“Was it Ember?”
“No, it wasn’t Mr. Ember.”
“Who was it?”
“I believe you know,” said Jane, speaking slowly.
“Was it a woman?” said Molloy. He dropped his voice to a whisper and looked over his shoulder.
Jane nodded.
“Glory be to God!” said Molloy. “Did you see her face?” Jane nodded again. Molloy came quite close, bent down, and whispered:
“Was it the old man’s daughter? Was it”—his voice dropped to the very edge of inaudibility—“was it Lady Heritage?”
Jane nodded for the third time.
Molloy spun round, went straight to the steel door, and, opening it, looked up the passage. After a moment he came back.
“You saw her face? Will you swear that you saw her face?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then you’ve seen more than I have. Do you know, I’ve never been sure. I’ve never really been sure. Ember’s talk, and—it was—her—face you saw, not that mask thing they wear in the laboratory, for that’s all I’ve seen? You saw her face?”
“Yes, I saw her face quite plainly,” said Jane. In her own mind something seemed to say with cold finality, “Then Lady Heritage is Number One.”
“Well… Well… Well… Well…” said Mr. Molloy.
There was a long pause. He seemed lost in thought, but suddenly he turned on Jane with the question which she hoped he had forgotten:
“You were saying that there were two others who knew the secret—you saw them down here?—down here in the passages?”
“Yes,” said Jane, without hesitation, “I did. They were men. One of them had a beard. I couldn’t tell you their names or describe them any more than that.”
Molloy looked desperately puzzled.
“Ember may know,” he muttered.
“He may,” said Jane. “I should ask him.”
Molloy gave a grunt and began to walk up and down again. The simile of the rat in the drain which he had made use of in conversing with Ember came back upon him with unpleasant force. His thoughts were confused by an access of unreasoning fear. Every time the question of what to do with Jane presented itself, he shied away from it. Jane knew too much. There was no doubt about that. She knew too much.
In the circles frequented by Mr. Molloy self-preservation dictated a certain course with regard to the person who knew too much. After thirty years Molloy still disliked the contemplation of that course of action. He was of those who pass by upon the other side. He had a well-cultivated faculty for looking the other way. It occurred to him that, after all, Jane was Ember’s affair. Let her go back to the house, she was Ember’s affair, not his. He became instantly very anxious to see the last of Jane.
Just as she was wondering how long this rather horrid silence was going to last, he walked up to her in a purposeful manner, put his hand on her arm, and pulled her to her feet.
“You’d best be getting back,” he said shortly.
Jane felt as if some one had lifted a heavy weight off the top of her head. The weight must have been fear, and yet she did not know that she had been afraid.
At the gate Molloy turned to her.
“Can you get into the hall?” he said. “Without being seen, I mean.”
“I’m not sure, it’s awfully risky. But I could walk home from the headland, that would be much safer, and if I’ve been missed, it would account for my absence.”
Molloy bent a sulky look on her.
“The headland—you know that too?” he said. Then, with an impatient jerk he switched off the light, turned on his torch, and walked ahead of Jane in silence.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Never in all her life had Jane seen anything so beautiful as the clear rain-washed sky, the grey rain-stilled sea. The little thud of the stone dosing between her and Mr. Molloy was one of the most delightful sounds that she had ever heard. She felt as if she had never really appreciated the daylight before. There were nice woolly clouds on the horizon. The damp air was fresh, not like the air in those abominable passages. There was a gorse bush with about two and a half yellow flowers on it, rather sodden with the rain. Jane regarded them with intense affection.
She walked down the gravel path, drawing long breaths and ready to sing with pure relief—“Ease after toyle, port after stormie seas.” She frowned, remembering the next line. After all, they were not out of the wood yet. An unpleasant proverb succeeded Spenser’s line—“He laughs longest who laughs last.”
“Rubbish,” said Jane out loud, and she began to run.
She came in with such a glowing colour that Mr. Ember, who met her in the hall, was moved to remark upon it.
“You seem to have enjoyed your walk. Where have you been?”
