“I haven’t any.”
“What do you do?”
“I earn my living.”
“Do you mind if I ask how?”
She laughed in a whisper. It was a pretty sound.
“I’m in a shop—a hat shop. I try on hats, and fat old ladies buy them. That’s why I couldn’t meet you until a quarter past six.”
“Look here,” said Lindsay, “we’re not getting on. I’ve got to take a plunge, and I hope you won’t be angry. You said ‘Ask’.”
“Ask then.”
“Well—I’m awfully sorry, but are you engaged to Froth or—or anything of that sort? I’ve simply got to know.”
Her hand slipped imperceptibly from his arm.
“Why should I be engaged to him?”
There are probably a hundred reasons why you shouldn’t,” said Lindsay bluntly. “I want to know whether you are—that’s all.”
There was a pause. He had again that feeling of their being plunged in deep waters of fog; but this time he felt the undertow. He wished he knew where it was taking them.
Elsie Manning made a sound that was like an impatient sigh.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“Tell me what you know. Won’t you?”
She moved quickly.
“No, I can’t. How can I? I don’t know you—I haven’t even seen you—you’re just a black shadow in a fog. How can I tell you things—how can I? Would you—would you advise anyone to tell things like that, important things, dangerous things— Oh, you said that yourself! Would you advise anyone to tell things like that to a—a shadow?”
“Well, I don’t know that I would, my dear,” said Lindsay, and heard her clap her hands again.
“There! You see! How can I? If I could see you, I might know—but not all in an inky fog where you might be anyone.”
Lindsay was not sure that he had not to be grateful to the fog. He did not think that even in the moment when he had stood bareheaded under the lamp at the corner of Leaham Road it would have been possible for anyone more than three or four yards away to swear to him—and there had certainly not been anyone within three or four yards when Elsie ran into his arms.
“Well, what are we to do?” he said.
“There’s the shop.” She spoke slowly; the words dragged a little.
“Near here?”
“Quite near.” Then after a moment, “There won’t be anyone there.” And then, “I’ve got a key.” The last short sentence came with a rush, as if she were in a hurry to be rid of it.
Recognition of her courage leapt up in Lindsay like a flame. She didn’t know him, she didn’t trust him—how could she?—but she was going to risk taking him into a dark empty shop with a fog right up to the windows.
He said, “Aren’t you afraid?” and tried to say it lightly.
“I must see you,” said Elsie Manning. Then she put a hand on his arm. He turned at her touch, and they went back along the way by which they had come.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SHOP HAD ONE unshuttered window. The door gave direct into a narrow room. A lamp just outside made the space seem full of thick, luminous air, out of which the black shapes of two or three hats on wooden stands lifted themselves. They might have been heads on pikes. There was nothing else visible as Lindsay shut the door behind him.
Elsie’s hand touched his arm again and drew him across the shop and through a door at the far end. She closed the door, pulled down a switch, and there they were in a rush of light from the unscreened bulb in the ceiling.
The room was tiny, a mere slip cut from the shop. There was a table, a couple of chairs, a sewing-machine, a pile of hat shapes, a pile of cardboard boxes, a litter of ribbons, and rolls of silk and velvet—one of a brilliant cherry crimson. The table was covered with cheap American cloth.
Lindsay took off his hat and stood under the light to be looked at and to look. He was conscious of amusement, interest, and a little compunction. The compunction deepened when he saw how young she was.
Her hand dropped from the switch. She stood against the wall and looked at him. Her eyes were as bright and brown as a bird’s. Her hair was all hidden. She wore a tight cap with a black wing that stuck out sideways. Her black coat looked too thin for the weather. The outline of her face was soft. You could not say that she had any features to speak of. Her mouth was painted a pillar-box scarlet, but there was no colour in the pale cheeks. He thought she looked like a little girl who has been dressing up. He wondered how old she was, and wondered why, when she ran to him out of the fog, he had had an impression of colour—bright, glowing colour.
Then all at once it came to him that she was pale because she was frightened. She had brought him to this empty place, and she was frightened. That bright awareness in her eyes was fear. He wondered what she knew. Then it struck him that if he had not been Lindsay Trevor but someone sent by Drayton to find out what she knew, she might have had a very real reason to be afraid.
She was looking at him with those bright, wary eyes. Her painted lips made an absurd splash of colour above a very firm chin. Her hands held one another tightly. One of them was gloved and one of them was bare. She had taken off the right-hand glove to fit her key into the lock. She held the glove crushed up in the grip her hands had taken of each other.
Lindsay saw all this with his first glance. What he thought about it came an instant later. It prompted him to say in his natural voice,
“Please don’t be afraid of me—there’s no need.”
She said, “I’m not.” Her chin lifted a little. Her eyes met his, looked deep, and brought something away. The bright, wild look left her own. The scarlet lips relaxed, parted, and trembled into a smile. “That was a lie,” she said, “I was most awfully frightened.”
