The girl from Scotland Yard
throat, another covered her mouth. She felt the pressure of a knee in
her back and struggled desperately but unavailingly.
“You scream--you killed!” whispered a voice in her ear, and, summoning
all her strength, she tried to nod in agreement with the unspoken
demand of her captor.
The door closed softly behind her. There were two men. She felt her
ankles gripped and lifted, and she was carried into the bedroom and
laid on the bed.
“You scream--you killed!” said the voice again.
The grip about her throat relaxed, but the evil-smelling hand was
still on her face.
“I won’t scream,” she managed to mumble, and the stifling palm was
removed.
“You scream, I cut your t’roat. You not scream, I not cut your
t’roat--not hurt.”
“I shan’t scream,” she said in a low voice. “May I get up, please?”
There was a whispered consultation in a language which held some
gutturals, and then the man who had first spoken said:
“You sit on a chair, keep very quiet, long time, long time.”
He gripped her by the arm and assisted her back to the dining room,
guiding her to a chair, though there was enough light from a street
lamp for her to pick her way.
There were two men--little men; their heads were not much above her
shoulder. Broad, squat, and, as she had reason to know, immensely
strong. She could not see their faces; by accident or arrangement
their backs were to the window. He who was evidently chief of the two
said something in an unknown language, and his companion withdrew to
the landing, and the hall and landing lights went out. Presently he
came back, and, to her surprise, he was joined by a third. Again there
was a whispered consultation, and the third man disappeared, the other
two squatting on the carpet before her, impassive, silent, watching,
as she guessed, with eyes that did not leave her for a second. A
quarter of an hour they sat thus, and then:
“I speak English liddle bit. I hear English well,” said the man. “I
tell you trut’. Last night you get t’roat cut. This night no hurt.” He
added a phrase she could not understand.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Presently by and by,” said the little man, after he had repeated her
words slowly and had grasped their meaning, “you and me walk into car.
While you walk you see peoples. If you speak to peoples I cut your
t’roat.”
Very definite, but the repetition of the phrase amused her mildly.
“You’re rather monotonous, aren’t you?” she asked. “And after I get
into the car what happens?”
There was a pause while he took this in.
“By and by you see,” he said.
The third man came back now, and she gathered that he was in reality
the leading member of the gang, for on his word the two others
vanished through the door and he took their place.
“You won’t be hurt unless you give us trouble,” he said. To her
surprise he spoke in perfect English. “My patron requires you.”
“Who is your patron?”
It gave her a sense of comfort to know that this queer little shape
could understand all she said, and could converse intelligently. It
made him less of a strange and menacing animal, and removed some of
the terror from the situation. And it delayed the moment when she
would find her cumbersome garter a vital safeguard.
“I cannot answer your questions, miss,” he replied. “But you will not
be hurt. Last night you would have been killed--I myself would have
killed you--but that is not the order to-day. If you are sensible and
quiet, nothing will happen.”
He stood up and looked out of the window; neither the shades nor the
curtains had been drawn, and he could see to the opposite side of the
road.
“I must tell you what will occur,” he said. He had a trick of pedantry
which might have amused her at any other time. “This house is being
watched by the police. After a while they will grow tired and
careless, and then my friend will signal to me that they have walked
away. When that happens we will go.”
She could not see him; she could only guess that his “friend” was one
of the two. She had noticed that all three were dressed in correct
European garb, and the incongruity of their overcoats and derby hats
added a touch of the bizarre.
“Will you therefore sit nearer to the window, at your writing place?
If the telephone rings you will not answer.”
So they sat, he on one side of the table and she on the other, his
eyes roving to the sidewalk, and from the sidewalk to his prisoner.
She saw the limousines stream past on their way to the theatres, and
wondered if, on any stage in London, there would be enacted a drama
quite as improbable as this in which she played a leading part.
After a long interval of silence:
“I suppose you realize that, when I do not arrive at Mr. Coldwell’s
house, he will either telephone or come back for me?”
He nodded.
“We have already made provision,” he said simply. “We have sent him a
telegram in your name, saying that you have been called away to”--he
hesitated--“I cannot remember the town; it is in the west and is on
the sea.”
“Plymouth?” she asked quickly.
“Plymouth,” he said. “The telegram also told him your hotel. Plymouth
is very far, and by the time he discovers you have not arrived”--a
pause--“by that time you will not be here.”
“Where shall I be?” she asked.
But the only answer was a strange, solemn glance.
CHAPTER XX.
A SILK SHAWL
Children--little Elizabeth and that unseen boy of his! Peter Dawlish
walked up and down his cramped room, his hands in his pockets, an
unlighted cigarette between his lips. The hopelessness of it all!
Where and how could he begin his search? That baby of his belonged to
the world of unreality, to the mists of dreams. Elizabeth was real. He
could see those wide, frightened eyes of hers, the transparent pallor
of her face. He shut his eyes and there she was again, frail,
delicate, pleading for help he was powerless to give.
