“Holy Niagara!” he said in low but heartfelt tones.
Jane felt a little giddy, and she sat down on the bench. Her right hand went out, feeling for support, and touched a sheaf of papers. Through all the confusion of her thought she recognised that these must be the lists from which Ember had been reading.
“What is it?” she said faintly.
Molloy put down his electric torch, came quite close to her, bent down with a hand on either knee until his face was on a level with hers, and said in what he doubtless intended for a whisper:
“And where is me daughter Renata?”
Jane leaned back so as to get as far away from the flushed face as possible. She opened her mouth without knowing what she was going to say, and quite suddenly she began to laugh. She leaned her head against the brick wall behind her, and the laughter shook her from head to foot.
“Glory be to God, is it a laughing matter?” said Mr. Molloy; “whisht, I tell you, whisht, or you’ll be having Ember back.”
He straightened himself, and made a gesture in the direction of the roof.
“It’s crazy she is,” he said.
Jane put her hand to her throat, gasped for breath, and stopped laughing.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was—you were—I mean, what did you say?”
“I said, where is me daughter Renata?” said Molloy in his deepest tones.
Jane gulped down a gurgle of laughter.
“Your daughter Renata?” she said.
“Me daughter Renata,” repeated Mr. Molloy sternly. “Where is she?”
Jane felt herself steadying.
“Why do you think—what makes you think—?”
“That you’re not my daughter? They say it’s a wise child that knows its own father, but it’s a damn fool father that wouldn’t know his own daughter.”
“How do you know?” said Jane.
Molloy laughed.
“That’s telling,” he said; “but I don’t mind telling you. You’re my niece Jane Smith and not my daughter Renata Molloy; and, even if I wasn’t her father, I’d always know you from Renata, the way I could always tell your two mothers apart when no one else could. Your mother had a little mole on her left eyelid, just in the corner where it wouldn’t show unless she shut her eyes. My wife hadn’t got it, and that’s the way I could always tell her from her sister. And my daughter Renata hasn’t got it, but you have; and when you blinked, in yonder, I got a glimpse of it; and when I flashed the light on to you again and you shut your eyes, I made sure. And now, perhaps you’ll tell me where in all the world is Renata?”
Jane’s gaze rested intelligently upon Mr. Molloy. The corners of her mouth lifted a little. The dimple showed in her left cheek.
“Renata,” she said in a very demure voice, “is in a safe place, like the money you went abroad for.”
Molloy looked at her uncertainly; in the end he laughed.
“Meaning you won’t tell me,” he said.
“Meaning that I’m not sure whether I’ll tell you or not.”
“Maybe it would be better if I didn’t know. That’s what you’re thinking?”
“Yes, that was what I was thinking.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Molloy. Then he laughed again. “I’ve the joke on Ember anyhow,” he said. “He thinks he’s got a patent for most of the brains in the country, and here he’s been led by the nose by a slip of a girl just out of school. And what’s more, he was taken in and I wasn’t. He’ll find that hard to swallow, will Mr. Jeffrey Ember. You’d not have taken me in, you know, even if I’d not had the mole to go by. And one of these fine days I shall twit Ember with that.”
“Are you so sure you’d have known me?” said Jane. “Why?”
“My dear girl,” said Mr. Molloy, “if you knew your cousin Renata, you’d not be asking me that. If I find a girl in an underground passage all in the dark, well, that girl is not my daughter Renata. And if, by any queer sort of chance, Renata had been in that hole where I found you, she’d have screamed blue murder when I turned the light on her. Then, at an easy guess, I should say you had Renata beat to a frazzle in the matter of brains. I’m not saying, mind you, that I’m an admirer of brains in a woman. It’s all a matter of opinion, and there’s all sorts in the world. But you’ve got brains, and Renata hasn’t, and Ember’s had you under his nose all this time without ever knowing the difference.”
Jane laughed.
“Perhaps I didn’t exactly obtrude my superior intelligence on Mr. Ember,” she said. Her eyes danced. “You’ve no idea how stupid I can be when I try, and I’ve been trying very hard indeed.”
