The girl from Scotland Yard
place; she must have dozed for the sound of voices wakened her.
Her bedroom led from her sitting room and the door was half open. Two
people were speaking--Lucretia and somebody else whose voice was
familiar.
“I will wait. Please don’t wake Miss Maughan especially for me.”
Leslie sat up in bed. Through the closing door which the maid was
jealously guarding, she saw the big, straight figure of a woman. Lady
Raytham! In an instant she was out of bed, thrust her feet into
slippers, and pulled her dressing gown about her. She stopped only at
the mirror to brush back her hair.
Lady Raytham was standing in the middle of the study, a bright coal
fire was burning, and the room, at that early hour of the morning, had
a special attraction for its young owner. But Jane Raytham’s presence
seemed, for some unaccountable reason, to lend it a new distinction,
as a great bunch of Easter lilies, or a bowl of narcissus, might have
done.
“Good-morning. I’m sorry to be so early. I hope I did not disturb
you?”
She was polite, almost frigidly so, and Leslie could only look at her
in wonder. All the evidence of distress and terror that had marked her
face on the night before had vanished--all except that dark tint under
the eyes.
“Won’t you sit down? Have you had breakfast?” asked Leslie
practically.
Lady Raytham shook her head.
“Please don’t bother about me. I have plenty of time and can wait,”
she said.
There was a certain resentful admiration in her gaze; she was thinking
how few women of her acquaintance were presentable at such an hour and
in such circumstances. She had never seen Leslie Maughan in the
daytime before, and not only did she stand the test of the cruel
morning light, but she looked even prettier. She liked the poise of
the girl and the readiness with which she accepted this sensible
suggestion and disappeared into the bathroom, the gawky maid, her arms
laden with garments, following. By the time she came out, Lucretia
Brown had laid a little table; huge blue coffee cups and china racks
bristling with crisp brown toast.
“No, I couldn’t eat, thank you.” Lady Raytham shook her head. “I will
have some coffee.”
Leslie looked significantly at the door and Lucretia regretfully
disappeared.
“Yes, I slept,” said Jane Raytham listlessly. “I don’t know how or
why, but I did. I suppose I just couldn’t sleep any more. There is
nothing about the murder in the newspapers.”
Leslie made a mental calculation.
“There wouldn’t be; it will be in the evening press. I know all about
Druze.”
“You know--about her?” Jane Raytham looked at her steadily.
“What was her name?” asked Leslie, but the other woman shook her head.
“I don’t know; she was always Druze to me.”
“Did your husband know----”
“That she was a woman?” She shook her head. “No. Poor Raytham! He’d
have had a fit! But then, he never notices anything.”
She had married the first Baron Raytham when he was a little over
fifty, bachelor-minded, a man of set habits, who had found himself
most unexpectedly a benedict and was a little aghast at the discovery.
For the greater part of a year he had striven to be the model husband,
and had been something of a bore. The domestic habit was foreign to
him. Society and all its dainty et ceteras he loathed. Before the end
of the first year of their married life, he had given up all attempt
to interest himself in the new complexities which marriage had
brought. Thereafter he devoted his energies and thoughts to his
concession--his boards of directors, balance sheets, and all the
precious things which were life for him--and Jane Raytham was left
very much to her own devices.
“My husband is very seldom in London--probably not two months a year.
He has”--she hesitated--“other interests.”
Very wisely, Leslie did not pursue the subject. She too had heard that
Lord Raytham had carried into married life a loose string or two that
was substantially attached and which he was unwilling or unable to
drop. Leslie was too versed in the ways of the world to be shocked at
this; too sophisticated to be anything but mildly amused at the
inefficiency of man, who finds it so easy to get rid of a wife and so
difficult to discharge a feminine attachment.
“Your name is Leslie, isn’t it?” And, when she nodded: “I wonder if
you would mind my ‘Leslie-ing’ you? You’re not so formidable as I
thought. I--I rather like you. My name is Jane--if you ever feel
friendly enough to ‘Jane’ me--I’ve been abominably rude to you, but
now I’ve come to ask you for favours.”
Leslie laughed.
“I owe you an apology,” she said, and the other woman was quick to see
her meaning.
“About Druze? It would be a beastly idea, only--women are such queer
fools, aren’t they? No, I knew Druze was a woman; that made everything
so hideous. I wonder if you will believe me when I say that that was
almost my heaviest cross--almost.”
“What was really the heaviest?” asked Leslie quietly.
Lady Raytham fetched a long sigh and looked out of the window.
“I don’t know. It is rather difficult to compare these things.” And
then, quickly: “Of course, I know now which is the heaviest, but that
is so new and so crushing that I dare not let myself think about it.
Something Druze said to me before she went out; something she told me
that froze my blood.” She closed her eyes and shuddered, but recovered
instantly. “That is why I got my car and went in search of her. She
told me a little but not everything, and I had to know! My first
thought was--you’ll think I’m a hypocrite--that Peter had killed her.
If I thought at all! I don’t think I cared. I had only one idea in my
mind, to find something she had boasted about.”
“Not the necklace?”
Jane Raytham smiled contemptuously.
