by John Bude
Penelope shook her corn-coloured head.
“I’m sure you’re wrong about that. He expressly said that he’d heard you and I intended showing those letters to Alicia.”
“Heavens above, but it’s out of the question. Unless one of your staff overheard you talking in your sleep or something.”
“Impossible. I sleep at one end of the house—my domestics at the other.”
“You don’t imagine that he suspects anything about—?”
“About the child?” Penpeti nodded. “No,” went on Penelope. “At least he made no mention of the fact. Merely that we had the letters and were going to give them to Alicia.” Penelope set down her sherry glass. Penpeti noticed that her hand was trembling. “It’s uncanny, Peta. There’s something very queer going on around us. I can sense it. Something strange and ominous.” Adding with a look of remorse: “I rather wish now I hadn’t thought of this horrid idea. But when one’s in a tight corner, it’s so easy to say the first thing that comes into one’s head. I’m too impulsive, Peta. I didn’t really stop to think about my suggestion.”
Penpeti asked quickly:
“What did you tell Eustace?”
“I told him I’d destroyed the letters.”
Penpeti nodded his approval.
“Splendid! Splendid! I knew I could rely on you to keep your head in an emergency.” He drew her down on to the settee and went on earnestly: “Now listen—you’ve got to forget about Eustace and his visit this morning. Erase him from your mind entirely. Even if he had his suspicions, you’ve now probably convinced him that he was wrong, that the letters have actually been destroyed. In the mean-time keep them safely locked away in your letter-case. Keep your bureau locked too. Don’t let Eustace into the house. Keep an eye on him. Be very, very watchful. If you haven’t convinced him he may try to do something desperate. He may even try to steal the letters or get somebody to do it for him. You follow?”
Penelope nodded.
“And you’re still willing to go through with our scheme?”
She hesitated a moment, and then said in low quick tones:
“I don’t know, Peta. When I come to think of it all in cold blood, it makes me feel rather ashamed of myself. Eustace’s visit has worried me. I can’t understand how he found out. You mustn’t think me stupid or fanciful but…but I can’t help wondering if…”
“Well?”
“If Eustace, perhaps, hasn’t some…strange gift…some psychical power that enables him to pick up other people’s thoughts. This unexplored realm of thought transmission…I’m convinced it’s a reality, Peta. Only most of us haven’t learnt how to use and control the gift.”
“Oh poppycock!” snapped Penpeti, with a scowl of impatience. “I still think Eustace was prompted to ask for those letters because he has an uneasy conscience. You mustn’t let your imagination run away with you.”
“I know it’s silly of me, but the whole affair has quite unnerved me. Do you really think we ought to go through with the scheme? Shan’t we always have it on our conscience?”
Penpeti sprang up with a little cry of irritation.
“For heaven’s sake, be logical! In the circumstances it’s one or the other of us that will take the rap—either Eustace or me. Well, which is it to be? It’s your choice, and out of fairness to me I should know your final answer.”
Again Penelope seemed to be struggling with some inward uncertainty. Then suddenly she gave a little shiver, looked up at him and said quietly:
“I suppose there’s no other way now, Peta. I shall just have to go through with it for your sake.”
“Good!” said Penpeti.
But at that moment he realised that Penelope was in a queer, unreliable mood. Her conscience, confound it! Was on the prowl. It was on the cards that when the moment came for them to act, Penelope might well rat on him. It was a ticklish situation and would need very careful handling. Penpeti was worried.
IV
So was Sid Arkwright. He had not failed to register the little scene which had been enacted on the threshold of the Dower House. From where he sat waiting, like a graven image, in the car, he had not been able to hear what had transpired, but his employer’s face, as he returned to the Daimler, had told him everything. When they reached the lodge, Sid had plucked up enough courage to ask a few discreet questions. His employer’s answers had not been reassuring. Not for a single instant did Sid believe the Parker woman’s story that the letters had been destroyed. The guv’nor, he thought, was too blooming ready to take people at their word.
