“What the devil do you mean?” demanded Digby.
“I am sorry,” said the manager, shrugging his shoulders, “but this morning I have been served with a notice that a caveat has been entered at the Probate Office, preventing the operation of the Danton will in your mother’s favour. I have already informed our head office and they are taking legal opinion, but as Mr. Salter threatens to obtain immediately an injunction unless we agree to comply, it would be madness on my part to let you touch a penny of your mother’s account. Your own account, of course, you can draw upon.”
Digby’s own account contained a respectable sum, he remembered.
“Very well,” he said after consideration. “Will you discover my balance and I will close the account.”
He was cool now. This was not the moment to hammer his head against a brick wall. He needed to meet this cold-blooded old lawyer with cunning and foresight. Salter was diabolically wise in the law and had its processes at his fingertips, and he must go wanly against the framed fighter or he would come to everlasting smash.
Fortunately, the account of the Thirteen was at another bank, and if the worst came to the worst—well, he could leave eleven of the Thirteen to make the best of things they could.
The manager returned presently and passed a slip across the table, and a few minutes afterwards Digby came back to his car, his pockets bulging with banknotes.
A tall bearded man stood on the sidewalk as he came out and Digby gave him a cursory glance. Detective, he thought, and went cold. Were the police already stirring against him, or was this some private watcher of Salter’s? He decided rightly that it was the latter.
When he got back to the house he found a telegram waiting. It was from Villa. It was short and satisfactory.
“Bought Pealigo hundred and twelve thousand pounds. Ship on its way to Avonmouth. Am bringing captain back by air. Calling Grosvenor nine o’clock.”
The frown cleared away from his face as he read the telegram for the second time, and as he thought, a smile lit up his yellow face. He was thinking of Eunice. The position was not without its compensations.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
EUNICE was sitting in the shuttered room trying to read when Digby Groat came in. All the colour left her face as she rose to meet him.
“Good evening. Miss Weldon,” he said in his usual manner. “I hope you haven’t been very bored.”
“Will you please explain why I am kept here a prisoner?” she asked a little breathlessly. “You realize that you are committing a very serious crime—”
He laughed in her face.
“Well,” he said almost jovially, “at any rate. Eunice, we can drop the mask. That is one blessed satisfaction! These polite little speeches are irksome to me as they are to you.”
He took her hand in his.
“How cold you are, my dear,” he said, “yet the room is warm!”
“When may I leave this house?” she asked in a low voice.
“Leave this house—leave me?” He threw the gloves he had stripped on to a chair and caught her by the shoulders. “When are we going? That is a better way of putting it. How lovely you are, Eunice!”
There was no disguise now. The mask was off, as he had said, and the ugliness of his black nature was written in his eyes.
Still she did not resist, standing stiffly erect like a figure of marble. Not even when he took her face in both his hands and pressed his lips to hers, did she move. She seemed incapable. Something inside her had frozen and she could only stare at him.
“I want you, Eunice! I have wanted you all the time. I chose you out of all the women in the world to be mine. I have waited for you, longed for you, and now I have you! There is nobody here, Eunice, but you and I. Do you hear, darling?”
Then suddenly a cord snapped within her. With an effort of strength which surprised him she thrust him off, her eyes staring in horror as though she contemplated some loathsome crawling thing. That look inflamed him. He sprang forward, and as he did, the girl in the desperation of frenzy, struck at him; twice her open hand came across his face. He stepped back with a yell. Before he could reach her she had flown into the bathroom and locked the door. For fully five minutes he stood, then he turned and walked slowly across to the dressing-table, and surveyed his face in the big mirror.
“She struck me!” he said. He was as white as a sheet. Against his pale face the imprint of her hand showed lividly. “She struck me!” he said again wonderingly, and began to laugh.
For every blow, for every joint on every finger of the hand that struck the blow, she should have pain. Pain and terror. She should pray for death, she should crawl to him and clasp his feet in her agony. His breath came quicker and he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
He passed out, locking the door behind him. His hand was on the key when he heard a sound and looking along the corridor, saw the door of his mother’s room open and the old woman standing in the doorway.
“Digby,” she said, and there was a vigour and command in her voice which made him frown. “I want you!” she said imperatively, and in amazement he obeyed her.
She had gone back to her chair when he came into the room.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“Shut the door and sit down.”
He stared at her dumbfounded. Not for a year had she dared address him in that tone.
“What the devil do you mean by ordering me—” he began.
“Sit down,” she said quietly, and then he understood.
“So, you old devil, the dope is in you!”
“Sit down, my love child,” she sneered. “Sit down, Digby Estremeda! I want to speak to you.”
His face went livid.
“You—you—” he gasped.
“Sit down. Tell me what you have done with my property.”
He obeyed her slowly, looking at her as though he could not believe the evidence of his ears.
“What have you done with my property?” she asked again. “Like a fool I gave you a Power of Attorney. How have you employed it? Have you sold—” she was looking at him keenly.