“Round by the headland,” said Jane.
The roll of typed paper pricked her knee beneath her stocking top. In her arms she carried a sheaf of yellow tulips. She made haste to her room and set the flowers in a jar on the broad window ledge where they could be plainly seen from the terrace. With all her heart she prayed that George Patterson, who was Anthony Luttrell, would see them. She did not know that George Patterson had ceased to exist, and that Anthony Luttrell, having taken the law into his own impatient hands, was on his way to London.
There had been an encounter with Raymond in the laboratory—her hand for a moment on his arm, his muscles rigid under her touch; not a word spoken on either side, not a word needed. The scene carried Anthony to his breaking-point. At the next roll-call George Patterson was missing. Meanwhile Raymond was behind a locked door, and Jane set yellow tulips on her window-sill.
Having made her signal, Jane turned her mind to the lists. She was afraid to keep them on her, and she was afraid to hide them anywhere else. If Molloy missed them, and had any means of communicating with Ember, she would be searched, and her room would be searched. Whatever happened to her, they must not recover the lists until 'she had copied them.
She remembered the trap-door in the cupboard, but it was just possible that Ember knew about it, not likely but possible. After five minutes’ profound thought, she went to a drawer into which she had emptied a quantity of odds and ends.
Renata, it appeared, had a mild taste for drawing. There were pencils, indiarubber, a roll of cartridge paper, and some drawing-pins. Jane took out the cartridge paper and the drawing-pins. She extracted the lists from her stocking top and smoothed them out flat. Then she opened the cupboard door, mounted on a chair drawn as close to the cupboard as possible, and pinned the lists on to the cupboard ceiling with a sheet of cartridge paper covering them. They just fitted in between two rows of hooks. Jane got down with a sigh of relief and unlocked her bedroom door.
The evening passed like a dream. Lady Heritage did not appear at all, and Jane found a strange unreality in the situation which kept her talking to Mr. Ember in set schoolgirl phrases whilst he condescended to her with more than a hint of sarcasm. She was glad when she could take a book and read.
It was eleven o’clock before she dared begin her night’s work, but she came up to her room with her plan all ready. First she took off her dress and put on a dressing-gown, just in case any one should come to the door. Then, having turned the key and switched off the light, she took a candle into the cupboard, set it on a shoe box, and took down the lists. She put a cushion on the floor, fetched Renata’s fountain pen and some sheets of foolscap which she had taken from the library, and began her work of copying. With the cupboard door shut there was no chance that any one would see her candle.
She wrote steadily, town after town, name after name. More towns, more names. As she finished each sheet, she checked it very carefully by its original. It was weary, monotonous work; but the weariness and the monotony were like a grey curtain which hung between her and something which she dreaded inexpressibly.
The idea of descending into the passage again, of creeping up to the laboratory in order to put back the lists before they were missed, fi
lled her with shuddering repugnance. To allow her mind to dwell upon this idea was to become incapable of carrying it out. She therefore held her attention firmly to the endless names, and drove an industrious pen. She had to get up twice for more ink. Each time, as she stretched herself and walked the few paces to the table and back, the thought came to her like a cold breath, “It’s coming nearer.”
At last, in the dead stillness of the sleeping hours, the lists were finished. She pinned the copies on to the cupboard ceiling in the same way that she had pinned the originals, carefully covered with a piece of cartridge paper. Then she took the originals in her hand and faced the necessity for action. Her feet and hands were very cold. She felt as if it were days since she had had anything to eat. She wanted most dreadfully to go to bed and sleep. She wanted to have a good cry. What she had to do was to go down into slug- and possibly rat-haunted passages and risk waking an Anarchist Uncle out of his beauty sleep. Jane gave herself a mental shake.
“Don’t be a rabbit, Jane Smith,” she said. “It’s got to be done. You know that just as well as I do. If it’s got to be done, you can do it. Get going at once.”
