The girl from Scotland Yard
child--only just that vague, queer impression like the elusive memory
of a dream. Peter, be a little pitiful. I was in a terrible condition;
my father was writing, asking me to make up my mind about Raytham. You
knew he wanted to marry me? Raytham had lent Father a lot of money,
and I was afraid, terribly afraid, of what would happen if Father came
to learn--about the marriage and everything.
“He knew I’d been to America, of course; I was supposed to have taken
an engagement to sing--you remember that, don’t you, Peter? But he
didn’t know I’d returned, or what had become of me. I had to send all
my letters to a friend in New York to be posted back to him.”
She stopped.
“Where is the child? That is all I want to know.”
She shook her head.
“Druze knew. She told me something just before she went out; she had
been drinking, Peter. She told me a ghastly thing.” Her voice broke.
“Terrible, terrible!” She covered her eyes again, and he waited, his
heart a heavy stone.
“This ghastly thing; what was it?” he asked at last.
“She said”--this needed courage to think, it was a torture to
say--“that even she didn’t know where the child was; that she had
handed the boy to the first person who, for a consideration, offered
to adopt it; and all the time I had been comforting myself with the
thought that--that he at least was being brought up happily, however
much a blackguard his foster father was.”
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“I’ve been paying money, big sums of money,” she said at last, “as I
supposed to the man who had adopted him, and who, learning of my
marriage to Raytham, had for years blackmailed me. Too late I
discovered that this blackmailer was mythical, that it was Druze who
was robbing me all the time.”
Peter drew a deep breath.
“How awful! How perfectly awful!” he whispered. “Just disappeared into
the mass--and you allowed him to go. I can’t understand that. I
thought that women----”
She stopped him with a weary gesture.
“I don’t understand women, either. I wish I’d kept him and had faced
all the trouble that would have followed. You know about it for the
first time, Peter, and you have the support of your righteousness. It
has been a bad dream to me--an eight-year long discomfort. And now it
is a nightmare.” She pressed her throbbing temples. “I can’t sleep for
thinking of him. That little mite of a boy--my boy and yours--perhaps
being starved, or dead perhaps, or suffering----”
She screwed her eyes tight as though to shut out a horrible vision.
“Does Bellini know?” He was like ice now.
“Anita?” She looked at him in surprise. “No; why should she? You hate
Anita, of course. I’m not really--fond of her. She’s difficult. But
she was very helpful to me, Peter.”
He looked at her steadily.
“Who was Martha?”
He saw by her frown that she did not understand him.
“Do you know a woman called Martha?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t remember anybody of that name. Why?”
“Martha’s servant had the child. Bellini knows. And what Bellini
knows, I will know.”
He made as though to leave the room, but she barred the way.
“Peter, will you forgive me? I’ve been a fool--a wicked fool, Peter.
I’d gladly change places with my own kitchen maid to undo all the
past. You loathe me, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t loathe you,” he said quietly. “I’m awfully sorry for you
in a way; but I’m disappointed in you, too, Jane. You’ve been a
weakling.”
“Have I? I suppose I have.” She saw him, a blurred figure, through a
mist of tears. “I suppose I have. And one pays dearer for weakness
than for wickedness, I think. Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find the child.”
She threw out her arms in a gesture of despair.
“Find the child! If you only could! Peter, if you could bring him to
me and----”
“You!” He laughed harshly. “The child belongs to me! To me! Do you
hear? You had him and lost him. If I find him I will keep him.”
He brushed past her, threw open the door, and stalked through the hall
into the night.
He had still the greater part of the twenty pounds left that Leslie
had given to him, and at this moment of crisis he must spend; he could
not afford to economize. A taxi driver accepted with some reluctance
his order to drive to Wimbledon Common. It was a long journey, and he
had time to put in order the confusion of his mind.
Anita Bellini knew; he was confident of that. And if she knew, he
should know. Her residence was a mansion, standing in two acres of
ground on the fashionable side of Wimbledon Common; a big, somewhat
old-fashioned house, garnished with the square towers and big Gothic
turrets which were the joy of the Victorian architects. It had
something of a mediæval appearance, seemed to be a veritable castle
of despair when he ordered the cab to wait. The cautious man demanded
something on account, and wisely, as it proved.
He strode up the gravelled drive. No light showed in any window; even
the transom above the massive front door was lifeless. He pulled the
bell and the faint clang of it came back to him. After a long time he
heard the rattle of chains, the shooting back of a bolt, and a faint
light was reflected behind the fanlight. The door was opened a few
inches by a very old man with dirty white hair and wearing the
slovenly uniform of a footman. Peter saw that the longer chain was
still fastened to the door and that the aperture was not big enough to
squeeze through.
“You’re Simms, aren’t you?” He remembered the ancient. “I want to see
the princess.”
The old man made the grimace that Peter remembered.
“You can’t see the princess; she’s not at home,” he said in a loud
cracked voice.
“Tell her Peter Dawlish wishes to see her, and if she will not let me
in she can come to the door,” he said.
