"I only want to meet her," he said plaintively. Lady Frinton's shrewd blue eyes appraised him and he was relieved to see her smile. "My dear, you really are charming," she said. "So old world, too. I only wish I could help you, but I'm afraid you must wait. Young girls have these difficult spells but, thank goodness, they get over them." Mr Campion's eyes flickered but his face registered nothing more intelligent than vague regret.
"What is it? The ballet or a footballer?" he inquired affably.
"Oh, nothing like that, the child's simply neurotic. I'm trying to persuade Phillida to take her to my yogi man. She has crying fits, ungovernable tempers, morbid desires for solitude and so on and so on."
Lady Frinton gave the information as though it had been dragged from her and then spread out her plump hands to indicate, no doubt, that she washed them of all responsibility.
"You must wait, my dear. Phillida says the girl won't see anybody. Just before the wedding, too. So unreasonable. Of course, it may be jealousy. These young people ..." She shrugged her shoulders and Campion laughed. The old lady bristled.
"Believe me, I'm not making mountains out of molehills. Why, the child actually wanted to throw up her part in the Jewel Pageant after her mother positively fought for a place for her, and we're all lending her our opals. We had quite a little scene the other night and poor Phillida simply had to put her foot down. The girl's impossible, Albert. She's spoiling her looks, too, the little idiot. If I'd behaved like that when I was young my mother would have taken a hairbrush to me." Campion sat blinking at his hostess. He looked monumentally stupid. "The Jewel Pageant?" he repeated. "Would that be the show at the Babylonian?"
"Well, of course it is." Lady Frinton gaped at him. "Dora is getting it up for one of those eternal charities." She spoke of her distinguished kinswoman, the Duchess of Stell, with tolerant amusement. "A host of young females are going to parade, each representing some jewel. The Pelham girl wasn't really eligible because she's still at school, but Phillida moved heaven and earth to get her in, and now the wretched creature has turned temperamental." She looked at her watch. "There's a rehearsal going on now. I expect there's been trouble over that. I am sorry for Phillida. When I was fifteen I'd have given my ears to appear in public in a blaze of jewelery. Dora is lending the child her opal coronet and there's not another like it in England."
Campion took his leave. As he passed the sunburst clock with the garden face he saw it was a quarter past five, and congratulated himself on a very instructive hour. Twenty-five minutes later he entered the ballroom of the Babylonian.
Her Grace, the Duchess of Stell, her hat on the back of her head and her broad face pink with exertion, nodded to him affably.
"Frightful!" she murmured confidentially, waving her programme towards a group of forlorn young women on the platform at the far end of the room. "Look at them. We ought to have had professional models, but, of course, people won't lend their jewelery then, so what can one do?" Then she shrieked. "Come, girls, we'll go through that once more. Mary, Mary, my dear. You're diamonds, aren't you? Round the stage, come on then, all of you. Round again, slowly."
She hurried down the room and Campion drifted towards the group of privileged onlookers, programme girls and other assistants who stood about on the polished floor.
Meanwhile, the awkward squad of granddaughters and nieces of the flower of England's nobility wriggled and did their inadequate best.
Mr Campion took up position directly behind the undieted mamas and so was able to observe the stage without much danger of being himself observed. He located Jennifer Pelham and was startled to see the change in her. She wore green still but her face was sharp and weary and her eyes hunted. As he watched he was aware that there was in her a certain conscious clumsiness. She moved with deliberate awkwardness and her mistakes were so absurd that they were entirely unconvincing. Campion was puzzled by her movements until the moment when she stumbled and collapsed. Then the explanation for her behavior came to him with the force of a minor revelation.
For years the Duchess had approved of Mr Campion. In the next few moments he earned her undying gratitude. No one could have behaved with greater tact and dispatch, no one could have been more helpful than Albert Campion. He swept through the chattering throng, gathered up the limp Miss Pelham and, explaining that his car was in the courtyard, declared his intention of taking her home immediately. Jennifer lay gracefully in his arms, her eyes determinedly shut. Only once did she open them, and that was when the Duchess, clucking over her like a distressed Wyandotte, murmured something about tomorrow's performance. At that moment Jennifer's heavy lids flickered wide.
