by Annie Haynes
“There is nothing to be done but to set all the resources of Scotland Yard to work to find the child.” He turned to John Daventry and said a few words in an undertone. Then he looked back at Alice.
“Why did you take the child to Brighton?” he asked sharply. “Why did you want to hide yourselves?”
Alice’s hands dropped on her lap. Every vestige of colour faded from her face. In the silence that followed you could fancy you could hear her heart beating.
“Hide ourselves!” she breathed at last. “We—we didn’t want to hide ourselves. Miss—Miss Maureen wanted to see Brighton.”
“Stop!” The inspector’s tones had altered to sternness. “We know that you were frightened, that you were both frightened, that there was something in connexion with Lady Anne’s—death! Ah!”
He sprang forward as he spoke and caught the girl just as she reeled off the chair in a dead faint.
The inspector laid her on the rough couch at the end of the window. Then glancing round the room he caught up a glass of water and dashed it into the girl’s face. It had the instant effect of bringing back her senses. She sat up and brushed back the wet hair from her face.
“You said that if I told you about Miss Maureen that was all—all!” she murmured.
“If you told me the whole truth,” the inspector said significantly. “Think again, my girl. The whole truth if you please.”
But Alice was lying back in her chair ready to faint again. “The truth! the truth!” she murmured. “I have told you the truth.”
“The whole truth,” the inspector corrected.
Alice scarcely seemed to hear him. She was murmuring: “The truth! the truth!” to herself.
The inspector shrugged his shoulders as he glanced across at John Daventry. “We shall do no more good here to-day, Mr. Daventry. It is sheer waste of time.”
John Daventry muttered a sulky assent, and the two men turned away. At the front door which Mrs. Gray was still holding open in a dreary, senseless fashion, the inspector waited to allow John Daventry to precede him. Then with a muttered word of apology he returned swiftly to the kitchen.
Alice sat up with a startled cry as he stepped quickly to her side.
“When you are thinking over what you will say to me, the next time—don’t forget the connexion with the Cat Burglar,” he said suggestively.
Then he turned away from her as quickly as he had come in. As he did so he cannoned into John Daventry who had followed him. But the inspector did not stop. With another apology he hurried out of the house.
With his quick stride John Daventry caught him up on the narrow pavement outside. “I heard you!” he said hoarsely. “I heard you just now.”
In one swift glance the inspector saw that the ruddy colour had faded from the young man’s face—that beneath its tan it had turned grey and cold.
“Heard me just now?” he questioned blandly.
“Yes! Heard you!” John Daventry repeated. “What did you mean? You asked about the Cat Burglar.”
The inspector turned and looked him full in the face, an odd expression gleaming for a moment in the sharp little eyes.
“What does she know about the Cat Burglar?” he repeated. “Well, I am inclined to think that she knows more about the Cat Burglar than anyone, Mr. Daventry.”
“But—but—” John Daventry’s utterance became choked. The big veins in his forehead stood out like whipcord. His face swelled, but he did not turn red, instead its sickly grey tint became more pronounced against the tan of his skin. He put up one big hand and wrenched at his collar as though he were stifling.
“But—but—” he gasped incoherently. “If—if you know that she knows all about the Cat Burglar—then you must know about him too.”
The inspector raised his eyebrows. “Not necessarily! But—supposing that I do know something. Have you never had any suspicion, Mr. Daventry?”
“Never, so help me Heaven!” John Daventry asseverated thickly.
CHAPTER XIX
“No news?”
Bruce Cardyn shook his head. “Not so far. The inspector may be back any moment.”
“He would have phoned through if he had had any good news,” Dorothy Fyvert said miserably. “And if he cannot make Alice speak no one can.”
“Mr. John Daventry may possibly,” Cardyn suggested.
“He won’t,” Dorothy said in a mildly contemptuous voice. “John will bluster and rage, but he will never get the truth out of Alice.”
