“It could easily have fallen out when he fell.”
Sally shook her head.
“No, it couldn’t. It was in an inside pocket, and he had on a jerkin. It couldn’t possibly have fallen out.”
“Well, what did he say about it himself—about the fall and everything?”
Sally lifted one of her hands and let it fall on her knee.
“He never remembered anything. He had a very bad concussion, and he never remembered a single thing.”
“Do you mean he didn’t remember what was in the letter?’
“Not a thing—not then.”
“How do you mean, not then?”
Sally hesitated.
“He’s remembered now—what was in the letter, I mean. At least I think he has. He hasn’t told me straight out, but I think he’s remembered, and I think that’s why he’s coming home.”
“Yes?” said James.
“And I think it’s very dangerous,” said Sally.
James leaned forward.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Oh!” said Sally on a startled breath. She leaned back against her black velvet cloak and the red leather of the chair.
James looked sternly at her.
“What’s the good of telling me anything if you don’t mean to go the whole way? First of all you say I’m not to ask any questions, and then you give me about half the bits of a jigsaw puzzle and say ‘Go on—make your own picture.’ How can I make any picture if you don’t give the pieces?”
“What pieces do you want?” said Sally.
“I’ll tell you. If you answer my questions, I’ll pick out what pieces I want.”
Sally looked at him, and looked away, but she didn’t speak.
“And the first thing I want to know is, did your Aunt Clementa really hide anything?”
“I don’t know. She said she did.”
“What did she hide?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You must.”
“Papers,” said Sally with a sigh. Then she straightened up. “And it’s no good your putting over any more of that third-degree stuff on me, because I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“All right, all right. Now this business about Jocko. Who was there when he got your Aunt Clementa’s letter?”
“All of us.”
“Who’s ‘all of us’?”
“It was at breakfast. We were all there.”
James gave her a raging look. He thought he knew something about how enraging girls could be, but Sally really was the limit. They generally did it to make you lose your temper, so he held on tight to his.
“You keep on saying ‘all,’ and ‘we.’ Do you mind telling me what that means? All the names please—one at a time.”
Sally’s colour rose.
“Well, I was there,” she said.
“Yes?”
“And Jocko.”
“Yes, I’d gathered that.”
“And Daphne and Bonzo,” said Sally quickly.
“Bonzo? Was Bonzo Strickland there?”
Sally nodded.
“All the time. We were all great friends—we did everything together.”
“Well? Who else?”
There was a longish pause. The colour in Sally’s cheeks burned high. Then she said all in a hurry,
“There was Hildegarde, and Henri.”
“Now we’re getting there,” said James to himself. “Bonzo and Daphne indeed! Stuff and rubbish!” He said out loud,
“Do you mind telling me about Hildegarde and Henri? Who are they? You’re not being exactly helpful, you know.”
“Oh—” said Sally. And then, “Henri is Henri Niemeyer. He is Hildegarde’s cousin.”
“Oh, he’s Hildegarde’s cousin? That explains everything—doesn’t it? And who is Hildegarde?”
“Hildegarde is my guardian’s wife.”
“And who is your guardian?”
She said in a perfectly colourless voice.
“My guardian is Ambrose Sylvester.”
XV
“What?” said James.
Sally said nothing. She looked down at her clasped hands.
James took her by the left wrist with his right hand and by the right wrist with his left hand and pulled her fingers apart. He kept his hold of her, a strong, hard hold, and he said,
“Are you making this up?”
Sally said nothing.
James rather shouted at her.
“Is this another Aspidistra Aspinall stunt? Because if it is, I’m not taking any!”
“No, said Sally—“it’s true.”
“Ambrose Sylvester is your uncle?”
“No, I never said he was my uncle. He’s my guardian till I come of age. I’m not twenty-one yet.”
James went on holding her wrists.
“You don’t mean Ambrose Sylvester the novelist?”
“Yes, I do.”
“The one with the profile?”
Sally was like all the other girls. She sighed.
“It’s a lovely profile.”
James shook the wrists he was holding.
“What does a man want with a profile?”
An odd look flitted over Sally’s face. She didn’t say anything.
“Can you read his stuff?” said James.
She nodded.
“Yes—it’s beautiful.”
James let go of her and sat back.
“Well, let’s get on. Is that the lot? Or was there anyone else in your party?”
“No—no one else.”
“Well, that’s you and Jocko, and Bonzo and Daphne, Sylvester and Mrs. Sylvester and her cousin Niemeyer. How many of these people were on the ledge with Jocko when he fell?”
“All of them,” said Sally.
“Do you know who was nearest to him?”
She shook her head.
