The girl from Scotland Yard
Leslie had turned on the lights and they saw the extent of the damage.
He must have dived for the lower sash, head-first, for the upper
window was untouched. There was not a scrap of glass remaining, and
the cross supports of wood were smashed to splinters.
“I’ve heard of such things being done,” said Coldwell, “and I’ve seen
them done--on the stage! But never in real life and through
three-quarter inch moulding!”
Leslie was still dressed. She had been waiting in the maid’s room, a
pistol on her lap, till the sound of the struggle brought her out,
just too late. Mr. Coldwell disappeared into the bedroom and returned
with the ugly and curious-shaped knife which the man had dropped.
“Eastern,” he said, as he felt the edge gingerly. “Malayan, I guess.”
He also had been sitting on a chair immediately to the right of the
wardrobe, but until he had made an examination later he had not known
from what place his assailant had come.
“I thought he’d come back through the window,” he mused. “That’s one
of the curiosities of human nature, Leslie; jot it down in your
notebook. We always look _under_ things for hidden criminals; we never
look over; and yet the cleverest fellow that ever got away from the
police was a steeplejack who hid for a fortnight at the top of a
smokestack! Ever wear garters, Leslie?”
She laughed softly.
“That almost sounds indelicate to me,” she said. “No, I won’t go very
deeply into the question, but I don’t wear garters!”
He was quite serious.
“Wish you would, just to oblige me. One garter, anyhow. I meant to
give it to you to-day.”
He drew something out of his pocket and she gasped.
“You really wish me to wear this?”
He nodded.
“A little heavy, but I wish you would,” he said.
He insisted upon staying the night, and to make doubly sure had a
policeman put on duty in the hall below. Early as the hour was when
she went out to her bath, she found him up and dressed, studying the
morning newspaper.
“Wonderful how you miss things when you’re away from the Yard for a
few hours,” he drawled.
She turned back from the open door of the bathroom. When Mr. Coldwell
drawled, there was something sensational to come.
“What have we missed?” she asked. It was not entirely curiosity which
made her ask.
He looked at the newspaper again and took off his glasses.
“Peter Dawlish was arrested last night.”
She gazed at him in horror and amazement.
“Arrested? On what charge?”
“Threatening to murder Princess Anita Bellini,” was the staggering
reply.
CHAPTER XV.
TRAPPED
Rarely did Mrs. Greta Gurden permit herself the luxury of brooding
upon her injuries. She was no philosopher, and it was sheer necessity
which made her disregard the irritations, petty and great, of life,
and concentrate her mind upon pleasant things. But she found herself
helpless with a leg that throbbed and throbbed, and the memory of
Anita Bellini’s insolence rankled as sorely. She was propped up in bed
with a heap of papers on her lap. Though there was no immediate need
for the work she had taken in hand, and, in truth, sought it only as a
relief from boredom, she permitted herself the illusion that she was
the victim of a task mistress who was not satisfied with her normal
and heavy exactions, but must needs add to her offence this torment of
a sick woman.
Old letters, old bills, a receipt or two, a few ancient telegrams
about nothing in particular, dozens of letters dealing earnestly with
forgotten accounts, an interminable correspondence between Anita and a
house agent--she turned the pages one by one, sorting the sheep from
the goats.
Presently she came to an old letter typewritten on plain paper--Anita,
like her dependent, had used a small portable typewriter for years.
The letter was unfinished; halfway through the princess had changed
her mind, or probably substituted another for this and had tossed the
rejected scrap aside to be gathered to the heap which had accumulated
and which was now being sorted.
She read the letter through as far as it went; she was sourly amused.
Anita must have been in a careless mood when she threw this away. The
old instinct of service told her that it ought to be destroyed at
once. She gripped the paper to tear it, thought better of her impulse,
and began to consider certain possibilities. To say that she felt
bitterly against Anita Bellini at that moment would be to grade her
emotion charitably. She was getting old, was she? She had lost her
looks and was unlikely to get a job in the chorus. Anita had taken it
for granted that she would be forever satisfied with the humiliating
position of companion. Capri was to be a kind of bonus.
The princess was a woman of temperament, sometimes feverishly elated,
sometimes savagely depressed. Yet in all her permutations of mood, she
had been consistently contemptuous of her hireling. Greta grew red and
hot and cold at the memory of the insults which this woman had heaped
upon her, and the hand that held the letter shook. And then an idea
began to take shape in her mind; it was half formed when she called
Mrs. Hobbs.
“Get my address book.”
She was a systematic woman, and entered without fail the location even
of chance acquaintances who might be of no value to her. She ran her
thumb down the index till it stopped at “D”; the last entry on the
crowded page was “Peter Dawlish.”
“Give me an envelope, please, and my fountain pen; and take this
letter to the post--no, bring my little typewriter.”
The obedient Mrs. Hobbs carried the tiny machine, which was a replica
of Anita’s, and laid it on the invalid’s lap. Greta inserted the
envelope, typed the address, and while the instrument was being
removed, inserted the torn sheet of paper and licked down the flap of
the envelope.