He was surprised into telling the truth.
“They have put an embargo—or some such rubbish—on the sale.”
She nodded.
“I hoped they would,” she said. “I hoped they would!”
“You hoped they would?” he roared, getting up.
Her imperious hand waved him down again. He passed his hand over his eyes like a man in a dream. She was issuing orders; this old woman whom he had dominated for years, and he was obeying meekly! He had given her the morphine to quieten her, and it had made her his master.
“Why did they stop the sale?”
“Because that old lunatic Salter swears that the girl is still alive—Dorothy Danton, the baby who was drowned at Margate!”
He saw a slow smile on her lined face and wondered what was amusing her.
“She is alive!” she said.
He could only glare at her in speechless amazement.
“Dorothy Danton alive?” he said. “You’re mad, you old fool! She’s gone beyond recall—dead—dead these twenty years!”
“And what brought her back to life, I wonder?” mused the old woman? “How did they know she was Dorothy? Why, of course you brought her back!” She pointed her skinny finger at her son. “You brought her, you are the instrument of your own undoing, my boy!” she said derisively. “Oh, you poor little fool—you clever fool!”
Now he had mastered himself.
“You will tell me all there is to be told, or, by God, you’ll be sorry you ever spoke at all,” he breathed.
“You marked her. That is why she has been recognized—you marked her!”
“I marked her?”
“Don’t you remember, Digby,” she spoke rapidly and seemed to find a joy in the hurt she was causing, “a tiny baby and a cruel little beast of a boy who heated a sixpence and put it on the baby’s wrist?”
It came back to him instantly. He could almost hear the shriek of his victim. A summer day and a big room full of old furniture. The vision of a garden through an open window and the sound of the bees… a small spirit-lamp where he had heated the coin….
“My God!” said Digby, reeling back. “I remember!”
He stared at the mocking face of his mother for a second, then turned and left the room. As he did so, there came a sharp rat-tat at the door. Swiftly he turned into his own room and ran to the window.
One glance at the street told him all that he wanted to know. He saw Jim and old Salter… there must have been a dozen detectives with them.
The door would hold for five minutes, and there was time to carry out his last plan.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A MINUTE later he appeared in Eunice Weldon’s room. “I want you,” he said, and there was a sinister look in his eye that made the girl cower back from him in fear that she could not master. “My dear,” he said with that smile of his, “you need not be afraid, your friends are breaking into the house and in half an hour you will be free. What I intend doing to you is to put you in such a condition that you will not be able to give information against me until I am clear of this house. No, I am not going to kill you,” he almost laughed, “and if you are not sensible enough to realize why I am taking this step, then you are a fool—and you are not a fool, Eunice.”
She saw something bright and glittering in his hand and terror took possession of her.
“Don’t touch me,” she gasped. “I swear I will not tell,” but he had gripped her arm.
“If you make a sound,” his face was thrust into hers, “you’ll regret it to the last day of your life.”
She felt a sudden pricking sensation in her arm and tried to pull it away, but her arm was held as by a vice.
“There. It wasn’t very painful, was it?”
She heard him utter a curse, and when he turned his face was red with rage.
“They’ve smashed in the gates,” he said sharply.
She was walking toward him, her hand on the little puncture the needle had made, and her face was curiously calm.
“Are you going now?” she asked simply.
“We are going in a few minutes,” said Digby, emphasizing the “we.”
But even this she did not resent. She had fallen into a curious placid condition of mind which was characterized by the difficulty, amounting to an impossibility, of remembering what happened the previous minute. All she could do was to sit down on the edge of a chair, nursing her arm. She knew it hurt her, and yet she was conscious of no hurt. It was a curious impersonal sensation she had. To her, Digby Groat had no significance. He was a somebody whom she neither liked nor disliked. It was all very strange and pleasant.
“Put your hat on,” he said, and she obeyed. She never dreamt of disobeying.
He led her to the basement and through a door which communicated with a garage. It was not the garage where he kept his own car—Jim had often been puzzled to explain why Digby kept his car so far from the house. The only car visible was a covered van, such as the average tradesman uses to deliver his goods.
“Get in,” said Digby, and Eunice obeyed with a strange smile.
She was under the influence of that admixture of morphine and hyacin, which destroyed all memory and will.
“Sit on the floor,” he ordered, and laced the canvas flap at the back. He reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a cotton coat which had once been white, but was now disfigured with paint and grease, buttoning it up to the throat. A cap he took from the same source and pulled it over his head, so that the peak well covered his eyes.
Then he opened the gates of a garage. He was in a mews, and with the exception of a woman who was talking to a milkman, the only two persons in sight, none saw the van emerge.
There was not the slightest suspicion of hurry on his part. He descended from his seat to close the gates and lock them, lit a pipe and, clambering up, set the little van going in the direction of the Bayswater Road.