“Yes, I knew you were. Will you tell me why?”
She laughed. It was the frankest, most natural sound.
“I was taking a chance. If you’d been one of them, I was just making them a present of a really first class opportunity of doing me in.” She laughed again. “You see, the rooms over the shop are empty—the people went out last week.”
What a thing to tell him! Was she reckless, or … Suppose he had been one of them, as she put it.
“Oh, good Lord!” he said, “Don’t give things away like that!”
She looked at him impudently.
“Well, you asked.”
“Do you always do what people ask you?”
“No, I don’t. You ought to know that by now.”
She came forward as she spoke, pulled out a chair, and sat down, an elbow on the table.
“You might as well sit. I hate people towering over me.”
Lindsay sat.
“Seriously,” he said, “you— Look here, you won’t be offended, will you, but you were doing a very dangerous thing when you brought me here.”
Her eyelashes flicked up and down again.
“Things that every girl should know!” she said.
“Yes,” said Lindsay. “I wonder whether you do know just how dangerous it was—or might have been if I had been one of them.”
She leaned her chin on her hand.
“I expect so,” she said. She was thinking that she could not have stood for another moment. She supposed her legs wouldn’t go on shaking for ever.
Lindsay was smiling at her.
“You’re not frightened now?”
She shook her head. It was more of a sideways toss than a shake.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I’m not. I knew I should know what sort you were if I could have a good look at you. I’d only seen your hair under the street lamp, and you can’t tell what a person’s like from his hair. You felt all right, but I wanted to see what you looked like, so I had to take a chance and bring you here. Is your ha
ir really red?”
“No—it’s out of a bottle—guaranteed fast dye. I’m always expecting it to come off on my towel, but it doesn’t. Now tell me—how much like Froth am I? I’d like to know.”
“Oh, you’re like.”
“Would you have spotted the difference if you had met me as Froth in the daylight?”
“Oh yes—of course I should.”
“How? I’d like to know, you know.”
“You’re a different person—that’s how. If someone else had on my clothes they wouldn’t be me.”
Lindsay hung his mouth down on one side and altered the pitch of his voice.
“That any better?”
She sat back startled.
“Yes—yes, it is. Oh yes, it is. You did that very well. Do you have to do it all the time? Are you going to tell me who you are? Because it seems to me if you’re not going to trust me, we shan’t get any farther.”
Lindsay had been thinking. He smiled his own natural smile, which was a very pleasant one.
“I’d like to ask you a question or two. You needn’t answer if you don’t want to. To start with, I want to know what on earth put it into Froth’s head to tell you anything. I’ve never had what you might call an extravagantly high opinion of him, but there are limits.”
“Why shouldn’t he tell me?” said Elsie Manning with an innocent stare.
“First because it was very dangerous for you, and secondly because it was very dangerous for him.”
“Not if I can hold my tongue.”
“I suppose,” said Lindsay, “the fact was that he was in such a nervy, unbalanced state that he simply couldn’t help telling someone, and you happened to be there.”
One of the things he had been thinking was that if he could make her angry, she might talk.
The colour had come back to her cheeks—a warm rosy colour, very pleasant to the eye. No angry flush heightened it. She replied calmly, “You’re beginning at the wrong end. It wasn’t Trevor who started telling things—it was me.”
“You!”
She nodded.
“Me.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Well, that’s just it—what did I tell him? We keep on getting to the point where somebody’s got to put their cards on the table.”
“Ladies first!” said Lindsay.
She had been watching him all the time, sometimes through a thick screen of lashes, sometimes through bright windows that hid the thoughts behind them. The brightness was just another screen. She looked through it now.
“I’ll tell you something.”
He said, “Thank you,” and to his surprise her colour deepened.
“Wait till you’ve heard what it is,” she said. “I’ll tell you something I told Trevor, but you mustn’t ask me questions about it.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“I’m not asking you to promise anything. This is what I told Trevor—I wrote it to him. It was about three weeks ago.”
“Well?”
“You mayn’t think much of it, but here it is. I was crossing the road in—no, I don’t think I’ll tell you where it was—at least I won’t tell you yet.”
“Well—you were crossing the road.”
She nodded.
“And I saw a man I didn’t want to see. As a matter of fact I’d been hoping for eight years that I should never see him again, and there he was on the other side of the road just under a lamp-post. Did I tell you it was in the evening?”
“No, you didn’t.”
She gave another almost imperceptible nod.
“Well, it was—and dark at that, thank goodness. I could see him, but he couldn’t see me.” She paused and fixed candid eyes on Lindsay’s face. “Do you know what it’s like to feel so frightened of someone that the idea of their recognizing you simply shrivels you up?”
“Well, no, I can’t say that I do.”
“Lucky for you! I just stood where I was and shrivelled. He didn’t see me—at least I don’t think he did. He went on, and when he’d got well round the corner I thought I’d see where he’d gone to. He was just turning up a side street. I waited, and then I followed him again.”
