It was towards the end of the dinner that the first disagreeable incident occurred. His butler leant over him, ostensibly to pour out
a glass of wine, and whispered: “That young lady that came this afternoon, sir, has been taken ill.”
“Ill!” said Mr Lewinstein in dismay. “What happened?”
“She complained of a bad headache, was seized with tremblings, and had to be taken up to her room,” said the butler in a low voice.
“Send into the village for the doctor.”
“I did, sir,” said the man, “but the doctor had been called away to London on an important consultation.”
Mr Lewinstein frowned. Then a little gleam of relief came to him. The detective had asked him not to be alarmed at anything that might happen. Possibly this was a ruse for her own purpose. She ought to have told him though, he complained to himself.
“Very good, wait till dinner is over,” he said. When that function was finished, and the guests had reached the coffee and cigarette stage before entering the big ballroom or retiring to their cards, Mr Lewinstein climbed to the third floor to the tiny bedroom which had been allocated by his lady wife as being adequate for a lady detective.
He knocked at the door.
“Come in,” said a faint voice.
The girl was lying on the bed, covered with an eiderdown quilt, and she was shivering.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me even.”
“Good Lord!” said Mr Lewinstein in dismay, “you’re not really ill, are you?”
“I’m afraid so; I’m awfully sorry. I don’t know what has happened to me, and I have a feeling that my illness is not wholly accidental. I was feeling well until I had a cup of tea, which was brought to my room, when suddenly I was taken with these shivers. Can you get me a doctor?”
“I’ll do my best,” said Mr Lewinstein, for he had a kindly heart.
He went downstairs a somewhat anxious man. If, as the girl seemed to suggest, she had been doped, that presupposed the presence in the house either of Four Square Jane or one of her working partners. He reached the hall to find the butler waiting.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the butler, “but rather a fortunate thing has happened. A gentleman who has run short of petrol came up to the house to borrow a supply–”
“Well?” said Mr Lewinstein.
“Well, sir, he happens to be a doctor,” said the butler. “I asked him to see you, sir.”
“Fine,” said Mr Lewinstein enthusiastically, “that’s a good idea of yours. Bring him into the library.”
The stranded motorist, a tall young man, came in full of apologies.
“I say, it’s awfully good of you to let me have this juice,” he said. “The fact is, my silly ass of a man packed me two empty tins.”
“Delighted to help you, doctor,” said Mr Lewinstein genially; “and now perhaps you can help me.”
The young man looked at the other suspiciously.
“You haven’t anybody ill, have you?” he asked, “I promised my partner I wouldn’t look at a patient for three months. You see,” he explained, “I’ve had rather a heavy time lately, and I’m a bit run down.”
“You’d be doing us a real kindness if you’d look at this young lady,” said Mr Lewinstein earnestly. “I don’t know what to make of her, doctor.”
“Setheridge is my name,” said the doctor. “All right, I’ll look at your patient. It was ungracious of me to pull a face I suppose. Where is she? Is she one of your guests, by the way? I seem to have butted in on a party.”
“Not exactly,” Mr Lewinstein hesitated, “she is – er – a visitor.”
He led the way up to the room, and the young man walked in
and looked at the shivering girl with the easy confident smile of the experienced practitioner.
“Hullo,” he said, “what’s the matter with you?”
He took her wrist in his hand and looked at his watch, and Mr Lewinstein, standing in the open doorway, saw him frown. He bent down and examined the eyes, then pulled up the sleeve of his patient’s dress and whistled.
“Is it serious?” she asked anxiously.
“Not very, if you are taken care of; though you may lose some of that hair,” he said, with a smile at the brown mop on the pillow.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Scarlet fever, my young friend.”
“Scarlet fever!” It was Mr Lewinstein who gasped the words. “You don’t mean that?”
The doctor walked out and joined him on the landing, closing the door behind him.
“It’s scarlet fever, all right. Have you any idea where she was infected?”
“Scarlet fever,” moaned Mr Lewinstein; “and I’ve got the house full of aristocracy!”
“Well, the best thing you can do is to keep the aristocracy in ignorance of the fact. Get the girl out of the house.”
“But how? How?” wailed Mr Lewinstein.
The doctor scratched his head.
“Of course, I don’t want to do it,” he said slowly; “but I can’t very well leave a girl in a mess like this. May I use your telephone?”
“Certainly, use anything you like; but, for goodness’ sake, get the girl away!”
Mr Lewinstein showed him the library, where the young
man called up a number and gave some instructions. Apparently his telephone interview was satisfactory, for he came back to the hall, where Mr Lewinstein was nervously drumming his fingers on the polished surface of a table, with a smile.
“I can get an ambulance out here, but not before three in the morning,” he said; “anyway, that will suit us, because your guests will be abed and asleep by then, and most of the servants also, I suppose. And we can get her out without anybody being the wiser.”
“I’m awfully obliged to you, doctor,” said Mr Lewinstein, “anything you like to charge me–”
The doctor waived fees out of consideration.
Then a thought occurred to Mr Lewinstein.
