Kate plus 10
She leant forward, her chin on her palm, her elbow on her crossed
knee.
“You frighten me sometimes,” she said. “I have not been able to make
up my mind whether you are clever or whether you are lucky.”
“I am both lucky and clever,” he said. “Tell me something about your
property in the Ural Mountains,” he said.
“In Poland,” she corrected him.
“Mines, I suppose?”
“There are no mines on my property,” she said calmly; “would you be
greatly surprised if I told you I had an estate in Poland?”
“Nothing you said would surprise me, unless you told me you were going
to be a good girl and respect the law relating to property.”
He folded his paper and dropped it into a wire receptacle provided for
that purpose and she followed the operations with amusement.
“What a tidy soul you are,” she said; “fancy doing things you are told
and obeying even by-laws.”
“We all obey by-laws. You are not so original as you think. For
instance, I observe that you are wearing a little toque--is that the
word?”
“That is the word,” she agreed.
“Toques are fashionable at this present moment. You are obeying the
by-laws. You haven’t the courage to come out in a sky-blue
tam-o’shanter with an ostrich feather because it is against the
by-laws. Also I remark that your dress is very short and very full.
You are not wearing a Roman toga or a Grecian gown, or even a hobble
skirt. Why? Because it is against the by-laws. It is absurd to disobey
one set and slavishly obey another.”
“You are quaint!” was the only answer she gave.
“Will you tell me, Princess?”
“Don’t call me ‘Princess’ if you please,” she said quietly.
“Well, will you tell me, my land-owner, what was the game with Ralph?
He described you with the greatest enthusiasm by-the-way. The night
you met him you were all dolled up to kill. Did you bring down your
birds?”
“I got him,” she admitted.
She was not as bright as usual.
“You are over-doing it,” said Michael; “you are trying to do too much.
Your doctor would probably tell you that you ought not to commit more
than one burglary a month.”
She laughed softly.
“You are very quaint,” she said again.
“You don’t feel like making a full and frank confession, I suppose,”
he suggested; “you would not like to burst into tears and sob out your
young heart on my shoulder?”
“That sob stuff never did agree with me.”
He raised a disapproving hand.
“Kate,” he said, “I have noticed a disposition in you to adopt the
slang which is employed exclusively by American newspaper reporters,
vaudeville artistes and other members of the criminal classes.”
“I will tell you this,” she said sitting upright and looking him fully
in the face, “we are going to do a big thing. The most colossal, the
most daring that has ever been done and we are going to do it to-day.
You want to know why I went to Flanborough’s, why I made up to that
unspeakable person, Ralph Sapson? Those are my two victims. I will
tell you more than this,” she said after a moment’s thought, “in order
to ensure the success of my scheme I have arranged for those two
gentlemen to be out of London on this bright Sabbath day. I can’t tell
you any more, Mike.”
“You are like a serial story, you finish off at the most interesting
place,” he grumbled.
His keen grey eyes searched hers and she met them fairly.
“I wish you weren’t,” he said.
“Weren’t what?” she asked.
“In this business,” he nodded. “I wish you weren’t.”
“Perhaps I will be good one of these days,” she said, “and then you
can recommend me for a job at two-ten-per. I’d make an ideal secretary
for you, Mike. I know all the underworld by name. You could cut out
your finger print department and leave it to Kate. What would happen,
do you think,” she went on, “if I went to a Salvation Army officer and
said, ‘I have been very wicked but now I am going to be good. Will you
please assist me. I have no money but I’ve a good heart--’ Mike, he
would put me to chopping wood for a week and then he would find me a
place as under-secretary to a housemaid in a strictly religious family
which gave me two evenings and one Sunday a month. You see, Mike, even
at goodliness one has to start at the bottom of the ladder; you can’t
break in on the roof. I hate good people.”
Michael nodded.
“I hate good people, too,” he said, “if they advertise their goodness,
but goodness is not hardness or sourness, it is just--goodness. For
example,” he went on, “I am good.”
“And I am wicked,” she said and appealed with outstretched hands to a
startled duck who had waddled to the railings, “choose between us!”
He laughed but was instantly serious again.
“Your confession puts me in a dilemma. As you are a lady I cannot
believe you are lying, as you are a criminal I dare not take your
word. I am sufficiently acquainted with your methods to know that your
presence is not essential to the committal of a crime, so I can gain
nothing by pulling you in.”
“Poor Mike,” she said mockingly.
“Poor Kate,” he said and the girl detected the note of sincerity in
his voice.
“Kate, you can’t get away with it,” he said; “you have got to fall
sooner or later. Think what it means. Think of that horrible drab life
in Aylesbury, where every minute is an hour and every hour an
eternity; think of the menial things they will set you to do,
scrubbing floors, washing shirts and sewing sacks. Think, how you will
be marshalled to church every Sunday and think how you will be stared
at and jeered at by friends of the Home Secretary who come to visit
the jail.”