He was not prepared to have the door slammed in his face, yet that was
what happened. He waited for five minutes, and then he heard the lock
turn. This time he saw Anita. She wore a long green dress, smothered
as usual with beading which glittered in the dim hall light.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I want to speak to you privately.”
“This is as private an interview as you’ll get,” she said coolly.
The reflection of the hall light on her monocle produced an eerie
illusion. It was as though she were glaring at him with one malignant
golden eye.
“What do you want?” she repeated. “If it’s money, you can’t have it.
This is not a charitable institution or a home for convicts.”
In the pause that followed he made a mental calculation as to the
strength of the chain that held him from admission. He might at a
pinch break it and force an entrance. He was prepared to go to any mad
lengths to get the information he sought.
“Where is my child?” he asked.
Not a muscle of the big face moved.
“I didn’t know you’d been raising a family. Surely I’m the last person
in the world to be acquainted with your vicarious progeny.”
“Where is Jane’s child? Perhaps you’ll understand that.”
She had been taken aback by the first question, he was sure. The
length of time that elapsed before she answered betrayed her.
“So you know that, do you? The child? I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I
have something better to do than to keep track of the indiscretions of
my friends, and certainly I do not concern myself with the
illegitimate children of convicted forgers----”
“You lie,” said Peter quietly. “You know I was married to Jane.”
Anita Bellini chuckled.
“The marriage was illegal; didn’t you know that? You didn’t comply
with certain formalities----”
“I have seen Jane to-night. She has no doubt about its legality. Where
is my son?”
“Where you will never find him.” All the pent-up malignity of the
woman suddenly took expression. Her face, never attractive, was
contorted by rage to an appearance that was almost ludicrous. “Where
you will never find him! In the slime and the mud where his father
belongs; dead, I hope!”
A sudden insane fury possessed him. He was scarcely human; saw the
hateful face of this woman through a redness, and flung himself
against the door. It jerked back with a crash and suddenly flew open.
The chain had broken.
To him she was no longer a woman, but some devil that had taken human
shape. He wanted to kill her, to grip that big throat and choke the
life out of her. As the chain broke, she stepped back, and he found
himself looking into the black muzzle of a pistol.
“Don’t move,” she said gratingly. “Don’t move, Peter Dawlish. I am
justified in shooting you in the defense of my life.”
She did not see his hand move. The pistol was struck down from her
grip and fell with a clatter on the floor; and, in his mad anger, with
murder in his heart, his hand was outflung. Then somebody called him.
“Peter!”
At the sound of the voice his arm dropped, paralyzed with amazement. A
woman was in the hall; she had come out of a room at the foot of the
broad stairway; a woman in black silk, white-haired, hard-faced; it
was his mother!
“Come in here.”
She pointed to the open door of the room and he walked past her
without another glance at Anita Bellini. She was shrinking back
against the wall, frightened for the first time in her life.
It was a small study furnished in the Oriental fashion; there was a
great silken divan, and a shaded lantern hung from the ceiling.
Something more modern he saw--a telephone on the tiny octagonal table.
The receiver was off--he had interrupted her in the act of
telephoning.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Mrs. Dawlish had assumed the old air that he knew so well and detested
so much.
He was still shaking, but he was calmer.
“I presume you don’t need to be told; you must have heard. I came to
your friend----”
“To the Princess Bellini,” interrupted the woman. “Yes?”
“To discover where was my child.”
“Really?” The gray eyebrows rose. “I was not aware that I was a
grandmother.”
The old devil rose again in him.
“Then your hearing is affected,” he said harshly. “You know--of course
you know! The whole gang of you know! You know about Jane, you know
about my marriage, you know about the child. Perhaps you know where he
is.”
And then, to add to the fire of his fury, he saw her smile.
“You have always been a fool, Peter. I suppose you will be a fool to
the end of your days,” she said. “You had better go back to your
envelope addressing and forget there are such things in the world as
children. I have been trying very hard to do the same for the past
seven years.”
She was a surprising woman, for without warning she came back to the
offer she had made to him.
“You would be well advised to go to Canada or Australia, or any other
place that takes your fancy,” she said, and went on in a
conversational tone to discuss the advantages which might accrue.
He was puzzled. Then it occurred to him that she was talking to gain
time--for what? His back had been to the door and now he edged round
until it was under his view. But if Anita Bellini contemplated any
treachery, there was no visible or audible evidence.
He heard the front-door bell ring, and an exchange of voices in the
hall, and then the door opened and two men entered. It was not
necessary that he should be very experienced in such matters to
realize that they were detectives. His mother’s narrative stopped
automatically. Her white, skinny finger pointed to him.
“This man is Peter Dawlish--an ex-convict!” she said. “I charge him
with threatening to murder my friend Princess Anita Bellini.”
A quarter of an hour after, the taxicab which Peter had employed to
bring him to Wimbledon deposited him at the police station, and he was
sitting, dazed and wrathful, behind the locked door of a police cell.
CHAPTER XVI.
AN OLD RECORD
“I can’t believe it.” Leslie stared at the inspector. “His own