he passed Johnnie’s bedroom, he noticed that the door was wide open. Evidently Johnnie was still in the gardens, settling his account with Mrs. Laxford.
Once in his own room, Jim Brandon switched on the light, closed the door, and flung himself angrily into an arm-chair. He had no intention of going to bed
just then. He had too much to think about. He lit a cigarette and for a while he smoked, turning over in his mind the events of the last two or three hours.
Of course, he reflected, this affair hadn’t been planned on the spur of the moment; they must have been leading up to it for days—or weeks, most likely. No doubt Mrs. Laxford had put Johnnie through a progressive course in philandering: holding hands, toying with shoes under the table, minor caresses in odd corners, hurried embraces with a watchful eye for intruders, kissing on the sly, and all with the extra spice of something forbidden. That preparation had been carried out before he himself appeared at Edgehill; but anyone could see that it was an essential preliminary before they risked their final stroke in the arbour.
Jim’s habitual dependence upon superficial symptoms drove him to recall what he had observed, consciously or subconsciously, since the gong sounded for dinner. Bit by bit, each detail fell into place, until in the new context even Una Menteith’s disjointed remarks became infused with fresh meanings. That night, everything had been directed towards a single end.
This accounted for the curious tension at dinner, the air of expectancy which had puzzled him at the time. They’d been following a pre-arranged time-table. So long for dinner, with Mrs. Laxford’s shoe at work under the table. She had made it serve two purposes, only one of which Jim had understood at the time. Besides acting as a check on Johnnie’s blundering conversation, that tiny shoe had given his senses a preliminary canter, in preparation for the second stage.
Next Hay had been utilised, with his after-dinner stories, to attack Johnnie’s equilibrium from a new angle. And then, having set his imagination grossly afire, they had turned to the task of weakening his inhibitions. That was what lay behind that grotesque discussion on free love, Jim could now see clearly. Laxford had let Johnnie infer that so far as Mrs. Laxford was concerned, Johnnie had a free hand. Hay’s part in the argument was evidently contrived to make his coming intervention more plausible. A very ingenious bit of work, Jim admitted to himself. No wonder they had talked like inferior actors. The whole thing must have been memorised beforehand.
And, meanwhile, a fresh attack had begun in the drawing-room. That hot-eyed little jade on the couch had played her part better than the two men, Jim judged. Each of these restless movements was meant to catch Johnnie’s eye and make him restless too. And when Johnnie joined her on the couch there was that hint about the thunder: ‘It seems to sharpen my nerves and make me ready to do the maddest things.’ And then all that ‘show-a-leg business,’ as he brutally described it to himself, that stroking of her ankle: ‘There’s something . . . titillating about it. with a silk stocking. It gives me a funny feeling all over.’ No doubt Johnnie was expected to make a note of that idiosyncrasy, although the words had actually been addressed to himself. And when she saw she had the game in her hands, she must have made an appointment at the arbour.
Even there, she had managed to kill two birds with one stone. To avoid Jim’s suspicions, she had made that excuse about a headache and had gone out of the drawing-room, leaving Johnnie to wander out through the french window, apparently alone. But before she slipped out of the front door to rejoin him, Jim guessed, she had passed the word to the couple in the billiard-room, so that Hay might know that he must go to the rendezvous.
As to the business in the arbour, he had missed a lot of it, no doubt. From his own point of view, her pose as a misunderstood wife was a poor affair; but it had worked well enough with Johnnie who had no experience of the world and who, by that time, had probably no wits left in control. And, obviously, that cry of semi-surrender had been the prearranged signal for Hay to come out of the darkness and play his part.
And then, with a final stroke of cleverness, she had taken control of the situation, pushed Johnnie aside, and negotiated with Hay herself.
“Damnably smart bit of business, the whole thing,” Jim confessed to himself with a scowl. “Laxford’s cuter than I took him for.”
He had no doubt that Laxford had planned the whole affair. The other two were mere subordinates coached for their parts by the leading spirit.
Then his thoughts turned to Una Menteith and he paid a grudging tribute to her astuteness. These apparently aimless remarks of hers had their hidden meaning, if he had only been sharp enough to catch it at the time. That one about the new moon had been double-edged. It was meant to draw his attention specially to Mrs. Laxford’s talk about ‘being ready to do the maddest things,’ and it was also to remind him that the night was dark. ‘A nice night for poachers,’ she had called it, just after Laxford had spoken of people ‘poaching on men’s preserves’ in the matrimonial sense. And she had underscored that by talking about setting snares for rabbits on a dark night. Of course Johnnie was the rabbit she meant. And when she saw that Jim was too dull to notice her hints, she had given him a straight tip: ‘You’re a very literal-minded person, aren’t you?’ Jim winced as he thought of the mocking expression which had gone with the words. After that she had resorted to more direct methods. That apparently pointless talk about shoes had been meant to draw his attention to Mrs. Laxford’s manœuvres on the couch across the room—the ankle-stroking and all that sort of thing. Una Menteith had succeeded there, without committing herself in the slightest.
