Kay lit the candle and looked at her clock. It was half past five. She was supposed to get up at six. Mrs Green couldn’t be very angry if she were to go and let the kitten out now—she couldn’t really. She could bring it in here and cuddle it for half an hour before it was time to get up.
She got out of bed, put on her shoes and the old red dressing-gown which she had had since she was sixteen and which was much too short for her, and went through into the scullery carrying her candle. The kitchen smelled of mice, and the scullery, of mice and cabbage-water and the fish which Miss Rowland had had for breakfast the day before. Mrs Green hated open windows so much that smells had no chance of escaping from the basement. They lingered till they died, and sometimes they took a very long time to die.
Kay opened the door in the oven-shaped bulge which covered the cellar stair. The smell that came up out of the mouldy dark made the smell of the scullery seem quite homely and comfortable. The cellar smelled like something forgotten time out of mind. It was a most dreadfully discouraging sort of smell, and Kay hated it very much. She held her candle up and called in a small anxious voice, “Kitty—Kitty—” There was no answer and no sound.
Kay leaned down over the stair and cried a little louder, “Kitty—Kitty—Kitty!”
The silence and the old, forgotten smell rose up out of the dark. There was no other answer.
Then she caught her nightgown and the red dressing-gown tightly about her and went down four steps without letting herself stop to think. She called again, and when again there was no answer, she went right on down to the bottom of the stair and stood there holding up her candle. It was like going down into a well. It wasn’t exactly cold, but it was still.
She looked about her. The cellar was very large. It must run right under the kitchen. There were doors opening from it. The place which the steps ran down into was like a wide stone-paved hall. There were doors all along one side of it. If she turned so as to face the front of the house, the doors were on her right. On the other side there was a white-washed wall running up to the roof, and at the foot of the wall was the straw which Mrs Green had spoken about. It was piled in a heap, and consisted partly of the straw covers in which bottles are packed, and partly of the loose straw which had doubtless been stuffed between them. There was certainly plenty of bedding for one small kitten.
Kay was getting used to the feel of the cellar. She went over to the straw and stirred it with her foot, calling to the kitten, but there was no answering rustle, no little sleepy waking mew. She went along the line of doors and tried them. Only one was locked. The others showed empty cellars with brick walls and stone floors—all except the one nearest the back of the house, which contained some empty packing-cases and some more straw, but no kitten.
Kay was beginning to feel most dreadfully worried about the kitten. Suppose the rats had killed it. She hadn’t seen any rats, but they might have dragged the kitten down into a hole. There were several holes in the brick. In the cellar where the packing-cases were there was a horrid-looking one on the floor level just where the party wall of the cellar met what she thought must be the side wall of the house. She called “Kitty—Kitty—Kitty!” and tried not to think about a rat coming out of the hole and running up her bare leg. She found herself away from the hole and over by the door without quite knowing how she had got there. It mightn’t be a rat-hole, but it did look most dreadfully like one.
And then she heard a sound which terrified her. It wasn’t exactly a groan—or was it?
She had reached the stair and climbed half the steps before she stopped to think, and by that time she no longer knew what she had heard. There had been something, and it had frightened her very much, but she didn’t know what it was.
And with that, the kitten came running out of the darkness of the last cellar. It came to her mewing, just as it had come to her in the Square the night before. She went down the steps to meet it, and as soon as she lifted it, it ran up her arm and on to her shoulder, purring loudly.
She ran back to her room and shut the door. As she turned from setting down the candle, the kitten sprang on to her pillow. Kay put out her hand to stroke it and stopped short. She stopped because she caught sight of her fingers in the candle-light, and they were smeared with blood. The kitten purred. It didn’t seem to be hurt. She picked it up, and found a wet smear of blood upon its shoulder. But there wasn’t any cut from which the blood could have come. Search as she would, there wasn’t any cut. She washed her own hand, but there was no cut there either.