“And now,” thought Sid miserably, “he’ll just swallow the yarn and let the matter drop. And before we can turn round that Parker girl will have shoved the damned letters under old Haggie’s nose. I wouldn’t trust that Penpeti chap further than I could kick him. Never have! He’s out to nab the position of High Prophet. I bet he’s put the Parker wench up to this. She’s soft on him. No mistake about that!”
But how to find out if the letters were still in the Parker woman’s possession or not? Sid clicked his fingers. Of course! He ought to have thought of it before. Hilda Shepstone—she was the answer. He’d taken her over to the flicks at Downchester on her half-day. Yes—Hilda would help him. She was beginning to get a bit of a yen on him, eh? He’d nip round to the kitchen door that evening, when everybody was having dinner at the manor, and have a talk with her, discreet like, about those blooming letters.
Sid did. And what he learnt completely justified his earlier suspicions. Luck was with him, for only that morning Hilda, passing by the little upstairs sitting-room, had heard her mistress make mention of the letters.
“That there creepy Mr. Penpeti was with her,” said Hilda. “Always in the house he is. Proper hot ’un, I reckon. Anyways, just as I went by the door, I heard him say ‘And what did you tell Eustace?’ That’d be your guv’nor, of course. And she said as she’d said she’d destroyed the letters. Then I heard him—that’s Mr. Penpeti—say as he could trust her to keep her head in an emergency. All seemed a bit fishy to me. Always laying their nappers together them two. Thick as thieves.”
“Swear you won’t breath a word about me coming here, Hilda.” Sid winked. “There’s things in the wind—see? Nasty under’and things. Now tell me—where d’you think she keeps these letters?”
“Can’t say exactly. In her desk, I expect, up in her own room.”
“What time does she usually get back from the manor?”
“Never later than ten. Usually between ’arpas nine and ten.”
Sid glanced at his watch. Eight-fifteen. He looked meaningly at Hilda, pointed to himself and jerked a thumb towards the upper part of the house.
“Safe, eh kiddo?”
“There’s cook,” breathed Hilda nervously. “She’s in the kitchen. But if you sneak round to the front, I’ll let you in through the french-windows of the big drawing-room.”
“O.K.,” said Sid.
Five minutes later, on tip-toes, he was following Hilda up the main staircase. Once on the landing, she paused and pointed to a door a little way down the spacious corridor.
“That’s the room,” she whispered. “I won’t hang about in case cook gets nosey. Let yourself out the same way as you came in, Sid. I’ll close the latch later. And hurry! Much as my job’s worth if you was caught here.”
Sid waited until the girl had regained the hall and vanished in the direction of the kitchen, before creeping softly towards the door she had indicated. Gently he turned the handle, opened the door and slipped into the room.
Then, with a stifled cry, he stopped dead. Seated in an armchair, directly facing him, was a man—a big, broad-shouldered man in a suit of plus-fours. He stared at Sid grimly.
“And what the hell may you want, eh?”
“Er…nothing…nothing,” stammered Sid. “I…I was just looking for something.”
“Since you ask—I didn’t.”
The man rose, stalked to the door and cautiously closed it.
“Well, now you are here, you’re going to tell me just who you are and what you’re doing in Miss Parker’s room.” Sid remained obstinately silent. “So you’re not going to talk, eh? Very well, I won’t badger you with questions which you obviously can’t answer. But before I let you go, understand this—if you breath a word to anybody about seeing me here, I’ll…I’ll break your confounded neck! Understand?”
“O.K.,” said Sid, sidling gradually towards the little bureau which stood near the door. “I won’t split on you if you won’t split on me. Fair deal, eh?” His hand groped up behind his back, feeling for the handle of the desk. “Strikes me,” he added, “that you were as startled to see me as I was to see you!” He tugged at the handle, but the lid of the bureau didn’t budge an inch. It was obviously locked. “Right about that, sir, aren’t I?”
The man ignored the query and jerked a hand towards the door.
“Go on! Clear out and stay out. And remember, unless you want to get yourself into trouble, you haven’t seen me.”
“O.K.,” reiterated Sid with a grin. “O.K.!”