“When that happens I shall be dead,” she said. “I believe you mean
kindly, Michael Pretherston, and I will tell you this, that you nor
any other human being can make me think or feel any different to what
I think and feel. There is no power on earth that can tear out the
foundations on which my life is built. I have read everything, all the
philosophies, Christian and pagan, and all the arguments from the
feeble evangelism of the tract writer, to the blatant nonsense of the
professional atheist, and I am just where I began. You can’t touch me
by reason or by devotion, by faith or by prayers. I am all
stone--here,” she laid her white hand upon her bosom and he saw the
mocking laughter in her eyes. “Poor Michael!” she said. “Why, if
devotion could change me, think of the chances I have had! I could
have taken Ralph Sapson and made of him a snake ring for my little
finger. I nearly had Flanborough on the point of proposing to me. He
is rather sentimental, did you know that?”
“All people with indigestion are sentimental between paroxysms,” said
Michael sagely.
He gave his hand to the girl though it was unnecessary and helped her
to her feet and they walked out of the park together. Her little
Mercedes was unattended and he cranked it up for her.
“Good-bye, Michael,” she said.
“Au revoir,” said Michael, “we shall meet at the sessions.”
At two o’clock that afternoon a constable on duty in Moorgate Street
heard the first of the two explosions which agitated police circles
that day. Michael was on the spot half-an-hour later and his brief
examination led to the view which he afterwards communicated to Ralph.
It was then he discovered that what the girl had told him was true and
that both Lord Flanborough and Sir Ralph Sapson were out of town.
Curiously enough, though he had been impressed at the time, he had
dismissed the girl’s statement as a piece of bravado on a par with the
badinage in which she usually indulged. He had cursed his folly in
ignoring the warning, all the way from Baker Street to the city and it
was a great relief to discover what was evident, that no attempt had
been made to rifle either the safe in Bartholomew Close or the strong
room in Moorgate Street. The outrages were similar in character; in
both cases the steel doors had been burst open by the application of
an infernal machine. In neither case had the thieves benefited by
their crime. The constable who heard the first explosion said he had
been admitted by the caretaker of the building within three minutes
but in that time had managed to send another policeman, who came up,
to guard the back of the premises. Nobody had either entered or left
in that period.
The explosion in Bartholomew Close had blown a sky-light into the
street. The safe was in a concrete cellar in which a light had been
burning day and night and although this had been extinguished by the
force of the explosion, it was possible for the constable who was
outside to see the safe and obtain a fairly comprehensive view of the
chamber. He, too, had asserted that nobody had entered the room or
left the building after the explosion.
“It is very curious,” said Michael.
T.B. Smith had come at his urgent request and the chief was as puzzled
as his subordinate.
“Did Flanborough say he would come up?”
“He is on his way now,” replied Michael.
“Do you know what I think?” said T.B. after a moment’s thought. “I
think that this is a blind. That there was never any intention of
rifling either the strong room or the safe. There is a big move on
somewhere, Mike, call in all the reserves.”
This was an order which Michael heard with pleasure, for he had
already anticipated these instructions, and detectives were at that
moment flocking to Scotland Yard from every point of the compass.
CHAPTER XII.
A MOTOR CAR WAS MET BY A SPECIAL
TRAIN
Whatever distress animated the bosoms of humanity on that fateful
Sunday afternoon and evening there were two people riotously and
supremely happy, though the car which Alphonso Blaxton drove was an
old one and badly sprung and though every hill it met reduced the two
young adventurers to breathless apprehension for the car had a trick
of stopping with its goal in sight and refusing to budge any farther.
They were happy though no word of love had been spoken between them
from the moment she had drawn from his arms. And their happiness was
such that even a faulty cylinder and a choked carburettor were matters
of little moment.
They had eaten a very bad luncheon in Maidstone without noticing the
fact. They had encountered perils innumerable (the steering gear had
gone wrong and temporary repairs had to be effected without the aid of
a tool chest) and were yet cheerful. They had been bumped and shaken
and jarred but they had had compensation. They had seen the uprising
ridges of the Kentish Rag green and white and starred with flowers.
They had looked through a golden haze across mysterious valleys. They
had heard the songs of birds and had tasted the joys which come only
to those who love youth and young things.
If the clouds were banking up in the west and an occasional puff of
cold wind came to remind them of May’s treachery they, for their part,
saw no cloud in their sky, felt no chill winds in their rosy world.
They reached the top of a particularly trying hill and Alphonso
stopped the car and got down. Before them the road dipped straightly
down to a level crossing. A mile beyond the railway there was a little
hill which promised no distress of mind.
“Wouldn’t this be a lovely place to paint!” said the girl.
“Don’t let’s talk about art,” he begged with a wry face, “let us talk
of beautiful things--such as tea and shrimps.”
She shrieked with merriment at his feeble jest.
“I wonder what is going to happen,” said the girl becoming grave.
“Happen, how, where?” he asked in surprise.
“About us,” she said.
He took her two hands in his.
“I am going to be tremendously rich.”
“Did I tell you I was engaged?” she asked timidly after a long
silence.
It was nothing less than an act of heroism for her to ask this
question.
“I have a dim idea you said something about it a long time ago,” he
said.