Chapter 14
Welton, almost stupefied as he was by the latest proof of the widespread nature of the organization of which Miss Ferriby was the apparent head, had no intention of allowing his new opportunity of learning details about it slip away.
But when the window was shut down, he gave himself a few minutes for reflection before he tried to find out more from the unseen informant whose voice he had recognized.
So he reached a rustic bench, which stood in a nook in the grounds under the spreading branches of an old cedar tree, and sat down to think over what he had heard.
Not that there was any great shock in what he had just learnt. Having already found out that the two menservants, Box and Cockett, played the spy in different houses in the city, it was not surprising to find that there were women also employed in the same infamous business.
Neither was it astonishing that he should again have happened to meet one of the gang at the house of an acquaintance, since it was because he had seen Lady Mirfield at The Lawns that he had made her acquaintance.
That which amazed him the most in connection with this business was the boldness with which it was carried on, an example of which he had just had in the words used by the unseen woman.
The maid made no pretence of innocence concerning the doings of the gang; but boldly assuming that Welton knew the sort of society in which he lived, she frankly advised him either to join it, or else to give it up and hold his tongue.
And she emphasized her warning by the most cynical openness as to the lives she and her fellow-conspirators led. "We live like fighting-cocks," was her terse comment and inducement to him to join them.
More and more evident did it become to him that he would have to tread warily if he would not draw down upon himself the vengeance of the gang. He had already faced the possibility of his having been overheard by Cockett when he gave his warning to Mr. Ospringe. Now he was sure that he had been listened to by unseen ears of the maid when he was advising Lady Mirfield not to have anything further to do with Miss Ferriby.
The knowledge that he could not move a step in any direction without finding some member of the gang, sometimes utterly unsuspected, on his track, was disconcerting and oppressive in the extreme. It complicated matters by making it difficult for him to approach the police except by letter, and in such a matter he felt that a personal interview was infinitely to be preferred to any other form of communication.
In the meantime he knew that he must lose no time if he meant to try to make the maid who had just spoken to him yield him further information. Miss Ferriby had told him she would be engaged ten to twenty minutes with her visitor, and there was not much left of that time.
He sprang up from the rustic seat, with a furtive glance around him to see that he was not even then being watched by unseen eyes, and returning to the closed window from which the woman had spoken to him, he tapped softly on the lower pane.
He could make out through the whitened surface that there was someone moving on the other side, and after a pause, he tapped again more imperiously.
Then the pane was moved up a little way. "What do you want?" asked the same voice as before.
"I want to see you. I know who you are. You are Lady Mirfield's maid. Come now, it can do you no harm to come out and speak to me face to face. And if you really want to help me, as you say, there is something more for you to tell me, isn't there? Come."
He made his voice very soft and persuasive, and to his intense relief he was answered by a giggle, suppressed at once, but sufficiently promising to make him sure that the lady's maid would not be able to resist his invitation.
"Well, if I come out, will you promise -- honour bright, mind -- to let me go in again without attempting to follow me the moment I want to?"
"I promise -- word of honour," said Welton promptly.
"All right, then. Go under the wall behind the cedar, where the plum trees are, and I'll come out."
Welton retired at once in the direction indicated, still careful to keep a good lookout against possible surprise. He had not been half a dozen seconds on the spot indicated, when a figure, darkly clad, with a black lace shawl hung flirtatiously about her head and neck, appeared from the other side of the cedar. It was evident that the instincts of plunder, which must have been successfully developed in her, had not extinguished her flirty tone, for she shrugged her shoulders and put on airs of alarm and timidity which he knew very well could not be genuine.
He took care to humour her, however, with a certain pretence of interest in her as a woman, though in his heart he cared for only one thing -- that she should tell him as much as possible of her associates and of the danger of his own position.
It was soon evident that she was competent to give him full satisfaction on both these points. "Now, it's too bad of you, Mr. Keynes, to make me come out, when I had done you a good turn, too, in warning you. I think, as a gentleman, you ought to have respected my incognito, even if you did guess who I was."
"I was too anxious for a sight of the girl who had done me such a kindness," replied Welton gallantly.
She giggled again and stepped back. "Well, I wouldn't have been so frank as I was, if I'd thought you were going to make me come out and show myself," she said. "Fancy you recognizing my voice, too! And I, who flatter myself I can disguise myself!"
"Well, perhaps I'd been too much struck with the quality of your voice when I heard it before, not to recognize it when I heard it again," said Welton, with a smile which he hoped was fascinating.
