The girl from Scotland Yard
broke with a snap, and he was in the foul bedroom. Elizabeth lay
cowering on a filthy camp bed, clad only in a coarse nightdress. Her
head was pillowed in the crook of her arm, and convulsive sobs shook
the thin shoulders. Her face aflame, Mrs. Inglethorne stood at the
foot of a big brass bedstead, one hand holding herself steady, the
other grasping an old dog whip.
“I’ll learn her to go talking about me!” she said thickly. “After all
I’ve done for her!”
There was another child there, a girl who was apparently the same age
as Elizabeth. She, however, enjoyed the luxury of Mrs. Inglethorne’s
ample bed and was so used to this exhibition of the woman’s wrath that
she was asleep.
“Where is your coat, Elizabeth?” asked Peter gently.
The child looked up, her eyes swollen, her face red, and cast one
fearful glance at her mother.
“Watcher goin’ to do?” asked Mrs. Inglethorne unsteadily.
“She will sleep in my room for the night,” replied Peter. “To-morrow I
will make other arrangements for her, and if you give any trouble I
shall send for the police.”
Mrs. Inglethorne was amused in her way.
“Send for the police!” she scoffed. “I like that! An old lag sending
for the police! And they’ll come, won’t they?”
“I think so,” said Peter quietly. “They will come, if only to discover
why you never use the back room upstairs as a bedroom, why it is
always kept locked, except after your visitors’ calls.”
The smile died from the woman’s face.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Peter went on, “you can ‘fence’ till the
cows come home! But I’m not going to have you beating this child while
I’m in the house. And when I’m out of it, and out of it for good, I’ll
see that she is well looked after!”
The woman’s face was mottled with fear.
“Fence!” she spluttered. “I don’t know what you mean by that low word!
If you mean I receive stolen property, then you’re a liar!”
“Let me call the police and settle the matter,” said Peter.
The threat sobered her.
“I don’t want any police in my house. The kid annoyed me, and it’s a
hard thing if a mother can’t cane her own children without being
interfered with. If she wants to sleep upstairs, she can, but she’d be
better off down here, Mr. Dawlish. You haven’t got any accommodation
for a little gel.”
This was true.
“All right, get into bed, Elizabeth.” He covered her up with the
pitifully thin bedclothes, and without apology took Mrs. Inglethorne’s
heavy coat that lay over the bed rail and put it on top. “Sleep well,”
he said, and patted her cheek.
She was safe for the night. What happened in the morning depended
entirely on the view which Leslie Maughan took of a scheme that was
beginning to take definite shape.
Mrs. Inglethorne was a fence, a buyer of stolen property. He had lived
too long in association with the worst criminals of England to have
any doubt upon the point, and, squinting through the keyhole one day
in his curiosity, he had seen enough to remove the last remnants of
doubt that remained.
He went to bed, determined to interview Leslie at the earliest
opportunity, and it was not only on Elizabeth’s account that the
thought pleased him.
When he arrived at the flat in Charing Cross Road next morning,
Lucretia did not recognize him, and scowled fearfully at the
suggestion that he should be admitted. She looked at his shabby attire
and shook her head.
“It’s no good your trying to see Miss Maughan. You’d better call on
her at Scotland Yard. She’s very busy now.”
“Who is it, Lucretia?”
Leslie was leaning over the rails of the landing; she could not see
the visitor, but she could hear the uncompromising note in Lucretia’s
voice.
“A young man wants to see you, miss. What’s your name again? Dawlish.”
“Oh, is that you, Peter Dawlish? Come up, will you?”
Peter ran up the stairs, followed by the muttered protests of the
maid.
“You’re in time for breakfast. How are the envelopes going?”
“They’re melting!” he said.
He was conscious of a certain indefinable change in her tone. It was
not that she was more serious, but there seemed some listlessness
about her, as though she were tired. It was almost an effort to talk.
She looked weary, he saw, when they passed from the dark landing, and
he commented on this.
“I’ve been up half the night,” she said, “wandering about in a very
cold garden, watching an elderly lady searching the ground with an
electric lamp. That sounds mysterious, doesn’t it?”
She pointed to a chair and Peter sat down.
“It sounds almost romantic. Where was this?”
“At Wimbledon.” She waved the matter out of discussion. “Well,” she
asked, “what brings you to West Central London at this unholy hour?”
Her grave eyes were fixed on his; there was something of reproach in
them, something of hurt. He was puzzled; he felt that he had fallen
short in her estimation, that she was disappointed with him for some
reason. So strong was this impression that he grew uncomfortable under
her gaze, and as though she were aware of this, she dropped her eyes
to the table and began slowly to stir her coffee.
“I’ve come on a fool errand, with a wild and impossible suggestion.”
And then he told her of what had happened overnight, of the merciless
flogging which Mrs. Inglethorne had administered.
“The woman is a fence,” he said, “not in a very big way. I think she
specializes in furs and silk lengths.”
She knew something of the genus fence, but he told her what he had
learned in Dartmoor, of fences who visited the scene of prospective
robberies and priced the loot, practically paying for it, before it
was stolen; of skillful men and women who would stand outside a small
jeweller’s shop and with one comprehensive glance assess the thieving
value of the whole. He told her of “dead” stores--stores which were
locked up at night, where nobody lived on the premises, and of “live”
stores, where there was either a watchman or a proprietor and his
family sleeping on the floors above.