“The devil you have?” said Mr. Molloy. “Well, you had Ember deceived and that’s a grand feather in your cap, I can tell you. He’s a hard one to deceive is Ember.”
Jane gurgled suddenly.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I deceived you, too. Yes, I did, I really did. You know the morning you went off to America, or rather the morning you went off not to America? At the flat? You said good-bye to me, not to Renata.”
“And where was Renata then?”
Jane twinkled.
“In the safe place,” she said.
“I’ll swear it was Renata the night before,” said Molloy.
“Yes, that’s clever of you. It was.”
Molloy was thinking hard.
“And which of you was it in the night when we thought the roof had fallen in, and came into Renata’s room to look out of the window? I’d my heart in my mouth, for I thought it was a bomb. Was it you or Renata sitting up in bed like a ghost?”
“That was me,” said Jane. “You couldn’t have been nearly so frightened as I was.”
“Then you changed places between eight and eleven that night?”
“We changed places,” said Jane, “just as you and Mr. Ember came home. I shut Renata’s door just as you opened the door of the flat. I was in the hall when the lift stopped.”
“Then I think I know how you did it,” said Molloy. He seemed interested. “But I’d like to know who put you up to it; and I’d like to know who gave the back entrance away; and I’d like to know how Renata, who hasn’t the nerve of a mouse, got down that blamed fire-escape alone.”
Jane dimpled again.
“You do want to know a lot, don’t you?” she said.
There was a pause. Then Jane said:
“And now, what happens next, please?”
“That,” said Molloy, “is just what I’m wondering.”
“I ought to be getting back, I think,” said Jane. “Ah, ought you now?” said Mr. Molloy thoughtfully.
There was another pause. Jane thought she would leave Mr. Molloy to break it this time. She sat considering him. Her eyes dwelt upon him with a calm scrutiny which he found extremely embarrassing. The longer it continued, the more embarrassing he found it. In the end he said:
“You want me to let you go?”
Jane nodded.
“And not tell Ember?”
Jane gave another nod, cool and brief.
“Oh, the devil’s in it,” said Molloy, with sudden violence.
“You don’t need the devil; you’ve got Mr. Ember,” said Jane.
“And that’s true enough, for it’s the very devil and all he is, and, if I let you go, I’ll have him to reckon with—some day. I’d rather face the Day of Judgment myself.”
“I tell you what I think,” said Jane. “I think Mr. Ember is mad. That is to say, I think he is the sort of fanatic who sees what he wants and sets out to get it, without knowing half the difficulties and obstacles that block the way. When he does begin to know them he doesn’t care, he just goes along blind. Where a reasonable man would alter his plan to suit the circumstances, this sort of fanatic just goes on because he’s made his plan and will stick to it whatever happens. He isn’t governed by reason at all. He doesn’t care what risks he runs, or what risks he makes other people run. He goes right on, whatever happens. If the next step is over a pr
ecipice he’ll take it. He must go on. Mr. Ember is like that. I think he is mad.”
Mr. Molloy stared hard at Jane, then he nodded slowly three times.
“Now you’re not like that,” said Jane. “You’re reasonable. You don’t want to run appalling risks when there’s absolutely nothing to be gained by it. Of course, every one’s willing to run risks if it’s worth while. I’m sure you are. I’m sure you’ve done awfully dangerous things.”
“I have,” said Mr. Molloy, with simple pride. “There’s no one that’s done more for The Cause, or run greater risks. I could tell you things—but there, maybe I’d better not.”
Jane clasped her hands round her knees. She leaned back against the wall and regarded Mr. Molloy with what he took to be admiration.
“Now do tell me,” she said—“when you speak of The Cause, what do you mean?”
In her heart of hearts Jane had a pretty firm conviction that, to Mr. Molloy, The Cause stood for whatever promoted the wealth, welfare, and advancement of himself, the said Molloy.
