“So it might,” Jim agreed.
Bill shook them both warmly by the hand and ushered them across the courtyard and through another door that led to a narrow alleyway. A few yards took them back onto the Embankment and Jim managed to find a taxi.
“Thomas Cook’s,” he ordered briefly.
“I cannot believe it’s true,” Karina said as they drove off. “It all seems like something out of a film.”
“It’s the advantage of having a disreputable past,” Jim smiled. “You see, most people would disapprove of my friendship with someone like Bill, but he has his uses.”
“Do you think I shall be able to get on an aeroplane today?” Karina asked.
“We will manage it somehow,” Jim replied confidently. “Do you know where Garland is?”
“He is in Delhi at the moment,” Karina answered.
They were nearing the West End and Karina sank back a little into the corner of the seat.
“You don’t think that Cousin Felix might suspect that I would go to him?” she asked.
“Of course, he might,” Jim answered. “But he will find that Karina Burke has not booked a passage. Have you forgotten that June Robinson is your name from now on?”
“I will try to remember it,” Karina replied. She drew a deep breath. “I don’t know how to thank you, Jim, for all this.”
“There is no need,” he answered.
“There is,” she protested. “I know why you are doing it and I think it’s very wonderful of you.”
“Nonsense,” he said almost roughly. “I love you and that’s that. Go and see Garland and, if he is not what you expect or you fall out of love with him, come back quickly to me. I shall be waiting.”
“Thank you,” Karina said simply.
But she knew even as she said it that she would not fall out of love with Garland. It was just one of those hopeless but undeniable things.
She loved him! Loved him with her whole heart and soul, even though she knew that he would never love her in return.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The aeroplane rose into a translucent blue sky.
The sunshine was dazzling on its silver wings and Karina, leaning toward in her seat, looked down and saw the white square houses of Delhi growing smaller and smaller until they looked like bricks that a child might have played with.
Now she could see the river winding like a silver ribbon through the sun-baked brown earth, which seemed to stretch away into an indeterminate distance to meet the sky.
She sat back in her seat.
The pretty Indian air hostess, wearing a blue sari, asked her if she would like a newspaper and, when she shook her head, smiled at her sweetly and went on to speak to the other passengers.
It seemed unbelievable, Karina thought, that she was here in India and travelling at this moment towards Garland, getting nearer and nearer to him with every rev of the throbbing engines.
It had been a bitter disappointment when she arrived last night to find that Garland was no longer in Delhi. She had telephoned from the airport, feeling shy and embarrassed at the idea of just walking in on him.
The clerk at the Ashoka Hotel, where he had been staying, had explained helpfully that he had already left.
“Mr. Holt is in Agra,” he said. “He will be returning here on Monday if you wish to see him.”
“I am afraid that will be too late,” Karina said. “I must see him at once.”
“I will give you his address,” the clerk offered,
With the address in her hand Karina had thought of telephoning. And yet, having come so far, she felt that she could not bear to struggle with explanations on the telephone.
No, she must see him in person – her common sense told her that. But her heart echoed the decision for a very different reason.
All through the long hours of flying she had thought of him, feeling that in some way he must be aware that she was doing so much for his sake. Then she had told herself that she was being ridiculous.
She meant nothing in Garland Holt’s life, nothing. And all she was doing was merely to try to right a wrong and to save him from the trouble and financial loss that she had inadvertently been instrumental in bringing upon him.
She felt that she could never be sufficiently grateful to Jim for all he had done for her. First of all he had found that there was a seat available on an aeroplane leaving London Airport late that evening.
It was while they were waiting in the lounge that suddenly over the loudspeaker had come an announcement,
“Will Miss Karina Burke come immediately to the BOAC information desk,” the impersonal voice had boomed.
Karina had given a start and gone very white. Almost instinctively she started to rise, but Jim’s hand had gone down quickly on her arm.
“Don’t move. Don’t look as if it meant anything to you,” he said. “Karina Burke is not here, you are June Robinson. Remember that, June Robinson.”
She felt herself breathe again.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Merely a precaution, I imagine. Felix is very likely having you called every hour or every time there is a plane leaving for India.”
“Do you think he is here?”
“He may be,” he answered. “But, anyway, don’t worry. It’s unlikely he will be allowed into this inside lounge. It’s only for people who are actually travelling and those who are seeing them off.”
Jim’s words were reassuring, but Karina was afraid until the very last moment. Only when she could actually leave and pass through the door onto the airfield and hurry across the windy asphalt to where the plane was waiting did she feel that Felix no longer had any hold over her.
Jim had put his arms around her when her flight was announced.
“Goodbye, Karina,” he said. “Take care of yourself. You know I will be waiting in case you come back to me.”
“I cannot begin to thank you, Jim.”
“Don’t try,” he answered.
She had kissed him goodbye, putting up her mouth impulsively, so grateful for all he had done and so conscious that the trip would have been impossible unless he had arranged it for her.
