“So’d you, if you were married to the oldest tortoise in the Zoo. However, we have our consolations. Perhaps Peter’ll be here to-night.”
“How you do jump about! Who’s Peter?”
“Peter Braithwaite.”
“Never heard of him.”
Alison’s turquoise eyes opened wide. “Oh, my dear! Do you never read the papers? Peter Braithwaite, England’s mainstay in the coming struggle, the flashing young D’Artagnan of the tented field, the Mecca of schoolboy autograph-hunters, the——”
“Do shut up and tell me what you’re talking about?”
“Peter Braithwaite. The cricketer. The England batsman.”
“Oh, yes,” said Georgia, feeling oddly deflated. Alison’s talk had at first seemed to be leading in quite another direction—a quite impossible direction, she realised. “I do seem to have heard something about him. He’s an amateur, I suppose.”
“No. As a matter of fact he’s a pro. But don’t let that get you down. Peter is one of my leading sweetie-pies. You’ll like him.”
“A pro? What’s he doing in this exclusive dump, then?”
“Oh, he’s been taken up, you know,” Alison replied vaguely.
Whether it was the effect of the steam-heating on her nerves or the result of her long walk this morning, Georgia found herself in an abnormally receptive state. At dinner the food was excellent and the head-waiter, informed no doubt of Alison’s business here, flatteringly attentive. There was something about this club, though, that Georgia could not get the hang of. Its atmosphere was oppressive in more ways than one. Most of their fellow guests—it was difficult to apply any other word to the clientele of the regal Madame Alvarez—were of the usual restless, pleasure-seeking crowd; but there were a few that Georgia could not place at all. The bald-headed man, for instance, sitting by himself at a corner table, whose eyes she caught every now and then fixed upon herself with an expression of strange vivacity and intelligence. Surely she had seen that face before somewhere? Among all these smooth, vacuous faces it stood out like flesh and blood in a gallery of waxworks. There were others, too: people whom she would not have expected to find in so exclusive a company. She was about to comment on this, when Alison nodded towards the door and said, “Here’s Peter.”
The popular cricketer was not exactly as Georgia had imagined him. He had a stocky figure, a broad, leonine face that looked boyish, full of vitality, not in the least spoilt. When, passing their table, he grinned at Alison, Georgia felt his charm like an electric shock; she felt it was there, a natural magnetism, not assumed for any one’s benefit. Peter Braithwaite, too, though several hands were raised to greet him, went over and sat at a table by himself.
“Isn’t he nice?” asked Alison.
“He’s certainly alive, which is more than one can say for most of the—I say, who’s that over there?” Georgia indicated the bald-headed man, who was now scribbling abstractedly on the back of his menu card. Alison did not know him. Presently she inquired of the head-waiter.
“That is Professor Steele, madam. Professor Hargreaves Steele.”
Goodness! thought Georgia. No wonder I seemed to recognise the face. It appears in the Press often enough. Hargreaves Steele was one of the foremost scientists of the day, an expert on tropical diseases who had also written a number of popular text-books. Because of the publicity he received, the scientific fraternity inclined to look on him as a bit of a charlatan. His achievements in his own field, however, made this attitude difficult to sustain. Glancing again at the famous scientist, Georgia observed him placing the point of his menu card on a thumb-nail and spinning it round like a tee-to-tum, his mouth pursed in a grimace of impish absorption. Still with the same expression, he proceeded to perform a trick that involved a saucer, a tumbler of water, a sixpence and a bent match. He seemed entirely oblivious of any audience, and indeed no one but Georgia was taking the least interest in him. Which was a pity, Georgia said to herself, for his hands were the most dexterous she had ever seen.
Aware of the scientist’s eyes upon her again, she looked away. Her gaze turned to Peter Braithwaite. It was quite a different kind of shock he gave her this time. At first she thought he must be drunk, but she realised he had not been here long enough for that. His mouth was hanging open a little, his hands gripped the sides of the table, his eyes were glazed in a look of—what could it be but the most besotted infatuation? Georgia felt a little sick at the dire change wrought in that merry, ingenuous face; sicker still when she perceived that it was Madame Alvarez at whom the cricketer was gazing with such flagrant self-betrayal.