“Ah,” said Mr. Molloy reverentially. He spread out his hands with a fine gesture. “That’s a big question.”
“Well, what I mean,” said Jane, “is this. What do you really call yourself? You know, I always used to call you ‘The Anarchist Uncle,’ but the other day some one said that there were no Anarchists any more, so I wondered what you really were. Are you a Socialist, or a Communist, or a Bolshevist, or what?”
A doubtful expression crossed Mr. Molloy’s handsome face.
“Well, now,” he said, “it would depend on the company I was in.”
Jane had a struggle with the dimple and subdued it.
“You mean,” she ventured, “that if you were with Socialists, you would be a Socialist; and if you were with Bolshevists, you would be a Bolshevist?”
“Well, it would be something like that,” admitted Mr. Molloy.
“I see,” said Jane. “And, of course, whatever you were, you’d naturally want to be sure that it was going to be worth your while. I mean you’d want to get something out of it?” She waited a moment, and then went on, with a complete change of voice and manner, “What are you going to get out of this?” She spoke with the utmost gravity. “If you don’t know, I can tell you. Disaster—at best a long term of imprisonment, at the worst death, the sort of death one doesn’t care about having in one’s family. The question is, is it worth it? You’re not in the least mad. You’re not a fanatic either. You are a perfectly sane and reasonable person, and you know that what I’m saying is the sane and reasonable truth. Isn’t it?”
“Faith, and wasn’t I saying so to Ember myself,” said Molloy in gloomy agreement. “We’ve got money enough, and we can live on it retired, so to speak. The life’s all very well when you’re young, but a man of my age isn’t just so keen on taking chances as he was, and that’s the truth. Then there’s the old times come over him, and he thinks of the place where he was born, and he thinks, maybe, he’d like to see it again. Why, with the money I’ve got,” said Mr. Molloy, “it’s a fine house I could have in Galway, and a car, and a horse or two. That’s what I’d like.”
Jane saw his face light up.
“It’s a fine town Galway,” he said, “and there are people I’d like to see there, and places too. The people would be changed, I’m thinking, but not the places. I’d like well enough to go up the river past Menlough again. It’s the grand woods there are there, and then there’s a place where you’d see nothing but reeds, and no way at all for a boat. But let you push through the reeds and a way there is, and you come out to the grey open water and the country round it just as bare as if you’d taken sand-paper to it. They used to say that the water went down to hell, but I’m not saying that I believe it; but deep it is, for no one’s ever touched the bottom. Many’s the stone I’ve dropped in there, and wakened in the night to wonder if it was still sinking; and many’s the time I’ve played truant, and gone there fishing for the great pike that they said was in it. Hundreds of years old he is by the tales, and once I could swear I saw him, only maybe it was only a cloud that was passing overhead. What I saw was just a grey shadow, and all at once it come over me that I should be getting back to my work. I was black frightened, that’s the truth, but I couldn’t tell you why.”
Jane looked at Mr. Molloy, and experienced some very strange sensations. He might sell her to Ember next moment, but for this moment he was utterly sincere and as simple as a child. His sentiments were not hypocrisy. They represented real feeling and emotion; but feeling, emotion, and sentiment had been trained to take the wall obediently at the bidding of what Mr. Molloy would call business. For all her youth, Jane felt a rush of pity for anything so played upon from without, so ungoverned from within as this big handsome man who stood there talking earnestly of his boyhood’s home.
“Why don’t you go back and see it all again?” she said.
“Well, I’d like to,” said Mr. Molloy, “but what good’ll my house in Galway do me if I waken up some fine night with a knife in me heart or a bomb gone off under me bed?”
It seemed a difficult question to answer.
Molloy began to pace the room.
“I must think,” he said.
All the time that Jane had been talking, part of her mind had been continually occupied with the question of the lists, those lists of towns and the agents in each who were to be entrusted with the work of destruction. It might not be so difficult to get hold of them, but to get hold of them without their being missed by Ember… that was the difficulty. She had only to drop her right hand to the bench on which she sat and it touched the flimsy sheets.