When she had cleaned the kitten’s fur, she got into bed and snuggled down with it.
“Did you kill a rat, Kitty? I don’t believe you could. You’re too small. Yes, I know your teeth are like needles. No, little wicked thing—you’re not to bite me! Did you bite a rat and run away? I believe you did. But supposing it had run after us, what would you have done? I know what I should have done—I should have run away. I’m not a bit brave about rats, Kitty. Are you?”
The kitten stopped biting and became a warm purring ball just under Kay’s chin. She found it very comforting. It was a pity when it was time to get up.
Mrs Palmer also dreamed that night. She lay awake through all the first part of the night, not fidgeting as most people do when they cannot sleep, but lying stiff and straight with her head on the one low hard pillow which was all she allowed herself. She heard all the hours strike until four, and then she fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed.
She must have been thinking about the verse upon which her finger had lighted when she opened the Bible at random after sending Miles Clayton away, because in her dream she saw Flossie riding on a camel across an open sandy waste. The camel and the sand came straight out of the picture-book of Bible scenes which her grandmother used to show her when she was a little girl, but there were additions which were due to her own disturbed imagination. There was Flossie, who sat cross-legged on the top of the camel’s hump in the pink dress which was a deal too bright for a Christian young woman. And there was the needle’s eye sticking up out of the sand, for all the world like a needle sticking up out of bran when you empty a pin-cushion, only the eye of this needle was as large as the Marble Arch, and the sinful thought came into Mrs Palmer’s mind that there was something wrong about the text, because the camel and Flossie would go through the eye of that needle as easily as a thread of silk through a horseshoe.
And while she was thinking this, a voice said, “Look at the text,” and there, out in the middle of the desert, was her polished table with the big Bible lying on it which ought by rights to be in the parlour standing against the wall next the door. And in her dream she put her hand between the leaves of the Bible and opened it. Then the voice said, “Read,” and she looked where her finger was pointing and read aloud. But it wasn’t the verse she had read before. It wasn’t the verse about the camel and the eye of the needle, and the rich who cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. It was another verse altogether, and it made her heart quake within her. She read it because she had to read it, and her heart quaked so much that she woke up. And as she woke, she heard her own voice repeating the verse aloud:
“Lying lips are an abomination unto the Lord.”
CHAPTER XXII
Miles lunched with the Gilmores next day. He really thought he had better tell Freddy about Flossie Palmer being mixed up in the Macintyre case. The present situation was an uncomfortable one, and he thought he had better put it straight with Freddy.
Flossie didn’t appear at lunch, which was rather a relief. The other girl, Gladys, waited on them. Lila treated him as if he were the friend of a lifetime. She wore a very simple, very expensive garment of honey-coloured wool which buttoned all the way down the front with the largest buttons Miles had even seen in his life. She had a new shade of lipstick, and was worried because her nail-polish did not match it exactly.
“And that devil of a girl at Roselle’s told me it would! Isn’t it too devastating? And Freddy’s no help at all!
Miles darling, what am I to do?”
“Wash one of them off,” said Freddy.
“Freddy! How too utterly vandal! Do you know how long my nails take to do?”
“I ought to. Why not give the lipstick a miss?”
“Darling, how can I? I should feel too utterly nude! Besides—Miles, do you know, I’ve got the most enthralling scheme—at least it isn’t mine really, but I’m in it, only Freddy is being too recalcitrant. Fitz wants me to go into a dress business with him. Really the most wonderful plan! There will be just a plate-glass window, and a heavy gold curtain, and a really comfy chair. I’ve told him I simply won’t play at all unless the chair is really comfy. I mean, Miles darling, I’ve got to sit in it all day—haven’t I?”
“Have you?” said Miles.
“But, darling, of course—in the dresses that Fitz is going to design for me—a morning one in the morning, and so on. And sometimes I’ll just walk across the floor and turn round. Fitz says I shall draw crowds. And he’s designed the most marvellous bathing-dress for me to show, only Freddy says I’m not to.”