The woman moved regally from table to table, inquiring if her guests had all to their satisfaction. Her husband was no longer in attendance. Georgia noticed sly glances among the other diners when Madame Alvarez approached the cricketer’s table and he invited her to take the vacant seat. There was something about his imploring gaze and this overblown creature’s half-coy, half-possessive response that turned the whole evening rotten for Georgia. She was a woman herself, though, and therefore she could not resist the feminine impulse to know what it was about Madame Alvarez that attracted the young man. She must have been twenty years older than he. Her beauty, like her voice and queenly air, was surely synthetic. Georgia could imagine her mask falling off under the stress of fear or anger, and revealing a character common as dirt. Those discontented lines, dragging down the corners of her mouth, explained her simply enough. But what explanation could there be for Peter Braithwaite? And Alison didn’t usually make mistakes of judgment.
“This is a bit much, isn’t it, darling?” she whispered to her friend. “I don’t approve of baby-snatching.”
Alison’s eyes were wide and innocent. “Oh, that. I told you we had our consolations. Poor Peter, he does have a time.”
“But what can he see in her?”
“Mystery. Mysterious womanhood. Or perhaps he’s just being kind-hearted.”
Alison’s hand, though, was clenched very tight over her gold evening bag, Georgia noticed. There were some things, then, that even Alison did not take lightly. Well, if Peter Braithwaite could prefer that ageing, counterfeit creature to pretty Alison, he deserved whatever was coming to him.
She was relieved when Alison suggested that they should take their coffee in the lounge. It amused her, too, to see the stir made by her friend’s presence there. Social climbers who had not achieved the rather dubious distinction of being mentioned in her column competed more or less openly for Alison’s attention. Those who had been born at the top of the tree treated her with a guarded courtesy. Alison herself flitted like a butterfly from group to group, gossiping away in her inimitable manner, listening with the adorable tilt of the head which made men feel—poor deluded things—what an intelligent, sympathetic woman she was. Not till they had started on a rubber of bridge did Georgia realise that her friend’s gaiety was not to-night quite natural. For her, Alison was playing abominably badly, and after a couple of rubbers excused herself from further play.
Georgia, too, decided she had had enough. She also wanted to make the acquaintance of Professor Hargreaves, who seemed by far the most interesting person here. But the professor was to be found in none of the rooms downstairs. Georgia wandered off upstairs by herself, admiring the beautiful proportions of staircase and landing, the delicate moulding on the walls. She felt restless again. The nerve-tingling heat, the vaguely uneasy atmosphere of the whole place. Through a door on the landing she heard voices. Assuming it was another public room, she was about to enter when she realised that the voices were those of Madame Alvarez and Peter Braithwaite.
“. . . No, you silly boy, I won’t. You’re much too young. Besides, you couldn’t afford to lose the money.”
“I might win. I know I’d win. I’m always lucky at games. And at love. Otherwise I’d not have found you, would I?”
“Darling Peter! But I won’t let you. I—I daren’t.”
“Well, you might let me have a look. I’v
e never seen roulette——”
“Sh! You’re not even supposed to know——”
So that’s it, thought Georgia disgustedly, moving away. That’s what the place is for. A discreet, posh gambling den. I suppose that’s where the professor has disappeared to.
Georgia felt a distinct sense of anti-climax. The climax of the evening, however, was yet to come. When, half an hour later, they were tucked into Alison’s car and about to move off, Peter Braithwaite poked his head in at the driver’s window.
“You forgot these,” he said, handing Alison her gloves. Then, in a lower voice, “No luck yet.”
Impulsively Georgia said, “‘No, you silly boy. You’re much too young.’”
In the dim glow of the dashboard light, Peter Braithwaite’s face showed surprise, but no trace of discomposure. His eyes twinkled at her. He threw up his chin and laughed merrily. “Good for you, Mrs. Strangeways. Well, you’ve had a look at the bowling, haven’t you? Good-night.”
“What an extraordinary young man!” said Georgia when they had moved away. “And what on earth did he mean by having ‘a look at the bowling’?”
