The girl from Scotland Yard
remained with Lord Everreed, of course I do not know. From the date of
my conviction that page of history is closed. But a few years after I
had gone to prison I heard in a roundabout fashion--I think it was in
a letter which an old servant of ours wrote--that he had gone into the
service of Lady Raytham.”
She thought over this for some time.
“When were you arrested?”
“Seven and a half years ago.”
She looked up in surprise.
“Then you served the full sentence?”
He nodded.
“Yes. I am not on ticket-of-leave. The truth is, I was rather a
troublesome prisoner. I suppose most prisoners are who have the
delusion of innocence. Why do you ask?”
“I have reason to believe that the princess thought you only served
five,” said the girl. “But that really doesn’t matter. I suppose she’s
of an age that---- I’m being cattish! Now, tell me something more.”
“You look a very sleepy cat,” he said, and at that moment there came
through the door a strange little figure.
How old she was it was difficult to tell, but Leslie guessed her to be
six, though she was tall for that age. She was painfully thin, and her
little arms, which carried with solemn attention a cup of tea, were
hardly more than of the thickness of the bones that showed through the
flesh. Her face, pinched and thin and translucent, had a beauty which
made the girl catch her breath. She raised two big eyes to survey the
visitor, and then the long lashes fell on her cheeks.
“Your tea,” she said.
Leslie took the cup gently from the child’s hand and set it down.
“What’s your name?” she asked, and as she put her hand on the yellow
head, the little creature shrank back, her face puckered with fear.
“That’s Belinda!” said Peter, with a smile.
The child wore a ragged old mackintosh over a nightgown that had once
been of red flannelette, but which had washed to the palest of pinks.
Her hands, lightly clasped before her, were almost transparent.
“I’m Mrs. Inglethorne’s little girl,” she said in a low voice. “My
name is ’Lizabeth--not Belinda.”
She raised her eyes quickly to the man and dropped them again. The
gravity of her tone, the low sweetness of her voice, amazed Leslie
Maughan. For a second she forgot that she was too tired to be
interested even in the bizarre.
“Won’t you come and talk to me?”
The child glanced at the door.
“Mother wants me.”
“Talk to the lady!”
Evidently Mrs. Inglethorne at the bottom of the stairs had good ears.
The child started, looked apprehensively round and came sidling toward
Leslie.
“What do you do with yourself?” asked Leslie. “Do you go to school?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“I think about Daddy most of the time.”
Leslie remembered that Daddy was at that moment serving his country in
Dartmoor.
“I keep him in a book; he’s very nice--ever so nice.” The child nodded
soberly.
“In a book?” asked Leslie. “What kind of a book?”
A voice outside the door supplied an answer. Mrs. Inglethorne must
have crept up the stairs to listen better.
“Don’t take no notice of her, miss; she’s a bit cracked! Any
good-looking feller she sees in a book she says is her father! Why,
she used to take the king once, and then Lord what’s-his name; and
when I think of her own poor dear father that worked his fingers to
the bone and got a ‘stretch’ for nothing, as innocent as a babe
unborn--it’s very hard----”
Elizabeth was tense now; her big eyes narrowed, her ear turned to the
door. It was an attitude of apprehension, and Leslie’s heart ached for
the child. She smoothed her hair, and this time the little girl did
not shrink.
“I’ll send you some wonderful pictures and you’ll be able to make up
fathers and uncles and all sorts of nice things from them.”
Stooping, she kissed the child, and with her arm about her painfully
thin shoulders led her to the door. On the landing the
unhealthy-looking Mrs. Inglethorne smirked and squirmed, a picture of
gratitude for the lady’s condescension.
“I’m going to be very interested in Elizabeth,” said Leslie, her
steady eyes on the woman. “You won’t mind if I come round sometimes to
see how she is getting on?”
Mrs. Inglethorne made a fearful grimace which was intended to express
her pleasure.
“How many children have you?”
“Five, miss.”
The woman was looking at her curiously, possibly fascinated by her
first meeting with the female of the hated species.
“Five in this little house?” Leslie raised her eyebrows. “Where do you
keep them all?”
Again the woman wriggled, this time uncomfortably.
“In the kitchen, miss, except the two girls; they sleep in my room.”
“I’d like to have a look at your kitchen.”
“It’s a bit late and you’d wake ’em up,” said Mrs. Inglethorne after
hesitation.
But Leslie waited, and reluctantly Mrs. Inglethorne went down the
stairs, the girl following. The kitchen was at the back of the house,
approached by a narrow passage. It was a room barely ten feet square,
cold and miserably furnished. In the unsatisfactory light of the oil
lamp the woman carried she saw not three but four little bundles; one,
a child which could not have been three years old, slept in a soap box
on the floor. Its coverlet was a strip of dusty carpet which had been
roughly cut to fit the shape of the box. Two children were huddled
together under the table, wrapped in an old army overcoat. The fourth
lay in a corner under a flour sack, so still that she might have been
dead: a girl of eleven, sandy-haired, sharp-featured, who shivered and
groaned in her sleep as the light of the lamp came upon her face.
“It’s very ’ard on a woman who’s got five mouths to fill,” complained
Mrs. Inglethorne, “but I wouldn’t part with ’em for the world! And
it’s warm in the kitchen when we’ve had a coke fire going all
evening.”
