The Square Emerald · Chapter 5 (1/2)

V

“I have lodgings at the above address, and, in spite of the neighbourhood, they are very comfortable, though my landlady is certainly the most unprepossessing female. There are six children in the house, ranging from a few months to a little girl of eight years. So, whatever are her faults, Mrs. Inglethorne (who drinks gin and has the fiery face of a Betsey Prig) has served her country most prolifically. I am buying some new clothes and hope to report in a few days that I am riding upward on a tide of prosperity.⁠ ⁠…”

Leslie Maughan had the letter on the following afternoon when she came back from her office.

What Mr. Coldwell called “The Dawlish Case,” but which she thought about under quite another title, was completely occupying the girl’s mind, sleeping and waking. It was her first big case, in the sense that never before had the wheels of investigation moved of her own volition.

There had been more spectacular events with which she had been associated. She had helped Coldwell in the Kent Tunnel murder; it was her quick mind which had first grasped the fact that the principal informant of the police knew too much about the tragedy for one who had not participated in the crime. She it was who, searching the contents of a prisoner’s pocket, had found the stain of indelible ink upon a silver coin, and had built upon that slender clue the theory which led to the arrest of the Flack Gang, and the capture of the plant with which they had been flooding Europe with forged 1000-franc notes.

She brought to police work the keenest of woman’s wits and a queer instinct for ultimate causes that sometimes amazed and sometimes amused headquarters.

And now she was building up a new fabric, but, as she realized, on the shakiest of foundations⁠—a little book of verse found in a Cumberland cottage.

She took it down from her shelf, a thin volume of Elizabeth Browning’s poems. On the flyleaf was an inscription and eight lines of writing in a neat hand. A stanza of free verse, and not especially good free verse. She read it for the fiftieth time.

“Do you recall

One dusky night in June

Over by Harrlow Copse,

Heart of my heart?

Ecstasy lay on your lips,

Nectar of gods was your gift⁠—

All in ‘the kiss of one girl’

Joy and despair.”

The writer was no poet. Even as a writer of vers libre his effort left something to be desired.

She put away the book, returned to her desk, and sat for half an hour, her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed vacantly on the opposite wall. For the moment Peter Dawlish was off her hands, and though he came back again and again to her thoughts, it was not in the role of a responsibility.

She took from a drawer the tin of cigarettes she had offered him on the previous night and examined it absently. She had searched London for this brand of Egyptian cigarettes, and in the end had found them in the last place in the world she expected⁠—Scotland Yard. The Chief Commissioner, an old Egyptian officer, imported them for his own use.

She closed the lid, found an envelope, and, addressing it to “Peter Dawlish, Esq., 104, Severall Street, London,” she enclosed the cigarettes. It was nearly dark when Lucretia brought in her tea.

“You’re not going out again tonight, miss, are you?” and when Leslie replied in the affirmative: “What about taking me with you, Miss Leslie?”

Leslie did not laugh.

“Somehow I can’t see you in the setting of a night club, Lucretia,” she said.

“I could stay outside,” insisted Lucretia stoutly. “Anyway, I’d never dream of going into a night club after what the papers say about ’em. I saw a party getting out of a car the other night⁠—ladies! Why, miss, I could have carried all their dresses in a little bag! Disgraceful, I call it!”

Leslie laughed quietly.

“You’ve got to understand, Lucretia,” she said, “that no woman is properly dressed for dinner unless she feels comfortably nude⁠—don’t faint!”

“Women are not what they was,” said Lucretia severely.

“That’s the devil of it, Lucretia⁠—they are!” said Leslie.

She had only half made up her mind as to the course she should pursue. Mr. Coldwell often twitted her about her luck, but her “luck” was largely a matter of abnormal instinct, and it was in her bones that there was tragedy in the air. Suppose she saw Lady Raytham again, and this time spoke not in parables, but in plain English? It required no particular effort on Leslie’s part, for her moral equipment was free from the faintest tinge of cowardice. She had inquired that morning as to whether Lady Raytham had carried her threat into execution and had written to the Chief Commissioner, but apparently her ladyship had reconsidered her decision. Had Peter Dawlish told her of the attack which had been made upon him, and which had so surprisingly led him to Mrs. Inglethorne, she would have called at Berkeley Square before then. But Peter had been silent on the subject, and Leslie did not know till the next day of that surprising outrage.

She went to her bedroom and changed her dress; she was dining that night with Mr. Coldwell at the Ambassadors, which is sometimes called a night club by the uninitiated, but is in reality the centre of London’s smart life. Over her flimsy gown, which Lucretia never saw without closing her eyes in mental anguish, she put her heavy fur coat, slipped her shoes over a pair of rubbers, and sent Lucretia for a taxi. At a quarter-past seven she was pressing the visitors’ bell at No. 377, Berkeley Square. The door was opened almost instantly by a footman.

