We sat like that while the bell rang and rang. The shrill sound gnawed at my nerves, bounced on the silent walls of the room, crept through the closed french windows and lost itself in the sea.
"What's the idea?" I asked, drawing back slowly. I didn't like the feel of the gun against my face.
"Shut up!" There was a rasp in her voice. "Sit still!"
Finally the bell got tired of ringing and stopped. She stood up.
"Come on, we're getting out of here," and again the automatic threatened me.
"Where are we going?" I asked, not moving.
"Away from telephones. Come on if you don't want to get shot in the leg."
But it wasn't the thought of being shot in the leg that made me go with her; it was my curiosity. I was very, very curious because all of a sudden she was frightened. I could see the fear in her eyes as plainly as I could see the little hollow between her breasts.
As we walked down the steps to a car parked just outside my front gate, the telephone began to ring again.
V
The car was a stream-lined, black Rolls, and its power and pace was tremendous. There was nothing about the car to convey a feeling of speed : no sway, no roll, no sound from the engine. Only the thunder of the wind ripping along the stream-lined roof and the black, blurred smudge of a madly-rushing night told me the needle of the speedometer, flickering on ninety, wasn't fooling.
I sat beside Maureen Crosby in what felt like a low slung armchair and stared at the dazzling pool of light that lay on the road ahead of us and that fled before us like a scared ghost.
She had whipped the car along Orchid Boulevard, blasting a Path for herself through the theatre traffic by the strident, arrogant use of the horn. She overtook cars in the teeth of oncoming traffic, slipping between diminishing gaps and a certain head-on crash by the thickness of her fender paintwork. She stormed up the broad, dark Monte Verde Avenue and on to San Diego Highway. It was when she got on to the six-traffic-lane highway she really began to drive, overtaking everything that moved on the road with a silent rush that must have made the drivers start right out of their skins.
I had no idea where we were going, and when I began to say something, she cut me off with a curt, "Don't talk! I want to think." So I gave myself up to the mad rush into the darkness, admiring the way she handled the car, sinking back into the luxury of the seat, and hoping we wouldn't hit anything.
San Diego Highway makes its way through a flat desert of sand dunes and scrub and comes out suddenly right by the ocean, and then cuts in again to the desert. Instead of keeping to the highway when we reached the sea, she slowed down to a loitering sixty, and swung off the road on to a narrow track that kept us by the sea. The track began to climb steeply, and the sea dropped below us until we breasted the hill and came out on to a cliff head. We were slowing down all the time, and were now crawling along at a bare thirty. After the speed we had been travelling at, we scarcely seemed to be moving. The glaring headlights picked out a notice: Private. Positively No Admittance, at the head of another narrow track lined on either side by tall scrub bushes. She swung the car into it, and the car fitted the track like a hand fits in a glove. We drove around bends and hairpin corners, as far as I could see, getting nowhere. After some minutes she slowed down and stopped before a twelve-foot gate smothered in barbed wire. She tapped her horn button three times: short, sharp blasts that echoed in the still air and was still coming back at us when the gate swung open apparently of its own accord.
"Very, very tricky," I said.
She didn't say anything nor look at me, but drove on, and, looking back, I saw the gate swing to. I wondered suddenly if I was being kidnapped the way Nurse Gurney had been kidnapped. Maybe the whisky I had swallowed was taking a hold, for I really didn't care. I felt it would be nice to have a little sleep. The clock on the dashboard showed two minutes to midnight: my bed-time.
Then suddenly the track began to broaden out into a carriage way, and we slip through another twelve-foot gate, standing open, and again looking back, I saw it swing to behind us as if closed by an invisible hand.
Into the glare of the headlights appeared a chalet-styled wooden house, screened by
flowering shrubs and Tung blossom trees. Lights showed through the windows of the ground floor. An electric lantern shed a bright light on the steps leading to the front door. She pulled up, opened the car door and slid out. I got out more slowly. A terraced garden built into the cliff spread out before me in the moonlight. At the bottom, and it looked a long way down, I could see a big swimming-pool. The sea provided a soft background of sound and glittered in the far distance. The scent of flowers hung in the hot night air in overpowering profusion.
"Is all this yours?" I asked.
She was standing by my side. The top of her sleek dark hair was in line with my shoulder.
"Yes." After a pause, she said, "I'm sorry about the gun, but I had to get you here quickly."
"I would have come without the gun."
"But not before you had answered the telephone. It was very important for you not to answer it."
"Look, I have a headache and I'm tired. I've been kicked in the throat, and although I'm tough, I have still been kicked in the throat. All I ask is for you not to be mysterious. Will you tell me why you have brought me here. Why it was important I shouldn't answer the telephone and what you want with me?"
"Of course. Shall we go in? I'll get you a drink."