“Why?” said Lindsay.
“You weren’t to ask questions. I followed him. The street led into a square. He went up the steps of a house, took a key out of his pocket, and let himself in. I took the number of the house and the name of the square and came away, and when I got home I wrote and told Trevor.”
She stopped abruptly, took her elbow off the table, and leaned back with a faint air of triumph about her, and just for a second there was a likeness, a faint, fleeting likeness, to someone. It touched the farthest edge of Lindsay’s consciousness, and was gone again. He was left wondering what had touched it. What he had seen, or what he thought he had seen, he could not tell; but there had been something. It was gone now.
He came back to what she had said.
“You wrote and told Trevor?”
“Yes.”
“And what did Trevor say?”
“He told me to keep out of the way.”
“Only that?”
“He said he was coming over. He told me where to meet him.”
“And you met him?”
“Yes—I did.”
“Well,” said Lindsay, “that doesn’t take us very far. Who was the man you followed?”
She shook her head.
“I can’t tell you.”
“But you told Trevor?”
“Trevor knew.”
“And then he told you things.”
“No, he didn’t—at least—” She paused, lifted her chin, and said with decision, “I shan’t tell you that.”
Lindsay wondered why she had told him anything. She was afraid of getting Froth into trouble. She was afraid of getting into trouble herself. And she was afraid of this man, whoever he might be. She didn’t look as if she would be frightened easily. He wondered why she had told him anything at all. He looked at her, and said what was in his mind.
“You’ve made me a present of a very small crumb. May I ask what I’m expected to do with it? It’s not much use to me as it is.”
“The square,” she said, “was Blenheim Square.”
“Oh, was it?” Had she followed Restow? Was that what she was driving at? “And the house?” he said.
“Number one.”
“Do you know whose house it is?”
“It’s Mr Restow’s house.”
“You knew that?”
“I found out.”
“And was the man Mr Restow?”
She had been looking down. Now she gave him a momentary view of those bright brown eyes. “I don’t know.”
“But you knew the man?”
“He wasn’t called Restow when I knew him.”
“What was he called?”
She said, “I think he’s had a lot of names.” When she had said it she shivered. Then all at once she leaned forward again, both arms on the table and her hands stretched out towards him. “It isn’t his name that matters—it’s what he does—it’s—it’s him.”
Lindsay felt a little tingle of excitement.
“Well—what is he? Suppose you tell me.”
“Can you put him in prison?” Her voice sounded eager.
“We’ll see.”
She looked at him with the solemn stare of a child who has something very important to say. She said it in a whisper:
“He’s a blackmailer.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE FOGGY NIGHT HAD passed into a foggy day, and the foggy day was darkening into a most unpleasantly murky evening. Fog affects business a good deal. From ten in the morning until five in the afternoon only two women had entered Madame Santa’s shop, and neither
of them had bought anything. One of them inquired the price of Madame’s most expensive model, and edged her way towards the door in obvious embarrassment when she heard what it was. She had, as Elsie Manning put it, a bargain basement manner. The other, a drab elderly female, wished to be directed to the nearest Tube station. Altogether a very flat, unprofitable day.
At five o’clock the telephone bell rang. Madame Santa, tall, fair, elegant, and at the moment distinctly out of temper, took up the receiver and changed before the eyes of her girls into a creature of radiant charm.
“Yes, Madam. … Oh yes, certainly. … Oh yes, I’m sure we can. Any special colours? … Yes, certainly.”
The receiver went back with a click.
“Fifteen hats on approval. A Madame Ferrans, recommended by Miss Lester. Miss Manning, you and Miss Wallace can go together. It’s no distance—Cannington Place. Yes, put in those three blacks. Medium size, she said. You might try her with the red velvet-it doesn’t seem to go. Now those felts. And the model out of the window—we shan’t have anyone else in to-night. Miss Wallace, why aren’t you putting your things on? Didn’t you hear me say that you and Miss Manning were to go?”
“I can’t think how you’re not frightened of her,” said Mabel Wallace as she and Elsie groped their way round the corner into Cannington Square.
Elsie laughed.
“What’s there to be frightened about?”
“I don’t know. She’s so quick.”
“Well, you’ll never frighten anyone by being quick, my child—will you?”
“Am I very slow?” The fog hid the auburn hair and lovely face. The voice had a droop in it.
“Well, you’ll never set the Thames on fire,” said Elsie cheerfully. “You’re for ornament, not use, ducky. The only thing you’ve got to worry about is getting fat.”
Mabel sighed heavily.
“I wish I didn’t love cream buns!” she said in a tragic contralto.
Cannington Place runs out of Cannington Square on the south side. Elsie set down the two large cardboard boxes she was carrying and rang the bell of the third house. In a minute the door opened and the maid was asking them into the hall and telling them to wait there. Madame Ferrans had been obliged to go out, but she wouldn’t be long. She hadn’t expected them so soon. “And if you like to sit down—”
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