Terror keep
bell-push, the door opened.
It was obviously Mr. Daver himself. A tall, thin man of fifty, with a
yellow, elf-like face and a smile that brought all her sense of humour
into play. Very badly she wanted to laugh. The long upper lip overhung
the lower, and except that the face was thin and lined, he had the
appearance of some grotesque and foolish mascot. The staring, round,
brown eyes, the puckered forehead, and a twist of hair that stood
upright on the crown of his head, made him more brownie-like than
ever.
“Miss Belman?” he asked, with a certain eagerness.
He lisped slightly, and had a trick of clasping his hands as if he
were in an agony of apprehension lest his manner should displease.
“Come into my den,” he said, and gave such emphasis to the last word
that she nearly laughed again.
The “den” was a very comfortably furnished study, one wall of which
was covered with books. Closing the door behind her, he pushed up a
chair with a little nervous laugh.
“I’m so very glad you came. Did you have a comfortable journey? I’m
sure you did. And is London hot and stuffy? I’m afraid it is. Would
you like a cup of tea? Of course you would.”
He fired question and answer so rapidly that she had no chance of
replying, and he had taken up a telephone and ordered the tea before
she could express a wish on the subject.
“You are young--very young,”--he shook his head sadly.
“Twenty-four--no? Do you use the typewriter? What a ridiculous
question to ask!”
“It is very kind of you to see me, Mr. Daver,” she said, “and I don’t
suppose for one moment that I shall suit you. I have had no experience
of hotel management, and I realise, from the salary you offer----”
“Quiet,” said Mr. Daver, shaking his head solemnly: “that is what I
require. There is very little work, but I wished to be relieved even
of that little. My own labours”--he waved his hand to a pedestal desk
littered with papers--“are colossal. I need a lady to keep
accounts--to watch my interests. Somebody I can trust. I believe in
faces, do you? I see that you do. And in the character of handwriting?
You believe in that also. I have advertised for three months and have
interviewed thirty-five applicants. Impossible! Their
voices--terrible! I judge people by their voices--so do you. On Monday
when you telephoned I said to myself, ‘The Voice!’”
He was clasping his hands together so tightly that his knuckles showed
white, and this time her laughter was almost beyond arrest.
“But, Mr. Daver, I know nothing of hotel management. I think I could
learn, and I want the position, naturally. The salary is terribly
generous.”
“‘Terribly generous,’” repeated the man in a murmur. “How curious
those words sound in juxtaposition! My housekeeper. How kind of you to
bring the tea, Mrs. Burton!”
The door had opened and a woman bearing a silver tray came in. She was
dressed very neatly in black. The faded eyes scarcely looked at
Margaret as she stood meekly waiting whilst Mr. Daver spoke.
“Mrs. Burton, this is the new secretary to the company. She must have
the best room in the Keep--the Blue Room. But--ah!”--he pinched his
lip anxiously--“blue may not be your colour?”
Margaret laughed.
“Any colour is my colour,” she said. “But I haven’t decided----”
“Go with Mrs. Burton; see the house--your office, your room. Mrs.
Burton!”
He pointed to the door, and before the girl knew what she was doing
she had followed the housekeeper through the door. A narrow passage
connected the private office of Mr. Daver with the house, and Margaret
was ushered into a large and lofty room which covered the superficial
area of the Keep.
“The Banquittin’ ’All,” said Mrs. Burton in a thin, Cockney voice
remarkable for its monotony. “It’s used as a lounge. We’ve only got
three boarders. Mr. Daver’s very partic’lar. We get a lot in for the
winter.”
“Three boarders isn’t a very paying proposition,” said the girl.
Mrs. Burton sniffed.
“Mr. Daver don’t want it to pay. It’s the company he likes. He only
turned it into a boardin’ house because he likes to see people come
and go without having to talk to ’em. It’s a nobby.”
“A what?” asked the puzzled girl. “Oh, you mean a hobby?”
“I said a nobby,” said Mrs. Burton, in her listless, uncomplaining
way.
Beyond the hall was a small and cosier sitting-room with French
windows opening on to the lawn. Outside the window three people sat at
tea. One was an elderly clergyman with a strong, hard face. He was
eating toast and reading a church paper, oblivious of his companion.
The second of the party was a pale-faced girl about Margaret’s own
age. In spite of her pallor she was extraordinarily beautiful. A pair
of big, dark eyes surveyed the visitor for a moment and then returned
to her companion, a military-looking man of forty.
Mrs. Burton waited until they were ascending the broad stairway to the
upper floor before she “introduced” them.
“The clergyman’s a Reverend Dean from South Africa, the young lady’s
Miss Olga Crewe, the other gent is Colonel Hothling--they’re boarders.
This is your room, miss.”
It was indeed a gem of an apartment; the sort of room that Margaret
Belman had dreamt about. It was exquisitely furnished, and, like all
the other rooms at Larmes Keep (as she discovered later), was provided
with its private bathroom. The walls were panelled to half their
height, the ceilings heavily beamed. She guessed that beneath the
parquet underneath was the original stone-flagged floor.
Margaret looked and sighed. It was going to be very hard to refuse
this post--and why she should think of refusing at all she could not
for the life of her understand.
“It’s a beautiful room,” she said, and Mrs. Burton cast an apathetic
eye round the apartment.
