“Unless what?” said Kay. And then she was sorry she had asked, because she felt quite sure that he had meant her to ask. It was too late now. She couldn’t take her question back.
He answered her in his pleasant reasonable way.
“Unless you were my wife. You couldn’t be made to give evidence against me if you were my wife. English law has a profound respect for family ties, you see, so if you were my wife, I might let you make a promise which you wouldn’t be very seriously tempted to break. You wouldn’t want to put your husband in prison, I’m sure. A prisoner’s wife is in a most unpleasant position—you can realize that.”
Kay listened with deepening horror. He couldn’t really mean what he was saying. He was just trying to frighten her. Of course he didn’t know that she was engaged to Miles, but even if she wasn’t, the idea of marrying someone who lived in two houses at once, and who spent half his time in pretending to be an old lady, made her feel quite cold and sick. Of course he couldn’t really want to marry her. And then suddenly she could hear Rhoda Moore speaking as she had heard her during those last few days when she rambled on not always knowing what she said. Some of the rapid muttered sentences came back to Kay now, “They may try and get hold of you … he’ll do anything for money … but I’ve written it all down … don’t lose it … be careful and don’t lose it.…”
Money—but she hadn’t any money. Rhoda Moore had said “You’ll have plenty of money.” She didn’t know where it was to come from, but perhaps Mr Harris knew. She looked up at him and said,
“You said there was another way out.”
He nodded.
“Oh yes. Dead men tell no tales.” His tone remained pleasant and light. “But we needn’t talk about that. Just you think the whole thing over. And meanwhile I’m going to move you to more comfortable quarters. We were rather hurried, you know, so we hadn’t got anything ready.”
He reached for the candlestick, got up, and opened the door. Then he took Kay by the arm, pulled her up on to her feet, and took her out into what she could see at once was the cellar which ran under the house. It was just like the one at No. 16. There were the steps going up in the corner, and a row of doors leading to the small cellars set against the party wall. She had been in the cellar farthest from the steps. Mr Harris now led her towards the back of the house and opened the door of the last cellar but one. There was a mattress on the floor, and a bed had been made up on it with a pillow, blankets, and sheets. There was a jug, a basin, and a pail, with a carafe of water and a tumbler to drink from. On a packing-case in the corner there was a tray with a loaf of brown bread and some butter.
“We’re not pampering you, but we’re not starving you,” he said. “Just you think things over, and in the morning—well, I hope to hear that you’ve made up your mind to take the pleasanter of the two ways out.”
Kay stood against the cellar wall.
“Do you think no one will look for me?” she said.
Mr Harris laughed.
“Mr Clayton has been making the most assiduous inquiries. He is probably now trying to trace the taxi which drove you to Waterloo Station. It’s news to you, of course, but about three o’clock you upset Miss Rowland very much by saying you were going to leave without notice—not at all a nice way to treat an old lady—and as Nurse Long found your box all ready packed, I’m afraid you and Mr Clayton had planned it. As a matter of fact, I happened to overhear some of your conversation the night before—it’s really not safe to talk secrets in a public square—and when I heard that your young man was going to steal a march on me by calling for you at half past two, I had to arrange to steal a march on him. So when he called he was told quite innocently by Mrs Green that you were sitting with the old lady. The innocence of Mrs Green is really invaluable. When he came back at half past four, she was able to tell him that she had actually seen you go off in a taxi. She saw the driver carry up your box, and she saw your blue coat and skirt and your grey hat come down the steps from the front door. They are a little tight for Addie Long, but she managed to squeeze into them. And of course, leaving like that after the dressing-down you had just had for upsetting a poor helpless old invalid, it was quite natural that you should be crying and holding a handkerchief up to your face. I shouldn’t wonder if you hadn’t cried all the way to Waterloo.”