Alison did not answer at once. She drove half a mile on, then stopped the car and, in a voice that Georgia hardly recognised, said:
“Peter’s a brilliant actor. He needs to be, just now.”
“I don’t understand. You mean that he—he’s not in love with that Alvarez creature?”
“He’s certainly not.”
“But—but why?”
Alison was silent for a while. At last, laying her hand on Georgia’s, she said, “You had a talk with Sir John Strangeways yesterday evening. . . . No, it’s all right, don’t get in a flap. You see, Peter and I are working for him. We were working for him to-night.”
Georgia stared at her speechless for a moment, utterly dazed, unable to believe her ears. If she had drawn the favourite in the Irish Sweep—if Nigel had told her that he was a secret drug-addict—if the Last Trump itself had sounded—she could not have been more dumbfounded than by this incredible revelation. Alison! The gay, fragile, exquisite Alison! And Peter Braithwaite, the Test cricketer! . . . At last she found her voice, and came out slap with a round and most unladylike oath.
“Well, I’m——! You dissembling little cat! Just a gorgeous humming-bird to look at, but——”
“Now I can’t be both, really!” Alison’s little glass-tinkle of a laugh rang out. “I told you there were advantages attached to the job of a society journalist. Pickings. Oh, yes, one picks up quite a lot. That’s why Sir John picked on me for the work.”
“Do stop this Shakespearean clown patter. You mean, that club——”
“Yes. We suspected the place was being used as a cover by some of the people behind the E.B. movement. They’re clever. Their shield has three layers, so to speak. On the outside, the place is all posh respectability. But they disseminate tactful rumours among the habitués that the place is used for roulette. It’s all very vague, of course. The bona-fide visitors dare not broadcast the rumour, for fear of taking the rap for libel. If one of them wants a flutter, the Alvarezs tell him, with a fine show of righteous indignation, that he’s come to the wrong shop. At the same time, it gives the actual conspirators an opportunity for meeting in secret—in an atmosphere of accredited secrecy. That’s their tactic, you see: to use a comparatively venial illegality as a cover for downright treason. Smart lads. The roulette is just a sop to Cerberus. Peter’s got the Madame as far as admitting that roulette is played there. Madame Alvarez is the weak link in their chain, and we’re playing on it good and hard.”
“But how do you know that it’s not simply roulette?”
“Oh, they’re playing for higher stakes all right. You’ll have to take my word for it. We have no proof, though, yet.”
Georgia was silent for a while, digesting all this. At last she asked point-blank, “Why did you take me there to-night?”
Once again Alison did not answer directly. Her fingers tightening round Georgia’s wrist, she said, “Peter loathes that woman. Just to touch her makes him feel sick. But he’s willing to go through with it. Right through with it, if necessary. You understand?”
“Yes. I see. I suppose this was Sir John’s idea, the wily old serpent. Well, I think I’d have come into it anyway.”
“Good girl.” Alison started up the car, and they shot away towards London.
CHAPTER V
THE EPISODE OF THE TWO DISSEMBLERS
WHEN GEORGIA AWOKE next morning it seemed that she must have dreamt the whole bizarre business of Thameford County Club. The weeks that followed were like a dream, too, but the kind of dream in which only a faint, intermittent sense of unreality disturbs the apparently logical sequence of images. At such moments, disquieting though they were, she could feel little urgency about her position, little apprehension for the future. Even the parting from Nigel, painful as it had been, was far different from her expectations. Sir John had seen to that.
“You’ve got to do the thing thoroughly,” he had said. “If they have the least suspicion that there’s anything faked about it, you won’t stand a chance of getting your foot inside their movement. What’s more,” he added with the brisk air of a seedsman’s assistant advising an amateur gardener, “you’d make things exceedingly dangerous for both yourself and Nigel.”
Planning the detail of their “separation” kept them so busy that much of the sting was taken out of it. They worked out every move, every sordid business item, as though it were the real thing. At first the illusion of reality was so powerful that Georgia had to remind herself it was only make-believe. Soon, however, she surrendered to the illusion, for she realised that thus she would present a much more convincing front to the inquisitive.