“I was in front. The last time I looked back Jocko was between Bonzo and Hildegarde. It was quite a wide ledge and there was room to pass. Daphne says she stayed behind to pick gentians—she didn’t see what happened. The ledge was very winding. Honestly, James, if he was pushed, anyone might have pushed him, and if the letter was taken out of his pocket, anyone might have taken it.” She slid back the chair and got up. “I’m glad I’ve told you, because I had gone over it, and over it, and over it in my mind until I’d got it all twisted up, but now I’ve told you, I can see that there isn’t anything in it. It was just an accident—it must have been.”
“Yes? What about the letter?” said James.
She flashed into a sudden radiant smile.
“I’ve been stupid. Oh, how stupid I’ve been! Don’t you see, Jocko must have torn it up himself. Why should he keep it? Of course he tore it up. What a relief!” She snatched up her cloak and pulled it round her. “I must hurry, hurry, hurry! I want to dance now—I didn’t before! Oh, don’t you wish you were coming too? Would you like to?”
Suddenly, violently, James did wish it. His eyes said so. His tongue said something that it had begun to say.
“Somebody shot at us all the same. And someone did Jackson in.”
That was what his tongue said, but next moment he could have bitten it savagely, because Sally’s smile went out and her eyes stopped shining at him. She said in a woeful voice,
“I’d forgotten. I was only thinking about Jocko. You mustn’t come. We mustn’t see each other again.”
It knocked James off his balance. He minded. That was what knocked him over—he minded frightfully. Why? He had met her three times, and of those three times he had only seen her twice. Why should it knock him over like that to be told that he couldn’t see her again? He stood there staring at her and stammering her name.
“Sally—Sally—”
She was clutching the big black cloak about her. It flowed over her in dark waves and hid all the whiteness of her dress. She went back a step and tapped the floor with her foot.
“Don’t! You mustn’t! I mu
st go.”
“Sally!”
She was on the edge of tears. She tapped the floor again.
“Open it and let me go!”
James got hold of himself. He said in quite a steady voice,
“In a moment, Sally—you can give me a moment. We’ve got to straighten this out. You say we mustn’t meet. Why?”
“Dangerous—I told you—” She choked a little.
“Dangerous for you, or for me?”
“For you—and for me—and for Jocko—dangerous for us all.”
“They think it was Jackson,” said James doggedly.
“Suppose they find out it wasn’t—and they find out we’re friends. How long do you suppose it would be before one of us—had—an accident? And Jocko is coming home—he’ll be here any day now—and we’d be dragging him into it. Don’t you see it won’t do? Let me go! I oughtn’t to have come—I knew I oughtn’t to!”
James stood obstinately on the trap-door which covered the stair.
“Why did you come?”
Sally looked at him.
“Because I wanted to.”
“Do you want to go?”
She shook her head.
“Then must you?”
She nodded. A round, bright tear fell upon the velvet of her cloak.
James came forward, but he didn’t touch her. He folded back the carpet, raised the trap-door. The steep ladder-like stair showed under the overhead light. He stood aside to let Sally go down, and slowly, still clutching her cloak about her, she went down out of his sight. When she had reached the bottom he followed her.
The passage was very narrow. It was very dark there. He went to the outer door to open it, but at the last moment his hand dropped from the knob and he turned round again.
“Come here, Sally,” he said, and Sally came. She came right into his arms and put up her face to be kissed, and he kissed her. Then she put her head down on his shoulder and cried.
James held her in a strong, angry clasp. He was feeling a strong, furious anger which made him want to smash something. Not Sally. She was his little Sally. To have and to hold. That was out of the marriage service. He had heard Bonzo say it to Daphne, and he had thought that Daphne would want some holding. Well, he meant to hold Sally against the world, and he meant to smash anyone who tried to come between them.
Sally said in a soft, crying voice, “Let me go,” and his clasp tightened. He said,
“I’ll never let you go. You’re mine.”
“I can’t be,” said Sally—“I mustn’t.”
“You are.”
Sally gave a small heart-broken sob.
“It’s no use. Why does it hurt like this? We don’t really know each other. We’ve got to forget.”
He tipped up her chin and kissed her. Her face was all wet with her tears. Her lips were trembling. They trembled against his. He said in an angry voice,
“Are you going to forget?”
Sally said “No” with a sob. And then, “I must. They’d kill you.”
“Now we’re getting down to it!” said James. “Now look here, Sally, I’m not taking any of this stuff about our not seeing each other again. It’s no earthly use your trying to put it across me, because I’m not having any. I suppose I’ve fallen in love with you, and I suppose you’ve fallen in love with me. I don’t know why it’s happened to us, but it has. You’re mine and I’m yours, and we’re not going to give each other up. We’re going to belong.”
“We can’t,” said Sally.
“I do wish you wouldn’t keep on saying that sort of thing! Whatever way you look at it, seems to me you want someone to look after you, and if there’s any dirty work going on, well you want someone all the more—don’t you?”