Kay put her hand behind her and pressed it against the wall. Waterloo—Nurse Long wearing her clothes and going away in a taxi—to make people think—to make them think she had gone away—if Miles thought she had gone away in a taxi, he wouldn’t look for her here—that’s what they had done it for—he would believe Mrs Green, and he would think she had gone away without letting him know.
She looked at Mr Harris, and she said,
“Miles will go on looking for me.”
As soon as she heard herself saying that, she knew that it was true. Miles would go on looking for her until he found her. There are things that you are sure about, and there are things that you are not sure about. You hope, and you believe, but you are not sure. This was one of the sure things, and it comforted Kay very much.
Mr Harris smiled. Kay did so wish he wouldn’t smile at her, because a smile ought to be a friendly thing, and this one wasn’t in the least bit friendly. It was sarcastic and cruel, as if he were thinking what a little fool she was, and as if it pleased him to be able to frighten her.
“Oh yes, he’ll go on looking for you,” he said. “He’s a most pertinacious young man. He’ll find out that from Waterloo you took the Tube to Victoria, and that you there took a ticket for Folkestone, and after that I’m afraid he’ll lose track of you. It will take him some time to get as far as that, especially if he follows you to Folkestone, and it may put him off if he finds out that when last seen you were with a young man with whom you seemed to be on the very best of terms. So you see it’s not much good your counting on Mr Clayton.”
He came forward and lighted a very small candle end which was on the tray. Then he went out of the cellar and shut the door. The key turned in the lock. Kay heard him going away.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Kay looked at the candle end, and then she looked at the cellar. She had better look at it whilst she could, for that candle end wasn’t going to last any time at all. If she had had some matches, she could have saved it to light for a minute or two at a time when the dark became unbearable. She could have made it last a long time like that, but it wasn’t any good thinking about it, because she hadn’t got any matches. She must learn every inch of the cellar and know just where everything was before the light went out. If she did that, it would give her something to think of. So many steps from the bed to the door. So many to the side wall. So many from the door to the party wall. The jug and basin here, the carafe and tumbler there. The packing-case with the tray on it in the right-hand corner farthest from the door.
The packing-case was empty. It was about three feet by two, but it was quite light because it was empty. She pulled it a little away from the wall, and found the floor in the corner very rough and broken.
The candle end was only a rim of wax with the wick beginning to fall sideways in the middle of it. The flame flickered in an upward draught and made a monstrous leaping thing of Kay’s own shadow. It was funny that there should be a draught in the corner. She remembered that there had been a draught in the first cellar. She knelt down in the space she had made between the packing-case and the wall and saw a rectangular hole in the bottom course of bricks. Right in the corner there was a whole brick missing. She put her hand into the hole and felt a wobbly grating there. That was why there was a draught. There was a ventilator in the corner between this cellar and the one at the end of the row. Perhaps there were ventilators between all the cellars. No, there didn’t seem to be one on the other side. Perhaps there was only one between every pair of cellars.
She had got as far as this, when the light flared and went out. The crowding shadows rushed together and made an impenetrable blackness. Then, j
ust as Kay was going to get up from her knees, she heard a sound which set her heart knocking against her side. In the end cellar of all, on the other side of the wall against which she was leaning, someone moved—and muttered—and groaned.
Kay’s hand was on the wall. It seemed to shake and tremble. After a moment she knew that it was she who was shaking. The brick was cold against her palm. The brick didn’t move. It was her hand that was shaking. The groaning came again and the low muttering. She took her hand from the wall and bent down to the ventilator. The groaning was louder, and she could hear the sound of someone or something moving. It was a slow, dragging sound, and all at once she remembered how the kitten had come back to her out of the cellar with a smear of blood upon its fur.
She leaned against the packing-case with her heart beating wildly. She must stop it. She must be calm. She must try and think.… The kitten had gone through a hole in the wall between the two houses. It wasn’t a big hole. If the kitten had been any larger, it wouldn’t have got through. It was such a tiny little thing, all fur. There had been blood on the fur. It had gone into the end cellar at the back of the house and she had lost it there, and when she went to look with a candle, there was a hole in the party wall, and the kitten had come back through the hole with blood on its fur.
