“Which of you two is Miss Judy Wellington?”
Judy sat up stiffly, and he turned his head and looked at her.
“Ah,” he said. “Miss Wellington, your guardian is looking everywhere for you, my dear. I think you’d better go to him. I daresay you’ll find him in his rooms.”
Judy started to her feet. Even the glorious weather seemed part of the terrible nightmare into which she had been plunged by the terrible paragraph in the newspaper. She barely looked at Saxon Marsh, but with a muttered and incoherent apology to Miss Ferney she turned and fled.
Saxon Marsh remained where he was. For some time he stood quite still, looking down at the woman without speaking.
Marguerite Ferney showed no signs of irritation or alarm but returned his stare steadily.
After a while he stepped forward uninvited and seated himself in the chair which Judy had vacated, stretching out his long, skeleton-like legs and folding his thin yellow hands across his body.
“A charming little girl, is she not?” he remarked at last. “So anxious to talk about herself. So charming and engaging in all her ways.”
Marguerite Ferney did not answer. She had taken a tiny silver vanity case from her bag and was peering thoughtfully at her flawless complexion in the tiny glass it contained.
“You don’t know me,” Saxon Marsh went on in the same even, precise tone in which he might have commented on the weather. “I really don’t think that matters. But I have a proposition to put up to you, Miss Ferney: one which, if you are as wise as I have reason to believe, you will accept with enthusiasm.”
Still the woman did not speak or even glance in his direction. She seemed to be engrossed in the slender line of her left eyebrow.
“First of all, perhaps you will forgive me if I come straight to a rather delicate matter,” the man continued placidly. “Your finances, Miss Ferney, are in a very—shall we say unsatisfactory condition?”
The woman nodded coolly.
“That is true,” she said.
“Ah.” The man pounced upon the admission. “In that case, Miss Ferney, you will, I am sure, be particularly interested in what I am going to say now. I have a very difficult and delicate mission to entrust to the right person. Once it is brought to a satisfactory conclusion there will be a great deal of money in it, both for me and my messenger. It requires tact, and that is why I feel that a woman, a clever, unscrupulous woman, is the person I need. It would necessitate this lady going to Australia within the next fortnight. The matter is urgent, you see. In all the trip would take the best part of a year, but the reward would be magnificent. Now, Miss Ferney, what do you say? Shall I continue?”
Marguerite Ferney shut the little silver case in her hand with a snap and put it back in her handbag. Then she leant back in her chair and turned her head slowly until her eyes rested squarely upon the man’s face.
“I must understand this thing completely,” she said in a voice that was dangerously calm. “First of all, you want me to leave the country: that is to say, to go to Australia and to remain away for the best part of a year. During that time I am to undertake some delicate but not, I suppose, dangerous, mission.”
There was the merest hint of sarcasm in her tone on the last phrase.
Saxon Marsh nodded.
“Exactly,” he said. “And the remuneration would be enormous; quite enough to get you out of your present difficulties and establish you permanently in the manner to which—er—you have become accustomed.”
Marguerite Ferney lay back in her chair and laughed. She laughed with genuine amusement, her pale face flushing, and her big, rather hard eyes suffusing with tears of mirth.
Saxon Marsh looked at her closely, striving to detect a false note of hysteria in the sound, but found none. Miss Ferney was genuinely amused.
“Dear Mr. Saxon Marsh!” she said at last. “Do you too believe that all women are necessarily fools?”
The use of his name when he clearly thought himself to be unrecognized startled the man, and he frowned.
Miss Ferney continued.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I can’t undertake your ‘delicate, tactful mission’ which was to make us both so rich. You see, my dear Mr. Marsh, I happen to be very busy. I have a little matter of my own on hand which requires a certain amount of tact in itself, and it too, I hope, will not prove unremunerative.”
After the first frown of annoyance Saxon Marsh did not show any other sign of emotion. He continued to look at the girl but with a curious, detached interest, as though he hardly considered her a real person.