Whilst Molloy was discoursing of his birthplace, she considered more than one plan. She must not precipitate Ember’s suspicions until she could place this evidence in Henry’s hands. If she took the lists and Ember missed them, he would suspect and accuse Molloy, and Molloy would most certainly exonerate himself at her expense. On the other hand, if she let the lists slip when they were under her hand, who was to say whether the opportunity would recur. Ember would return. He already distrusted Molloy, and what would be more likely than that he would remove such incriminating papers from Molloy’s care?
Then, quite suddenly, Jane knew what she must do. She didn’t want to do it, but she knew she must. She must get the papers now, she must copy them, and she must put them back before daybreak whilst the Anarchist Uncle was asleep. Jane had never contemplated anything which frightened her half so much as the idea of putting those papers back in that discouraging hour before the dawn, but she knew that it must be done.
As Mr. Molloy walked up and down frowning intently, there were moments when his back was turned towards Jane. The first time this happened Jane’s hand took hold of the thin papers and doubled them in half. The next time that it happened she doubled them again. She went on doubling them until the large thin sheaf had become a small fat wad. Then whilst Molloy’s back was turned she lifted her skirt and pushed the wad down inside her stocking top. When Molloy faced her again her hands were folded on her lap.
“I really must be going,” she said.
He threw her an odd, sidelong glance. It made Jane feel a little cold.
“Since you heard so much just now, I don’t doubt you heard Ember tell me just how convenient this place would be for putting some one that wasn’t wanted out of the way?”
“Yes, I heard what he said,” said Jane, “but I’m afraid Mr. Ember doesn’t know everything. As far as I remember, he described these passages as a place no one knew anything about.”
“He did,” said Molloy, staring.
Jane gave a little laugh, and felt pleased with herself because it sounded steady.
“Well, to my certain knowledge, three other people know the way in here,” she said.
Molloy showed signs of uneasiness.
“Meaning you and me and… since you heard the rest, I’m supposing you heard me name Number One.”
“Oh, I didn’
t mean you and me at all,” said Jane. “I was thinking of two quite different people, and as to Number One, I could answer that better if I were sure who Number One was. The third person I’m thinking of may be Number One, or may not. I’m not sure.”
“I’m thinking,” said Molloy—“I’m thinking you know too much. I’m thinking you know a deal too much.”
Jane met his eyes full. Her own were steady, his were not.
“Are you going to tell Mr. Ember, and let him ‘eliminate’ me?”
Molloy gave a violent start.
“Where did you hear that?” he said.
“It wasn’t I who heard that, it was Renata. It was one of the things that made her so anxious to change places with me.”
“And what made you willing to change with her?” Molloy’s voice was harsh with suspicion.
“I hadn’t a job, or any relations to go to. I had exactly one-and-sixpence in the world. I didn’t know where I was going to sleep that night—that’s pretty awful for a girl, you know; and then… Renata was so frightened.”
“She would be,” was Molloy’s comment. “And weren’t you frightened now?”
“I suppose I was,” said Jane.
“You had need to be.” The something that had made Jane feel cold before was in Molloy’s look and voice. “You had heed to be more afraid than you’ve ever been in your life. Renata would have stayed quiet, but nothing would serve you but you must push, and poke, and pry. What were you doing here at all now, will you tell me that? Who showed you how to get down here? You say there are others who know the secret—who are they? Tell me that, will you… who are they?” Molloy’s sudden passion took Jane by surprise. Her heart began to beat, and she had difficulty in controlling her voice.
“Which question am I to answer first?” she said. “Shall I begin at the beginning? I found the passages by accident.…” Molloy gave an impatient snort. “Yes, I did really, on my word of honour. I couldn’t sleep and came down to get a book. I was standing in the shadow and I saw some one come out of the panelling. Next night I thought I’d try and find the place. The same person came downstairs and went through the door in the wall. I followed.”
The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery Page 19