“Go to the general post office--you’d better take a bus each way--and
post this. If anybody asks you whether you’ve posted a letter for me,
you’re to say no.”
It was not the first time Mrs. Hobbs had received similar
instructions.
The houses in Severall Street are not equipped with letter boxes, and
postmen have learned by experience that inserting letters under doors
which are backed by coarse fibre mats is a difficult and sometimes an
impossible proposition.
Peter heard the heavy rat-tat of the postman and, going downstairs,
opened the door.
“Dawlish?” asked the postman.
“That is my name,” said Peter, in surprise. He took the letter and
closed the door. Had he followed the practice of Severall Street and
its people, which is never to go to the door without making a scrutiny
up and down the street, he could not have failed to see Leslie on her
way home.
His first thought was that it was a letter from her, but when he
brought it to the light of his room, he saw that it was typewritten
and had been posted in the city.
He opened the envelope and took out a sheet of typewriting paper. It
was discoloured, and one corner had been torn off. He looked at the
date and had a mild shock.
“July 7, 1916.”
And yet--as he saw--it had been posted that afternoon. There were just
three or four lines, the last of which stopped abruptly in the middle
of a sentence. Only dimly did he comprehend the significance of the
fragment.
Dear Jane: Druze has found a very good home for your son in a
middle-class family. There are no other children. He will be well
cared for. And----
Scribbled below in pencil, and almost indecipherable, were the words:
“Martha’s servant.”
He must have read the letter a dozen times before he understood.
“Jane’s son--Jane’s little son!” He came to his feet slowly, his limbs
trembling, the paper swimming before his eyes.
Jane’s son--his son! The consciousness of fatherhood momentarily
overwhelmed him. Jane had had a child. He had never dreamed--somewhere
in the world was a little boy, fatherless--his little boy! He grew hot
at the thought. And then, in a frenzy of impatience, he took up his
coat, struggled into it, and, not stopping to extinguish the lamp, ran
down the stairs and out of the house.
The bus that carried him to Piccadilly seemed to crawl. He got down at
a traffic block at Bond Street, half walked, half ran into Berkeley
Street, and came at last to the dark portals of Lady Raytham’s house.
It was past ten. She might be out. But he would wait for her--all
night if necessary. He hated her at that moment and there was jealousy
behind the hate. He hated her for not telling him, for excluding him
from the knowledge and inspiration of their gift. Perhaps he was being
brought up as Raytham’s child, to call him “father.” Peter grew
insanely furious at the thought.
To the new butler who opened the door all callers were as yet strange.
Peter seemed no stranger than others and he was met civilly.
“What name shall I tell her ladyship?” he asked.
“Mr. Peter,” said Peter, after thought.
He was shown into the small drawing room, and paced up and down like a
caged animal until he heard the door open and, turning, met face to
face, for the first time in eight years, the woman of “the adventure.”
She was pale but very calm and sure of herself as she closed the door
behind her. For a while they stood, looking at each other. She had
matured, grown more beautiful; the old, graceful carriage was
unchanged; the enticing lines of her had come to a greater perfection.
He had grown older, she thought, was much more of a man than when she
had known him before. His face had formed; he had resolution and
strength and a balance that had been missing; in his eyes she read
something that chilled her.
“You wish to see me, Peter?” she asked.
He nodded.
He was trembling; feared to speak lest his voice betray him.
“What is it you wish to see me about?”
“I want my child.” His voice was low; the words seemed to choke him,
so that he ended on a cough.
“You want--your child?”
She shook her head so slightly that if he had not been watching her
closely the gesture would have escaped him.
“Will you tell me what you mean?”
She was fencing. She wanted time to take all this in. He had shocked
her very badly.
“Why pretend, Jane? You know what I want, and what I mean. Where is
our child?”
She passed her hand wearily across her eyes.
“I don’t know,” she said. She made no attempt to evade the question,
accepted his knowledge, startling as it was, “I don’t know. Is it
worth while knowing? He is very happy. I did what was best, Peter. I
told nobody. When I went to Reno----”
“You have divorced me?”
She did not answer. A lie trembled on her lips and was instantly
rejected--impatiently.
“No, I have not divorced you,” she said. “They would not grant me a
divorce because you had not been served with the papers--or something
of the sort. I don’t understand the law very well. I was a fool, of
course.”
Another intense silence.
“That puts me in your hands, doesn’t it?” she went on. “Though I don’t
imagine you will----”
He stopped her with an impatient gesture.
“I’m not thinking of you and I’m not thinking of myself,” he said. “I
am thinking of the boy. You don’t know? Jane, you horrify me! You
don’t know where your own child---- Good heavens! I thought he might
not be here, but that you should tell me so quietly and calmly that
you’ve lost track of him--as if he were a----”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know. Honestly, Peter, I don’t know. I was terrified when I
knew he was coming. I just dimly remember seeing the little thing, and
then they took him away--we had arranged it beforehand.”
“Who are ‘we?’”
She hesitated.
“Anita was very good to me, and so was Druze. It was only then I
discovered that Druze was a woman. I had to pay for it
afterward--Druze’s knowledge, I mean. I don’t really remember the