She got going. First she put the lists back in her stocking top. Then she put on the old serge dress. Her fancy played hopefully with the thought that some day she would give herself the pleasure of burning that abominable garment. She extracted the maroon felt slippers from the paper parcel to which she had consigned them. They were still sopping. She put them on. They felt limp, damp, and discouraging, but they had the merit of making no noise. Then she took a good length of candle and a box of matches and opened her door.
“Well, here goes,” said Jane, and stepped into pitch darkness. This time she shut the door behind her. As she took her hand off the handle she felt as if she were letting go of her last hold on safety, an idiotic thought, as she instantly told herself. She knew by now just how many paces took one to the place where the light should have been burning, and just how many more to the stairhead. The rose window showed like a pattern painted on the dark. It gave no light, but it marked the position of the door.
Jane felt the soles of her feet stick and cling to the damp slippers as she crawled down the stairs. They just didn’t squelch and that was all; they only felt like it.
She hated moving the big chair in the dark, but it had to be done. Suppose she dropped it with a crash, suppose she pulled Willoughby Luttrell’s picture down when she was feeling for the catch; suppose a mouse ran over her foot—there is no end to the cheerful suppositions which will throng one’s brain in circumstances like these.
Jane did not drop the chair with a crash, neither did Willoughby Luttrell’s picture fall down, nor did a mouse run over her foot. She passed through the panelled door, shut it behind her, groped her way to the foot of the steps, and lighted the candle. It was then that the cheering thought that she might perhaps encounter Henry came to her, only to fade as she remembered how long past midnight it now was. However, if she had not Henry she had at least a light. It is much harder to be brave in the pitch dark even when, as in the present case, the darkness is really a protection.
Jane walked quite blithely up the second passage on the left until she came to the point where she knew that she must put the light out again. Molloy might be awake. She blew out her candle and began to feel her way forward. She came to the corner, and passed it. Moving very slowly and cautiously, she crept up to the steel gate and stood with her fingertips on it, listening, and thinking hard. She could feel that the door was ajar. That struck her as strange, very strange. If there ever was a man badly scared, Molloy was that man when she had said that the secret of the passages was not confined to himself and Ember. Yet he had gone to sleep leaving the gate ajar. Had he? Jane’s mind gave her a clear and definite answer. He hadn’t, he wouldn’t. She had been so sure that the gate would be shut, so ready with her plan. She was going to unfold the papers, push them between the bars, and jerk them as far across the room as possible. Molloy might think they had fallen from the bench, or, if he had his doubts, might well wish to avoid letting Ember know that Jane had been in the laboratory. All this she had so present in her thought, that to feel the gate give to her hand staggered her and set her shaking. She quieted herself and listened intently. Not a sound.
She did not somehow fancy that Molloy would be a quiet sleeper. She had anticipated snores of a certain rich bass quality. Here was silence in which one might have heard an infant draw its breath, a silence undisturbed, inviolate.
It was not only the silence which spoke to Jane. That odd, dim, only half-understood sense which some people possess, clamoured to her that the place was empty. As she stood there, and the seconds dragged into minutes, this sense became so insistent that she found herself resolving to act in obedience to its dictates.
She pushed the gate and heard the alarm ring. With all her ears she listened for the sound of a man stirring, waking, and starting up. At the first movement she would have been away, and Molloy, new roused from sleep, would never have caught sight of her. There was no movement. The bell went on ringing, a little continuous trickle of metallic sound, not loud but as confusing as the buzzing of a mosquito.
Jane switched on the light, slipped round the gate, and closed it. The bell stopped ringing. The jarred silence settled slowly, as dust settles when it has been stirred. There was no one there. The unshaded light showed every corner of the chamber. Molloy’s bag was gone. Like a flick in the face came certainty. “He’s gone. Molloy’s gone too.”
Slowly, almost mechanically, Jane extracted the rolled-up lists from her stocking. She was still holding the unlighted candle in her left hand. The lists bothered her. She moved towards the bench to put them down, but first she laid the candle carefully on its side so as not to stub the wick, and, sitting down, began to smooth the papers out upon her knee. It was whilst she was doing this that she saw the note.