He kissed her desperately, the kiss of a man who sees something which means everything to him slipping out of his grasp.
And then, with his gay irresponsible smile, he had raised her hand to his lips.
“Good luck and God bless.”
She was conscious then that the tears were not far from her eyes.
And, as she reached the plane, she had turned and waved, seeing him, an indistinct figure through the glass windows of the waiting room.
They were off! She really had escaped. Felix had not caught up with her and there had not been a last minute hitch over her passport. And the Police had not arrived to show her up for the impostor she was.
The Stewardess spoke to her as Miss Robinson and with an effort she managed to reply without looking surprised.
‘June Robinson, June Robinson, June Robinson,’ she repeated over and over again to herself.
She could not help wondering, with a sudden smile of irrepressible humour, what Aunt Margaret would say if she knew that she was flying out to India on borrowed money, with the passport of a lady of easy virtue and a stolen pink quartz elephant worth ten thousand pounds wrapped in her nightgown.
She felt very small and lonely as the great aeroplane rose higher and higher in the sky and she saw England lying beneath her like a map of tiny fields, small villages and dolls’ houses.
And then she thought of Garland and knew that in sixteen hours she would see him.
She had not expected the setback of finding that he had already left Delhi. The Indian Government tourist representative was extremely kind and took her to a small inexpensive hotel for the night.
It had been dark as she drove from the airport into Delhi and yet even the darkness was different. There was an acrid odour of wood smoke, of earth dried
by the sun and the exotic fragrance of strange flowers, the smells that she had only read about in books.
The lit streets were an enchantment. People in white clothes moved in front of the open-fronted shops, looking exactly as Karina had dreamed they would.
The men sitting cross-legged before a pyramid of fried cakes, selling yards of coloured material to veiled women or offering brightly coloured drinks to passers by, seemed to her just like something out of a film.
There was noise, confusion and dark faces with exquisite features turning to look curiously at the car with its hooting horn.
All too quickly she had arrived at the hotel and been taken up to her room. She was more tired than she had realised and, after a somewhat indifferent dinner in the dining room, of which she was the only occupant, she went to bed.
She would have liked to walk about the streets, but she did not have the courage to go out alone and she felt too that she must stay and guard the pink elephant until she had put it safely into Garland’s hands.
The Indian Government tourist representative had arrived to fetch her at six o’clock the next morning to take her to the airport. He had also brought with him her ticket for the aeroplane to Agra.
She had realised when she paid for it that she was left with only a few shillings in her purse. She hoped that Garland was still at Agra and had not moved on elsewhere. If he had, she would have to telephone him.
There was no question of her following him any farther.
It was warm in the aeroplane and Karina was glad that she had spent some of the precious money that Jim had borrowed from Bill in buying a cotton dress. It was crisp and fresh and the white sandals that went with it were comfortable on her feet.
The aeroplane was not full and she had no one seated beside her, which was a relief as she might have had to talk, and what she wanted to do more than anything else was to look out of the window and watch India unfold beneath her.
In only a few minutes, it seemed to her, the captain’s voice told them to fasten their seat belts and she realised that they were coming down at Agra.
It was now that the very moment was upon her that she began to feel a sudden sick sense of apprehension.
Would Garland be very angry? she wondered. She had seen him angry on more than one occasion and she knew that, while in the past she had been prepared to defy him, now because of her love it was going to be more difficult than it had ever been before.
There were taxis waiting at the airport. She managed to secure one and told the driver to go to the address the clerk at the Ashoka Hotel had given her.
“Very nice house,” the Sikh driver said conversationally. “Rich man, many visitors.”
He was ready to chat all the way into Agra and Karina realised that he was particularly delighted because she was English.
“I serve English Memsahib many years. I very sorry when British leave India.”
Karina told him about England and her flight. At the same time her thoughts were increasingly preoccupied with the interview that lay ahead of her.
It had seemed in London the obvious thing to fly out to Garland and to tell him what had happened. But now to put the story into words was a very different thing altogether.
The car turned in through stone pillars carrying wrought-iron gates and round a great bed of brilliantly coloured flowers to draw up in front of an imposing-looking house with a colonnaded verandah.
An Indian servant came hurrying out, as Karina climbed out of the taxi.
“I wish to see Mr. Garland Holt.”
She paid the taxi with the last rupees she had left after paying her hotel bill and followed the servant into a large hall. The air-conditioned coolness inside the house made her realise how hot she had felt since she had arrived at the airport.
But now there was no time to think of anything but Garland and what she was to say to him.
“One minute,” she said to the servant.
She put her suitcase down on the floor, opened it and took out the pink elephant. She had wrapped it the night before in two pieces of tissue paper.
She put it under her arm.
“I will leave the suitcase here,” she said.