We went up the steps. The front door stood open, and we walked into a lobby, through an archway into a big lounge that ran the width of the house. It was everything you would expect a millionairess to have. No money had been spared. The colour scheme was cream and magenta, and the room was showy without being vulgar. Not my idea of a room, but then I run to very simple tastes.
"Let's sit on the verandah," she said. "Will you go through? I'll bring the drinks."
"Are you alone here?"
"Except for a servant. She won't worry us."
I walked out on to the verandah. There was one of those big swing lounging seats about ten
feet long arranged so you could sit and admire the view: as a view it was well worth admiring. I dropped on to a soft leather cushion and stared at the distant sea. All the time I had been in the car I had been wondering what she wanted with me. I still wondered.
She came out after a few minutes, pushing a trolley on which were bottles, glasses and an ice-pail. She sat down at one end of the seat. There was about eight feet of leather and space between us.
"Whisky?"
"Thank you."
I watched her pour the whisky. Dark blue lights in the verandah roof made enough light for me to see her, but not enough to try the eyes. I thought she was about the loveliest lovely I had ever seen. Even her movements were a pleasure to watch.
We were both careful not to say anything while she poured the drinks. She offered me a cigarette, and I took it. I lit hers, and then mine.
We were now ready to begin, but she still seemed reluctant to say anything, and I wasn't chancing a wrong remark that might put her off. We stared at the garden, the sea and the moon while the hands of my wrist-watch moved on.
She said suddenly, "I'm sorry about the way I—I acted. I mean offering you money to leave me alone. I know it was the wrong approach, but I didn't want to give anything away until I had had a chance to find out what kind of man you are. The fact is I want your help. I'm in a mess, and I don't know how to get out of it. I've been an awful fool, and I'm scared. I'm scared out of my wits."
She didn't look scared, but I didn't tell her so.
"I wish I knew for certain if he knows of this place," she went on, as if talking to herself. "If he does he's certain to come here."
"Suppose we take this nice and slow?" I said mildly. "We have all the time in the world. Why was it important I shouldn't answer the telephone? Let's start with that one."
"Because he would know where you were, and he's looking for you," she sa
id, as if she
were talking to a dim-witted child.
"You haven't told me who he is. Is it Sherrill?"
"Of course," she said shortly.
"Why is he looking for me?"
"He doesn't want trouble, and you're making trouble. He's determined to get rid of you. I heard him tell Francini to do it."
"Is Francini a little Wop with pock-marks on his face?"
"Yes."
"And he works for Sherrill?"
"Yes."
"So it was Sherrill who engineered Stevens' kidnapping?"
"Yes. That settled it for me. When I heard the poor old man had died I came straight to you."
"Does Sherrill know you have this place?"
She shook her head.
"I don't think so. I've never talked about it, and he hasn't ever been here. But he might know. There's very little he doesn't know."
"All right, now we have got that ironed out, suppose we begin at the beginning?"
"I want to ask you something first," she said. "Why did you come to Crestways, asking for me? Why did you go and talk to Dr. Bewley? Has anyone hired you to find out what I have been doing?"
"Yes," I said.
"Who?"
"Your sister, Janet," I told her.
If I had hit her across the face she wouldn't have reacted more violently. She reared back in the seat as if she had trodden on a snake, making the swing rock violently.
"Janet?" The word came out in a horrified whisper. "But Janet's dead. What do you mean? How can you say such a thing!"
I took out my wallet, found Janet's letter and held it out to her.
"Read this."
"What is it?" she asked, and seemed afraid to look at it.
"Read it, and look at the date. It was mislaid for fourteen months. I only read it myself for the first time a day or so ago."
She took the letter. Her face stiffened and the pupils of her eyes contracted at the sight of the handwriting. After she had read it she sat still for several minutes, staring at it. I didn't hurry her. Fear, real and undisguised, was plain to see on her face.
"And this—this started you making inquiries?" she asked at last.
"Your sister sent me five hundred dollars. I felt bound to earn it. I came out to Crestways to see you and talk it over. If you had been there and had explained the letter I should have returned the money and dropped the inquiry. But you weren't there. Then all kinds of things started to happen, so I continued the investigation."
"I see."
I waited for her to say something else, hut she didn't. She sat still, staring at the letter; her face white and her eyes hard.
"Were you being blackmailed?" I asked.
"No. I don't know why she wrote to you. I suppose she was trying to make trouble. She was always trying to make trouble for me. She hated me."
"Why did she hate you?"
She stared down at the garden for a long time without saying anything. I drank some of the whisky and smoked. If she was going to tell me she would in her own time. She wasn't the type to be rushed.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "If I tell you why she hated me I'll be putting myself entirely at your mercy. You could ruin me."
