The Square Emerald · Chapter 12 (2/4)

She knew something of the genus fence, but he told her what he had learnt in Dartmoor, of fences who visited the scene of prospective robberies and priced the lot, practically paying for it, before it was stolen; of skilful men and women who would stand outside a small jeweller’s shop and with one comprehensive glance assess the thieving value of the whole. He told her of “dead” stores⁠—stores which were locked up at night, where nobody lived on the premises, and of “live” stores, where there was either a watchman or a proprietor and his family sleeping on the floors above.

“I am not reporting this officially⁠—I mean the fence part of it, but the child is ill-used. The other little kids get a whacking now and again, but I should think she gets hers all the time.”

“What do you wish me to do?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I don’t know.” He had a sense of awkwardness. “I had a wild idea that possibly you might be able to find⁠—to do something with her.”

“You mean take charge of her?”

She was smiling at him.

“Yes, I suppose I did mean that,” he said after a second’s thought. “It sounds fantastic and impossible now, but Elizabeth has got a grip on me. Probably it is my own rather unhappy childhood which is responding to her wretchedness.”

She laughed.

“I’ll make your mind easy at any rate,” she said. “I had already considered the possibility. In fact I discussed the matter with Lucretia last night before I went out to dinner, and Lucretia was wildly enthusiastic. I have a spare room here; she could go to the Catholic school in Leicester Square. The only point is that we get Mrs. Inglethorne’s consent.”

“She had better,” he said grimly, and her lips twitched.

“Really, you’re almost ferocious when you’re taking up the causes of other people,” she said. “I wish you’d be a little energetic in your own.”

“Aren’t I?”

She shook her head.

“Not very,” she answered, in her quiet way. “Why don’t you see your mother⁠—”

He grinned.

“She saved me the trouble and came last night.”

“To Severall Street?” she asked in astonishment, and when he nodded: “Was it⁠—a pleasant⁠—encounter?”

“A normally strained interview,” he answered cheerfully. “She endeavoured to instil in me a passion for agriculture, and Canadian agriculture at that. I love Canada: you can’t even take a weekend trip into Canada without loving it. But the prospect of milking cows in Saskatchewan didn’t appeal.”

“She wanted you to go abroad? Why?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I suppose she rather feels there isn’t room enough for both of us in London.”

She thought the matter over for a minute.

“Didn’t your father leave you any money?”

“He cut me off without the proverbial shilling.”

The lightness of his tone, she suspected, was assumed. Coldwell had told her how much Peter had loved his father.

“He altered his will at the eleventh hour⁠—the day before I was sentenced⁠—and left me nothing. Poor old dear! I haven’t the slightest grudge; how could I? He was the best father that ever lived.”

She had said she rarely smoked; she took a cigarette from her bag now and lit it without looking at him. Indeed, for the next four minutes, as he talked about his envelope addressing and his future, it seemed that she was more interested in the blue vapour that floated from the end of her cigarette than in his narrative.

“You’re unfortunate.”

She put down the cigarette, carefully took out a spoonful of coffee from the cup and dropped it on the glowing end as it lay in the saucer.

“You’re unfortunate, Peter Dawlish, both as a son⁠—and as a husband!”

He did not speak.

“Terribly unfortunate,” she went on moodily. “I think you must have been born under a very unlucky star. I’m not asking you for confidences⁠—you’d hate me if I did.”

Presently:

“How did you know?”

She fetched a long sigh.

“How did I know? Oh, I only knew yesterday for sure. I’d guessed for a long time⁠—ever since I went on my holidays into Cumberland and found a little volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s with an inscription in doggerel blank verse on the flyleaf. It was when I saw that the first letter of every line reading from below upwards made the words ‘Jane Dawlish’ that I first guessed. But I wasn’t certain⁠—about the marriage. There was no record at Somerset House.”

“We were married in America.”

She nodded.

“I know that now; but why?”

He stared past her out of the window. Here, she thought, was a man who really regarded life as a terribly serious business. She was glad of that.

“Jane was very unhappy at home; her people were rotten. Her father kept a gambling house, and her mother⁠—” He shrugged. “I fell in love with her. If I hadn’t been a fool I would have gone to my father and told him the truth and then, in all probability, there would have been no cause for unhappiness. But I was aware that he knew Jane’s people and knew that they were rotten. We went away to America together and were married in a little town in Connecticut. I suppose you know that? Her father was American born. From the first day the marriage was a ghastly mistake. Jane thought I had unlimited money. I had to pawn her jewels to get home, and there was a fearful scene when we landed at Liverpool. We were both a little crazy, and agreed then and there to separate. I went back to Lord Everreed’s house to find detectives awaiting me at the railway station. I haven’t seen or spoken with Jane since.”

