The girl from Scotland Yard
He hesitated a second, then took it in his. She felt the hardness of
the palm, and winced at the significance of it. In another second she
had joined the waiting Coldwell. Peter Dawlish watched them until they
were out of sight, and then, with a little grimace, turned and walked
slowly toward Blackfriars.
“I knew about the smallness of the world,” said Coldwell, swinging his
umbrella, “but I had no idea that applied to London. Peter! It’s years
since I saw him last. He was rather a weed five years ago.”
“Do you think he really is a forger?”
“A jury of his fellow countrymen convicted him,” said Mr. Coldwell
cautiously, “and juries are generally right. After all, he needed the
money: his father was an old skinflint, and you cannot run a hectic
establishment, and escort pretty ladies to New York, on two hundred
and fifty pounds per annum. He was a fool; if he hadn’t taken that
three months’ holiday the forgery would never have been discovered.”
“Who was she?” Leslie asked; she felt that this question was called
for.
“I don’t know. The police _cher-chezed la femme_--forgive my mongrel
French--but they never ran her to earth. Peter said it was a chorus
girl from the Paris opera house. He wasn’t particularly proud of it.”
The girl sighed.
Near the dark entrance of Scotland Yard Mr. Coldwell stopped.
“Now,” he said, standing squarely before her, “perhaps you will cease
being mysterious, and tell me why you are so frantically interested in
Peter Dawlish that you have talked Peter Dawlish for the past three
days?”
She looked up at him steadily from under the lowered brim of her hat.
“Because I know just why Peter Dawlish wants to kill and whom he wants
to kill!” she said.
“Druze! A child would guess that!” scoffed the detective. “And he
wants to kill him because he thinks Druze’s evidence sent him to
jail.”
She was smiling--a broad smile of conscious triumph.
“Wrong!” she said. “If Druze dies, it will be because he doesn’t love
children!”
Mr. Coldwell could only gape at her.
CHAPTER IV.
PETER’S LODGINGS
“Let me get this right,” Coldwell said slowly. “Druze will be
killed--if he is killed--because he does not like children?”
Leslie Maughan nodded.
“I know you hate mysteries. Everybody in Scotland Yard does,” she
said; “and one day I will tell you just what I mean. Do you remember
last August you gave me a month’s vacation?”
Chief Inspector Coldwell remembered that very well.
“I went to Cumberland just to loaf around,” she said. “I was most
anxious to pretend that there wasn’t such a place in the world as
Scotland Yard. But I’ve got that prowling, inquisitive spirit that
would have made me the first woman inspector of the C.I.D. if the
commissioners were not such stuffy, old-fashioned gentlemen! One day I
was loafing through a little village, when I found something which
brought me eventually to this conclusion, that Druze doesn’t like
children. And one day, when he discovers the fact, Peter Dawlish will
kill him for it!”
“More mysterious than ever!” exclaimed Coldwell. “You’re probably
chasing a boojum. It is the fate of all enthusiastic young
officers--not that you’re an officer.”
Leslie Maughan had started her police career as a very junior
stenographer at Scotland Yard. Her father had been that famous
Assistant Commissioner Maughan whose exploits have formed the basis
for so many stories of police work, and he had left his daughter with
an income which put her above the necessity of working for her living.
But police investigation was in her blood, and she had graduated
through successive stages, until the authorities, reluctant to admit
that any woman had an executive position at police headquarters,
admitted her to the designation of “assistant” to the chief of the Big
Four.
“She’s brilliant; there’s no other word for her,” he had told the
chief commissioner. “And although I don’t think it’s much of a woman’s
job, there never was a woman who was better fitted to hold down a high
position at the Yard.”
“What are her chief qualifications?” asked the commissioner, slightly
amused.
“She thinks quick and she’s lucky,” was the comprehensive reply.
This question of luck exercised the mind of Leslie as she walked home
to her flat in the Charing Cross Road. The very fact that that
apartment was hers was strong support for the theory of luck. She had
taken a long lease of a floor above a moving-picture house at a time
when flats were going begging. She might have drawn double the rent
from a subtenant; but the place was central, comparatively cheap, and
she withstood all temptations to change her abode at a profit.
A side door led to the apartments, and she had hardly closed the door
behind her when a voice hailed her from the top of the stairs.
“That you, Miss Maughan?”
“That’s me,” said Leslie.
She hung her coat in the narrow hall and went upstairs to the girl who
was waiting on the landing. Lucretia Brown, her one servant, was a
very tall, broad-shouldered girl, with a round and not unpleasant
face. She stood now with her hands on her hips, surveying her
mistress.
“I thought you were----” she began.
“You thought I’d been murdered and thrown into the river,” said Leslie
good-humouredly. “As you always think if I am not back on the tick!”
“I don’t trust London,” said Lucretia.
It was her real name, chosen by a misguided farm labourer, who, having
heard a lecture on the Borgias, delivered at the parish hall, came
away with a vague idea that the historical character who bore that
name was a worthy creature.
“I never did trust London and I never will. Have you had dinner,
miss?”
“Yes, I’ve had my dinner,” said Leslie, and looked at the clock. “I am
expecting a man to call here at half-past ten, so, when you open the
door to him, please don’t tell him that I’m out and not expected back
for three weeks.”
Lucretia made a little face.