But once clear of the house, as he hurried through the chilly Maytime dusk that was descending like a miasma on the park, his mind began to work overtime. What the devil did it mean? Why was that big, broad-shouldered chap sitting in that armchair, obviously waiting for that Parker woman’s arrival? And how was it that Hilda was unaware of his presence in the house? All these puzzling factors struck Sid as damnably fishy.
But there was something even more curious, a simple fact that remained diamond-sharp in his mind. It was something he had noticed just as he was leaving the room. On the arm of the settee was a brown tweed cap and, flung carelessly over the back of it, unmistakable, significant, arresting, was an elegant coat fashioned of teddy-bear cloth!
Chapter XI
The High Prophet Plans a Theft
I
In the few days that intervened before the arrival of the some six hundred members who were scheduled to attend the convention, there was an ominous lull in the progress of events at Old Cowdene. Penpeti was biding his time. His argument was logical. If the High Prophet were to be tumbled from his pedestal, it was far better that his fall should be witnessed by as many people as possible. The whole affair if allowed to come to a head when the convention was in full swing would be just twice as dramatic and effective. Granted Penpeti felt nervous in postponing the dénouement, for Penelope was becoming more jumpy and conscience-stricken at their every meeting. It was a case, Penpeti upheld, of weighing one advantage against another.
For Eustace it was a period of the deepest depression. He lived under the shadow of fateful and imminent happenings, uneasy with apprehension, taut-nerved, disillusioned and desperate. Sid had spoken to him quite frankly about his talk with Hilda at the Dower House. He had said nothing of his abortive attempt to recover the letters, however, or of his startling encounter with the Man in the Teddy-Bear Coat. But he left no doubt in Eustace’s mind that the letters still existed; that Penelope had deliberately lied to him; that Penpeti’s threat to show the letters to Alicia was no evil dream but a very present reality.
But how to counter this threat? Eustace felt himself already fast in the trap. No matter in which direction he looked there seemed to be no way out. In due course Alicia would read those passionate epistles, call together an extraordinary meeting of the Inmost Temple, who would most certainly pass a unanimous resolution that he was no longer worthy to hold the exalted position of High Prophet. He would be called before the Inmost Temple, arraigned, cross-questioned and, finally, judged. And to make matters even more hopeless, Eustace felt that once his infatuation for Penelope were common property he would be unworthy of his high office. Yes—even if they didn’t turn him out, he’d be forced to resign.
And yet…?
Eustace’s jaw tautened and a stubborn gleam illuminated his dark eyes. To let Penpeti into the High Prophetship…it was unthinkable! Penpeti, who for all these months had so obviously been conspiring to bring about his downfall. To hand over his robes of office to an ambitious opportunist; to a man whose ideas concerning the Judgment of the Dead were ethically unsound; to a man who refuted the powers of Am-mit as “Eater of the Dead”, who expounded the heretical theory that Neb-er-tcher should take precedence over the great god Osiris himself, who denied that Apep was the arch-enemy of Horus—No! No! Never! To allow the High Prophetship to fall into such hands was to deny the infallibility of his own theological beliefs.
But how to arrest the impending debacle? There was only one way. He must recover the letters. Quite—but how? In the name of Geb, how? It was obvious Penelope would never give them up. He had now been refused admittance to the house. Impossible, therefore, to renew his pleadings. Penelope just wouldn’t see him alone. Impossible to steal the letters for with the doors locked against him, how to place himself in a position to do so? At his age, quite apart from the undignified aspect of such a performance, one did not shin up drain-pipes or pick locks with pieces of bent wire. No, in every direction he faced despair and frustration. Every day he expected the bombshell to explode.
II
And then one evening, some three days before the opening of the convention, he was sitting with Terence in the lodge parlour, when Mrs. Summers entered with the information that Sid Arkwright wished to see him. Owing to a slight indisposition Eustace had decided not to attend the dinner-party over at the manor that evening. It was a tiny deviation from his usual routine but, in the light of subsequent events, a detail of enormous significance.
