Missing From Home

by Mary Burchell

  “If my sister does come, will you tell her to telephone home without fail? Tell her—it’s all right. Nothing matters but that she should phone home.”

  “All right.” The man looked at her curiously. Then he added, “I wonder just what you’re up to. You’re a funny kid, I must say!”

  Marilyn grinned feebly at him as she turned away. But she didn’t feel a funny kid at all. She felt about seventy-five and quite unfunny.

  CHAPTER VII

  ALL the way to the Gloria Hotel, Marilyn was trying to decide how she was going to tell her story to her father. At first she even flattered herself that she might get away with only a partial confession. But irresistibly the conviction grew upon her that the moment had come to make a clean breast of things. Pat had genuinely disappeared, and all help must be mobilised.

  “He’ll be terribly mad with us both, of course,” she reflected resignedly, as she entered the great foyer of the Gloria. “But if he thinks Pat is in real danger he’ll probably put that before every other consideration.”

  Even so, she was trembling slightly and her voice was nervously sharp and uneven as she enquired at the desk for Mr. Collamore.

  The desk clerk peered at a row of pigeonholes, clinked a key in one of them and replied, “He’s out.”

  “Out?” Somehow, Marilyn had not thought of that possibility. She needed him so badly that it seemed to her he surely must be there. “You—you don’t know when he might return?”

  “No. I’m sorry. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “No, thank you.” She shook her head. No message was going to put him in the picture. Only a long, painful talk, involving a full confession, would suffice now.

  As she turned away, lost in dismay and confusion, a good-looking, well-dressed woman came up to her and said with a smile,

  “I heard you asking for Greg Collamore. You must be his daughter. I don’t think he’ll be long. Why don’t you come and sit over here with me and wait for him?”

  The self-reliant Marilyn was usually quick in her reactions and seldom did she need anyone to tell her what to do. But at this moment she felt stunned and bewildered. She was almost glad to have some course of action—any course of action—suggested to her, and wordlessly she did what she was told. Then, even before she could collect herself sufficiently to ask who the stranger was, the woman said, pleasantly enough, “I know your father very well.” A sort of nervous awareness of danger suddenly prickled all over Marilyn. “My name is Mrs. Curtiss—Linda Curtiss. I met your sister when she was in Munich, and I feel sure you are Marilyn.”

  “Yes,” Marilyn spoke warily, “I am. Pat told me about you. What makes you think my father will be back soon?”

  “He told me he wouldn’t be long.” Mrs. Curtiss spoke with an air of having an intimate knowledge of his movements. “I’m staying at the Gloria too, you know. We see a good deal of each other.”

  Marilyn, who had a certain talent for saying nothing rather offensively, said nothing at that moment and just stared thoughtfully at the other woman.

  Then, after a few moments, she said, “Oh?” And it was quite remarkable how much scepticism, scorn and private amusement she managed to express in that one syllable.

  Linda Curtiss, who prided herself on her ability to handle people and situations, actually flushed, and her genuinely beautiful violet eyes narrowed slightly. In her turn she allowed a slight silence to supervene. Then she said drily,

  “Although you’re the younger, I should think you’re the ringleader in any mischief you two get into, aren’t you?”

  “We’re a little past the ‘mischief’ stage,” replied Marilyn coolly. “But we’re both pretty determined about what we want and how we’re going to get it.”

  “And sometimes what you want is to make trouble?” suggested Mrs. Curtiss, taking out a slender but handsome gold cigarette case. “Do you smoke?”

  “No, thank you. And I don’t think my mother would describe either of us as trouble-makers.”

  “But then she might be something of a troublemaker herself, I suppose? And if you were all in it together, you’d naturally back each other up.”

  “What on earth do you mean by that?” Marilyn was stung into sharp anger.

  “Oh, really, my dear!” Linda Curtiss laughed slightly as she selected a cigarette from her case and lit it. “Do you suppose I haven’t guessed what you two and your mother are up to? Some sort of clumsy plot to try to lure poor Greg back home. This absurd business about your sister disappearing! It couldn’t be more obvious to another woman. Only a man would be taken in by it. You all banked on Greg’s natural good nature, I suppose, and that vague sense of parental guilt which he has. You thought you’d frighten him back into the family fold by the disappearance of Pat, and then your mother could get her hooks on him again. Too silly and naive!”

  “How dare you use such an expression of Mother! And she had nothing whatever to do with it.”

  “To do with what?” came the quick response, and Marilyn caught her breath. But she recovered immediately and said coldly,

  “There was no sort of plot, as you put it. You’re just trying to make mischief!”

  “No, my dear. I’m simply an amused spectator. I told your father from the beginning that this business of your sister’s disappearance was a put-up job.”

  “My sister is really missing,” said Marilyn stonily, unhappily aware that this was now nothing less than the truth.

  Mrs. Curtiss smiled with infuriating disbelief.

  “And now your mother has sent you to stir up Greg’s anxieties afresh?” she suggested. “It’s really very clumsy, you know. I shall tell him so. It’s too bad that he should be victimised by you three.”

  “My mother has not sent me here. I came of my own accord.”