“It’s old,” she said. “I don’t like old houses. I used to live in
Brixton----”
She stopped abruptly, sniffed in a deprecating way, and jingled the
keys that she carried in her hand.
“You’re suited, I suppose?”
“Suited? You mean am I taking the appointment? I don’t know yet.”
Mrs. Burton looked round vaguely. The girl had the impression that she
was trying to say something in praise of the place--something that
would prejudice her in favour of accepting the appointment. Then she
spoke.
“The food’s good,” she said, and Margaret smiled.
When she came back through the hall she saw the three people she had
seen at tea. The colonel was walking by himself; the clergyman and the
pale-faced girl were strolling across the lawn talking to one another.
Mr. Daver was sitting at his desk, his high forehead resting on his
palm, and he was biting the end of a pen as Mrs. Burton closed the
door on them.
“You like the room: naturally. You will start--when? Next Monday week,
I think. What a relief! You have seen Mrs. Burton.” He wagged a finger
at her roguishly. “Ah! Now you know! It is impossible! Can I leave her
to meet the duchess and speed the duke? Can I trust her to adjust the
little quarrels that naturally arise between guests? You are right--I
can’t. I must have a lady here--I must, I must!”
He nodded emphatically, his impish brown eyes fixed on hers, the
bulging upper lip grotesquely curved in a delighted grin.
“My work suffers, as you say: constantly to be brought from my studies
to settle such matters as the fixing of a tennis net--intolerable!”
“You write a great deal?” she managed to ask. She felt she must
postpone her decision to the last possible moment.
“A great deal. On crime. Ah, you are interested? I am preparing an
encyclopaedia of crime!” He said this impressively, dramatically.
“On crime?”
He nodded.
“It is one of my hobbies. I am a rich man and can afford hobbies. This
place is a hobby. I lose four thousand a year, but I am satisfied. I
pick and choose my own guests. If one bores me I tell him to go--that
his room has been taken. Could I do that if they were my friends? No.
They interest me. They fill the house; they give me company and
amusement. When will you come?”
She hesitated.
“I think----”
“Monday week? Excellent!” He shook her hand vigorously. “You need not
be lonely. If my guests bore you, invite your own friends. Let them
come as the guests of the house. Until Monday!”
She was walking down the garden path to the waiting cabman, a little
dazed, more than a little undecided.
“Did you get the place, miss?” asked the friendly cabman.
“I suppose I did,” replied Margaret.
She looked back towards Larmes Keep. The lawns were empty, but near at
hand she had one glimpse of a woman. Only for a second, and then she
disappeared in a belt of laurel that ran parallel with the boundary
wall of the property. Evidently there was a rough path through the
bushes, and Mrs. Burton had sought this hiding-place. Her hands
covered her face as she staggered forward blindly, and the faint sound
of her sobs came back to the astonished girl.
“That’s the housekeeper--she’s a bit mad,” said the cabman calmly.
CHAPTER II
/George Ravini/ was not an unpleasant-looking man. From his own point
of view, which was naturally prejudiced, he was extremely attractive,
with his crisp brown hair, his handsome Neapolitan features, his
height, and his poise. And when to his natural advantages were added
the best suit that Savile Row could create, the most spotless of grey
hats, and the malacca sword-stick on which one kid-gloved hand rested
as upon the hilt of a foil, the shiniest of enamelled shoes and the
finest of grey silk socks, the picture was well framed and
embellished. Greatest embellishment of all were George Ravini’s Luck
Rings. He was a superstitious man and was addicted to charms. On the
little finger of his right hand were three gold rings, and in each
ring three large diamonds. The Luck Stones of Ravini were one of the
traditions of Saffron Hill.
Most of the time he had the half-amused, half-bored smile of a man for
whom life held no mysteries and could offer, in experience, little
that was new. And the smile was justified, for George knew most of the
things that were happening in London or likely to happen. He had
worked outward from a one-room home in Saffron Hill, where he first
saw the light, had enlarged the narrow horizons which surrounded his
childhood, so that now, in place of the poverty-stricken child who had
shared a bed with his father’s performing monkey, he was not only the
possessor of a classy flat in Half Moon Street but the owner of the
block in which it was situate. His balance at the Continental Bank was
a generous one; he had securities which brought him an income beyond
his needs, and a larger revenue from the two night clubs and spieling
houses which were in his control, to say nothing of the perquisites
which came his way from a score of other sources. The word of Ravini
was law from Leyton to Clerkenwell, his fiats were obeyed within a
mile radius of Fitzroy Square, and no other gang leader in London
might raise his head without George’s permission save at the risk of
waking in the casualty ward of the Middlesex Hospital entirely
surrounded by bandages.
He waited patiently on the broad space of Waterloo Station,
occasionally consulting his gold wrist-watch, and surveyed with a
benevolent and proprietorial eye the stream of life that flowed from
the barriers.
The station clock showed a quarter after six: he glanced at his watch
and scanned the crowd that was debouching from No. 7 platform. After a
few minutes’ scrutiny he saw the girl, and with a pat to his cravat
and a touch to the brim of his hat which set it tilting, he strolled
to meet her.
Margaret Belman was too intent with her own thoughts to be thinking
about the debonair and youngish man who had so often sought an
introduction by the conventional method of pretending they had met