“Doctor, could that disease be communicated to the girl by means of a drug, or anything?”
“Why do you ask?” said the other quickly.
“Well, because she was all right till she had a cup of tea. I must take you into my confidence,” he said, lowering his voice. “She is a detective, brought down here to look after my guests. There have been a number of robberies committed lately by a woman who calls herself ‘Four Square Jane,’ and, to be on the safe side, I had this girl down to protect the property of my friends. When I saw her before dinner she was as well as you or I; then a cup of tea was given to her, and immediately she had these shiverings.”
The doctor nodded thoughtfully.
“It is curious you should say that,” he said; “for though she has the symptoms of scarlet fever, she has others which are not usually to he found in scarlet fever cases. Do you suggest that this woman, this Four Square person, is in the house?”
“Either she or her agent,” said Mr Lewinstein. “She has several people who work with her by all accounts.”
“And you believe that she has given this girl a drug to put her out of the way?”
“That’s my idea.”
“By jove!” said the young man, “that’s rather a scheme. Well, anyway, there will be plenty of people knocking about tonight, so your guests will be safe for tonight.”
The girl had been housed in the servants’ wing, but fortunately in a room isolated from all the others. Mr Lewinstein made several trips upstairs during the course of the evening, saw through the open door the doctor sitting by the side of the bed, and was content. His guests retired towards one o’clock and the agitated Mrs Lewinstein, to whom the news of the catastrophe had been imparted, having been successfully induced to go to bed, Mr Lewinstein breathed more freely.
At half-past one he made his third visit to the door of the sick room, for he, himself, was not without dread of infection, and saw through the open door the doctor sitting rea
ding a book near the head of the bed.
He stole quietly down, so quietly that he almost surprised a slim figure that was stealing along the darkened corridor whence opened the bedrooms of the principal guests.
She flattened herself into a recess, and he passed her so closely that she could have touched him. She waited until he had disappeared, and then crossed to one of the doors and felt gingerly at the key-hole. The occupant had made the mistake of locking the door and taking out the key, and in a second she had inserted one of her own, and softly turning it, had tip-toed into the room.
She stood listening; there was a steady breathing, and she made her way to the dressing-table, where her deft fingers began a rapid but silent search. Presently she found what she wanted, a smooth leather case, and shook it gently. She was not a minute in the room before she was out again, closing the door softly behind her.
She had half-opened the next door before she saw that there was a light in the room and she stood motionless in the shadow of the doorway. On the far side of the bed the little table-lamp was still burning, and it would, she reflected, have helped her a great deal, if only she could have been sure that the person who was lying among the frilled pillows of the bed was really asleep. She waited rigid, and with all her senses alert for five minutes, till the sound of regular breathing from the bed reassured her. Then she slipped forward to the dressing-table. Here, her task was easy. No less than a dozen little velvet and leather cases lay strewn on the silk cover. She opened them noiselessly one by one, and put their glittering contents into her pocket, leaving the cases as they had been.
As she was handling the last of the jewels a thought struck her, and she peered more closely at the sleeping figure. A thin pretty woman, it seemed in the half-light. So this was the businesslike Lady Ovingham. She left the room as noiselessly as she had entered it, and more quickly, and tried the next door in the passage.
This one had not been locked.
It was Mrs Lewinstein’s own room, but she was not sleeping quietly. The door had been left open for her lord, who had made a promise to see his wife to make arrangements for the morrow. This promise he had quite forgotten in his perturbation. There was a little safe let into the wall, and the keys were hanging in the lock; for Mr Lewinstein, who, being a prudent, careful man, was in the habit of depositing his diamond studs every night.
The girl’s fingers went into the interior of the safe, and presently she found what she wanted. Mrs Lewinstein stopped breathing
heavily, grunted, and turned, and the girl stood stock-still. Presently the snoring recommenced, and she stole out into the corridor. As
she closed each door she stopped only long enough to press a small label against the surface of the handle before she passed on to the
next room.
Downstairs in the library, Mr Lewinstein heard the soft purr of a motor car, and rose with a sigh of relief. Only his butler had been let into the secret, and that sleepy retainer, who was dozing in one of the hall chairs, heard the sound with as great relief as his employer. He opened the big front door.
Outside was a motor-ambulance from which two men had descended. They pulled out a stretcher and a bundle of blankets, and made their way into the hall.
“I will show you the way,” said Mr Lewinstein. “You will make as little noise as possible, please.”
He led the procession up the carpeted stairs, and came at last to the girl’s room.
“Oh, here you are,” said the doctor, yawning. “Set the stretcher by the side of the bed. You had better stand away some distance, Mr Lewinstein,” he said, and that gentleman obeyed with alacrity.
Presently the door opened and the stretcher came out, bearing the blanket-enveloped figure of the girl, her face just visible, and she favoured Mr Lewinstein with a pathetic smile as she passed.
The stairs were negotiated without any difficulty by the attendants, and carefully the stretcher was pushed into the interior of the ambulance.
“That’s all right,” said the doctor; “if I were you I would have that bedroom locked up and fumigated tomorrow.”