“Suppose the truth has already been told?” Bruce Cardyn suggested. He was looking grave and tired. His eyes were red-rimmed and had an extinguished look—the sort of look that comes to a man who has been sitting up several nights in succession. Lady Anne Daventry’s death was taking heavy toll of those who were engaged in trying to probe the secret of it.
Dorothy herself was looking wretchedly ill. This terrible anxiety about Maureen coming on the top of the horror of her aunt’s death had turned the bright healthy girl who came home with the Barminsters to the house in Charlton Crescent into a mere nervous wreck. She had not been to bed, she had not taken off her clothes since she heard that her sister was missing, and she spent her whole time walking, backwards and forwards, up and down the streets. She firmly believed that Maureen would come or be brought to her in those same streets. Sometimes Margaret Balmaine was with her—sometimes Susan. More often she was alone.
It went to the heart of the man who loved her to see her as she was now. Her bright fair hair looked disordered and dull under a hat thrust on anyhow. Her brown eyes were bloodshot from much weeping and had great dark half-circles beneath them. The clear tones of her complexion were blurred and her face itself looked sodden and swollen. Her usually soft red lips were cracked and discoloured and every now and then they twitched uncontrollably. But Dorothy cared nothing about her appearance. She could think of nothing but Maureen—Maureen whom her imagination pictured in more and more terrible straits as the hours went on.
She had just paused in her endless pacing of the streets to call at the house in Charlton Crescent to see whether there was any news of Maureen.
It was the day of the inspector and John Daventry’s visit to Todmorden Lane, and Bruce Cardyn was at Lady Anne’s house to meet the inspector.
“How do you mean—that Alice has told the truth?” Dorothy questioned feverishly.
“Well, I am inclined to think that, when she says she does not know where the child is, she is speaking the truth,” he said slowly.
“But if she does not, where on earth can Maureen be?”
“I don’t know,” Bruce said in a strangely abstracted tone. “But we are bound to know soon,” he added.
He was still holding the door open. Dorothy had come into the hall and was standing with her back to it. He watched the outgoings and the incomings in the Crescent with the same abstracted look. A motor came whizzing up to the next door. For a moment Bruce thought that one of the two men in it was the inspector, then he saw that both were strangers. An organ-grinder was playing a melancholy ditty outside the Crescent; a little beggar boy came round from the other side and sat down on the first doorstep, leaning his head against the doorpost.
“I don’t know that we are bound to know soon,” Dorothy contradicted. “I heard the other day—somebody told me in a shop where I was making inquiries—that a mother sent her child to school as usual one day in a little country town. She stood on the doorstep to watch her as far as she could. It was only a little way to the school, such a very little way that there was only one field with a footpath running right through it that was really out of the mother’s sight until the child came out in the village street. The child turned to wave her hand to her mother before she went through the handgate, and from that day to this neither word nor sign has come from her. She disappeared as completely and utterly as though the earth had swallowed her up. The villagers went out in bands to search for her. Scotland Yard sent down detectives and of course the local police were v
ery busy from the first, but not the smallest trace of her could any of them discover—or has ever been discovered. Mr. Cardyn, do you wonder that the poor mother went mad—that to this day she is confined in a lunatic asylum and that she spends all her days in trying to find something? She does not know what, fortunately. The memory of her little child has a good deal faded, only she knows that it is a very precious thing that she looks for constantly. Mr. Cardyn, suppose we never find Maureen—we never know what has become of her?” And Dorothy shook from head to foot as she spoke.
“I refuse to imagine anything so appalling,” Bruce Cardyn said at once.
But it seemed to Dorothy Fyvert that his manner had altered—that some assurance had gone from him, that he was trying to evade her questions. His eyes did not meet hers, instead they looked away from her down the Crescent, and a terrible fear gripped her. Suppose he suspected something—suppose he knew—something! Her very heart seemed to turn cold within her, to stay its beating as she watched his averted face. In a sudden accession of overwhelming terror she seized his arm.