Sally said, “Yes.” And then, “Let me go now.”
James went on holding her.
“We can meet without anyone knowing if you think it’s necessary. I shouldn’t have said it was myself.”
Sally pulled away from him with a sudden strength.
“James—please let me go. I must show up at this dance. Let me go now. I’ll write to you—I promise I will.”
“Swear?”
“Yes, I will. Don’t you think I want to?”
He stood away from the door and opened it.
“I’ll get you a taxi.”
“No. It’s only just round the corner—24 Hinton Road—the Naylands. You can walk round there with me if you like, but I must tidy up my face first. Is there a light down here?”
He put it on. They were back to ordinary things again, but the tears that stained her face had been shed against his shoulder. The salt taste of them was still upon his lips. He watched her with her powderpuff and lipstick, and at the end she looked at him with a shaky smile and a lift of the brows which asked,
“Am I all right?”
James said, “Yes.” And then, “There’s a little too much powder on the left side of your nose.”
And then he took her round to No. 24 and rang the bell, and stood well back in the shadow to see her go into the brightly lighted hall. He did not kiss her again.
XVI
James rang up his cousin Winifred Lushington and asked her to lunch next day. She was Gertrude’s sister, and they were a good bit older than the other cousins, being the daughters by an early and extremely improvident marriage of his mother’s eldest sister, Frederica.
Winifred Lushington had pushed her way brightly into journalism at the age of seventeen. She was now the assistant editress of a woman’s paper. Like her sister Gertrude she was strongly and squarely built and rather wildly dressed. Her thick iron-grey hair always looked as if she had just cut it herself with a pair of nail-scissors. She wore large tortoiseshell glasses with bright yellow rims. Behind them her hazel eyes were very intelligent and alive. She was never quite able to forget that she was fifteen years older than James and had frequently spanked him in the past. She had even, under supervision, given him his bottle. These things had induced a superiority complex which sometimes annoyed James a good deal. He was, however, prepared to put up with it today.
It was as well that he had braced himself, because Winifred’s manner was distinctly tinged with the kind of solicitude which you expect from an aunt but resent in a cousin. She ordered lentil cutlets with tomato sauce, and a large cup of cocoa, a combination which made James shudder, and enquired how he was getting on at Atwells, using exactly the tone which all his aunts had used whenever they came down to see him at school. It required an effort of will to prevent himself from frowning as he replied that he was getting on all right, thank you Winifred.
The lentil cutlets having arrived, Winifred Lushington helped herself to butter, pepper, salt, mustard, and vinegar. She stirred these into the tomato sauce, and then mashed the cutlets and mixed the whole thing together, talking all the time.
“You’ve been with them two years now, haven’t you?… Oh, not quite? Well, I thought it was, because it was just after Daphne’s wedding, but of course you ought to know. Well now, have you decided whether you’ll put Aunt Millie’s money into them or not?”
James said he hadn’t decided yet.
“Well, what will you do if you don’t? That’s what I always say when people ask my advice. The job mayn’t be perfect—very few jobs are—but what’s the alternative? That’s what I say.”
“I might set up on my own,” said James, who hadn’t asked her advice and didn’t want it.
Miss Lushington put five lumps of sugar into her cocoa and stirred it vigorously.
“Far too risky,” she announced. “One of the girls in the office had a brother who did that, and he lost every penny.”
James became unable to restrain himself from frowning. His fair, thick eyebrows made an angry line across his face.
“Where is Gertrude?” he enquired brusquely.
Winifred sipped her cocoa.
“Somewhere in the Caucasus, I believe. She doesn’t write, you know—not unless she wants someth
ing—but she’s promised us a series of articles when she gets back. I shall have to write them of course—Gertrude’s bone lazy. And we’re paying her quite well too.”
James’s frown relaxed. Winifred was all right if he could keep her off his own affairs, but he had asked her to lunch with a purpose, and that purpose was not to talk about her sister Gertrude. He ate cold ham in silence whilst she talked shop about Gertrude’s articles, and then broke in abruptly,
“Do you know Ambrose Sylvester?”
Winifred stopped with a piece of mashed cutlet half way to her mouth.
“How do you mean, do I know Ambrose Sylvester?”
“I mean do you know him?”
“Everybody knows him, don’t they? I don’t know him personally.”
James didn’t allow himself to be disappointed. There were very few people in the public eye about whom Winifred didn’t know quite a lot. You couldn’t vouch for the truth of everything she knew, but if you wanted the current gossip, well, Winifred would deliver the goods. He grinned affably and said,
“Well, come along—what do you know about him?”
She ate her piece of cutlet and washed it down with cocoa.
“My dear James, you must know all about him—everyone does.”
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