It lay on the end of the bench propped up against a book. It was addressed to Jeffrey Ember, Esquire. The capital E’s were magnificent flourishes; an underlining like an ornamental scroll supported the superscription. Jane, like other well-brought-up people, was not in the habit of opening letters not addressed to herself. It may be said, however, that no solitary scruple so much as raised its head on this occasion. She tore open the tough linen envelope, and unfolded a lordly sheet. Molloy wrote a good, bold hand and legible withal. Every word stood clear.
“MY DEAR EMBER,—I’m off. The place is getting altogether too crowded. I’ve seen Renata, and she tells me that there are two men use the passages. One has a beard, but she couldn’t tell me their names or describe them further. She knows all about the passages herself. She confessed to having found them through following Number One. She has also seen you come in and go out. I don’t think this place is very healthy, so I’m making my get-away whilst I can. Drop the whole thing and get out quick is what I advise. I’m staunch, as you’ll find. Why did you take the lists after saying you’d leave them for me to look through? I’ll not work with a man that doesn’t trust me. You can write me at the old place.”
The letter was signed with a large Roman three. It appeared that Mr. Molloy was more careful over his own identity than over that of Mr. Jeffrey Ember.
Jane sat looking at the letter. It made her feel rather sick. If she had not come down, if she had shirked putting the papers back, if the letter addressed to Jeffrey Ember, Esquire, had reached Jeffrey Ember’s hands—well, it was a good enough death-warrant, and Molloy must have known that very well when he wrote it.
“It’s exactly like a Moral Tract,” said Jane. “I hated coming back, and I did it from a Sense of Duty, and this is the Reward of Virtue.”
She put the Reward of Virtue down rather gingerly on the bench beside her. She felt about touching it rather as she had felt when she touched the slug. She wanted to wash her hands. An odd creature Molloy. He had given her away exactly and completely, yet he had left her any small shred of protection which she might be s
upposed to derive from passing as his daughter.
Jane turned her thoughts from Molloy to the more pressing consideration of her own immediate course of action. Ember would come in the morning, and would find Molloy gone, and no word to say where he had gone, or why. The idea of following in Molloy’s footsteps presented itself vividly before Jane’s imagination. Why should she stay any longer at Luttrell Marches? The idea of getting away set her heart dancing. And what was there to stay for? She had all the evidence necessary to procure Ember’s arrest and the smashing of the conspiracy. The sooner she was out of Luttrell Marches and with her precious papers in a place of security the better. For a moment she contemplated taking the originals of the lists; Ember would naturally conclude that it was Molloy who had gone off with them. But on second thoughts she decided that it would be in the highest degree unwise to put Ember on his guard. His distrust of Molloy might be so great as to induce flight. She decided to leave the originals and to take the copies—but she had left the copies in her room pinned to the cupboard ceiling. Go back for them she could not. Even if she could have forced herself to the effort, the risk was too great. They must stay where they were, whilst she found Henry. The sooner she got off the better. She had no watch, but the night must be very far spent, and if Ember were to take it into his head to come back—
The bare idea brought Jane to her feet. She picked up her candle, lit it, and with feelings of extreme satisfaction set fire to Molloy’s letter, making a little pent roof of it like the beginning of a card house on the stone floor. She had often admired the way in which masses of compromising documents are consumed in an instant by the hero or heroine of the adventure novel. She used four matches before she considered that this particular letter was really harmless. The envelope took two more. Then she collected the ash very carefully, crumbled it up well, and scattered it amongst the rubble in the broken-down passage where Molloy had found her. Then, having taken a good look round to make sure that nothing compromising remained, she picked up her candle and passed through the gate, leaving the laboratory in darkness behind her. When she came to the turn she hesitated, and finally went straight on, following the passage which she had not yet explored, down which Molloy and Ember had come the day before. She was almost sure that it would lead back into the main corridor just short of the headland exit; but she had not gone more than a yard or two along it when she heard something that brought her heart into her mouth.
The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery Page 20