“I am not reporting this officially--I mean the fence part of it--but
the child is ill-used. The other little kids get a whacking now and
again, but I should think she gets hers all the time.”
“What do you wish me to do?” she asked, looking up at him.
“I don’t know.” He had a sense of awkwardness. “I had a wild idea that
possibly you might be able to find--to do something with her.”
“You mean take charge of her?”
She was smiling at him.
“Yes, I suppose I did mean that,” he said after a second’s thought.
“It sounds fantastic and impossible now, but Elizabeth has got a grip
on me. Probably it is my own rather unhappy childhood which is
responding to her wretchedness.”
She laughed.
“I’ll make your mind easy, at any rate,” she said. “I had already
considered the possibility. In fact, I discussed the matter with
Lucretia last night before I went out to dinner, and Lucretia was
wildly enthusiastic. I have a spare room here; she could go to the
Catholic school in Leicester Square. The only point is that we get
Mrs. Inglethorne’s consent.”
“She had better,” he said grimly, and her lips twitched.
“Really, you’re almost ferocious when you’re taking up the causes of
other people,” she said. “I wish you’d be a little energetic in your
own.”
“Aren’t I?”
She shook her head.
“Not very,” she answered, in her quiet way. “Why don’t you see your
mother?”
He grinned.
“She saved me the trouble and came last night.”
“To Severall Street?” she asked in astonishment, and when he nodded:
“Was it--a pleasant--encounter?”
“A normally strained interview,” he answered cheerfully. “She
endeavoured to instill in me a passion for agriculture, and Canadian
agriculture at that. I love Canada. You can’t even take a week-end
trip into Canada without loving it. But the prospect of milking cows
in Saskatchewan didn’t appeal.”
“She wanted you to go abroad? Why?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I suppose she rather feels there isn’t room enough for both of us in
London.”
She thought the matter over for a minute.
“Didn’t your father leave you any money?”
“He cut me off without the proverbial shilling.”
The lightness of his tone, she suspected, was assumed. Coldwell had
told her how much Peter had loved his father.
“He altered his will at the eleventh hour--the day before I was
sentenced--and left me nothing. Poor old dear! I haven’t the slightest
grudge. How could I? He was the best father that ever lived.”
She had said she rarely smoked; she took a cigarette from her bag now
and lit it without looking at him. Indeed, for the next four minutes,
as he talked about his envelope addressing and his future, it seemed
that she was more interested in the blue vapour that floated from the
end of her cigarette than in his narrative.
“You’re unfortunate.”
She put down the cigarette, carefully took out a spoonful of coffee
from the cup and dropped it on the glowing end as it lay in the
saucer.
“You’re unfortunate, Peter Dawlish, both as a son--and as a husband!”
He did not speak.
“Terribly unfortunate,” she went on moodily. “I think you must have
been born under a very unlucky star. I’m not asking you for
confidences; you’d hate me if I did.”
Presently:
“How did you know?”
She fetched a long sigh.
“How did I know? Oh, I only knew yesterday for sure. I’d guessed for a
long time--ever since I went on my holidays into Cumberland and found
a little volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s with an inscription in
doggerel blank verse on the fly leaf. It was when I saw that the first
letter of every line reading from below, upward, made the words “Jane
Hood” that I first guessed. But I wasn’t certain--about the marriage.
There was no record at Somerset House.”
“We were married in America.”
She nodded.
“I know that now; but why?”
He stared past her out of the window. Here, she thought, was a man who
really regarded life as a terribly serious business. She was mighty
glad of that.
“Jane was very unhappy at home; her people were rotten. Her father
kept a gambling house, and her mother----” He shrugged. “I fell in
love with her. If I hadn’t been a fool I would have gone to my father
and told him the truth and then, in all probability, there would have
been no cause for unhappiness. But I was aware that he knew Jane’s
people and knew that they were rotten. We went away to America
together and were married in a little town in Connecticut. I suppose
you know that? Her father was American born. From the first day the
marriage was a ghastly mistake. Jane thought I had unlimited money. I
had to pawn her jewels to get home, and there was a fearful scene when
we landed at Liverpool. We were both a little crazy, and agreed then
and there to separate. I went back to Lord Everreed’s house to find
detectives awaiting me at the railway station. I haven’t seen or
spoken with Jane since.”
“Has she divorced you?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know. Things like that are possible in America, but I’ve had
no notification.”
Leslie bit her lip.
“If she hasn’t, she’s committed bigamy. You realize that?”
“I realize that,” he said shortly. “Which means that I cannot free
myself without betraying her; I can’t do that. I couldn’t expose her
to imprisonment.”
There was a tense and painful silence.
“Is that all?” she asked. “All you have to tell me?”
“You did not need telling, I think,” he said, a little bitterly.
“No.” She lit another cigarette; the flame of the match quivered
unsteadily. “You’re very unfortunate, Peter Dawlish.”
She blew out the match with deliberation and put it carefully in her
saucer by the side of the sodden cigarette.
“You knew nothing about Druze, of course, or you would have told me.
When did you say your father disinherited you?”
“The day before I went to prison.”
She considered this.