"I can't," she murmured, "I'm so sorry. Somebody else," then she relapsed against Mr Campion's lapel. Her Grace sighed.
"It'll have to be the Carter girl," she said. "After all, opals are large and vague. It won't really matter. Still, I am sorry. Take the poor child home, Albert. Her color's still good so it can't be anything very serious. Tell Phillida I'll phone this evening. I can't thank you enough, Albert. You are a comforting boy. Take her along."
Mr Campion remained the soul of knight errantry until he had reached the Lagonda and packed his fainting burden into the front seat. His efficiency was remarkable. He stove off the anxious and well-meaning guests at the rehearsal and made his rescue from collapse to car in a little under seven minutes. As he swung the Grey automobile out into the traffic his manner underwent a change.
"Sit up!" he said curtly. "Doubtless you have your own reasons for this histrionic display but there's no need to get a crick in the back of your neck. You look rather silly, too."
The fainting girl blushed, and a smile curved the corners of Campion's wide mouth as he glanced at her.
"Too difficult, my child," he said. "If you must dissemble, choose a violent internal pain or acute rheumatism of the knee joint. The swoon is too exacting. Even the greatest of tragediennes, Eleanora Duse, couldn't fool a Boy Scout at close quarters."
He paused abruptly. Jennifer's fiery color had disappeared. A single tear, very large and round, squeezed beneath her left eyelid and bumped down the steep curves of her face.
Mr Campion felt himself a cad and had the grace to say so. "What's up?" he inquired.
"Nothing. I'm all right. Put me in a taxi, if you like." She spoke humbly. The Lagonda was caught in a traffic-jam. He braked and sat regarding her.
"Do you remember me?" he asked. For a moment she stared at him, then her eyes grew wide and she fumbled at the door-catch beside her. Mr Campion felt unreasonably angry.
"Look out," he said sharply. "At least let me put you down on the pavement. If you get out that side you'll walk into a bus."
She turned slowly and stared at him again. "I don't care," she said and the intensity in the young voice was terrible.
At that moment the stream of traffic moved sluggishly forward and the Lagonda crawled on in the procession. Campion did not look at Jennifer and when he spoke again his tone was serious but comfortingly calm.
"Look here," he said, "I don't want to butt into your affairs but I'm not quite the ape I look and I might conceivably be able to lend a useful hand. You're terrified, aren't you?"
He felt her shiver at his side.
"A bit," she admitted huskily.
"I ask you again; what's up?"
"I can't tell you."
"You daren't; that's it, isn't it?"
"Yes no I don't know. Take me home, please."
Campion nodded his regretful acquiescence. "All right. Forgive me. We turn here, don't we?"
She sat very still and stiff until they reached Clarges Street, but as the car slid to a standstill she plucked at his sleeve, a frightened little gesture that was oddly disarming.
"Don't please tell anyone I didn't really faint," she said, her extreme alarm counteracting the childish naivete of the words. "Don't tell anyone. I can't explain, but it's terribly important. You see, I just had to get out of wearing all that jewelery and yet I've got
to go to the Dover House Ball the day after tomorrow. Promise, please, promise." He looked at her squarely.
"You can rely on me," he said, "but, if I were you, I'd risk it and tell me the whole yarn. I can usually fix these things. It's a sort of hobby of mine."
The younger Miss Pelham caught her breath. "I can't," she said, "not you. Not you, especially not you."
This emphatic statement was so unexpected that Mr Campion blinked in astonishment. Jennifer, seizing her opportunity, fled into the house as if all the furies were behind her.
Mr Campion drove slowly and thoughtfully to Scotland Yard. Superintendent Oates sat behind his square desk and regarded his visitor with a mixture of curiosity and grudging admiration.
"Where have you been all the day?" he demanded. "I've been looking for you everywhere. How do you do it? Second sight or just plain guesswork?"
Campion raised his eyebrows. "Turned up anything?" he inquired.
"Plenty; and Mr Allen has been in here with a cable from his American agent. There's a chance you may be right. Some people get all the luck." The Superintendent, a spare, Grey man with the enthusiasm of a boy, rubbed his hands cheerfully.