He was alone in the house. Through the thin partition walls which
separated one jerry-built cottage from the other he heard the sound of
a man and a wife quarrelling. In the street a boy was whistling flatly
a popular tune. If Mrs. Inglethorne were here he would have the truth
though he had to choke it from her. Who else would know but she?
He had been such a short time in the lodging that he was not even
acquainted with her friends; the slinking little thieves who came to
barter and haggle over the property they had stolen knew no more of
her than that she was a mean and grinding bargainer. She had no
cronies to come and spend the evening with her; by very reason of her
peculiar business, she could not risk the giving or taking of
confidences.
The police had been to the house and made a perfunctory search, their
object being to discover other evidence against her. But they had
looked only for articles of value which she might have purchased;
lengths of cloth and silk--she specialized in this trade--and they
were not particularly concerned about Elizabeth. Nobody cared very
much about Elizabeth, except Leslie and he.
This thought occurred to him as he walked to and fro--and thought
breeds thought. Might he not, searching with another object, discover
what they had overlooked--one fragment of a clue that would bring him
to the child? Why should he be concerned? What legal or moral right
had he to detach Mrs. Inglethorne’s daughter from her legal guardian?
He considered this matter, only to brush it aside. Presently he
carried the lamp downstairs, with the faintly pleasurable hope which
comes to all who engage in secret searches.
The woman’s room was accessible. The lock he had broken had not been
repaired. He went in, put the lamp on the mantelpiece and looked
around. Search parties usually leave chaos behind them, but the police
in their investigation had, if anything, tidied the room. There were a
number of dresses, obviously the woman’s, stacked on the bed. Two
oleographs that once decorated the wall had been lifted down--clean
squares on the wall paper marked their old position. By the side of
the clothes was a square wooden box, of the kind that soldiers use for
the transportation of their possessions. This had been opened and was
unlocked. The lid had jammed upon a wedge of cloth as it had been
closed, and there was a gap of an inch.
Where would a woman like Mrs. Inglethorne keep papers? Or did she keep
papers at all? He tried to remember the habits of her type, acquired
at second hand from his fortuitous acquaintances in Dartmoor Prison.
Under her bed? But the police had obviously rolled up the mattress and
made that elementary examination. There was nothing here--nothing. He
opened the big black box, disparagingly. And then he saw, with a
quickening interest, that the inside of the lid was almost covered by
newspaper cuttings which had been pasted on the wood. Here was
revealed Mrs. Inglethorne’s “scrap-book,” and incidentally her
favourite daydream. A headline caught his eye.
HEIRESS TRACED BY HER BABY SOCK
Another headline ran:
CHILD’S MOTHER TRACKED BY INITIAL ON
INFANT’S GOWN
He carried the lamp to a little table and read the cuttings carefully.
They all dealt with one subject: The identification of unknown
children that had brought fabulous fortunes to the lucky person who
had traced their descent. Some of the cuttings were very old, yellow
with age, and scarcely decipherable. Evidently Mrs. Inglethorne’s
collection covered a long period.
He supposed the police had searched the box, which was nearly filled
with little cylinder-shaped bundles tied around with tape. Linen,
coarse calico, cotton--diving into the mass, his fingers touched silk.
The bundles had once been white, but constant fingering and dust had
left them an indescribable hue. He untied a bundle and opened it. It
consisted of a child’s cotton nightdress, a little pair of woollen
shoes, and a small knitted shawl. Pinned to the shoes was a scrap of
paper on which was written in an illiterate hand the words: “Mrs.
Larse, boy, ten days old, measles, nine months.” Here then was the
beginning and end of Mrs. Larse’s boy. “Measles, nine months” was his
epitaph.
She was a baby farmer; he had guessed that. He opened another bundle
hopefully. Somewhere here would be a reference to Elizabeth. The
second package had nothing but a coarse calico robe and a penned
inscription: “Young girl named Leavey, five days, whooping cough, six
weeks.” One by one he unrolled these little tragedies, and few indeed
were they who had not their death certificates inscribed laconically
at the end. Some had two papers, identically inscribed. He supposed
that the repetition was due to Mrs. Inglethorne’s careless and
haphazard system of “bookkeeping.”
He had examined twelve and took out the thirteenth, wondering what
potency there was in that lucky or unlucky number. The nightdress he
unrolled was of the finest linen, the most expensive of all he had
examined. The shawl was of heavy silk, and the microscopic shirt of
the most delicate flannel. For some time he could not find the
inscription, but eventually it was discovered inside the shawl. Only
three words, but they set his heart beating.
“Miss Martha’s girl.”
The bundle dropped from his nerveless hands. “Miss Martha’s girl!”
He took the letter out of his pocket. “I have found a home for your
son and----” He read again the pencilled words “Martha’s servant.” And
Martha’s servant was--Mrs. Inglethorne!
Miss Martha’s girl. This woman could not have made a mistake. One by
one he examined the clothes separately, and then, pinned to the inside
of the dress, near the collar, he found a second paper written in the
same hand, and, reading it, he uttered a hoarse cry.
“Miss Martha’s girl Elizabeth.”
Feverishly he untied the other bundles but found no further clue. His