“I’m sorry you can’t entertain my proposition,” he said. “You seemed such an intelligent girl. Don’t you think it would be an idea, Miss Ferney, to work with me instead of against me?”
The girl sat forward in her chair and turned her head so that her eyes met his, and people on the beach below might well have thought that they were two old friends, or perhaps father and daughter, chatting amicably about the most trivial of subjects.
“There is only so much money,” she said. “Do you understand?”
Saxon Marsh rose to his feet.
“Miss Ferney,” he said in his silkiest tones, “may I advise you that it would be wisest for you, best for your health, shall we say, if you left Westbourne, or at any rate kept out of the way of Miss Judy Wellington?”
Saxon Marsh had unpleasant eyes, and even Miss Ferney, who was not afraid of anything on earth, experienced a faint thrill of distaste and apprehension as she looked into them.
“Mr. Marsh,” she said, “you amuse me. I have often noticed that when men become very wealthy they are apt to lose all sense of proportion. I would like to remind you that this is respectable Westbourne, in safe, respectable England, and it is the twentieth century. Melodrama, don’t you think, is rather out of place?”
Saxon Marsh raised his head and looked up at the blue sky above the terrace. The ornamental wall of the hotel garden was silhouetted against that vivid blue twenty feet above his head. It was a very fine wall, of grey stone overhung with creeping rock plants and punctuated every now and again with huge stone urns also filled with flowers.
Directly above him, or rather directly above the chair in which Miss Ferney sat, was one of these huge urns, kept in position upon the wall by its own weight and the growth of lichen and moss which surrounded its base.
As Saxon Marsh looked at it now, filled with scarlet geraniums gleaming so bravely against the vivid sky, his pale eyes flickered.
And then, after a pause during which he turned and gazed thoughtfully out to sea, he shrugged his shoulders.
“Miss Ferney,” he said, “you’re a clever woman. Just how clever I don’t know. But I have a feeling I may soon find out. Perhaps you will think over my suggestion. After all, remember the old proverb, ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in chancery.’ Perhaps I may come and talk to you again some time,” he added. “This is a charming spot. Tell me, do you often sit here?”
Marguerite Ferney, who had not followed his glance and who knew nothing of the old-fashioned ornamental wall above her head, and had probably never noticed the heavy stone urn with its load of blood-red geraniums, answered frankly enough.
“Why, yes,” she said. “I always sit here. It’s my special corner.”
Saxon Marsh’s smile broadened.
“Usually alone?” he inquired.
“Usually alone,” said Marguerite Ferney innocently.
CHAPTER IX
The Private Investigator
INSPECTOR BLEST, hot, dusty, and badly in need of sleep, strode into the lounge of the Arcadian about three o’clock that afternoon and, avoiding Old Charlie and the manager, who were both moved by a desire to gossip with him, hurried up the staircase. The lift he disdained, not because he particularly wanted to walk, but because even the lift boy’s eyes had contained a gleam of curiosity as they rested upon him, and he was not in the mood to repulse with politeness.
David was
worried. He had made up his mind to speak to Judy. She would have to know the situation, have to realize that sooner or later she would be cross-questioned by the police and that sooner or later the secret of her birth must be revealed.
David wanted to spare her at least the shock. Thinking it over, he realized that he would not be able to trust himself to listen while Inspector Winn ploughed tactlessly over the girl’s feelings. It was an unpleasant task David had set himself, and he was not looking forward to it, but he pressed on.
He had had a nerve-racking day. Inspector Winn’s oath, “comb England if necessary for Lionel Birch,” looked as though it would give the Westbourne police many weary months of work if it was to be fulfilled.
