The Man of Dangerous Secrets

by Maxwell March

  The little woman was unprepared for the change which came over the girl at these ordinary, but in the circumstances apparently sensible, remarks.

  Jennifer started to her feet and shrank back from the woman, a look of sheer unadulterated horror appearing in her eyes. Her hand went to her throat impulsively while the other was outstretched as though to ward off something intangible.

  “Oh, not you too!” she said, her voice poignant with fear and entreaty. “Not you too! I’m all right, I tell you. I’m perfectly all right. I’m quite well. Do you understand me? Quite, quite well.”

  This outburst only served to convince Mrs. Phipps more firmly.

  “You’re certainly not at all the thing,” she said, a characteristic touch of obstinacy coming into her voice. “Not at all the thing. You lie down, child. I’ll bring the tea. Mr. Robin will be that frightened when he comes in if you’re not ready to see him in a sensible frame of mind.

  “Why, child,” she went on more kindly, “you’re white as a sheet and trembling all over!”

  Jennifer took the old woman’s hand.

  “Listen,” she said. “This morning, after Robin had gone, my father and Sir Ferdinand Shawle had a long talk together. I was going out shopping, and I had just got into the hall when they came out of the study, and from that moment my life has been a nightmare.

  “They say I’m ill, nervous, imaginative, in danger of a complete breakdown.”

  Her voice was tense now, and it was evident that the relief of being able to pour out the story into unbiased ears was doing her good.

  “I laughed at first,” she went on, her wide grey eyes peering into the other woman’s own. “I thought they were joking. But I suddenly realized that they were in earnest.”

  Tears came into her voice, and her grey eyes became pathetically shiny.

  “I can’t tell you what it’s been like. The whole house seemed to enter into the conspiracy. I’ve been treated as though I were a child, as though I didn’t understand quite what I was saying. If I tried to joke, my maid—my own maid who knows me well—looked frightened. I was locked in my room. A doctor came to see me—oh, a dreadful little man!—who talked to me as though I were a peculiarly stupid child. He frightened me, and I began to cry. And then, I don’t know why, I got angry. I lost my head. I ordered him out of the room.

  “Then a nurse came, a hateful woman who said, ‘Yes, try to sleep’ to everything I said to her.

  “Finally I heard her and my maid talking outside the door.”

  The girl’s eyes dilated with horror at the recollection.

  “I couldn’t stand it any longer. There’s a balcony outside the window in my room. I got to it. I crept down into the street, and here I am. Oh, why doesn’t Robin come? Don’t you see, he’s the only person in the world who’ll help me now that my father doesn’t seem to understand.”

  Her voice failed her completely, and she sat trembling.

  Mrs. Phipps, who had listened to this recital in bewilderment, reserved her judgment.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “You wait till Mr. Robin comes. That’s certainly the best thing you can do. Now lie down and I’ll get the tea.”

  She bustled out of the room, leaving the girl crouching in a corner of the sofa, the indignation and bewilderment which her astounding treatment had produced giving her an oddly pathetic and disturbing air, like some wounded animal or a child punished when it had done no wrong.

  Left to herself, the girl resummoned her courage and tried to thrust the fear which haunted her out of her mind. Soon Robin would come, soon she would look up into his face and be reassured.

  Although he had never told her he loved her, although the pathetic message he had pencilled had never reached her, she knew instinctively that next time they saw each other they would meet as lovers, not merely as friends.

  She bent forward, pressing her cool palms to her burning forehead and closing her eyes.

  A draught of air suddenly passing through the room brought her to an upright position again, however, her eyes fixed eagerly on the door. It was opening slowly.

  She sprang to her feet and started across the room.

  “Robin!”

  The name froze upon her tongue. Standing in the doorway, a strange smile upon his lips, was not the man she loved, not the boy from whom she knew she could obtain comfort and reassurance, but the sinister figure of Sir Ferdinand Shawle.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Terror Grows

  THE girl stood petrified in the middle of the room, her eyes fixed upon her unexpected visitor. He did not move or speak, but stood holding her with his set, terrifying smile.