“Has she divorced you?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know. Things like that are possible in America, but I’ve had no notification.”

Leslie bit her lip.

“If she hasn’t⁠—she’s committed bigamy. You realize that?”

“I realize that,” he said shortly. “Which means that I cannot free myself without betraying her⁠—I can’t do that. I couldn’t expose her to imprisonment.”

There was a tense and painful silence.

“Is that all?” she asked. “All you have to tell me?”

“You did not need telling, I think,” he said, a little bitterly.

“No.” She lit another cigarette; the flame of the match quivered unsteadily. “You’re very unfortunate, Peter Dawlish.”

She blew out the match with deliberation and put it carefully in her saucer by the side of the sodden cigarette.

“You knew nothing about Druze, of course, or you would have told me. When did you say your father disinherited you?”

“The day before I went to prison.”

She considered this.

“Tell me, Peter⁠—you don’t mind my calling you Peter? I feel rather sisterly towards you just now⁠—what was the relationship between your father and mother? Cordial?”

He shook his head.

“No; they were never cordial, they were polite.”

She bit her lip, looking at him absently.

“Did you ever see the Princess Bellini at your father’s house?”

“Only once,” he replied. “Father disliked her⁠—”

“She was a sort of aunt, wasn’t she?” Leslie interrupted.

“I’ve never exactly fathomed the relationship. I’ve always understood that the Princess Bellini’s brother married my mother’s sister.”

She rose from the table abruptly, for no apparent reason.

“Peter Dawlish,” she said, and her voice shook a little in spite of her assumption of banter, “if you were cursed with my intense curiosity you might be a very much happier man.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you⁠—some day. And now let us get back to our muttons; and our muttons for the moment are poor Elizabeth. The only difficulty in the way is Mrs. Inglethorne. As a loving mother, she may very well object to her child being taken from her. Obviously, I cannot use the same argument as you have done. If she is a ‘fence’ and a lawbreaker, it is my duty to inform Mr. Coldwell and have her arrested. If she isn’t a lawbreaker, we shall have to get after her from another angle. That sounds terribly businesslike. I think I’ll go back with you to Severall Street and see Mrs. Inglethorne myself. She may be amenable to reason.”

They went by bus to the southern end of Westminster Bridge and walked along York Road together. Just before they reached Severall Street they saw a small motor-lorry turn into the main road, and mechanically, Leslie, who had a weakness for such mental registrations, turned her head to note the number. It was a favourite trick of hers to carry fifty or sixty motorcar numbers in her head and jot them down at the close of the day⁠—a practice into which Mr. Coldwell had initiated her. As she looked round⁠—

“Lady!”

A shrill voice called her.

“Who was that?” she asked, but Peter had not heard.

They reached the house, and he opened the door and called Mrs. Inglethorne, but it was one of the children who answered.

“Mother’s gone out. Her and Elizabeth.”

Sometimes the woman took the child with her when she went shopping, Peter explained.

“I’m afraid I’ve brought you on a long job,” he said. “She may be out for hours.”

Leaving her for a moment in the passage, he ran upstairs to his room, intending to show her one of his small treasures, the photograph of his dead father. He reached the head of the stairs, and then stopped, aghast. The door of the mysterious locked room which adjoined his own was wide open, and when he strode in he saw it was empty. Mrs. Inglethorne was a quick worker, and, in the space of time between his departure and his return, had removed all evidence of her guilt.

He went into his own room, pulled open the drawer of the table where he kept his few treasures, and had taken out the small leather-covered portfolio when he saw some writing on the pad; a few scribbled words in a childish hand.

“She has taken me away.⁠—Elizabeth.”

He tore off the corner of the blotting-paper and went back to the girl.

“I was afraid of this,” she said in a low voice. “Do you remember the cry ‘Lady!’ as we passed the motor-van? Where is the nearest telephone booth?”

At the corner of the street was a little general shop, which had a telephone sign, and Leslie almost ran into the shop. There was some delay before the instrument was disengaged, but in a few minutes she was connected with Scotland Yard and was talking to Coldwell.

“The number of the car is XY 63369,” she said. “There is no doubt whatever that it contains stolen property, but it is the little girl I want.”

“I’ll send out a call,” was Coldwell’s reply. “We may not pick it up before tonight; on the other hand, we may be lucky.”

“Where are you going now?” asked Peter when they were outside the shop.

“Back to the house,” said Leslie. “I want to look at that room.”

“They cleared everything.”

She nodded.