“I’m awfully obliged to you, doctor. If you will give me your address I would like to send you a cheque.”
“Oh, rubbish,” said the other cheerfully, “I am only too happy to serve you. I will go into the village to pick up my car and get back to town myself.”
“Where will you take this young woman?” asked Mr Lewinstein.
“To the County Fever Hospital,” replied the other carelessly. “That’s where you’re taking her, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” said one of the attendants. Mr Lewinstein waited on the steps until the red lights of the car had disappeared, then stepped inside with the sense of having managed a very difficult situation rather well.
“That will do for the night,” he said to the butler. “Thank you for waiting up.”
He found himself walking, with a little smile on his lips, along the corridor to his own room.
As he was passing his wife’s door he stumbled over something. Stooping, he picked up a case. There was an electric switch close by, and he flooded the corridor with light.
“Jumping Moses!” he gasped, for the thing he held in his hand was his wife’s jewel case.
He made a run for her door, and was just gripping the handle, when the label there caught his eye, and he stared in hopeless bewilderment at the sign of Four Square Jane.
An ambulance stopped at a cross-road, where a big car was waiting, and the patient, who had long since thrown off her blankets, came out. She pulled after her a heavy bag, which one of the two attendants lifted for her and placed in the car. The doctor was sitting at the wheel.
“I was afraid I was going to keep you waiting,” he said. “I only just got here in time.”
He turned to the attendant.
“I shall see you tomorrow, Jack.”
“Yes, doctor,” replied the other.
He touched his hat to Four Square Jane, and walked back to the ambulance, waiting only to change the number plates before he drove away in the opposite direction to London.
“Are you ready?” asked the doctor. “Quite ready,” said the girl, dropping in by his side. “You were late, Jim. I nearly pulled a real fit when I heard they’d sent for the local sawbones.”
“You needn’t have worried,” said the man at the wheel, as he started the car forward. “I got a pal to wire calling him to London. Did you get the stuff?”
“Yards of it,” said Four Square Jane laconically. “There will be some sad hearts in Lewinstein’s house tomorrow.”
He smiled.
“By the way,” she said, “that lady detective Ross sent, how far did she get?”
“As far as the station,” said the doctor, “which reminds me that I forgot to let her out of the garage where I locked her.”
“Let her stay,” said Four Square Jane. “I hate the idea of she-detectives, anyway – it’s so unwomanly.”
2
The chairman of the Bloxley Road Hospital for Women took his seat at the head of the table, with a grim nod of recognition for his colleagues, and a more respectful inclination of his head for that eminent surgeon, Sir John Denham, who was attending this momentous meeting of the Governors by special invitation.
Doctor Parsons, the chairman, pushed aside a little brown paper parcel which lay on his blotting pad, and which he saw, after a cursory glance, was addressed to himself. Presumably this contained the new vaccine tubes which he had ordered from the research laboratory. He cast a swift glance from left to right, smiling a little bitterly at the glum faces of the staff.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “Bloxley Road Hospital looks like closing.”
“Is it as bad as that, sir?” asked one of the surgeons with a troubled face, and Dr Parsons nodded.
“I suppose you didn’t have any luck, Sir John?”
Sir John Denham shook his head.
“I have been to everybody in London who is likely to h
elp. It is little short of a crime that the hospital should have to close down, and that’s just how it stands, doesn’t it, Parsons?”
The doctor nodded his head.
“I’ve already shut two wards out of four,” he said. “We ourselves have had no salaries for a fortnight, but that, of course, does not matter. And the devil of it is that women are clamouring to get into this hospital – I’ve got a waiting list of nearly eighty.”
Sir John nodded gravely.
“It’s a terrible state of affairs,” he said. “Do you know Lewinstein?”
“Slightly,” said the doctor with a faint smile. “I know him well enough to cadge from him; but it was no go. Mr Lewinstein would get no credit from having his name on our subscription list, and he is rather out for credit. As a matter of fact, he did subscribe once before. By the way, talking of Lewinstein reminds me that Lord Claythorpe, a close friend of his, has bought his niece a £50,000 pearl necklace as a wedding present. It was in all the morning papers.”
“I saw it,” said Sir John.
“Really, I sometimes feel that I would like to turn burglar,” said the exasperated chairman, “and join the gang of that – what do you call the lady? – the person who stole that Venetian armlet that is being advertised for so industriously. She went down in the guise of a detective to Lewinstein’s house. Apparently she cleared out all the guests and bolted in the night, and amongst the things she took was an armlet belonging to one of the Doges of Venice, worth a fortune. At any rate, they are advertising for its return.”
“Whose is it?”
“Lord Claythorpe’s. His wife was wearing it. Like a fool she took it down to Lewinstein’s place. Claythorpe is a bit of a connoisseur,
and they say he has been off his head since his wife came back and reported the loss.”
At that moment the telephone bell rang, and the doctor pulled the instrument towards him with a little frown.
“I told those people in the office not to put anybody through,” he said and lifted the receiver.
“Who’s that?” he said sharply, and the soft pleasant voice of a girl replied: “Is that Dr Parsons?”
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