by Molly Thynne
“Is nothing known against this man Strelinski?” asked Mellish.
Shand smiled.
“We’re taking a good deal for granted in assuming that it is Strelinski,” he reminded him. “Personally, I’ve a curious conviction that it is, but I’ve nothing to go on but a chance remark of Long Peter’s. As a matter of fact, we were in communication with the Buenos Aires people on another matter some time ago, and I took the opportunity to make a few inquiries. They knew nothing of any one of that name, and though they had more than one person on their books answering to the very vague description we were able to give them, there seemed to be no one who fitted into our little puzzle. I can’t understand this fellow’s being willing to risk his neck rather than face exposure.”
“His neck’s not in much danger at present,” Mellish reminded him. “He’s covered his tracks very neatly so far. What about de Silva? Nothing has transpired in that direction, I suppose?”
“Nothing. He’s apparently leading the ordinary life of a well-to-do man about town who dabbles in little business ventures on the side. He’s running a Beauty Specialist place, the Onyx, and he’s put that man Bond in as manager, but there’s nothing wrong with the show, so far, and, what’s more, he seems to be making it pay. Probably he’s trying to get back his losses on the Terpsychorean.”
“He dropped a lot over that, I imagine?”
“A pretty penny, I should think. He’d barely got it going when the blow fell. Why he was such a fool as to think that he could put that gambling stunt over, I can’t think. He might have known that that sort of thing always gets given away sooner or later, generally by the people who are most nervous of being caught. They can’t keep their tongues still. Now, about Mrs. Verrall.”
It did not take the three men long to complete their plans for her protection, with the result that, soon after half-past ten, an elderly woman, presumably a friend of the landlady’s, was seen to go down the area steps of Mrs. Verrall’s lodgings. Shortly after eleven a taxi drove up to the house and Mellish climbed ponderously out. When the door opened he lingered for some minutes in conversation with the landlady, standing in full view of the street, an unmistakable figure in his heavy, well-cut overcoat. Then he went in and the door closed behind him.
Ten minutes later he came out, carrying a large suitcase and accompanied by a woman, obviously Mrs. Verrall. She wore the dress and hat she had hurried out in the night before, with the addition of a heavy veil and a bulky, if inexpensive, imitation fox fur, which she held closely up to her chin. She and Mellish got into the cab and drove away.
Almost immediately the driver of a taxi that was standing outside a cabman’s eating-house on the other side of the road issued from the shop, having evidently just finished his lunch, mounted his box and drove away in the direction Mellish and his companion had taken.
When Dalberry, ten minutes later, swung round the corner, driving his own car, the street was empty. Mrs. Verrall had been watching for him, and it did not take her a second to dart across the pavement and into the closed motor. She also wore a veil and had with her a small suitcase. She sat well back from the windows and did not uncover her face till the car was clear of London and spinning along the straight country road.
By two o’clock that afternoon she was safely established at one of the Berrydown lodges, and Dalberry was already on his way back to town.
Meanwhile Mellish had deposited his charge and her luggage at a respectable boarding-house near Victoria Station, kept by an ex-sergeant of police. The driver of the taxi that had followed them did not stop, though he slowed down as he passed the house and took a careful note of the number. Mellish looked after him with a twinkle in his eye; he had not missed the man’s sudden diminution of speed, and he knew that a plain-clothes detective at the other end would by now have reported to the Yard and handed in the number of the cab.
He said good-bye to his companion, slipping a note into her hand as he did so, and drove away. Though he kept a sharp look-out he could see no sign of any one watching the house. All the same, he hoped devoutly that the follower would think it worth while to return and ascertain that the lady Mellish had chaperoned so carefully did not leave the premises. If he did decide to do so, Mellish felt quite at ease as to the result, the lady in question having already divested herself of her borrowed garments and settled down in the kitchen to prepare lunch for her boarders, regaling her husband with the story of her adventures the while.
Late that evening he was rung up by Shand.
“Any result?” he asked.
Shand’s voice was grim as he answered.
“We’ve been properly sold,” he said. “We’ve traced the taxi all right. A police constable found it abandoned in a side street in Pimlico at six o’clock this evening. It had been stolen from outside a pub early this morning, and the owner had already reported the loss at the local police station. I can’t blame my man. His instructions were to take the number of the cab and he carried them out, but, since I’ve seen his report, I’ve been kicking myself for not taking better precautions.”
“Did he manage to get a sight of the driver?”
“He did,” answered Shand bitterly. “And he describes him as slight and fair. Looked like a foreigner. He noticed him sitting in the eating-house. It’s our fair friend, right enough, and he’s playing this game single-handed. We could have taken him this morning, and we opened our fingers and let him slip through.”