"Well," he said, "we've looked up the man you suggested and the dates are okay. He was in New York at the right time and he certainly visited the same houses as poor Mrs Allen. Of course, there's no proof but it's interesting, to say the least of it. Then this cable this afternoon takes us a step further. Some of her jewelery has been traced and by sheer good luck the purchaser took the numbers of the notes with which he paid her for it. And now a goodly parcel of these notes has turned up in a Brooklyn bank. The bank officials think they may be able to furnish a description of the man who deposited the notes. It's pretty slender, but it's better than nothing. Waldo Allen is trying to persuade us to hold your man, this suspect of yours, for inquiries when we get the full dope from New York. I must say I don't like it. Better to catch a chap like him actually at work." Campion sat down.
"Can I talk unofficially?" he asked quietly. Oates stared at him and, impressed by his manner, checked the flippancy which was close to his lips. "Of course," he said. "Are you on to something? What's on your mind?" Mr Campion put his cards on the table while the Superintendent listened with his head on one side, terrier fashion.
"You say we must keep this girl out of it?" Oates said at last. "Well, if it's blackmail that's quite possible. It's an incredible story. I don't see his game, not yet, not quite. A young married woman with her own bank account is one thing, but a fifteen-year-old could only give him chicken-feed, surely?" Mr Campion looked lazily at the policeman.
"This fifteen-year-old was about to be entrusted with many thousands of pounds' worth of opals," he murmured. "She was to wear them all the evening. The prospect so frightened her that she threw up her part in this pageant. It was rather an important treat to miss for a kid of that age." Oates was silent for a moment.
"It has been done," he admitted at last. "I don't like it, Campion, I don't like it at all, but still, let's keep our sense of proportion." He had another thought. "What could a child of that age have to hide?"
"That I can't possibly imagine." Campion spoke gravely, his pale eyes puzzled. He could not shake from his mind Jennifer's final remark to him. The Superintendent cut through his thoughts.
"Since you're so keen on it, we might start an investigation without committing ourselves. I don't mind telling you we've had a tip from up above to do everything we can for Mr Allen. What do you suggest?"
"A word with the organizers of the Dover House Ball," said Mr Campion promptly. "Then a couple of your men, me, and you yourself, if you feel like it four of us in all. What do you say?"
"It's crazy," said the Superintendent. "You could be on to entirely the wrong man."
"That's a possibility, but if I read aright one of Allen's two clues, then I'm not. The day after tomorrow?" Oates sighed. "All right. I'll get out my boiled shirt and come with you. But I warn you, if you get me into a stiff collar for nothing...." He left the threat dangling in air but Mr Campion appeared not to be listening.
There were, in fact, five of them keeping vigil in a small enclosure some forty-eight hours later. Superintendent Oates, Mr Campion, two young officers from the Mayfair squad and Waldo Allen who had insisted on accompanying them. Just outside their prison the thick black velvet curtains of a tent hung motionless. Around them the music and chatter of one of the greatest balls of the summer season eddied and swirled. The night was hot, there was scarcely enough room for the five men in the space where they hid and they were close to smothering.
Superintendent Oates stood like a rock, his keen ears strained and one hand resting upon the sleeve of the American. From not far away they heard the sound of someone striking a match. This was the prearranged signal which told them that the detective on duty at the ball had seen Jennifer Pelham enter the fortune-teller's booth. The five men stiffened.
For a moment all was quiet on the other side of the curtain, then a young voice said huskily: "I'm here."
Cagliostro the Second did not reply immediately and Campion guessed that he had gone to the opening of the tent to see if there were anyone about. Campion knew that the room outside was deserted for he had arranged that in advance. After a pause he heard the fortune-teller's voice, slow and very cold.
"You failed."
"I couldn't go. I was ill. Honestly, I was ill. I fainted at rehearsal and they had to send me home." The girl's voice was barely audible. Oates felt the American stir at his side and grasped his sleeve all the more firmly. Cagliostro spoke again.
"I am growing angry with you." The quiet voice on the other side of the curtain had a menacing quality out of all proportion to the words.