“Have you an appointment with her ladyship?” he asked, as he closed the door upon her.

“No, she hasn’t an appointment with her ladyship.”

Leslie turned in amazement at the sound of a loud, raucous voice. It was Druze, who had come into the hall from a door beneath the stairs. The white face was red and blotchy; his hair untidy; there was a stain on his white shirt front, and when he walked towards her his step was unsteady. He was, in point of fact, rather drunk, and Mr. Druze drunk was an exceedingly different person from Mr. Druze sober.

The whole character of the man seemed to have changed. From being a shrinking, rather fearful servitor, he had become a blustering, loud-mouthed bully of a man.

“You can get out⁠—go on; we don’t want you!”

He advanced towards her threateningly, but the girl did not move. The second footman had withdrawn to a respectful distance, and was looking with frowning amusement at the antics of his chief.

“Do you hear what I say? Clear out! We don’t want any spying police girls round here.”

It looked as though he would use physical force to eject her, but his hand had hardly been raised when she said something in a low voice⁠—one word. The big white hand went down; the blotchy red went out of his face, and he blinked at her like a man who was trying to swallow something that would not be swallowed. And then, looking up, she saw a resplendent figure at the head of the stairs. It was Lady Raytham.

“Come up, please.”

The voice was hard and metallic. There was neither cordiality nor welcome in it, nor did Leslie expect any such demonstration. She mounted the stairs, but before she could reach the landing Lady Raytham had turned and preceded her into the drawing-room. As she went in, she saw that her unwilling hostess was not alone. Before the fire stood a figure which was not wholly unfamiliar; a square, tall, Eton-cropped figure with a monocle, which fixed her with a keen and penetrating glance.

The contrast between the two women was startling. Lady Raytham had never looked more lovely, more fragile, Leslie thought, than she did at that moment. She also was going out to dinner, and she wore a dress of old gold, and about her neck a magnificent chain of emeralds that terminated in a square emerald pendant which must have been worth a fortune. Anita Bellini was in scarlet, a hard, shrieking scarlet that no human woman could have worn. And yet, for some remarkable reason, it suited her. The godet was of silver lace, decorated with big green and red stones, and the thick jade bracelets and ruby necklet gave her an air of barbaric splendour.

“I am sorry you came, Miss Maughan⁠—it is doubly unfortunate. If Druze had been normal I should have sent you away without seeing you. As it is, I feel that at least an apology is due to you for the disgraceful condition of my servant.”

Leslie inclined her head slightly. What she had to say could not be told before this big, steely-eyed woman who stood with her back to the fire, the inevitable cigarette between her lips, the shining eyeglass fixed upon the visitor.

“I wanted to see you alone, if I could, Lady Raytham.”

Jane Raytham shook her head.

“There is nothing you can tell me that I should not wish Princess Bellini to hear,” she said.

Without turning her head, Anita flicked her cigarette ash into the fireplace.

“Perhaps Miss Maughan doesn’t wish to speak before a witness,” she said, in her hard, deep voice. “If I were Lady Raytham, I should have reported you last night to your superiors and had you kicked out of Scotland Yard.”

Leslie smiled faintly.

“If you were Lady Raytham, there are so many things you would do, Princess,” she said; “and there would be so many things that it would be quite unnecessary for you to do.”

Anita’s eyes did not waver.

“Such as⁠—?” she suggested.

If she expected to frighten the younger woman she must have been disappointed; Leslie’s lips were curved in a fixed smile.

“We have now come to the point,” she said good-humouredly, “where I should not like to speak before witnesses either⁠—though some day I may speak before more witnesses than you can crowd into a room twice this size; as many, Princess, as can squeeze themselves into Court No. 1 at the Old Bailey.”

She said this without raising her voice, and now, for the first time, Anita Bellini gave the slightest hint of her emotion. The eyeglass dropped and was caught deftly and replaced with too elaborate care. The strong mouth drooped a little, but recovered at once.

“That sounds almost like a threat to me,” she said harshly. “Young lady, I think you’re going to lose a job.”

Quick as a flash came the answer:

“Before I lose my job, Princess, you will lose a very profitable source of income.”

She did not wait for the answer, but turned to Lady Raytham.

“Will you see me alone, Lady Raytham?”

Jane Raytham’s voice shook a little; she was a very bewildered woman.