“Thieves in a hurry are very careless people, and perhaps Mrs. Inglethorne isn’t so clever as she imagines.”

The room was apparently bare; the only article of furniture it contained was a long table, and by the dust-marks on this Leslie was able to judge the extent of the property that had been stored. On either side of the rusty fireplace was a cupboard. Both of these she opened and found empty, except for a little heap of rubbish at the bottom. The second, however, was locked. With a table-knife borrowed from the kitchen she forced back the catch and pulled open the door. There was nothing very much there, but enough. Three bolts of silk, one still bearing the label of the wholesaler from whom it had been stolen.

“Thieves in a hurry are very careless,” she said, with the light of battle in her eyes; “and it really doesn’t matter whether Mrs. Inglethorne is hanged for a sheep or a lamb, so long as she’s well and truly hanged!”

She sent Peter to the police station, and went down to interview the children. A grubby lot of little people they were, very pale, very starved looking, except one, who apparently was in charge in Mrs. Inglethorne’s absence. She was the little girl, Leslie learnt later, who had slept in the woman’s bed, and, unlike the others, she bore a striking facial resemblance to her mother.

“You didn’t find nothing, did you?” She was frankly hostile. “You’ve got to be up very early to catch my old woman, missis!”

And then, turning to the silent semicircle of children who constituted the remainder of Mrs. Inglethorne’s family, she ordered them peremptorily away.

“Go and play in the back yard.”

Poor little starvelings! Leslie’s heart bled to see them. She sought, by delicate inquiry, to discover where Elizabeth had been taken, but the preternatural cunning of the child she questioned baffled her.

Peter came back in a very short time, accompanied by a uniformed inspector and a plain clothes officer. They made an inspection of the silk and carried it off with them to the station.

“This may affect you a little, Peter Dawlish,” said Leslie when they were alone. “The children will be removed to the workhouse this afternoon, and Mrs. Inglethorne will be arrested immediately on her return, so that you will have the house to yourself.”

He laughed.

“I’m not depressed,” he said.

He walked with her as far as Westminster Bridge, and at parting she asked him a curious question.

“What would you do if you had half a million pounds?”

He looked at her in astonishment and laughed.

“That isn’t my favourite dream,” he said. “But I think the first thing I should do would be to send to America to discover whether I have been, as you would say, ‘well and truly’ divorced.”

“Indeed?” Her tone was a trifle cold. “Is that necessary⁠—when Jane Raytham is within a penny bus ride?”

And with a nod she was gone.

Peter returned to the house and found it very difficult to resume his work or concentrate his mind upon lists. He had hardly started before the police officials came with an omnibus to take away the children, and they departed with no visible reluctance, except in the case of the girl whom Leslie had interviewed.

At four o’clock in the afternoon Mrs. Inglethorne came into the house in triumph, and without going into the kitchen, mounted the stairs and stood, arms akimbo, her red face made hideous by a self-satisfied smirk, confronting her lodger.

“Well, did you bring in the police?” she demanded. “And what are you going to do with Elizabeth?” And, when he did not answer, she shook her fist at him. “Out you go, out of my house, you ‘nose’ I’ll learn you to go prying around and threatening me! You leave this room at once, or I’ll send for a policeman.”

“I think I’ll stay,” he said good humouredly.

“Oh, will you?”

She went to the door and roared for Emma. There was no answer.

“I can save you a lot of trouble, Mrs. Inglethorne,” said Peter, putting down his pen. “Your children have been taken away to the workhouse.”

She staggered back against the wall, her big mouth open wide.

“W-why?” she stammered.

“It is usual to take children to the workhouse when their parents are arrested and there are no other relatives to look after them,” he said.

“Arrested?” she screamed.

He nodded to the window, and she staggered past him and, pulling up the sash, looked out. Two men were standing on the opposite sidewalk, and one nodded as to an old friend. She recognized the detective-sergeant who had arrested her husband.

“They can’t touch me!” she screamed. “They can’t touch me! It’s my word against yours.”

“Unfortunately you left a few bolts of silk behind in the cupboard,” answered Peter.

Mrs. Inglethorne was in a state of collapse when the detectives came in to arrest her.

The motor-lorry had been traced; the driver and a man who accompanied the car had been driven to the nearest police station, where the plunder was checked and exhibited in preparation for the charge which would follow. They either could not or would not, however, give any information concerning the child, and when Leslie went to Lambeth to interview Mrs. Inglethorne in her cell, she was no more successful.

“Find her!” rapped the woman. “She’s in good hands, that’s what she is. I’m not saying anything. If you want her, find her⁠—that’s my last word to you!”