“Good-bye, darling. Take care of yourself,” Nigel said on their last morning together. They kissed passionately. She forced herself into a chair. There seemed no other way of resisting the temptation to stand by the window and watch the taxi taking him away. And that would never do; she must not allow even herself to suspect how bitterly this separation was hurting her; she had a part to play. Besides, one never knew that someone might not be watching.
From the cottage Nigel wrote appealing letters. Would she not change her mind, even now? Surely her decision to leave him was not irrevocable? Think how happy they had once been.
And she wrote back, no, it was over, their lives were too obviously incompatible. She had made a mistake in thinking she could settle down to the sort of domesticity he wanted. It had been all right for a while, but she was born restless, she wanted to go off on her travels again, she was determined to live her own life.
There were business letters too; about the cottage, the disposal of the furniture, the forwarding of her clothes and effects. He was to keep the cottage, she the London flat. Sometimes she felt wildly impatient at all this detail. It was like elaborately dressing a scene for a play that would never open. But she knew it was necessary. Their letters might, just conceivably, be intercepted. In any case, they kept all the letters they received, for the E.B.—as they had now come to think of it—would certainly make investigations before they let Georgia inside.
Then there were what Alison ghoulishly called ‘the official obituaries.’ Hints in the gossip columns, growing broader, becoming affirmations. Finally, an interview with one of the Daily Post feature-writers, to be reproduced next morning under the lurid headline, “Famous Woman Explorer Pans Domesticity.”
After that—worst ordeal of all—the shock, sympathy, anger, curiosity, sly hints, well-meaning interference of Nigel’s and her own acquaintance. “Your first appearance as a grass widow,” Alison had remarked with some relish, “will be a tricky affair. What a pity you’re so indecently fond of your late husband. You’ll have to be coached.”
And coached Georgia certainly was. During the fortnight that elapsed between Nigel’s departure and the first hinting of their separation, Alison took her in hand. She would ring up a
nd inquire innocently when Nigel was returning. She would take Georgia out to dinner or for an afternoon’s shopping, and make off-hand, unexpected allusions to Nigel. Georgia soon learnt to answer these with a suitable blend of embarrassment and constraint. Knowing what terrible issues might hang on her being word-perfect, Georgia played up with the irritable concentration of an actress at a dress-rehearsal.
“Thoroughness and patience,” Sir John Strangeways had said. “They’re the things that really matter in our work.” Well, they had been thorough enough. His own two visits to the flat a fortnight ago were to be explained, if any one should turn inquisitive about them, by the fact that, as Nigel’s uncle and guardian, he had been trying to heal the rupture between them. Everything seemed to be provided for. She was not to communicate with Sir John until she had obtained vital information, and then through a code which she had memorised. Her own instructions were simple enough: to make contact with the E.B. conspirators and find out the owner of the locket.
It sounded simple enough at the time. But, as week followed week and the date of the General Election drew nearer, Georgia’s patience was severely tested. Nigel, the whitewashed cottage on the green hillside, the hedge she had never finished cutting, all were like memories out of some former life. They had receded to an immeasurable distance. Often, discouraged out of belief, she was tempted to throw up this wild-goose chase and return home. Discouraging the work certainly was. At first there had been a certain interest—excitement even—in picking up old threads, in the round of parties, concerts, social events which she attended, in playing the part of a woman who has regained her freedom. But the excitement soon turned sour on her tongue. Though she let fall hints of Fascist sympathies, expressed fears of what the next government would do, they all seemed to fall on deaf or indifferent ears, and nowhere did she come across a face that recalled the features of the woman in the locket.
At last, when she was almost driven to despair by this nightmare sensation of walking eternally down a dead end, things began to open up. Peter Braithwaite and Alison Grove arrived at the flat one evening early in April. There was no mistaking when Peter was in good spirits. His eyes snapped with an audacious gaiety, the infection of his vitality made you want to turn somersaults, to run out and push over a bus, to tell him your most intimate secrets. He sat wrong ways about on an upright chair, his arms crossed on its back, and announced:
The Smiler With the Knife Page 6