Sid, cap in hand, was waiting deferentially in the cramped little hall.
“Well, Arkwright?”
“I must see you, sir,” said Sid with a hint of excitement in his voice. “Private like, if I may. And the sooner the better, sir, if it’s convenient. I was wondering…?”
“Well?”
“If you could slip across with me to the barn, sir. We could talk there without interruption.”
“All right—if it’s really important.”
“It’s vital, sir,” said Sid emphatically. “Vital!”
Reaching for his hat, Eustace followed Sid out of the door, across the drive and up the broad cinder-track that led to the barn. There, seating himself on a rough bench outside the big double-doors, Eustace waited. Sid took a quick look around and, satisfied that they were alone, said abruptly:
“I gotta idea, sir. Came to me only a moment back. About them letters.”
“The letters, Arkwright?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve thought of a way in which you could get ’em back.”
Eustace sprang up with a look of disbelief. It was his turn to rake the screening bushes with anxious eyes, before asking in tremulous tones:
“Are you serious about this?”
“Dead serious, sir. You can’t afford to be pernickety, if I may say so. You’re in a nasty jam, sir, and no mistake. I’ve been thinking of a dozen ways to get you out of this, but until this evening I was stuck for the right idea. Now, I reckon, I’ve got it!”
Eustace sat down again. Sid came closer.
“Well?” demanded Eustace.
“It’s like this, sir,” explained Sid. “You know well enough that Miss Parker’s not going to cough up them letters just because you ask her to. She’ll do what Mr. Penpeti tells her—you mark my words! But suppose you was to go to her and give her a bit of a fright—threaten her a mite, lay on a sort of a gangster act. I reckon she’d crumple up on the spot and hand over the letters without a murmur.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow, Arkwright,” said Eustace stiffly. “A gangster act? What exactly—?”
“My idea’s dead simple, sir. I’m
pretty slick with my hands and it wouldn’t take me a brace of shakes to knock up something that looked like a revolver from a few bits of wood—see? Well, sir, if you waggled this thing at Miss Parker and talked a bit rough—”
“Are you suggesting,” broke in Eustace in outraged tones, “that I terrorise Miss Parker into surrendering those letters?”
“Why not, sir? Think what’s at stake! It’s no time to act soft.”
“But…but…how am I to get into the house? You know as well as I do, Arkwright, that Miss Parker has given strict orders to the servants that I’m not to be admitted. I can’t break in, can I?”
“No, sir, you couldn’t. But the point is—what I did you could do—see? A hundred times better, too. You’ve got the same sort of dark eyes and skin. Much of the same build, too. It’s a cinch, sir!” added Sid with a sudden burst of enthusiasm. “An absolute cinch!”
“You mean…?” But Eustace could get no further. The wild audacity of the idea left him dumbfounded. Was Arkwright out of his senses?
“I mean just this, sir. If you’ll give me permission to nip up to London, I’ll hire the same set of things as I did for that dance—make-up, spirit-gum and all.”
“But even then, Arkwright—?”
Sid went on smoothly:
“We’ll fix on a suitable evening in the near future. You find some excuse for not going over to the manor that night. Get rid of Mr. Terence and Mrs. Summers somehow and leave me to doll you up over here in the barn. Miss Parker always gets back to the Dower House somewhere between nine-thirty and ten. I found that out from her maid. All I’ve got to do then is to drive you down to the Dower House and wait under those trees about half-way up the drive there. All you’ve gotta do, sir, is to ring the bell bold as brass, wait till the door’s opened, nod casual like and go straight up to Miss Parker’s room. Hilda tells me she’s got orders to let Mr. Penpeti into the place at any time of the night or day, so there won’t be any need to do more than nod and go upstairs. I know just where Miss Parker’s room is situated on the second floor. I’ll draw you a plan so as you can’t make any mistake. Once you’re inside, close the door, pull out your wooden gun and talk rough. And if you’re not back in the car inside five minutes with the letters in your pocket, sir, then my moniker’s not Sid Arkwright. As I said before, it’s a cinch. You can’t put a foot wrong.”