Lionel Birch had disappeared completely and utterly, leaving no trace save the disordered room. Winn and his minions had scoured the place, interviewing everyone who might possibly be of use to them. But their task was incredibly difficult. It was not easy to obtain descriptions of everyone leaving a busy seaside town in the height of the season. Dozens of excursion trains, scores of charabancs had sped out of Westbourne the night before. And to make matters even more difficult, half the town seemed to have been in fancy dress. Even the booking clerk at the Empress could not say for certain which of his clients had come in before the crime had been discovered or who had gone out. His mind was a maze of Harlequins, Red Indian chiefs, Queen Elizabeths, and Mickey Mice.
When David reached the landing he sought and turned down the corridor towards Judy’s room, he had dismissed all these things from his mind. He was thinking only of Judy and wondering how to tell her the terrible truth which had to be told, wondering how he could hurt her least.
He was within sight of her door when it opened, and his heart leapt, as it always did, at the prospect of seeing her. But the next moment anticipation was turned to bewilderment and a growing sense of complete stupefaction for there emerged out of Judy’s door two completely unexpected persons.
One was a jovial old rascal in a fisherman’s jersey and slacks, a peaked cap on the back of his head, and a broad smile on his bewhiskered face; and the other was no less a person than ex-Sergeant Bloomer himself, very solemn and portentous in his best clothes and carrying as carefully as though it had been a bomb nothing more nor less than the plainclothes policeman’s proverbial bowler hat.
David paused in his stride. The element of the completely unexpected which seemed to have become quite a feature of the case was once more manifest. How on earth had Bloomer got on to Judy, and what in the name of good fortune could he possibly have had to say to her?
He had no time for conjecture, however, for the odd pair had by this time come abreast of him, and Bloomer’s little round eyes had widened considerably as he recognized the Scotland Yard man.
But if David’s appearance was a shock to him he preserved his composure remarkably well.
“Afternoon, sir,” he said blandly, pausing, and a smile spreading over his plump red face. “You’re staying ’ere, aren’t you, sir? It’s a very fine hotel. Makes us look right shabby.”
His companion had paused also, and in the cool shadow of the corridor his unkempt appearance looked very out of place.
Bloomer made no attempt to introduce him but seemed to see nothing odd about his presence.
David was more mystified than ever.
“What are you doing here, Bloomer?” he inquired. “Have you given up your job at the Empress in favor of the Arcadian?”
“Me? Oh no, sir. I’m on leave. Me afternoon out, the management calls it. No sense of dignity, these commercial people, ’ave they?”
He would have moved on, but David was in the way, and the young man did not attempt to move. Bloomer became confidential.
“As a matter of fact, sir,” he murmured, lowering his voice to the husky rumble to which David had become accustomed, “I’m pursuing a little line of investigation of me own. Just because my cooperation was flouted the other night it doesn’t mean that I’ve lorst interest. Oh well, I said to meself, if you’re not wanted, Bloomer, ’e can manage without you, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to stand by and see mistakes made all along the line, does it? Oh dear me no! So here I am on the job, sir, and I hope you won’t mention it.”
David quite appreciated Bloomer’s position. He no longer belonged to the regular force, it was true, and really, strictly speaking, he owed no loyalty to anyone but the hotel manager who employed him; but his cheerful assumption that David owed nothing to Inspector Winn either shocked the young inspector’s rigid sense of police etiquette.
“Really, Bloomer, this is outrageous,” he said. “I think you certainly ought to go to Inspector Winn and tell him all you know, and prefix it with a handsome apology for your manner last night.”
The words cost David a certain amount of effort and were prompted only by a sense of loyalty, for it was certainly not to his own personal interest that Bloomer should go to Winn with a piece of information that would take that irascible officer straight to Judy herself.
Bloomer hesitated. Then a broad if somewhat shamefaced grin spread over his features.
“I certainly ought to apologize,” he said at last. “I made a reg’lar fool of meself one way and another. But I don’t think I’ll go back to Inspector Winn if you don’t mind, Captain. In the first place, you see, I made a mistake. It was really lucky he didn’t hear me out, as it happens.”
David stared at him. “You made a mistake?” he said.