Freddy smiled his agreeable smile.
“I should hate you to catch cold, darling.”
“But Fitz says it would be the most marvellous draw.”
“Lila,” said Freddy gravely, “are you fond of Fitz?”
Lila’s eyebrows rose.
“Darling, I adore him. You know I do.”
“Then I suppose you don’t want him to have a black eye?”
“Freddy!”
“Or a thick ear?”
“Darling!”
“Or a split lip?”
“My sweet!”
“Well, personally, I think they’d improve his appearance quite a lot. And what’s more, he’ll get them if he doesn’t look out, and then, darling, I shall be had up for assault, and all the evening papers will have headlines like ‘Husband’s Vengeance. Society Beauty in the Box,’ and all that sort of thing.”
“How marvellous!” She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin upon her hands. The lipstick certainly did not match the finger-nails. Freddy told her so.
“My sweet, I know—too devastating! I shall have to do my face again—it doesn’t take quite as long as my hands. Besides, I really do think this nail stuff is rather alluring, and it’s such a perfectly foul day, I must have something to cheer me up. Freddy, I think we must have the rest of the lights on. It’s getting darker every minute.”
Gladys was out of the room. Freddy got up and turned on the light in the four cut crystal globes which studded the black ceiling.
“Of course, if you will have a black room—”
“But, my sweet, it’s so becoming.”
“To you and Miles perhaps—but what about me? Hallo, who’s been shedding beads?” He stooped and picked up a small object which the sudden illumination had discovered. It lay against the wall under the glass slab which did duty for a serving-table, and which, he always declared, reminded him of a block of ice from the fishmonger’s. He did not really consider that a black room furnished with blocks of ice was a comfortable place in which to eat your meals.
He laid what he had found upon the table in front of Lila. It was a bead of about the size of a large pea, of a dark grey colour with an iridescent bloom upon it. Against the semi-transparency of the glass it looked black.
He said, “Yours?” and went back to his place.
Lila picked up the bead.
“Oh no, I—Freddy, where did this come from?”
“I picked it up off the floor over there.”
“But darling, how extraordinary!” She turned it between finger and thumb, feeling it, looking at it. “Freddy, where could it have come from?”
Gladys had come into the room and was handing the sweet. She said in a low voice,
“Oh, madam, it’s Flossie’s.”
Lila looked at her, the bead in her hand. Her eyes were wide. She looked like a startled child.
“This isn’t Flossie’s.”
“Yes, madam. She broke her beads coming in last night. She told me she hadn’t been able to find them all.”
Lila had turned quite pale. She looked past the dish which Gladys was holding and said,
“It can’t be Flossie’s! What nonsense! It’s a pearl.”
Gladys went on holding the dish.
“It’s a pearl bead, madam. Flossie broke the string last night coming in.”
“Lila,” said Freddy—“suppose you help yourself. I don’t see why Miles and I should have cold pancakes.”
Lila waved the pancakes away. She stared at the bead. Once she looked up as if she were going to speak, met Freddy’s eyes, and stopped. When Gladys had left the room, she burst out.
“Freddy, it’s a black pearl!”
Freddy was squeezing lemon over the quarter of an inch of sugar with which he had encrusted his pancake.
“Darling, you’ve got pearls on the brain. If you’re not careful you’ll be thinking you’re an oyster, and then where shall we be?”
“But, Freddy, it is a pearl! It is really! It can’t be Flossie’s—it simply can’t!” She put it to her lips and touched it with her tongue. “I knew directly I saw it. But that’s the proof—it’s rough. Pearl beads are smooth, but real pearls are rough if you try them with your tongue. It’s a black pearl. How can Flossie have a string of black pearls?”
Miles had been thinking so hard that it had not occurred to him to speak, but he spoke now. He said,
“If she’s Miss Macintyre, she might have her mother’s pearls.”