Leslie went out of that sad little room sick at heart. Poverty she had
seen and understood. Possibly these unfortunate children were as well
off as thousands of others in the great metropolis. The weaklings
would die; the fittest would survive and drag their stunted bodies to
a free school where they would be taught just enough to enable them to
write their betting slips and read the football reports intelligently.
Peter was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs.
“I think I’ll go home now. I’m rather tired,” she said. “Most likely
you will be interrogated to-morrow either by Mr. Coldwell or an
officer from the Yard. I think the best thing you can do is to go up
and interview him.”
And then, abruptly:
“Have you seen your mother since you have been free?”
He shook his head.
“My parent has expressed her wishes on the matter in unmistakable
terms. We were never _en rapport_, so to speak, and perhaps it is a
little too late now to attempt to arrive at a mutual understanding.”
She looked down at the floor, her lips pursed.
“I wonder,” she said, and held out her hand. “Good-night, Peter
Dawlish.”
He took the hand, held it for a second, and then:
“You’re rather wonderful. I’m getting a new angle on life,” he said.
She had one more call to make. Inspector Coldwell had promised to wait
at Scotland Yard until she returned with her report, and she found him
sipping coffee in the lobby, and told him briefly the result of her
visit.
“I never thought Peter knew much about it. What does he know of
Druze?”
He listened intently until she had finished.
“Rum! All the paths in this maze lead back to the Princess Bellini.
Yes, I’ll see Peter; I’ll wire him in the morning,” he said, yawning.
“It is time all honest people were in bed. I’m going to take you
home.”
Her cab was waiting, and though she had no need of an escort, he
pointed out that her way was largely his.
“What we’re going to do about Lady Raytham I don’t know. I’m taking it
for granted that you have discovered a whole lot that you haven’t told
me.”
“Not a whole lot, a little,” she admitted.
Mr. Coldwell scratched his head.
“That little is usually crucial. However, I am not going to discourage
you. Keep your mystery; a little romance in police work has a
wonderful tonic value.”
The cab carried them across deserted Trafalgar Square, and a few
seconds later stopped before the door of Leslie’s flat.
“I suppose you know all that is to be known about the case?” he said,
with a touch of the sardonic, as he handed her out of the cab. “Whilst
I, a poor old muddle-headed copper, am groping round like a
blindfolded man in a fog!”
“I think I know a lot,” she admitted, with a tired smile.
Coldwell was amused.
“The complacency of the woman! Here she is, keeping all her clues up
her sleeve, ready to spring them out and reduce police headquarters to
a bewildered pulp! Know all about Druze, do you?”
“I know a lot about him.”
“Fine!” said Coldwell.
She had the door open now, and he waited until she was in the passage
before he dropped his bombshell.
“Promise me you won’t come out and ask questions, but will go straight
up to bed, if I tell you something?”
“I promise,” she said.
He put his hand on the knob of the door, ready to shut it.
“Arthur or Anthony Druze, as he was variously called, was a woman!”
The door slammed on her; before she recovered from her stupor she
heard the rattle of the cab as it moved away.
CHAPTER IX.
DRUZE’S HANDICAP
Druze--a woman! It was incredible--almost impossible! Yet that
shrewd old man would not have jested with her. She dragged herself up
the stairs, her limp body aching for rest, her mind very wide awake
and alert.
Druze a woman! She shook her head helplessly. And then she remembered
Lady Raytham’s hysterical laughter. “What was Druze to you?” Jane
Raytham knew!
Leslie was too sane, too big, to feel foolish. She stopped on the
landing and leaning heavily on the balustrade, she recalled the
hairless face and figure of the portly butler. All her theories must
go by the board. A scaffolding must be erected on a new foundation.
She found Lucretia Brown huddled up in a chair before a dead fire,
fast asleep. Lucretia had never been trained out of her habit of
“waiting up.” It was her firm conviction that only this practice of
hers saved her mistress from a terrible fate. She woke with a start
and came reeling to her feet.
“Oh, miss!” she gasped out. “What time is it?”
Leslie glanced at the mantelpiece.
“Three o’clock,” she said, “and a fine morning! Why aren’t you in bed,
you poor, knock-kneed girl?”
“I’m not knock-kneed and never was,” protested Lucretia. “Three
o’clock, miss? What a time!” She shivered. And then, morbidly curious:
“Has anything been up, miss?”
“More things are ‘up’ than will ever come down, I think,” replied
Leslie, as she dropped into a chair. “There’s been a murder.”
“Good heavens!” said the shocked Lucretia. And then, with pardonable
curiosity: “Who done it?”
“If I knew ‘who done it,’ I’d be a very contented female.”
Leslie stifled a yawn.
“Run the bath, Lucretia, make me some hot milk, and don’t wake me till
ten o’clock.”
“If I’m awake then,” said Lucretia ominously. “I never see such a
place as this. You turn night into day. Did he have his throat cut?”
She returned to the tragedy.
“No. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it was quite ghastly enough.”
She dragged herself to her feet and went to her desk, turning over the
letters that had arrived by the night mail. There was one which looked
promising. She tore off the end of the envelope, read its contents,
and locked the document away in a drawer. A little while later, before
Lucretia had run the water from the bath, Leslie Maughan, snug between
sheets, was sleeping dreamlessly.
She woke with a dim remembrance of the rattle of teacups and of
Lucretia’s calling her. Partly opening her eyes, she saw the cup by
her bedside. She was horribly tired; bed was a warm and luxurious