“Half-past ten’s a bit late for a gentleman visitor, miss. A friend of
yours?”
Leslie could never train her out of a personal interest in her
affairs. In a way Lucretia was privileged. Her first memory was of the
broad-faced Lucretia pushing a perambulator in which Leslie took the
air.
“Is it anybody we know, miss? Mr. Coldwell?”
Leslie shook her head.
“No,” she said, “he is a man who has just come out of prison.”
Lucretia closed her eyes and swayed.
“Good heavens!” she said in a hushed voice. “I never thought I’d live
to see the day when you’d be having a convict up to see you at
half-past ten at night! What about asking a policeman to stand by the
door, miss?”
“You’re much too partial to policemen,” said Leslie severely, and the
big maid grew incoherent in her indignant protests.
Half-past ten was striking from St. Martins-in-the-Fields when the
doorbell rang, and Lucretia came in to her, eyes big with excitement.
“That’s him!” she said melodramatically.
“Well, let him in.”
“Whatever happens,” began Lucretia, “I’m not responsible.”
Leslie pointed to the door. He came so lightly up the stairs that she
did not hear his steps. The door opened and Lucretia backed in.
“The gentleman,” she said loudly, and cast an apprehensive glance at
the stranger as she sidled out of the room and closed the door.
Peter Dawlish stood where Lucretia had left him, his soft hat in his
hand, glancing from the girl to the cosy room, a smile on his thin
face. She saw now how shabbily dressed he was: his shirt was
collarless, his boots gray with mud, the old, ill-fitting suit he wore
stained and patched.
“I warned you I was a scarecrow,” he said, as though he read her
thoughts. “They gave me a beautiful prison-made suit at Dartmoor, but
it didn’t seem the right kind of equipment with which to face a
censorious world, so I swapped it for this.”
She pushed a chair up to the fire.
“Sit down, won’t you, Mr. Dawlish?”
“‘Mr. Dawlish,’” he repeated. “That sounds terribly respectable.”
“You may smoke if you wish,” she said, as he seated himself slowly,
and again he smiled.
“I wish, but I have not the wherewithal.” She hastily opened a drawer
and took out a tin of cigarettes: “Thank you,” he said.
He took the cigarette in his fingers and frowned.
“That is certainly queer,” he said.
“What is certainly queer?” she asked.
“These gaspers; I used to smoke them in the old days. Had ’em imported
from Cairo. You can’t buy them here, at least you couldn’t when
I--retired. Heigho! Am I being very sorry for myself again? That
stung! I loathe these self-pitiers, and it was a revelation to
discover that I had gone over to the majority.”
He lit the cigarette and drew luxuriously.
“This is rather wonderful,” he said.
“Have you had any food?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I dined like a Sybarite, at a small shop in the Blackfriars Road. The
dinner cost sixpence; it was rather an extravagance, but I felt I
needed bracing for this ordeal.”
“You have no lodging?”
He shook his head.
“No, I have no lodging.”
He was twiddling his long, thin fingers. She noted with satisfaction
that his hands were scrupulously clean, and again he seemed to divine
her thoughts, for he looked down at them.
“I don’t exactly know what information I can give you, if it is
information you require, and if you had been a male-of-the-species
policeman I should have declined your invitation rather loftily! But a
woman policeman is unique. I’ve seen them, of course--rather fat
little bodies with squat little helmets. I suppose they’re useful.”
He noticed that she herself was not smoking, and commented upon it.
“No, I very rarely smoke,” she said. And then, in a changed tone: “Do
you mind if I speak very plainly?”
“The plainer the better,” he said, and he leaned back in his chair and
sent a cloud of smoke to the ceiling.
“I dare say you’ll be forced to walk London to-night?”
“It has become a habit,” said Peter Dawlish. “And really, it would be
rather amusing if one weren’t so horribly tired. They gave me a little
money when I left prison--not much. One gets quite a lot of sleep in
the daytime, especially the sunny days, in odd corners of the parks.
And on rainy nights I know a gardener’s tool house, which is not
perhaps to be compared with the bridal suite at an expensive hotel,
but is cosy. I slept there last night with an ex-colonel of infantry
and a lawyer who lived in the same ward at Dartmoor.”
She eyed him steadily.
“To-night you will sleep decently,” she said, in her quiet, even tone;
“and to-morrow you will buy a new suit of clothes and interview your
father.”
He raised his eyebrows, amusement in his eyes.
“I didn’t realize that you had scraped down to the family skeleton,”
he said. “And why am I to do this, Miss Maughan? The suit of clothes
would be a waste of money; my parent would not be impressed by my
appearance of affluence. Rather he would imagine that I had found
another good-natured gentleman who trusted me with his check book.
Furthermore, all this would cost money; and I think you should know,
before we go any further, that I am not taking any money from you on
any pretext.”
She had the extraordinary knack of making him feel foolish. He always
remembered afterward that in the first two meetings with this strange
girl he had gone hot and cold either at her words or the inflection of
her voice.
“That kind of pride which refuses to take money from a woman is very
admirable.” There was a note of cold sarcasm in her voice which made
him writhe. “It is the attitude of mind behind man’s subconscious
sense of superiority to the female of the species! It is not
particularly flattering to a woman, but it must be immensely
gratifying to a man! May I ask you another question, Mr. Peter
Dawlish? Do you intend sinking down into the dregs? Is your vista of