Everything began to straighten out in her mind. The kitten had gone into the end cellar at the back of the house at No. 16. 18 came next to 16, because the odd numbers were on the other side of the street. The groans came from the end cellar at the back of the house in No. 18. She herself was in the end cellar but one.
But who was it that was groaning on the other side of the wall? It was dreadful to crouch there in the dark and hear those groans. There must be someone there who was hurt. Just then Kay saw a picture in her own mind. It was a picture of what she had seen when she came through the wall on to the first-floor landing of No. 18. In this picture she saw the new stair carpet and its bright garish pattern, and she saw the odd marks where something had stained it—and it had been rubbed—and the stain hadn’t quite come out. She had been afraid of what might have stained it then, and she was more afraid now, because she knew that the stains had been blood, and blood never quite comes out.
The groaning had stopped. The wild knocking of Kay’s heart had stopped. In some curious way it gave her courage to know that there was someone in the next cellar. She stooped down again, put her lips against the hole, and said in a whisper,
“Who is there?”
There wasn’t any answer to that.
The sound of her own voice had frightened her again. Suppose Mr Harris hadn’t really gone away. Suppose he was listening. Suppose he suddenly opened the door and caught her kneeling here.… Well, suppose he did—
She said again, “Who is there?” and this time she said it a little louder.
There was a groan, but no other answer.
In a quick revulsion of feeling she scrambled up and pushed the packing-case back against the wall. One or two groans came to her faintly. Then they ceased and a dead weight of silence settled down.
Time goes very slowly in the dark. She felt rather sick and not at all hungry, so she did not touch the bread, but she found the carafe and drank a tumbler of water. Then she lay down on the mattress bed and tried to think that Miles would come and find her. Presently she slept.
Mr Harris went up through the house, unlatched the door of Miss Rowland’s wardrobe, and stepped out into the bedroom. The room was lighted, the curtains were drawn, and the fire burned brightly. Two chairs were pulled up to the hearth, and on the table between them stood a well filled tray. Nurse Long sat in the farther chair. She still wore Kay’s coat and skirt, but she had taken off the little grey hat and thrown it on the bed. She was pale and frowning as she looked up and said,
“I thought you were never coming. Everything’s getting cold.”
Mr Harris shrugged his shoulders.
“I didn’t ask you to wait for me,” he said, and helped himself to chicken stew. He was getting a little tired of chicken, but Miss Rowland’s character as an invalid had to be considered.
Nurse Long helped herself when he had done. She took a few hasty mouthfuls, eating as if she were famished, and then suddenly dropping her knife and fork, she demanded,
“What are you going to do?”
“Have my supper,” said Mr Harris equably.
“I must know what you’re going to do.” Her tone was sharp and exasperated.
Mr Harris raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, I’m going to marry her. I told you so.”
“And suppose she won’t?”
“This is very good stew. You might tell Mrs Green I enjoyed it.” said Mr Harris. “Well, I’d rather suppose she will.”
“Oh, chuck it!” said Addie Long. “What have you done to her? I’ve got to know!”
“I haven’t done anything—yet—except move her into more comfortable quarters.”
She looked startled.
“You’ve moved her? Where have you put her?”
“Next to the Yank.”
Addie Long put down her plate and jumped up.
“Damned fool! She’ll hear him! He makes the hell of a row.”
Mr Harris went on eating stew.
“My dear Addie, I do wish you’d believe that I know my own business. Kay’s probably listening to the Yank’s groans at this very minute. I hope she is. I except them to have a very persuading effect. You see, I want her to marry me of her own free will.”
Addie Long stood over the fire and kicked at it with her foot.