  At length she retreated slowly across the room until she stood with her back to the wall, her eyes fixed on his face.

  She had not seen Sir Ferdinand often, and on her first meeting had been inclined to regard him as rather a harmless if slightly eccentric individual, but now, as he stood looking at her, she was aware for the first time of something different about him, menacing, evil.

  All the control which she had been summoning so bravely was swept away before that twist on the narrow lips.

  “What do you want?” she said, and her voice was toneless and abrupt. “Go away. I won’t go back, I tell you. I won’t. I’m perfectly well. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m going to wait for Robin. I must see him. He’ll know that I’m all right. He’ll know I don’t want to see any doctors. He’ll know that I’m not on the edge of a nervous breakdown or—or—anything else. Why have you come here? Go away.”

  The man’s smile broadened.

  “Come,” he said in a little sharp, dry voice, “you are being foolish. Your place is at home, by your father’s side.”

  She caught at the words, and a new terror, not for herself this time, came into her eyes.

  “What’s the matter with Daddy?”

  The man glanced over his shoulder as though he were afraid of being overheard.

  “There has been an accident in his office. The police are questioning him. Mr. Grey is in his proper place assisting them. I came to fetch you. Your father guessed you would be here.

  “I have a taxi waiting,” he went on. “Will you come at once?”

  In spite of her terror of the man, in spite of her fear of the home she had known and loved since a child, at this sudden news of a danger threatening her father her terrors for herself were temporarily forgotten.

  Yet she could not repress a shudder of repugnance as she permitted the man to take her hand in his hard, dry palm and lead her into the darkened hall.

  “I ought to tell the woman,” she murmured. “She’s making tea for me.”

  The man tugged at her hand. “There’s no time for that now. Your father needs you. Come.”

  She went with him unsuspecting and stepped into the taxicab which waited outside in the narrow street.

  “An accident?” she questioned anxiously. “What’s happened? What is it?”

  The man’s tone did not alter.

  “A friend of his has shot himself.”

  “Oh—oh, how terrible! We seem to be surrounded by horror, Daddy and I.”

  Once again the hard, dry palm was laid over hers.

  “Keep quiet,” said the icy voice. “Don’t excite yourself. You’ll need all your strength later.”

  The girl shut her lips, and as the taxi rocked and swayed through the streets she struggled to reconcile herself to this new development of this terrifying day.

  If her father was in danger and had sent for her, that at least proved that the ghastly illusion concerning her health and state of mind under which he seemed to have dwelt earlier in the day must be dispelled.

  And there had been that comforting remark about Robin. Robin was at her father’s house with the police. She would see him. At least he would be there to help her, to champion her if it were necessary.

  When at last the cab drew up before the familiar stone building, she noticed that the hall door stood
open, and she sprang out of the cab with something of her old reassurance. She felt strong again, strong in the belief that her words would be taken seriously again, that her arguments would carry weight.

  She glanced over her shoulder to look for Sir Ferdinand and saw the lean figure bending forward to speak to the taximan. He seemed to be getting change.

  She burst into the house, brushed past old Williamson, who stared at her as though he had seen a ghost, and hurried into the library.

  On the threshold she stopped. The blood rose in her face and drummed in her temples. Her hands felt icy cold, and there was a choking sensation of sheer terror gripping her throat.

  For out of the deep chairs before the fire two men had risen and come towards her.

  One was her father. She saw the surprise mingled with something she did not understand in his very blue eyes.

  And the other, tall, cadaverous, and utterly unexplainable, the man she knew she had left in the street not thirty seconds before, the man who even now must be following her through the house, Sir Ferdinand Shawle.