He stopped only at the petrol station to take aboard a fair supply of spirit, and then he went on, still at a leisurely pace, passing through the outlying suburbs, until he came to the long road leading from Staines to Ascot. Here he stopped and got down.
Taking the little flat case from his pocket, and recharging the glass cylinder, he opened the canvas flap at the back and looked in.
Eunice was sitting with her back braced against the side of the van, her head nodding sleepily. She looked up with a puzzled expression.
“It won’t hurt you,” said Digby. Again the needle went into her arm, and the piston was thrust home.
She screwed up her face a little at the pain and again fondled her arm.
“That hurt,” she said simply.
Just outside Ascot a touring car was held up by two policemen and Digby slowed from necessity, for the car had left him no room to pass.
“We are looking for a man and a girl,” said one of the policemen to the occupants of the car. “All right, sir, go on.”
Digby nodded in a friendly way to the policeman.
“Is it all right, sergeant?”
“Off you go,” said the sergeant, not troubling to look inside a van on which was painted the name of a reputable firm of London furnishers.
Digby breathed quickly. He must not risk another encounter. There would be a second barrier at the cross roads, where he intended turning. He must go back to London, he thought, the police would not stop a London-bound car. He turned into a secondary road and reached the main Bath road passing another barrier, where, as he had expected, the police did not challenge him, though they were holding up a string of vehicles going in the other direction. There were half a dozen places to which he could take her, but the safest was a garage he had hired at the back of a block of buildings in Paddington. The garage had been useful to the Thirteen, but had not been utilized for the greater part of a year, though he had sent Jackson frequently to superintend the cleaning.
He gained the west of London as the rain began to fall. Everything was in his favour. The mews in which the garage was situated was deserted and he had opened the gates and backed in the car before the occupants of the next garage were curious enough to come out to see who it was.
Digby had one fad and it had served him well before. It was to be invaluable now. Years before, he had insisted that every house and every room, if it were only a store-room, should have a lock of such a character that it should open to his master key.
He half led, half lifted the girl from the car, and she sighed wearily, for she was stiff and tired.
“This way,” he said, and pushed her before him up the dark stairs, keeping her on the landing whilst he lit the gas.
Though it had not been dusted for the best part of a month, the room overlooking the mews was neat and comfortably furnished. He pulled down the heavy blind before he lit the gas here, felt her pulse and looked into her eyes.
“You’ll do, I think,” he said with a smile. “You must wait here until I come back. I am going to get some food.”
“Yes,” she answered.
He was gone twenty minutes, and on his return he saw that she had taken off her coat and had washed her hands and face. She was listlessly drying her hands when he came up the stairs. There was something pathetically childlike in her attitude, and a man who was less of a brute than Digby Groat would have succumbed to the appeal of her helplessness.
But there was no hint of pity in the thoughtful eyes that surveyed her. He was wondering whether it would be safe to give her another dose. In order to secure a quick effect he had administered more than was safe already. There might be a collapse, or a failure of heart, which would be as fatal to him as to her. He decided to wait until the effects had almost worn off.
“Eat,” he said, and she sat at the table obediently.
He had brought in cold meat, a loaf of bread, butter and cheese. He supplement
ed this feast with two glasses of water which he drew in the little scullery.
Suddenly she put down her knife and fork.
“I feel very tired,” she said.
So much the better, thought Digby. She would sleep now.
The back room was a bedroom. He watched her whilst she unfastened her shoes and loosened the belt of her skirt before she lay down. With a sigh, she turned over and was fast asleep before he could walk to the other side of the bed to see her face.
Digby Groat smoked for a long time over his simple meal. The girl was wholly in his power, but she could wait. A much more vital matter absorbed his attention. He himself had reached the possibility which he had long foreseen and provided against. It was not a pleasant situation, he thought, and found relief for his mind by concentrating his thoughts upon the lovely ranch in Brazil, on which, with average luck, he would spend the remainder of his days.
Presently he got up, produced from a drawer a set of shaving materials wrapped in a towel, and heating some water at the little gas-stove in the kitchen, he proceeded to divest himself of his moustache.
With the master key he unlocked the cupboard that ran the height of the room, and surveyed thoughtfully the stacks of dresses and costumes which filled the half a dozen shelves. The two top shelves were filled with boxes, and he brought out three of these and examined their contents. From one of these he took a beautiful evening gown of silver tissue, and laid it over the back of a chair. A satin wrap followed, and from another box he took white satin shoes and stockings and seemed satisfied by his choice, for he looked at them for a long time before he folded them and put them back where he had found them. His own disguise he had decided upon.
And now, having mapped out his plan, he dressed himself in a chauffeur’s uniform, and went out to the telephone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“DEAD! Jane Groat dead?”
To Lady Mary the news came as a shock.
Jim, gaunt and hollow-eyed, sitting listlessly by the window of Mr. Salter’s office, nodded.
“The doctors think it was an overdose of morphia that killed her,” he said shortly.
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