“I brought you here to apologize to you for Druze,” she said breathlessly, “and you have made use of the opportunity to insult my friend, a lady who⁠—”

Her voice grew husky and she stopped, as though she could not articulate further.

There was nothing more to be gained here, unless she was prepared to blurt her questions before the very woman who she was anxious should remain in ignorance of the information which had come to her. Leslie had unfastened her coat in coming upstairs; behind the brown fur Lady Raytham saw the silk-clad figure in mauve. Princess Anita Bellini smiled. She had a flair for Paris models.

“They pay you well in the police, my young friend,” she said bluntly. “Who is the lucky gentleman who pays for your clothes?”

“My lawyer until I am twenty-five,” said Leslie.

“Fortunate lawyer⁠—who is he?”

Leslie smiled.

“You ought to know him; he acted for you in your bankruptcy.”

And with that parting shot she went out of the room, knowing she was a cat, but realizing that a cat was entitled to what pleasure she might find in getting under the skin of a tigress.

Half an hour later, Mr. Coldwell unfolded his serviette and shook his head soberly.

“You are a cat, too. But you’re a clever little cat. And when, Tabitha, did you discover that her Highness was a bankrupt? I confess that is news to me.”

The girl laughed ruefully.

“I read gazettes,” she said. “It is depraved in me, but I find them more interesting than the best sex novel that any schoolgirl has ever written. The bankruptcy was arranged ten years ago in the quietest way. The Princess took up her residence in a small country town before she filed her petition, and it is so easy to keep these country proceedings out of the London papers. On this occasion she described her self as Mrs. Bellini. There is no law compelling you to use a foreign title.”

“Pussy cat, pussy cat,” murmured Mr. Coldwell. “And did she annihilate you?”

“She was slightly withering,” said Leslie carelessly. “But Druze⁠—dropped! I’m awfully worried about that.”

“I don’t see why you should be,” said Coldwell, and beckoned a waiter.

When the man had taken the order:

“Do you know, you’re almost persuading me that there is something big behind this Dawlish mystery? I don’t mean the discovery, which is very unlikely to be made, that Druze was the forger, after all.”

A tall woman had come into the restaurant and was glaring round through the thick lenses of her horn-rimmed spectacles. She was very straight and spare, her head covered with a mop of white hair, which lent her an almost comical air of ferocity. She nodded curtly to the inspector and went to meet the gesticulating maître d’hotel.

“That is mamma,” said Coldwell.

“Mamma? Whose mamma?”

“Your interesting convict’s.”

“Margaret Dawlish?” Leslie opened her eyes in astonishment. “This is the last place I should have expected to see her.”

“She dines here every night,” said Coldwell. “I have a good idea why.”

Leslie looked at Peter’s mother again; the square jaw, the thin lips, the deep eyes, all fulfilled the mental picture she had made of her.

“If you weren’t here, do you know what I should do?” she asked at last.

“Whatever it is, don’t!” said Coldwell apprehensively.

His relationship with Leslie was a curious one. In the old days of Commissioner Maughan he had been the Colonel’s chief assistant; though he was only a sergeant in those days, he was admitted very largely to the confidence of that genius of Scotland Yard, spent long weekends at Sutton Cawley, and had assumed a sort of guardianship towards Colonel Maughan’s motherless child. There never was a time within Leslie’s recollection that Josiah Coldwell had not figured largely in her life. He was one of her father’s executors, the best trusted of all his friends, and it was only natural, when she conceived the idea of adopting police work as a profession, that he should be her sponsor.

It was not until a very long time after she had put the suggestion to him that he agreed. At first he had pooh-poohed, then he had grown solemn, and then mournful; but in the end she had her way.

“If you don’t put me there, Uncle Josiah, I shall go into training as a private detective!”

It only needed this threat to force his capitulation, for private detectives were contemptible figures in the eyes of this regular policeman. For him it was a matter for pride that she had succeeded. Today, if the truth be told, if she had expressed the slightest hint of weariness and a desire to return to the obscurity of what is termed “civilian life,” he would have been thrust in the deeps of gloom.

He did not tell her this in the course of the dinner (she had guessed it easily enough long before), but he did venture to return to a matter which rather worried him. As the band struck up a dance tune and she rose invitingly, he groaned and came to his feet.

“I’ll be awfully glad, Leslie, when you find a young man to dance these infernal jazzes with you. How can you expect the high-class crooks of London to have any respect for a man who dances in public?”

He was over sixty, yet, in truth, no better dancer took the floor that night. But it pleased him to talk of his decrepitude.

“I’m not made right,” said Leslie, as he guided her through the dancers who crowded the floor. “Young men have no appeal for me whatever.”

Mr. Coldwell peered down at her.