I didn't have anything to say to that. "But if I don't tell you," she went on, clenching her fists, "I don't know how I'm going to get out of this mess. I must have someone I can trust."
"Haven't you a lawyer?" I said, for something to say.
"He would be worse than useless. He's my trustee. By the terms of my father's will if I get involved in a scandal I lose everything. And I'm up to my ears in what would be a horrific scandal if it got out."
"You mean with Sherrill?" I said. "Did you finance the Dream Ship?"
She stiffened, turned, stared at me. "You know that?"
"I don't know it. I'm making a guess. If it got out you were behind the Dream Ship it would make a scandal."
"Yes." She suddenly moved along the seat so she was close to me. "Janet was in love with Douglas. I was crazy about him, too. I stole him from her. She tried to shoot me, but father saved me. He was shot instead of me," she blurted out and hid her face in her hands.
I sat as still as a stone man, waiting. I wasn't expecting this, and I was startled.
"It was hushed up," she went on after a long pause. "Never mind how. But it preyed on Janet's mind. She— she poisoned herself. That was hushed up, too. We were afraid it would come out why she killed herself. It was easy enough to hush up. The doctor was old. He thought it was heart failure. Then, when I came into the money, and there was a lot of it, Douglas showed himself for what he is. He said unless I gave him the money to buy Dream Ship he would circulate the story that I had stolen him from Janet and she had tried to kill me, but killed father, and had poisoned herself: all because of me. You can imagine what the papers would have made of that, and I should have lost everything. So I gave him the money for his beastly ship, but that didn't satisfy him. He keeps coming to me for more money, and he watches every move I make. He found out you had started to make inquiries. He was afraid you would uncover the story, and, of course, if you did, he would lose his hold on me. He did everything he could to stop you. When he heard Stevens was meeting you, he kidnapped him. And now he's going to wipe you out. I don't know what to do! I've got to go somewhere and hide. I want you to help me. Will you help me? Will you?" She was clutching my hands now. "Will you promise you won't give me away? I'll do anything for you in return. I mean it! Will you help me?"
There was a slight sound behind us, and we both turned. A tall, powerfully-built man with dark curly hair, dressed in a scarlet sleeveless sweat-shirt and dark blue slacks stood just behind us. He held a .38 automatic in his hand and it pointed directly at me. There was a cheerful, patronizing smile on his tanned face as if he was enjoying a private joke that was a little too deep for the average intelligence.
"She tells a pretty tale, doesn't she?" he said in one of those ultra-masculine voices. "So she wants to run away and hide? Well, so she shall. She'll be hidden all right, where no one will ever find her, and that goes for you, too, my inquisitive friend."
I was calculating the distance between us, wondering if I could get up and reach him before he fired, when I heard the all too familiar swish of a descending cosh and the inside of my head seemed to explode.
The last sound I heard was Maureen's wild, terrified scream.
Chapter IV
I
The room was big and airy, and the walls and ceiling were a dead Chinese white. Cold, white plastic curtains were drawn across the windows, and a shaded lamp made a pool of light over the opposite bed.
There was a man sitting up in the bed. He was reading. His small-boned face with its high, wide forehead gave the impression of a young student reading for an examination.
I watched him through half-closed eyes for some minutes, wondering in a vague, detached sort of way who he was and what he was doing in this room with me. There was something odd about the book he was reading. It was a big volume, and the print was close set and small. It was only when he turned a page and I saw a chapter heading that I realized he was holding the book upside down.
I wasn't surprised to find myself in this room. I had a vague idea I had been in it for some time: perhaps days, perhaps weeks. The feel of the narrow high bed I was lying in was familiar: almost as familiar as the feel of my own bed in my beach cabin which now seemed as remote as last year's snow.
I knew in an instinctive kind of way—I was quite sure I hadn't been told—that I was in hospital, and I tried to remember if I had been knocked down by a car, but my mind was working badly. It refused to concentrate, and kept jumping across the room to the man in the opposite bed. Its only interest was to find out why he was holding his book the wrong way up, for it seemed to me the book looked dry and complicated enough without adding to the difficulty of reading it.
The man in the bed was young; not more than twenty-four or so, and his thick fair hair was
over long and silky-looking. He had very deep-set eyes, and the lamp cast shadows in them so they seemed to be two dark holes in his face.
I suddenly became aware that he was also watching me, although he pretended to be reading; watching furtively from under his eyelids; watching as he turned a page slowly with a concentrated frown on his face.
"You'll find it easier if you turn the book the right way up," I said, and was surprised how far away my voice sounded, as if I were speaking in another room.
He glanced up and smiled. He was a nice-looking youngster : a typical collegian, more at home with a baseball bat than a book.
Lay Her Among The Lilies Page 13