His mind passed to Wendover’s visit. Why had she refused that invitation so definitely? Of course! Because she had ‘called up reinforcements,’ as she put it; and she had to keep herself free on that account. That meant the reinforcements might turn up to-morrow. What did she mean by ‘reinforcements’? Jim wondered.
But Una Menteith was only a minor character in the Edgehill drama. His mind went back to Laxford and his scheme. Hitherto Laxford had only his moral influence with Johnnie to throw into the scale against the Brandon interests; but that coup in the arbour had given him a double hold on the youngster. By remaining in pretended ignorance, Laxford could retain his old mastery while using his wife and Hay to play on Johnnie’s fears of discovery and make him amenable. Johnnie had enough decency in him to feel ashamed of what he had done, Jim suspected; and a boy in that state would be mere clay in the hands of a clever scoundrel like Laxford, aided by his confederates. Jim bit his lip as he explored one possible course after another which Laxford might choose.
Then a fresh idea crossed his mind. Why had Laxford chosen to execute his plan at the very moment when Jim was on the premises? That seemed like taking unnecessary risks. Why hadn’t they waited over the week-end and sprung their mine after he had cleared out? Then he remembered the people who were coming for the shooting next week; the house would be crowded; and the chance of carrying out a carefully timed scheme would be gone. The coup had been planned for that night, and when he made his unexpected incursion they had to take the risks, whether they liked it or not. It was a case of now or never. Besides, if they had waited, Johnnie in his excited state might have forced the pace with Mrs. Laxford and taken the bit in his teeth at a moment when Hay was not available. That would have complicated matters, for Jim had a shrewd suspicion that Laxford didn’t mean his wife to go to extremes. Obviously their best policy had been to go through with their original plans even under Jim’s very nose. As he admitted to himself, resentfully, he’d never have seen through their game without Una Menteith’s help.
He glanced at his watch and found that it was later than he thought. He switched off the light, opened his door, and glanced out. The house was dark and silent; everyone must have gone to bed.
Cautiously he made his way down the corridor and tried the door of his brother’s room. He wanted to see how Johnnie was taking it; and it would be easy enough to fake up some excuse for disturbing him, even at that hour. But the door was locked; and when Jim knocked gently there was no response. His ear caught a faint sound of movement in the room. Evidently Johnnie was awake. It was hardly likely that he’d be asleep after his evening’s experiences. Jim tapped again on the door.
“Johnnie!” he called softly, to let his
brother know who was there.
But Johnnie evidently had no wish for visitors. Jim heard him move again, but he made no answer. Jim turned away and went back to his own room, fretting with rage. A pretty business! The whole Brandon position shaken because a damned young cub couldn’t keep control of himself for an evening! This was the end of all his own hopes for a diplomatic settlement. And then, into his mind flashed Hay’s words at the arbour:
“So that’s why you signed that thing, eh? For value received?”
What had Johnnie signed? Jim pondered over that problem with growing perturbation. It must have been a business paper; the phrase ‘for value received’ made that clear enough. So Laxford had already attained to the stage of documents and signatures. Johnnie had promised something—‘for value received’—and that something could only concern the Brandon inheritance. And then, with a kindred menace, the recollection of that unexplained trip to London edged itself up in Jim’s thoughts.
He was so engrossed in his reflections that the bursting of the long-heralded storm failed to rouse him. Roll after roll of thunder shook the windows, followed by the heavy beat of straight-falling rain upon the ground outside. At last Jim woke from his introspection with a muttered comment:
“That’ll bring the streams down, bank-full, if it goes on.”
Suddenly a flood of relief swept over his mind as he realised that no real damage could have been done yet. Johnnie was a minor. In legal transactions, his signature was not worth the paper it was written upon. He breathed more freely as he remembered this. Curious that it should have slipped his mind! Then came a fresh doubt. Laxford must be quite well aware that Johnnie’s signature had no binding power; and still he had persuaded the cub to put his name to some paper. It must be yet another move in that twister’s crooked game, Jim reflected, if only one could spot the meaning of it.
The Ha-Ha Case Page 9