  After that first moment, when all the natural laws seemed to be inexplicably reversed and she felt that she must faint, a smothered exclamation of fear escaped her, a deep, horrible little sound which struck a chill into the hearts of those who heard it.

  Then she turned on her heel and hurried out into the hall again, the two men following her in alarm.

  The hall door still stood open as she had left it. There was no sign of any other entrant. She hurried on to the steps and looked about her wildly.

  All sign of the cab which had brought her and the man who had accompanied her had vanished.

  She turned to her father, her lips quivering, her eyes starting.

  “How long has Sir Ferdinand been here?”

  The old man put his arm round her shoulders. There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was none too steady.

  “Why, Jenny,” he said, “why, Jenny, my little girl, what’s the matter? What is it, dear? Sir Ferdinand has been here with me the whole time, ever since you ran away. Come in, into the study, and sit down.”

  Jennifer laid her hand on his cheek and looked up searchingly into his face.

  “Daddy, you don’t mean this?” she said. “You don’t mean the whole time? You don’t mean that he didn’t bring me home just now in a cab?”

  Sir Ferdinand and old Sir Henry exchanged shocked glances, and the old man, yielding to a sudden impulse, took the girl in his arms and held her close to him.

  “Hush, hush, my dear,” he said, soothing her as though she were a baby. “You’re imagining things, my sweet. Why, Jenny, you know Sir Ferdinand. You know me. You know where we are.”

  “Of course I do! Of course I do!” The girl was crying now, and she permitted herself to be half led, half carried into the big, tobacco-smelling study and set down in the velvet chair before the fire.

  Sir Henry was trembling violently in spite of every effort to keep himself under control.

  “Now, look here, Jenny, suppose you tell us?” he said. “Suppose you tell us all about it? You’re frightening me, my dear.”

  Jennifer poured out the whole story.

  “I saw Sir Ferdinand,” she finished. “I saw him with my own eyes. He sat beside me in the taxi. He told me you needed me. He told me that the police were here with Robin because a man had committed suicide in your office. I left him paying the cabman. I came in here a minute afterwards—less than a minute—and there you were.”

  She turned to the banker, her grey eyes staring, lips trembling.

  Sir Henry Fern wiped his eyes openly. Then he rose to his feet from the kneeling position he had taken up on the rug beside her and strode down the room.

  Jennifer sat trembling. Fear for herself, then for her father, and now actually of herself, of her own mind, had rendered her helpless, beaten, and bewildered.

  Suddenly she became aware of a signalled conversation going on over her head, and panic seized her.

  “You don’t believe me?” she said, her voice rising high and uncontrolled. “You don’t believe me?”

  She sprang to her feet and faced them.

  “Sir Ferdinand,” she said, “early this morning you telephoned me. You promised me—or rather you offered—to do anything you could to help Robin. You told me you had a scheme to put up to him. You cautioned me not to tell him before you could have a word with him yourself. I am only reminding you of this to show you that this morning you were my friend. When you called here and we were all together in the morning room, you caught my eyes and smiled, as though we shared some pleasant secret, which I thought we did. You were going to help my fiancé.

  “This afternoon you became my enemy. You persuaded my father that there was something wrong with me. You sent for a doctor. You had me confined to my room, as though—as though I were not responsible.”

  “My dear young lady”—Sir Ferdinand’s tone was dry—“after your extraordinary story of five minutes ago you can hardly blame me. I’ve been sitting here with your father for the last hour at least, in this very room. Yet you deliberately say that you rode home in a taxicab with me. You don’t inspire confidence.”

  “Don’t try to argue with her, F. S.” Sir Henry’s voice was pathetic. “My poor little girl! She’s not herself at all.”

  Jennifer clung to her father.

  “Not you, Daddy!” she said piteously. “Not you! Send for the woman, Robin’s landlady. She’ll tell you Sir Ferdinand was there. Send for her—I implore you to send for her.”