"I gave you your opportunity. You had but to walk to a window and drop the jewelery out. In ten minutes you could have given the alarm. I asked you for nothing impossible. I was kind enough to show you a way to settle your debt. Now I shall not help you any further. You must pay me, Miss Pelham."
"I can't, I tell you, I can't!" Jennifer was on the edge of hysteria. "I've given you every penny I've got. Let that be enough. Give me back my letters. You got them by a trick."
"Not at all. You gave them to me."
"I just put them in an envelope for you to put under your crystal. I didn't know you were going to give me back a different envelope with a piece of newspaper in it. Give me the letters, please. They're not mine." Cagliostro laughed. "If they were yours they'd hardly be so interesting," he said. "You haven't even read them, have you? If you had, my dear, I think you'd be more obliging. I shall be at the Courtney reception on the twenty-third. Get yourself invited. Come in to see me in the ordinary way and bring me something else to put in an envelope under the crystal this time two hundred and fifty pounds in one-pound notes. It's not a large sum; I choose it because I think you can raise that much. When I see the money then I'll return your dangerous letters!"
"I can't." No sooner did he hear the girl's despairing exclamation than Waldo Allen charged, brushing aside the Superintendent's attempt to restrain him as if it had never been made.
It was not an edifying scene and afterward the organizers of the ball, who had cooperated with the police against their better judgment, had a good deal to say on the subject.
Oates maintained his dignity and insisted that the commotion had been restricted to the tent and to the room which held the tent.
As ever, Mr Campion had shown himself capable of calm in an emergency. He it was who realized that the first objective must be to prevent murder. Waldo Allen was at last dragged away from the gasping creature who had called himself a psychometrist. Cagliostro was unceremoniously hustled into a waiting police-car.
Quietly, Mr Campion climbed the stairs to the room where the dismantled tent lay, a pool of inky wreckage on the parqueted floor. The detectives on duty stood woodenly by the closed doors into the ballroom.
It was some moments before Campion saw Miss Pelham curled u
p in the corner of a couch, her head in her arms. He sat down beside her and solemnly preferred his handkerchief. "Cheer up, old lady," he murmured. "The worst is over. The tooth is out."
She raised a tear stained face to his. "You don't understand," she whispered. "Now they'll find the letters." Campion sat up. "Of course," he said. "Bless me, whose were they? Your sister's?" She gulped and the tears dried from her eyes like a startled child's. "How did you know?" Realizing that to confess to the gift of divination is a weakness, Mr Campion did not reply directly.
"Don't you think that it might help if you explained it all in your own words? You stole the letters in the first place; I saw you, remember. We'll skate over that. I take it you had a natural sisterly anxiety to discover the sort of man your Roberta was marrying, and you thought our unpleasant pal Cagliostro was the man to read the oracle. Is that right?"
She nodded miserably. "I'm a sentimental, theatrical little ass," she said with sudden frankness, adding grimly, "I mean, I used to be. I'm also rather mad; careless and muddleheaded, you know. The idea came to me suddenly and I knew Roberta kept her private letters in that bureau. I just rushed off to get them, meaning to put them back, of course, as soon as I'd heard the reading from the fortuneteller. You startled me and I took the first package of letters that came to hand. I didn't even look at them. I just tore downstairs and then hung about until I could slip into the tent. I had some sort of idiotic idea I was looking after Roberta, don't you see, and then this went and happened."
Mr Campion was sympathetic. "They weren't from our Thomas?" he said. "Whose were they? D'you know?"
The younger Miss Pelham started to weep again. "Bobby Fellows, I think," she said. "They had a sort of silly affair last year. He's frightfully young, and Roberta rather passed him on to me. He brought me here tonight, as a matter of fact. Now it will all come out, Thomas will break off his engagement and Roberta will break her heart. Bobby will be livid, too. I can't bear it! I didn't know anything had happened until I opened the envelope. I thought it was the same one that I'd sealed the package in. But when I did open it I saw it wasn't. I simply thought there'd been a mistake and I went back to Cagliostro. He was frightfully serious. He said the letters showed Roberta's infidelity and he suggested I buy them back. I gave him all the money I had but it wasn't enough. You know the rest."
The Return of Mr Campion Page 11