CHAPTER XVI
For some days Carol had seen nothing of de Silva, and she had begun to feel safe in the conviction that he had definitely ceased his unwelcome attention. Lady Dalberry had crossed the landing to his flat on more than one occasion, but he had not set foot across her threshold—at any rate, when Carol was at home. In consequence the girl was completely taken aback when her aunt opened the attack again at breakfast one morning.
“I want to speak to you about that poor Juan de Silva,” she said. “Don’t you think you have punished him enough?”
Carol stared at her in astonishment. “I thought we’d settled all that,” she said. “It’s ridiculous to talk of my punishing him. I simply don’t want to see him any more. I thought he understood that.”
“He did, and it hurt him terribly. Surely he has suffered enough, Carol. And the whole situation is impossible. Apart from the fact that he is an old and valued friend of mine, this foolish quarrel puts me in a very difficult position. I do not like to have to remind you that this flat is my home as well as yours, and that I have a right to receive my friends in it. Juan de Silva is looking after some of my business interests, and it is necessary that we should see each other. It would make life easier and pleasanter for all of us if you would consent to forget the past and give him the chance he asks to right himself in your eyes. He is very fond of you, my child, and he knows now that he can expect nothing in return.”
“If he’s really as fond of me as you say,” said Carol miserably, “surely it would be better for him not to see me. I’m sorry that I can’t like him, but there it is, Aunt Irma, and I can’t help it. As for his coming to the flat, I told you that, provided he did not come to see me, I had no objection. I’m prepared to be pleasant to him if we do meet, but I can’t see any reason why we should run into each other. After all, you’ve got your rooms and I’ve got mine. We needn’t interfere with each other.”
Lady Dalberry smiled.
“My little Carol,” she said gently. “Do you really think that he would come to the flat at all under those conditions? I have told you that he cares for you and that his pride has been bitterly hurt. I have known him for many years now, and I have never seen him so humiliated. Only a very young and inexperienced girl could imagine that a man of this type would accept the sort of compromise you offer. Be generous, my child, and set his mind at ease.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Carol helplessly.
“Give him a chance to plead with you himself. It is the only thing he asks, to set hims
elf right with you. You will find him quite reasonable. He knows now that you will never return his feeling for you, and I have told him that, attached though I am to him, I should never give my consent to a match between you. You are not suited to each other in temperament, and he is not, and never could be, of your world. All he asks now is your friendship. If you would see him it would be more than generous, it would be merciful.”
Carol felt trapped, but she made one last effort to resist.
“I can’t see what good it would do. Honestly, Aunt Irma, it would be far better to leave things as they are.”
Lady Dalberry sighed.
“I cannot force you, my dear, and, if you feel so strongly about it, I will not try. But I do feel that, in fairness to him, you ought to hear what he has to say.”
“There’s nothing he can say that will make any difference. It isn’t that I bear him any grudge; it’s simply that I don’t want to have any more to do with him. I wish he would understand that.”
“That is hardly a message you can expect me to give him. It would be too cruel. If that is really how you feel, I think that you should tell him so yourself as mercifully as possible.” Carol realized suddenly that there could be but one end to this unprofitable discussion.
“If you make such a point of it, I will see him,” she said. “But it will be a very uncomfortable interview for both of us, and I would much rather have avoided it.”
Lady Dalberry rose and came to Carol’s side. For a moment the girl thought she was going to kiss her, and it dawned on her that her aunt must have felt very strongly indeed on the subject of her break with de Silva. For an emotional woman Lady Dalberry was singularly undemonstrative, and she and Carol had never been on kissing terms. Even now she went no further than to lay her hand on the girl’s shoulder, but there was real feeling in her voice as she answered:
“That is generous of you, Carol. I am sure you will not regret it, and you will find that my poor Juan is not so black as you have been painting him in your imagination. May I tell him that you will see him this evening?”
“Only if you are going to be here yourself,” said Carol, with unusual firmness. “And he must understand, please, that I will never see him when you are out.”
“He knows that already. I have told him that I will not permit you to receive him in my absence. But you must see him alone this once, my dear. I shall be in my own sitting-room next door, so there will be no breach of the proprieties.”
There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice that was not lost on Carol.
“I will see him,” she answered quietly, “but only if you are in the flat.”
“I am not going out at all this evening. About nine o’clock, then, and he can come in to me for a little business talk afterwards.”
All that day the shadow of her coming interview with de Silva hung over the girl. It was ridiculous, she told herself, to feel nervous, and she realized that Lady Dalberry’s covert sneer at what she no doubt considered a troublesome attack of prudery on the girl’s part was not unjustified. All the same, there was an atmosphere about the whole thing that she did not like, and she was angrily conscious that her hand had been forced very skilfully. She waited for him in her little sitting-room that evening with a restlessness that was half irritation, half dread.
He entered with a diffidence that in another man she would have found disarming. He was evidently wretchedly nervous and wholly bent on conciliating her. She noticed that he left the door open behind him.