  Sir Henry pulled himself together with an obvious effort. There was fear in his eyes as well as consternation, however, and the beads of sweat stood out upon his forehead.

  “Now look here, Jenny,” he said, still using the childish diminutive which he always employed when deeply moved, “now look here, my dear. Mr. Ash, my partner—you know him, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do! I’m not a child, and I’m not crazy.”

  He patted her hand soothingly.

  “There, there, my pet. Listen to what I’m telling you. Mr. Ash has gone for a very famous doctor. We—we feel”—his voice trembled—“we feel that you ought to go away for a day or so to a nursing home, somewhere in the country where you’ll be quiet, where you’ll be looked after, and where I can come and see you.”

  She gasped at him, and then, as the real significance of his words slowly forced itself upon her, a cry of sheer terror broke from her, and she shrank shuddering into his arms.

  “Don’t send me away—please!—please! I’m all right, I tell you, perfectly all right. Have a little pity on me. Don’t let them send me away.”

  The old man’s face was ashen, but he stuck to his point.

  “Listen, Jennifer, you mustn’t be silly. And oh, my dear, you mustn’t make things too difficult for me to bear. You’re going to be very well looked after, my dear; very kindly treated.”

  He glanced at Sir Ferdinand with a half-questioning expression which told, plainer than any words could have done, the tragic question in his heart.

  Sir Ferdinand nodded.

  “Of course,” he said. “Of course. Jennifer only needs a little rest. These—these hallucinations are the outcome of nervous strain.”

  Jennifer wound her arms round her father’s neck.

  “No—no—no!” Her voice rose passionately. “Send for Robin’s landlady. At least do that for me. You’re wrong, I tell you.”

  Sir Henry glanced over at the banker.

  “Send for her,” he said, and added with a touch of fire unexpected in one who had so long been silenced: “Both she and I deserve that.”

  Sir Ferdinand shrugged his shoulders and went out of the room.

  Father and daughter faced each other. The old man suddenly rose to his feet and, going over to the girl, pushed her hair off her forehead and stood looking deeply into her eyes. In that moment there was born a strange understanding between them.

  The girl heard her own voice sof
tened to a breathless whisper.

  “What is it, Daddy? What is this thing that’s happening to us? What does it all mean? Can’t we—can’t we do anything?”

  The old man sank down into a chair and covered his face with his hands.

  “God help us, Jenny,” he said brokenly. “God help us both.”

  The girl dropped on her knees beside him.

  “Don’t let me go. Don’t let me go away from here—please—please!”

  The old man raised his head, and for a moment it seemed as if he were about to pour forth the whole story, so far as he knew it, into her bewildered ears. But before the first word could leave his lips, a shadow, a flickering doubt passed through his mind and showed in his eyes.

  “Jenny,” he said, “that story of Shawle bringing you home: why did you invent it?”

  “I—I didn’t. It was he. The same clothes, the same voice, the same everything. The same hard, unsympathetic face.”

  “Jenny! My God! Don’t you see what you’re saying?”

  The old man’s fingers bit into her flesh.

  “When Ash brings this specialist of his we shall have to tell him that story. Remember, Jenny. Admit you’re mistaken. Think, my darling.”

  Jennifer swept his words aside. Mrs. Phipps was coming, and she knew she could rely on that old woman’s honesty as upon her own.

  Instinctively she knew that she would have very little time alone with her father, and there was something she wanted most desperately to know.

  “Daddy, who sent for the specialist? Who thought of this monstrous idea? I don’t need nerve treatment. Who suggested I did?”

  Sir Henry Fern’s arms tightened about his daughter.

  “That, Jenny,” he said brokenly, “please God you’ll never know.”

  CHAPTER 13

  She Shall Have Every Care

  “EXTRAORDINARY business, Shawle, the girl getting genuine hallucinations. It simplifies matters.”

  Nelson Ash stood on the hearthrug in the morning room and looked down at the man lounging in the chair beside him.