“What?” said Freddy Gilmore.
Lila’s blue eyes rolled helplessly.
Miles beamed upon them both.
“Well, it’s this way. Flossie is the adopted child of a woman called Flo Palmer in whose sister’s house the Macintyre baby was born. I’d met Flossie before she came here. I was going to tell you all about it after lunch.”
“You’re not pulling our legs?”
“No, I’m not. It’s a fact. But that’s as far as I’ve got. I don’t know that Flo Palmer adopted the Macintyre baby. In fact there’s every reason to suppose that she didn’t—or, let us say, there’s no reason to suppose that she did. I hadn’t got farther than a suspicion, but if Flossie has got a string of black pearls, it’s going to have a very stimulating effect on that suspicion.”
Freddy finished his pancake.
“It can’t be a pearl,” he said. “It’s sheer blithering nonsense. Let’s go upstairs and interview Flossie, who will, (a), tell us she got the beads at Woolworth’s; (b), burst into tears; (c), give notice; and (d), bring an action for defamation of character. But it’s all right as long as you’re happy, darling. Come along!”
Flossie, who had not changed, was entrancingly pretty in a blue print dress, a white apron, and a little white cap. When Miles showed her the bead and asked her if it was hers, she looked first pleased and then puzzled, because what were they all looking at her like that for, and why didn’t Mr Miles give her the bead and have done with it? If it had been anyone but Mr Miles, she’d have been uncomfortable the way he looked at her—sort of excited-like and eager, and perhaps just as well Ernie wasn’t there to see him. Mr and Mrs Gilmore too—what did they want to look at her like that for? She hadn’t done anything.
“Flossie,” said Miles, “I wonder if you’d mind telling us where you got those beads of yours?”
She didn’t mind telling anyone. She hadn’t got anything to hide, thank goodness. She said,
“I didn’t get them anywhere, Mr Miles. I’ve had them always. They were my mother’s.”
“Do you remember your mother?”
“Not to say remember. Look here, Mr Miles, what’s all this? They’re nothing but a lot of old beads, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know,” said Miles. “There’s nothing for you to worry about, Flossie, but I wonder whether you’d mind letting us see the rest of the string?”
Flossie turned to the door�
��and turned back again. She looked from Miles to Lila, and from Lila to Freddy. Mrs Gilmore was all worked up. Mr Gilmore looked at her straight and gave a little nod. He said the same as Mr Miles had said.
“All right, Flossie—nothing to bother about. But if you’d—”
Well, she hadn’t anything to hide. She ran out of the room and came back with the beads still knotted up in her handkerchief—and thank goodness it was a clean one straight from the wash.
They were in the drawing-room. Flossie laid the handkerchief down on a small gold table and untied it. The loose beads and the knotted string shimmered under the light with that iridescent bloom. They weren’t everyone’s fancy perhaps, but there was something about them. She’d have been sorry if they’d broken in the street.
Lila was hanging on Freddy’s arm and staring with all her eyes.
“Oh, my sweet!” she breathed. “Oh, Freddy—aren’t they too marvellous?”
Flossie felt herself beginning to get angry. Her colour deepened. She said with some heat,
“They’re my beads! They belonged to my mother! Aunt always says they did! And if there’s anything wrong, I ought to be told what it is—I didn’t ought to be kept in the dark!”
“We’re going to tell you everything we know ourselves,” said Miles. “Will you tell me just one thing more? Will you tell me how many beads there are in your string—or if you don’t know, will you let me count them?”
“Course I know!” said Flossie. “There’s three hundred. Leastways there did ought to be three hundred, but there was one I couldn’t find when the string broke, and that’s it what you’ve got in your hand.”
There were three hundred pearls in Mrs Macintyre’s string. Three hundred black pearls, perfectly matched. And Flossie Palmer had been wearing them—not thinking very much of them—leaving them lying about.…
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