“Yes,” said ex-Sergeant Bloomer blandly. “It was me memory again. I thought of it afterwards. That fellow the inspector’s hunting for wasn’t the man I thought ’e was. Shows you how careful you’ve got to be, doesn’t it, sir?”
David frowned. The man was lying: so much was obvious. But why should he? What possible motive could he have for suddenly withdrawing his evidence which had come out so spontaneously at the time? David glanced at the bowler hat and thought he could guess the explanation. Ex-Sergeant Bloomer was fancying himself as a full-blown detective, and, having taken offence at Inspector Winn, had decided to handle the case and make a bid for glory on his own account.
David thought it his duty to remonstrate.
“You’ll never do any good trying to work without the police, Bloomer,” he said. “You’ll only get into trouble. I should cut it out if I were you.”
“Work without the police, sir?” Bloomer looked shocked, but it was the same degree of polite astonishment which habitual criminals sometimes employ when speaking to a police officer whom they consider overinquisitive, but whom at the same time they do not wish to offend.
David recognized that tone and recognized Bloomer’s frame of mind.
“I see you’re obstinate,” he said.
Ex-Sergeant Bloomer looked hurt.
“Obstinate? Me, Captain? Oh dear me no. I’m only trying to ’elp. Come along, George. Good-afternoon, sir.”
The person addressed as George grinned foolishly and shambled off with Bloomer.
David was nettled, but in spite of his irritation he could not help feeling that there was something likable about old Bloomer. He was a wholehearted old rascal, at any rate, and Winn had certainly treated him in a very cavalier fashion.
He had just turned back to his original project and was advancing upon Judy’s door when the second impediment to his interview with her that afternoon came hurtling down the corridor behind him.
The man moved so rapidly and brushed past David so sharply that their shoulders touched. The next instant he had forestalled the inspector and was tapping loudly on Judy’s door.
David recognized him instantly. It was Sir Leo Thyn. Although he had only a fleeting glimpse of him—for the girl’s door was opened almost immediately, and the baronet stepped inside and slammed the door behind him with unnecessary violence—David had time to observe the extraordinary change which had taken place in the old man since he had last seen him.
Sir Leo was positively haggard. The vivid colour had vanish
ed from his face, leaving it veined but pallid, and his extraordinarily precipitate rush upon the door suggested extreme nervous tension. David raised his eyebrows, and for the second time that day the conviction came back to him that Sir Leo knew a great deal more about the whole inexplicable business than anyone seemed to imagine.
David was irritated. It was evident that he could not speak to Judy just now, but it was also very clear that such an interview was vitally necessary. He stepped into his own room and stood thinking. He would wait, he decided, until Sir Leo had gone, and then tackle the girl.
He walked over to the open window and stood looking down into the garden with the sea beyond. But his mind was very far away from the glittering panorama spread out before him. Sir Leo, he felt sure, had not recognized him. The corridor was dark, and the man had clearly been in such a state of nerves that his mind was only fixed upon his immediate objective.
From where he stood scraps of conversation floated in to him through the open window of the other room. David listened openly, his scruples completely set aside because of the tremendous importance of the situation. Even so, it was impossible to hear much.
Judy was inaudible. He could hear her voice, but it was pitched so low that he could catch no separate word.
Sir Leo, on the other hand, while using a rumbling monotone most of the time, occasionally raised his voice, and disjointed phrases, shrill with hysteria, reached the inspector quite clearly.
“It’s imperative,” David heard him say again and again. “Imperative. I insist. I tell you I order it.”
There was a murmur of protest from Judy, and then a few words from Sir Leo, sounding as clear as though they had been spoken in his ear.
“You must not speak to her. She is dangerous.”
It was not the words themselves, although they were odd in the circumstances, which caught David’s attention. It was the tone in which they were uttered, a tone of fear.
David had heard men who had been frightened before, and could hardly have been mistaken. The high, thin note of alarm sounded as shrill as though it had been played upon a trumpet, and he wondered who it was who filled Sir Leo with such tremendous apprehension.
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