  “For what purpose?” the older woman shrugged. Marilyn opened her lips to say with angry desperation that she had come for her father’s help because Pat really had disappeared. But then, with gathering dismay, she saw that the story she had come to tell would merely provide fresh ammunition for this clever, ill-wishing woman. With a sceptical laugh, she would describe the frightening development as just a fresh move in a clumsy game—and she would make Marilyn’s father see it that way too. With her clever gift for insinuation, Mrs. Curtiss would have little difficulty in extending the real guilt of the two girls to embrace their entirely innocent mother too.

  “I would be handing her the victory on a silver plate!” thought Marilyn in a terrified flash of comprehension. And, with a speed and skill born of sheer desperation, she retreated from the position which had so suddenly become a trap.

  “What I do, or why I do it, is no business of yours,” she said drily, getting to her feet. “I didn’t really mean to be offensive until you started it. But you may as well know that Pat told me about the way you chased poor old Dad, and she was a good deal amused to see him taking evasive action. But frankly, I’d only find it a bore. After all, it is rather old hat, isn’t it? So I won’t wait any longer. I’ll talk to him on my own some time later. Good hunting! But not, I think, in our family field.”

  And with her head high, Marilyn marched out of the lounge and out of the Gloria Hotel.

  Her mood of angry elation lasted until she found herself on the pavement. But then a perfect wave of frustration and misery engulfed her. She might have won a verbal battle with Linda Curtiss. But so far as practical help for Pat was concerned, she was as far from her goal as ever. It looked as though she would have to tell her mother, after all, and heap fresh anxieties upon her. For there was no one else with whom she could even discuss the position. Unless—Suddenly a faint gleam of hope showed on the horizon and, with a warmth of feeling amounting almost to affection in that moment, she recalled the existence of Jerry Penrose. He knew all about the real situation and would require only the minimum of explanation. Also he had Pat’s interests very much at heart. And, most blessed thought of all, he was both resourceful and sensible.

/>   She must find him immediately, Marilyn decided. And, by standing quite still on the pavement—to the annoyance of an old gentleman just behind her—and concentrating fiercely, she remembered the name of the firm for which he worked.

  “Morgan & Petersfield!” she exclaimed aloud in her relief. And, rushing to the nearest telephone booth, she riffled through the pages of the directory until she found the address.

  Then, since it was already perilously near what might well be his lunchtime, she allowed herself a taxi to the City, found her way to the top of the big block of offices which her mother had described, and presented herself at the same enquiry desk before which Clare had trembled in almost equal agitation only a few days before.

  “I want to see Mr. Jeremy Penrose, please,” she exclaimed breathlessly. But, before the girl at the desk could even reply, the swing doors into the main office opened, and out came Jeremy Penrose.

  He stopped dead and said, “Hello! What are you doing here?”

  “Jerry!” She greeted him with the warmth and fervour of a long-lost and dearly-loved relation. “I’m so glad to see you. I had to come. Pat’s disappeared!”

  “Well, I know.” He looked slightly wary, as one who had gone through this curious experience before. “What’s new about that?”

  “But she’s really disappeared this time. Don’t you see? It’s not pretence any longer. It’s the real thing. I haven’t the faintest idea where she is, and something’s terribly wrong.”

  The reality of the crisis was so unspeakably plain to her that she could hardly forgive him for the way he hesitated and the sceptical glance with which he surveyed her.

  “Look, Marilyn—” he began. But then he stopped. Because, without much effort this time, she had made her eyes fill with tears, and she was looking at him as though he were her last hope. Which indeed, in a sense, he was.

  “All right,” he said curtly. “You’d better come with me and have some lunch.” And he grimly ushered Marilyn towards the lift once more, hoping that the interested blonde at the enquiry desk would not have the story half-way round the office by the time he returned.

  “I’m sorry t-to be such a nuisance,” stammered Marilyn humbly in the lift. “But I couldn’t get Dad to myself. That Curtiss woman was floating around making mischief. And I just can’t bear to unload all this fresh anxiety on to Mother alone. She’s had about all she can stand. It—it was like a light in the darkness when I remembered you.”

  Few young men are proof against the flattering thought of being a light in the darkness to an attractive girl, and Jerry Penrose softened visibly.

  “So long as you’re not just playing everyone up again,” he said, but more kindly.

  “No, I’m not! It’s all the truth this time, I promise you. Something quite unforeseen has happened, and I’m frightened.”

  “Very well. You shall tell me all about it, and I’ll see what can be done,” he told her, in a marvellously reassuring tone. “We’ll go in here. It’s near and will save time.”

  In the crowded, rather steamy help-yourself just opposite his office block they were lucky enough to find a small table to themselves. And here, over a meal for which she had little appetite, Marilyn rapidly outlined the story of the last twenty-four hours.

  He listened in almost complete silence to the end. And then, with considerable authority, he said, “My dear girl, there’s only one possible course. You simply must tell both your parents everything, and get the police on to the business of finding Pat. We’ve all played the fool quite long enough.”

  In some obscure way, she was faintly comforted by his use of “we” instead of “you”. But she was still so much under the influence of her conversation with Mrs. Curtiss that she exclaimed anxiously,

  “If that woman has half a chance to give him her interpretation of things, Dad will be bound to suspect that Mother too was in the original plot.”