"Oh, well, there now, to think of your noticing. Well, now I've come, what is it you want to say to me?"
"I want in the first place to know what you mean by your warning?"
The girl came a step nearer, and peeped at him from behind her lace shawl. "Well, you know what I said. It's all true, every word. I heard you speaking to Lady M., and warning her about Fiammetta -- that's Miss F. Now, it's no mortal use your warning people, because Miss F. and Miss F.'s assistants in the business aren't so easily caught, I can tell you. But you've already shown your hand plainly enough to be watched, shadowed, and I can just tell you that if you were to do anything more in the way of warning outsiders that we're wrong 'uns, you'd have very little chance of ever warning anybody again."
"Do you mean that I should be murdered?" asked Welton abruptly.
She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not prepared to say that, but I may tell you this, that Miss F. has had a good many secretaries before, and that they went two ways all of them. One set went with us, and are with us still. The other lot didn't, and -- well, I can't tell you, I'm sure, where they are now. But I shouldn't like you to end as they've done."
There was just enough of hurry, of awe, about her voice and manner as she uttered the last words, to let Welton know that she herself had a vivid impression of the fate which had befallen these others the gang looked upon as traitors.
"You're very good," he said, in a tone which he in vain tried to make other than horror-struck and disgusted.
She laughed in a subdued way. "Oh, well, I don't know so much about that," she said. "I just don't care to see you in danger of being knocked on the head by that Box, who's mad because you've cut him out with Miss F."
"Cut him out?" echoed Welton quickly.
She nodded. "Yes. When he came here first, he made up to Miss F. of course, like the rest of them, but he wasn't her style, and so she just got her claws into him in the way she does, but she wasn't taking him on and he had just to fall into line with the rest of us. So naturally, when he sees you getting ahead of him and the rest without any trouble, and Miss F. making the fuss with you she does, he don't like it. So he wouldn't be above showing his feelings in a way I should be sorry to see."
"Do you mean he said he loved her and she snubbed him?"
"That's it exactly. Oh, she's very particular, ugly though she is. And the wonder is how she can get them to work for her, and keep her hold on them, and all without being handsome or
even being able to stand straight. It's uncanny, that it is, and I do believe myself she's more than half a witch."
"Did any of the other secretaries make passionate approaches to her?" asked Welton quickly.
"Rather. For her money, of course. But she sent them all to the right about in that way. They might work for her, but her own share she would keep to herself. You're the first one she's taken a real fancy to, I do believe."
It flashed through Welton's mind that this might be the thing said to each of Miss Ferriby's secretaries in turn with the object of getting their willing service. So he only nodded without being greatly impressed by the implied compliment, such as it was.
"Of course you're too good for her," went on the girl impishly. "But I should advise you to humour her, and if you don't mean to marry her, to pretend you do. But if so, you'd better give up warning people to have nothing to do with her, hadn't you?"
"There's another alternative," said Welton.
"You mean getting away? Well, you won't find it so easy. As for your warnings, they won't do any good. Everybody warns one against fortune-tellers, don't they? But they go to them all the same."
"It's something besides fortune-telling that people ought to be warned against," said Welton.
"Well, you'd better not worry your head about that," said the maid coolly. "And if your conscience is uneasy and you feel you must get away from us, all I can say is you'd better take care how you set about it. But if you think to give us away, you may look upon yourself as what they call a goner."
That was exactly what Welton was feeling himself to be, and he smiled with a sinking heart as he thanked her for her advice. The barefaced audacity with which this little quiet-looking maid gave him this account of the gang's way of doing things, and of the consequences of interfering with them, made him shudder.
She evidently hoped to begin a little flirtation with him in return for her information. "If you want a chat with me any evening," she said confidentially, "you've only to tap at the window where you found me. I generally sit in the next room to the passage -- that's the passage-window, you know -- in the evenings, and I'd hear you if I didn't see you."
By which Welton knew she had now left Lady Mirfield's, presumably because she had found out all she wanted.
"And how many are there of you in there?" asked Welton, with a carelessness which did not deceive the quiet-looking young woman, who uttered a sort of chuckle as she said, "Oh, I mustn't tell you that. I do wish for your own sake you'd be satisfied to know just what comes under your eyes and no more. And now goodnight. And take care of yourself."
She advanced her cheek with so evident an invitation that Welton kissed her, and she uttered a stifled scream and ran away.
But Welton was certain that if she had known the feelings of abhorrence which her cynical indifference to the criminal aspect of her mistress's business inspired in him, she would not have been so well pleased with this attention.
Miss Ferriby's Clients Page 14