“It was very kind of you to see me,” he said gently, making no attempt to take her hand. “It is more than I dared to hope for.”
“Aunt Irma said that you wished to see me. I don’t want to be horrid, Mr. de Silva, but honestly I think it is waste of time. It would have been better to have left things as they were.”
She spoke brusquely, partly from sheer embarrassment and partly because she could not control her instinctive dislike of the man.
“I know,” he answered. “You were persuaded against your will, and I am very grateful to you for giving me a chance to justify myself. I will not keep you long now or trouble you in any way in the future.”
He paused, and she waited in silence. There seemed nothing she could say.
“I behaved very badly,” he went on at last. “I see that now, but I ask you to believe that I could not help it. I suppose this is hardly the time to say it, but I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this flat nearly a month ago. I have hoped that perhaps, some day, you might see in me something more than just a casual friend of your aunt’s. I see now that there was no foundation for my hopes, and I have heard, what I did not know until the other day, that you are one of the richest women in England and destined to move in a very different world to a humble person like myself. Your aunt has made me understand this very clearly now, but, believe me, Miss Summers, I did not know it then. In my ignorance I had hoped to ask you one day to be my wife. That is my only excuse for my folly.”
In spite of the stilted, almost theatrical wording of his little speech, it rang true, and at the end it came near to achieving dignity. Much as she disliked him, Carol could not refuse to accept his apology.
“I’m dreadfully sorry,” she said sincerely. “My money hasn’t anything to do with it, of course. It’s just that it seems, somehow, impossible to think of you in that way. Please try to put the idea out of your head altogether. I know I could never care for you in that way.”
“I know,” he said gently. “I see now that I was a fool. I do not know England well, and in my country things are different. With us love is undisciplined; it is swift and passionate. Here marriage is a thing to be considered calmly, with consideration.”
There was a touch of derision in his tone that stung Carol.
“I’m afraid my answer would have been the same, whatever country we had been in, Mr. de Silva,” she said decisively.
He was quick to see that he had struck a false note.
“But you have forgiven me?” he insisted. “That is all that matters now. We are friends?”
He held out his hand as he spoke, and Carol took it reluctantly.
“We are as much friends as we shall ever be,” she said, knowing her words to be ungracious, but unable to control her antipathy to the man.
He bowed over her hand.
“It is more than I deserve,” he answered smoothly, “and I am not ungrateful, believe me. But you were more generous to Lord Dalberry, Miss Summers.”
Carol stiffened.
“I don’t understand, Mr. de Silva.”
“Your English standards are strange to me, but his offence was surely greater than mine, and he was more quickly forgiven.”
“Lord Dalberry …” began Carol hotly, then pulled herself up with an effort. She had been on the point of betraying her knowledge of the plot against Dalberry—a plot engineered, she was now convinced, by the man who had almost trapped her so neatly into an admission. She had a sudden inkling of his true object in forcing this interview, and she blessed the instinct that had warned her just in time.
“Lord Dalberry is an old friend,” she went on coldly. “As you yourself pointed out that night, Mr. de Silva, he was hardly to be blamed for what happened. You made excuses for him, if you remember, and I was sorry afterwards, when I heard his explanation, that I had allowed my temper to get the better of me and refused to listen to them.”
For a moment he was taken aback, then he recovered himself swiftly.
“I am glad he was able to convince you,” he answered. “I did my best. I hope I was right and that your generosity has not been misplaced.”
There was no mistaking the insolence of his manner now. Carol, her temper now well under control, watched him with interest. She was convinced that he was not idly jeopardizing his own cause. He was working with a definite object in view, that of making her angry enough to reveal how much she knew.
“I don’t think there is likely to be any further misunderstanding
between us,” she said quietly. “We have known each other all our lives, you know.”
“If you will forgive me, Miss Summers, those are the people one very often knows least well. I have a feeling that Lord Dalberry must have made an even better case out for himself than I did when I tried to help him.”
He waited, his keen eyes on hers and a derisive smile on his lips, but she did not take up the challenge and he was obliged to continue.
“I should be interested to hear his explanation of how he came to find himself in such a condition in the company of a lady,” he insinuated.
“You must ask him yourself, Mr. de Silva,” she answered. “You were present, and I understand that he was found by the police in a room belonging to you in the club, so that he no doubt feels he owes you an apology.”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“A room belonging to me? I had a part share in the club, unfortunately for me, but my connection with it was purely financial. I had no room there, and I had no idea, until the night of the raid, that Bond was using the club for nefarious purposes. Bond is one of my little problems, Miss Summers. He is a harmless creature in his way, and I cannot make up my mind to abandon him altogether. He would simply drift into the gutter. But the truth is that he cannot run straight. It was not easy to find a position for him where he would be kept out of mischief.”
“From what my aunt tells me, he seems to be running the Onyx very well,” said Carol, only too thankful that the conversation had shifted to a less dangerous topic.