“What do you want to marry her for? I tell you it’s much too risky. You’ve got to prove that she’s Kay Macintyre—and when you’ve done that, what have you got? The off-chance that Boss Macintyre will leave her his wad. And what is he—sixty—sixty-five? He might hang on for another twenty years. It’s not worth it. And if he knew who she’d married, it wouldn’t take him long to make another will—would it?”
Mr Harris took another helping of stew.
“Come and sit down, can’t you, and eat your supper. Restless—that’s what you are—and a nagger. And if you know anything that feeds a man up worse than that, I don’t.”
Addie Long came back to her chair, and got an approving nod.
“That’s better. Now I don’t mind telling you something you don’t know—and something I didn’t know till the other day. Kay’s mother would have come in for all old Miss Harriet Basing’s money if she’d lived. She was the favourite niece, and Miss Basing left the whole wad to her and her children—tied it up tight on them. Miss Basing only died a few months ago, but she couldn’t alter her will after Mrs Macintyre died, because she was a certified lunatic. The will she made twenty-two years ago before she went off her head is good in law, and it means that Kay gets the Basing millions. That, my dear, is why I began to take an interest in her again. As you say, the off chance of her coming in for anything from Boss Macintyre wouldn’t be worth running any serious risk for. But the Basing millions are another story, and they’re hers—there’s nothing problematical about them.”
Her face sharpened. After a moment she looked away.
“You’ll have to prove who she is.”
“Rhoda’s letters will do that. They’re all together in that old desk of hers.”
“Where is it?”
He nodded towards the wardrobe.
“Next door. Well—now are you on?”
He watched the struggle in her averted face. After a minute she said sulkily,
“I suppose so.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
Kay woke up. She had been dreaming that she and Miles were walking in the Square just as they had really walked there. Only in her dream there were no lamp-posts, and no pavements, but soft green grass under foot and trees shining with blossom and very sweet to smell. Some of the blossom was pink like almond, and some of it was white like plum, and some of it was green like lime. They walked in a bright dusk, and there was a g
reat happiness and content between them. And then all at once she heard the kitten mew. She couldn’t see it, but she could hear it crying with a tiny insistent cry which troubled her and broke in upon her dream. She began to wake, and the dream began to recede. The colour and the brightness faded from the blossoming trees. She couldn’t see Miles any more. All her comfort went. But the cry of the kitten still sounded in her ears. She woke to the dark loneliness of the cellar, and as she woke, she heard it still.
It took her a moment to find herself. The mattress low on the floor, the heavy stuffy air, the cold weight upon her thought—it took her a moment to remember why these things were as they were. Then when she was fully awake and herself, there came again that faint insistent mew. She sat up and listened with all her ears, but this time the sound that filled them was one of those deep and dreadful groans. And then it flashed over Kay that the groan and the kitten’s mew both came from the same cellar, the cellar that was next to hers.
In a moment she knew what had happened just as well as if she had seen it happening. Mrs Green had shut the kitten into the cellar for the night. It wouldn’t matter how much it mewed or clung to her hand, she would push it down the steps and bang the door, and go into the warm lighted kitchen and have her supper just as if it wasn’t a frightfully cruel thing to shut a poor baby of a kitten into a horrid cold cellar where there might be rats.
The kitten was a very brave little thing—Kay had seen that from the first. It really was an Example. It didn’t let itself be frightened. It started looking for adventures. She could just see it dancing up to a bit of straw and patting at it, and dancing away again all sideways like a crab. Kay didn’t feel herself to be nearly as brave—but of course the kitten could see in the dark, and that did make a difference. Well after it was shut up it would play little pouncing games and pretend there were mice in the straw. And then it would get bored with that—kittens never played any game for more than a minute or two on end—and that was when it would remember the hole in the end cellar where it had got through before. Perhaps it had a game about catching something that lived in the hole. Perhaps it knew that there was someone in the cellar through the party wall. Perhaps it was lonely. Perhaps it was only curious. Whichever it was, one thing was certain—the kitten was in the next cellar.
Blindfold Page 20