“Mr. Cardyn, you do know something—you are keeping something from me. Tell me—tell me, anything—any certainty must be better than this awful suspense.”
Cardyn did not answer for a moment. He did not turn his head or glance at her, he even drew his arm gently away.
“I do not know anything,” he said slowly in a muffled tone that was curiously unlike anything Dorothy had heard from him before. “But I wonder—I expect I am quite wrong—I dare say I am going crazy—”
He moved slowly down the steps as he spoke, walking almost like a man in a dream. After a second’s hesitation Dorothy followed him. She could not imagine what had caused the sudden change in his manner. There appeared to be nothing to account for it. The thought occurred to her that his mind had become unbalanced owing to the worry and the difficulties in connexion with Lady Anne’s death.
The mode of his progression along the Crescent struck her as extraordinarily peculiar. He went forward a few steps, then stopped, then went forward again; once he turned his head and, seeing her behind him, seemed to hesitate for a moment, then went on more quickly, almost, thought Dorothy, as though he wanted to shake her off.
In spite of her all-absorbing anxiety the girl felt a curious little pang of pain. Then at last a strange thing happened. He hurried forward with a cry—Dorothy could not catch the words, but something about him, some cadence set her heart beating violently. She too sprang forward.
Bruce was stooping forward over the little beggar boy on the steps, then before Dorothy could catch him he had lifted the child tenderly in his arms and turned.
“Safe at last, Miss Dorothy,” he said with a wry smile as the girl came up to him.
Dorothy could not believe the evidence of her own eyes and ears as she gazed at the limp figure lying in Cardyn’s arms. Could it indeed be Maureen—Maureen, her bright little butterfly sister? Maureen in ragged coat and knickers, her pretty hair jagged round her forehead, her face dirty and tear-stained, her hands blackened and bleeding, her bare feet showing through her tattered shoes and stockings—but still, Maureen! With a half incredulous sound of joy Dorothy stretched out her arms.
Cardyn shook his head.
“She is too heavy for you. And—I think she is ill. I do not believe that she is quite conscious. I will carry her into the hall, and then—”
Dorothy uttered no further remonstrance. One glance at the fever-bright eyes that met hers unseeingly had filled her with an awful foreboding.
Cardyn went straight through the hall into the library and laid his burden down on the big sofa near the window; Dorothy knelt down and took the hot, dirty little hands in hers.
“Maureen—Maureen, darling, don’t you know Dorothy?”
The blue fevered eyes focussed themselves on her face; a faint gleam of recognition dawned in them. The child tried to raise herself.
“Dor-othy,” she said brokenly.
With a cry of joy Dorothy kissed the poor cracked lips.
But in another second Maureen had turned from her, had torn her hands from her sister’s and apparently was fighting to keep off imaginary enemies with all her small strength.
Dorothy’s eyes were full of a piteous appeal as she looked up at Cardyn. Then with a supreme effort she pulled herself together. She placed pillows under the child’s head and laid her back gently on them and opened the window at her head.
“Please ring Dr. Spencer up and tell him to come at once,” she said to Bruce. “And then to the hotel—to Margaret. They must get rooms ready. I know Dr. Spencer will say that Maureen must not stay here. It is this horrible, horrible house that is killing her!”
While Bruce was obeying her she got warm water and gently sponged the grime from the child’s face and neck and arms, and took off her ragged garments, replacing them with a quilted dressing-gown of her own. For a time Maureen seemed more comfortable, but very soon she began to toss about again, to beat aimlessly on the air. She caught at Dorothy’s skirt as she passed.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked in a harsh cracked voice absolutely unlike her own.
Dorothy touched the outstretched hand gently. “You are Maureen, my dear little sister,” she said tenderly. “And I want you to lie still and go to sleep, just to please me.”
But Maureen was past heeding her. She pushed her sister’s hand away.