The servant bowed and led her through the hall and down a long passage. He opened a door at the far end. The room was furnished in English fashion with bright chintzes, comfortable sofas and chairs.
A man was sitting at a desk in the window writing, with his back towards the door.
“A lady to see you, Sahib,” the servant said.
“Mr. Ascher is in the garden.”
“For you, Sahib.”
Garland Holt then turned round almost irritably.
He saw Karina and the astonishment on his face would have been amusing if she had not felt so frightened, so helpless and so vulnerable.
She heard the doors close behind her. She was alone with Garland and he was staring at her as if he was seeing a ghost.
“Karina! What in the world are you doing here?” he managed to blurt out at last.
“I had – to see you.”
“To see me?”
“Y-yes.”
She felt as if she must force every word from her lips.
There seemed to be a sudden constriction of her throat and the thumping of her heart seemed to be echoed by a throbbing in her head.
“I don’t understand. Why are you here? What has happened?”
He came towards her, forceful and masterful, just as she remembered him and not the idealised man she had been imagining all this time since she had loved him.
But Garland himself, dynamic, overpowering, difficult and frightening.
She felt as if her feet would not move, would not carry her towards him.
And then, impulsively, as if it explained everything, she took the pink elephant wrapped in its tissue paper from underneath her arm and held it out to him.
“I – brought you – this,” she said, scarcely above a whisper.
He took it from her wonderingly, stripped off the tissue paper and saw the pink elephant.
“Good God!”
He stared at it as if he could not believe it was real.
And then he said,
“Where did you get it? Why have you brought it? Did the Police find out who had taken it?”
His questions were shot at her in a staccato manner like a machine gun.
“C-Cousin F-Felix took it,” she stammered, feeling as if she herself was guilty.
Garland glanced at her from under his eyebrows.
“I imagined he had something to do with it. How did they catch him?”
“They didn’t, if you mean the Police,” Karina replied. “I-I stole it back from him.”
“And brought it out to me,” Garland questioned. “It seems incredible. But sit down, do. You had better tell me all about it from the beginning.”
“There is something else,” Karina said.
“Yes?”
His very tone was uncompromising.
“He took the copy of your list of Holdings from the safe in your office. He telephoned them to a man whose Christian name is Eric who was in Zurich. He told him to come to London by aeroplane so that he could start buying on Monday. But that is why I am here. It’s only Sunday today. They cannot do anything until tomorrow morning.”
“The copy of my Holdings!” Garland repeated. “But how did he get into the safe? How did he know the combination?”
“Miss Weston gave it to me,” Karina answered. “She was ill. You had cabled for the notebooks – and so I had to open the safe.”
“I cabled for the notebooks? I have not sent a cable of any sort since I left England,” Garland snapped. “What is all this nonsense? What is going on? Has Miss Weston gone off her head?”
“She – she was very ill and the cable came. Perhaps it was not from you. I think Cousin Felix must have sent it, but we believed that it was from you and so I went to get them out. At that moment he came into the office and – colla
psed. While I was fetching some water, he stole the list of Holdings.”
She went on with an effort,
“I went to his flat and heard him talking to this man on the telephone. He took something out of his safe without realising that I was there. But I saw the pink elephant, so I stole it and – and came out here to tell you.”
“I have never heard such a story in the whole of my life!” Garland exclaimed. “And how did you manage to get here?”
“I flew,” Karina said.
“I imagined that,” he said drily. “But the money! Where did you get the money from? Did you get that from your Cousin Felix?”
“No, Jim gave it to me,” Karina replied. “I had to have a passport and we paid for it by letting the man have some of the diamonds from the base of the elephant. He is keeping them and, as soon as I can repay him, he will give them back.”
“Jim! What has Jim to do with all this?” Garland enquired.
“He has been so kind. I could not have come here without him.”
“So Jim is mixed up in it too!” Garland said in the sarcastic bitter voice that she disliked so much. “I might have guessed that. Trust Jim to get in on any unsavoury business, whatever it might be. Well, I am glad you found him useful.”
“How can you speak about him like that?” Karina asked, stung by his tone. “It was Jim who did everything to help me come to you, so that I could warn you.”
“When I want Jim’s assistance. I will ask for it,” Garland Holt retorted. “I have never heard such a mad, cock-and-bull story in all my life. I had better try and get through on the telephone to Miss Weston to see if she can talk sense. As for all this stealing and re-stealing and Felix Mainwaring being allowed into my private safe, I think the whole world must have gone mad. And you included!”
He strode across the room as he spoke and picked up the telephone on the desk.
Karina felt the tears in her eyes overflow and run down her cheeks.
It was not only what he had said to her, it was the way he had said it – the roughness in his tone and the anger in his eyes.
She felt that she could bear no more.
Half blindly, because of her tears, she walked across the room just as Garland began to explain that he wanted a personal call to England. To a Miss Weston,
The Runaway Heart Page 19