  “Not if you make your confession to both your parents at the same time. Your father will see perfectly well from your mother’s reactions that she didn’t know a thing about it.”

  “Ye-es, that’s true.” Marilyn blanched slightly at the thought of taking on both her mother’s reproaches and her father’s anger at one and the same time. But her fears for Pat were now so acute that she was prepared to face almost any ordeal. “H-how can I make sure of getting them together, though?”

  “I think I’d better phone your father first.” Jerry seemed to have taken command quite naturally. “He should be back at the Gloria by now. I’ll tell him I have news about Pat for him and Mrs. Collamore, and that you and I would like to tell them together. Can he arrange to be at the flat in half an hour’s time? Then I’ll just check that your mother is there.”

  “D-did you say—you were coming too?” Marilyn’s lips were suddenly trembling.

  “Yes, of course. You’d find it tough on your own, wouldn’t you?”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “And it will sound more convincing if I take part in the story too,” he added.

  “Thank you.” Marilyn’s voice was husky. “You needn’t tell them the bit about your finding out the truth early on and not telling them. They might blame you for that.”

  “They probably will,” he agreed drily. “And quite right too. But we’re telling them the whole thing this time, Mari. And if a bit of the blame is transferred from you to me I guess I can take that all right.”

  “You’re—you’re rather a dear, really.” Marilyn gulped slightly. “I’ll be sure to—to tell Pat, when we find her.”

  Then the poignancy of that last phrase struck on her heart and she bent her head to hide her tears.

  “All right—don’t cry about it,” he said, a trifle roughly. “I’ll go and phone now. You sit there and get your courage up. And you might start thinking out some telling phrases for when we have to put the story as well as we can.”

  He went away to the callbox at the back of the restaurant, and Marilyn, anxious and forlorn though she still felt—and dreading the scene which was to come—somehow gathered a certain degree of comfort from the sheer fact that Jerry Penrose felt he knew her well enough to be almost rude to her.

  Apparently he had better luck than she had had over the matter of getting the right people together. He was back again in a short time, with the information that both Marilyn’s parents would be waiting for them at the flat in half an hour.

  “Were they scared when you said it was about Pat and that we wanted to see them together?” Marilyn enquired.

  “He was. He thought it was bad news and that I felt your mother would need his support when it was given.”

  “You reassured him, I hope?”

  “Partially.” Jerry Penrose’s usually kind eyes looked rather hard.

  “Why only partially?” Marilyn was suddenly indignant on her father’s behalf.

  “He was the one who walked out on his responsibilities, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, but it wasn’t as simple as that!” Marilyn was nearly as shocked as her mother would have been. “Mother says—”

  “All right. Come along. At least I was much more careful with her. I told her simply that there was an interesting development and I’d like to come along and tell her about it. I didn’t even mention that your father would be coming. I didn’t want to frighten her.”

  “It doesn’t seem quite fair,” began Marilyn.

  “We won’t start handing out the bouquets and the brickbats yet,” he interrupted. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, of course! We’d better take a taxi, hadn’t we?”

  “No. We’re taking a bus.”

  “The taxi’s on me, if you’re hard up,” Marilyn assured him. “You’re doing this for my family, after all.”

  “I’m not hard up,” Jerry Penrose said. “At least, no more so than usual. But we don’t want to arrive too early. It’s vital that your father should get there first and realise that we couldn’t possibly have had a useful chat with your mother bef
ore he came.”

  “That’s true.” Marilyn shot him an admiring glance, and followed him meekly to the bus stop.

  But both her patience and her nerves were sorely tried on that long bus ride. When she thought of the ordeal in front of her she would have liked the journey to last for ever. But when she thought of the terrifying mystery of Pat’s genuine disappearance she was wild with impatience to set some sort of enquiry in motion.

  “How can we tell if Dad’s arrived or not?” she asked timidly as they approached the familiar block.

  “He’ll be there,” replied Jerry, with the cool confidence of one whose arrangements usually worked. Then he added a trifle ruthlessly, “I frightened him just enough for that. Which was the idea.”

  As they went up in the lift together he took her hand unselfconsciously and gave it an encouraging squeeze.

  “In half an hour the worst will be over,” he reminded her, and she managed to respond with a faint smile.

  It was her father who opened the door before she could even put her key in the lock, thus settling any doubt about his being there first. He looked drawn and somehow older than Marilyn had ever supposed him to be, and he said in a rapid undertone to Jerry Penrose.

  “If it’s really bad news, tell her gently. She’s had about all she can stand.”

  “It’s not what you mean by really bad news,” Jerry replied categorically. “It’s puzzling and requires a good deal of explanation first. Then we’ll have to do some hard thinking about action instead of just waiting for something to happen.”

  Gregory Collamore looked faintly reassured, though puzzled too at the authoritative way this young man seemed to have taken over the direction of events. And Marilyn noticed that, when they all went into the sitting-room together, her father sat down on the settee beside her mother, as though he had been there before their arrival and still felt she might need the support of his presence.