“I am not your little sister,” she said in her high-pitched cracked child’s voice. “I am not anybody’s little sister. I am—shall I tell you what I am?—I am—only you must not tell anybody”—her voice dropping to a whisper so that they could scarcely hear—”because if you did they would perhaps hang me. I am”—in a hoarse strained tone—“the Cat Burglar!”
Dorothy gave a cry of horror.
“Maureen, darling, you must not.”
Bruce Cardyn touched her. “Don’t contradict her. She is wandering, poor child. She has heard so much of the murder and the Cat Burglar that it is haunting her brain.”
At this moment the long-expected motor drove up to the door and the inspector and John Daventry got out. The Ferret was looking as imperturbable as ever. Daventry’s face was as black as thunder.
“No use!” he said as Cardyn came into the hall. “Couldn’t get a word out of the girl, do what we would.”
“She is here,” Cardyn said quietly.
“Who is here?” John Daventry questioned, staring at him.
“The child—Maureen.”
John Daventry sat down heavily on the nearest chair. “How did she come?” he questioned helplessly. “Who found her?”
Cardyn smiled faintly. “I may say she found herself. She was sitting on a doorstep lower down the Crescent, disguised as a beggar boy.”
“Good Lord!” ejaculated John Daventry, staring at him. “Of all the extraordinary things! Inspector, what is going to happen next in this case of yours?”
“The arrest of the criminal, hope,” Inspector Furnival answered as he came forward, his face very stern and his eyes watching Cardyn’s face carefully.
At the same moment Dr. Spencer walked into the hall.
“What is this I’m told? Little Miss Maureen found?”
Hearing his voice Dorothy came out of the library.
“Maureen is here, Dr. Spencer. But she is dreadfully ill. I don’t think she even knows us, and she keeps on telling me that she is not Maureen —that she is the Cat Burglar! You must save her for me, doctor!”
“Tut, tut! my dear!” the doctor said, patting her arm paternally. “Children are up and down. I expect Maureen is over-tired and probably overexcited by what she has gone through. We shall soon have her about again.” He hurried after her into the library.
The three men left in the hall stood and looked at each other. Daventry was the first to speak.
“Let me catch the ruffians who stole little Maureen away, and by the Lord above I will strangle every mother’s son of them. I will offer a big reward for
every one who can give any information about them. How much shall it be, inspector? Five thousand?”
“Too much!” the inspector said laconically. “I think we shall clear the matter up for you in a day or two without a reward. The reward offered for the discovery of Lady Anne’s murderer or murderers did not do much!”
“No! And you did not do much, either,” retorted John Daventry. “I wouldn’t mention that if were you, inspector.”
“Ah, well, when we have found that mystery out and made one arrest I dare say you will be as much surprised as anyone, Mr. Daventry,” said the inspector placidly.
“I shall be surprised if you arrest anyone, right or wrong, for my part!” John Daventry said. “Nice useful sort of lot you Scotland Yard men are!”
At this juncture Dr. Spencer came out of the library.
“I have phoned for an ambulance and nurses, Mr. Daventry—most convenient arrangement having the telephone in the library the child must be taken to a nursing home without delay.”
“What is the matter with her?” John Daventry asked bluntly.
The doctor regarded him over the top of his spectacles.
“Shock and exposure,” he said briefly. “She will require great care for some time. I am having her moved to a nursing home close at hand. The sooner she is out of this house the better.”
“Is she talking about the Cat Burglar?” John Daventry pursued.
“Yes! She is quite upsetting her sister,” the doctor answered. “But my dear Mr. Daventry, it is worse than useless to talk about the wanderings of a sick child. Once away from here she will be better. No doubt she has heard people talking about the Cat Burglar, and her disordered imagination has fastened upon the idea. As for there being any relation in it to facts, the very notion is ridiculous. But there is one person I should like to see punished, inspector”—raising his voice for that gentleman’s benefit—“and that is that housemaid, Alice.”
“There I am with you, doctor,” John Daventry joined in vigorously. “Girl deserves hanging.”
CHAPTER XX