“The necklace! As if I cared for that! I’m making a clean breast of
everything--up to a point. The necklace you saw at the house last
night was only----”
“Was a copy, I know that,” said Leslie quietly. “An exact replica of
the real emerald chain, and, valueless! When you didn’t bother to put
it back in the safe, I guessed.”
Eye met eye, each striving to read the other’s thoughts.
“What else did you guess?” asked Jane Raytham, after a long silence,
and then:
“No, no, don’t tell me. I want to feel that nobody knows that--nobody!
You will tell me that I am trying to create a fool’s paradise myself,
and I’m a moral coward. I wonder if I am.” And then, obliquely: “Have
you seen Peter?”
“I saw him last night, yes. He knew nothing about the murder--not so
much as you,” said Leslie.
The woman ignored this challenge.
“I wonder how much you do know, Leslie?”
It was a strain to ask the question. Even as she had her reservations,
so also had Leslie Maughan. The truth must come from Jane Raytham or
not be truth at all.
“I know you were being blackmailed; that the necklace you gave was
part of the price; the twenty thousand pounds, which I imagine was all
you could raise in cash, was the other part. I guess also that Druze
was a blackmailer. Am I right?”
Jane nodded. There was a perceptible brightening of her face as
though, fearing to hear worse, she was experiencing relief at the
limitation of the girl’s knowledge.
“How long have you been paying?”
She did not answer, and Leslie repeated the question.
“I don’t know. Quite a long time.”
Another silence. The truth was not to come yet, then, only a measure
of it.
“Do you want to tell me any more?” she asked.
Jane Raytham drooped her head. She wanted to tell--just as much as
this frank and friendly girl knew, hoping against hope that the more
precious secret would remain with her, and yet almost praying that
Leslie Maughan would suddenly drag forth the grisly skeleton and
expose it to her eyes.
“Yes, I want to, terribly! But I shan’t. I can’t bring myself to put
things into words. And I want your help. How badly I need it! But, my
dear, you’re police, part of the machinery of Scotland Yard. I’ve told
you too much already. I shall be living in a flutter of fear all
day----”
“I’m Leslie Maughan in this flat,” said Leslie, smiling. “Just a sort
of little sister of the human race! But I’ll warn you that I am
determined, as far as I can, to find the murderer of that wretched
woman. Short of that information you can tell me anything.”
Jane shook her head ruefully.
“I don’t know who killed Druze. I will not swear that, but I will tell
you on my word I don’t know; I do not even suspect. Anita wanted to
know. I called on her this morning. She is like a woman distraught. I
never knew she felt so deeply. The police have been there to inquire
whether Druze called. I suppose you told them last night that I had
told you. Poor Anita! She was terribly fond of Druze, who was once in
her service. She always contended that he hadn’t been, and talked
about him as though he were the merest stranger. But that, I think,
was her pride; she hated the thought that she had ever been so
poverty-stricken that she was obliged to let him go--her, I mean. The
habit of years takes a lot of breaking! I have thought of Druze as a
man and spoken of him as a man so long, that it is difficult to get
out of the trick.”
“One question I want to ask you, Lady--Jane, I’d better call you. It
will be almost as difficult a habit to get into! Did Druze forge Lord
Everreed’s name as Peter Dawlish thinks he did?”
Jane Raytham shook her head.
“That is impossible,” she said simply.
“Why impossible?”
The answer took Leslie Maughan’s breath away.
“Because she could not read or write!”
CHAPTER X.
A DOCTOR’S CONFESSION
“Druze was illiterate, but, like all illiterate people, had acquired
a certain form of culture and was very clever to conceal this
misfortune. I think, in fact I know, she had the schooling of an
average child, but she was just incapable of learning. The Council
schools and even the public schools are full of people like that, of
girls and boys familiar with the most obscure sciences who have never
mastered these elementary arts.”
Leslie thought quickly.
“Her signature was on the passport?”
“I wrote it,” said the surprising woman. “She told me she wanted to go
across to France for a week-end trip and asked me if I would sign the
passport form. That was only a few weeks ago, so it is fresh in my
mind. Now tell me what I am to do? The police will come to me, and I
am prepared to tell them the truth, though I cannot see how I can help
them.”
“The whole truth?” asked Leslie significantly.
Jane Raytham looked at the girl for a long time before she answered.
“As much as I’ve told you--not as much as you guess,” she said, in her
even voice.
Leslie carried her cup of coffee to the desk.
“Would you like me to write down the gist of what you have said, and
sign the statement?” she asked. “That might save you an awful lot of
trouble.”
Jane hesitated.
“Is it necessary? I suppose it is,” she said. “Yes, if you would be so
kind.”
For ten minutes she watched the girl as her pen flew over the paper,
and took the pages from her as they were written.
“You have put my case more cleverly than I could have put it myself,”
she said with a little smile. “I almost think you’re sympathetic.”
“You don’t know how sympathetic I am,” said Leslie, rising from her
chair to make way for the other.
Lady Raytham sat down, read the last sheet again, and had dipped her
pen in the ink, when the sound of voices came from outside the door.
It was Lucretia’s raised protest, and a deeper voice, which Leslie
instantly recognized, and, running to the door, threw it open. The
Princess Anita Bellini stood on the landing, glaring through her
monocle at the defiant Lucretia.
“You can’t come in--Miss Maughan’s engaged,” she was saying. “I don’t