‘I have to be at Simpson’s in the Strand by seven-thirty, but I’m free until then.’
‘Fine, we’ll slip up to a little place I know, then. It’s what I call a gentlemen’s pub—if you take my meaning—and between you and me I’m thinking of buying it now I’ve got money—to run it myself, you know, if I can get the brewers to give me decent terms.’ He gave an address to the driver and the cab moved off.
The dreary winter night had fallen, and hundreds of tired, rain-soaked wage-earners waited patiently for the crowded buses at Oxford Circus. As they turned north up Portland Place only a few pedestrians were hurrying with bent shoulders through the steady downpour, and when the taxi entered the Outer Circle of Regent’s Park not a passer-by was to be seen on the glistening pavements.
Philbeach had taken the knobkerrie from Sandy in response to a question about it and was weighing it carefully in his hand.
‘No, I’ve never seen this thing before—but what a weapon, eh?’
The dazzling headlights of a car loomed up, racing towards them out of the darkness. ‘My!’ exclaimed Philbeach, ‘he’s going it, isn’t he—just look at him!’
As the car flashed past them Sandy leaned forward to peer out of his window, which was nearest to it. Mr. Roger Philbeach raised the knobkerrie in both hands. Sandy felt as though the whole of St. Paul’s had suddenly descended on his head and pitched forward on to the floor of the taxi, unconscious.
5
Of Liars and Others
On the following afternoon Michael went down to Surbiton. He had telephoned to Patricia Long that afternoon to ask if he could see her and she had fixed the hour of four o’clock. As the Longs had not been at the family dinner at Simpson’s the night before, he suggested she might like to know what had been settled there. Though he hardly realised it himself, he was very attracted by her and would have invented an excuse for meeting her again if such an excellent one had not lain ready to his hand. He had been desperately sorry for her pathetic disappointment when she had been compelled to forgo the fun of participating in the projected expedition, and judged that her life with her grim father was not at all a happy one.
Henry Long’s father was a Noncomformist minister, and it nearly broke his heart when John Thomas—his baby and favourite—ran away from home at the age of sixteen.
Luckily he did not survive the shock long enough to see his eldest daughter divorced or his younger elope with Sandy’s father to South Africa.
Henry was his only comfort. Serious, bigoted, and upright, even as a boy he always managed to save a few pennies every week out of his meagre pocket money. These he would hoard, denying himself sweets or books, until he had sufficient to buy another coloured print to add to the collection on his bedroom wall.
His artistic taste developed rapidly—though it remained all his life a secret bone of contention between his aesthetic sense and his Lutheran conscience.
When his daughter Patricia was born he resolved to stamp out at an ealy age any sign of the family wildness. The girl, however, had her full share of the adventurous streak and all Henry Long’s care had only served to repress it.
Both she and Michael were only children and yet they were a curious contrast. The boy had been brought up in luxurious surroundings, spoilt by his mother and adored by his father. His nature was fortunately too sweet to spoil and the hint of wilfulness he knew so well how to employ in cajoling his parents was rather attractive than otherwise. His, round face, powdered with freckles, was plain enough but his eyes were always smiling under ridiculously long lashes. He had that subtle charm which is inborn, and with it cultivated manners which sat as easily on him as his loose tweed coat.
He found The Laurels, where the Longs lived, to be a large square house, fronted by a semi-circular drive and backed by quite a good-sized garden. As he rang the bell Michael prayed fervently that his Uncle Henry would not be at home. An elderly maid left him in the hall for a few moments and then showed him into a sitting-room, where Patricia was busy with some mending.
‘Hello!’ said Michael.
‘Hello!’ replied Patricia.
‘It is nice of you to let me come and see you,’ he said.
‘On the contrary, it is nice of you to come!’ she smiled quickly. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘Thanks.’ He looked round the room with some surprise. Michael did not know a great deal about paintings nor the one reason that would induce his Uncle Henry to loosen his purse-strings. He knew enough, however, to recognise an Henri Matisse when he saw one. There were three hanging on the cream-coloured walls, together with half a dozen other pictures that he felt had real distinction although he could not have named their painters. He turned quickly to Patricia, his merry face unusually solemn. ‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry that you’re not coming on this trip after all.’
‘So am I.’
‘Couldn’t you possibly persude your father to let you? We are cousins, aren’t we? So it isn’t going with strangers. Of course, we should have to leave you parked in an hotel in Cape Town while we went up country. We couldn’t possibly let you take any risk—especially in the smuggling part of it—but we should have tremendous fun on the boat going out.’ It was on the tip of Patricia’s tongue to tell him that if she went at all she had no intention of being packed up in cotton wool, but she averted her eyes and said instead: ‘I’m afraid it’s quite impossible. Father would never let me go with you.’
‘What a rotten shame.’
‘Isn’t it, but tell me,’ she hurried on. ‘Is Sandy McDiamid going, and what have you and the Bennetts decided to do?’ ‘I’d better tell you all that happened at Simpson’s last night,’ Michael answered. ‘Sandy refuses to play, worse luck. I only wish he would though, because I like Sandy.’
‘Yes. He’s nice. But why is he called Sandy when he has dark hair?’
‘I got stung on that last night,’ Michael laughed, ‘and he called me a silly Sassenach. For some obscure reason it seems that Sandy is short for Alexander.’
Patricia nodded. ‘I see. Well, I like him much better than the Bennetts. I suppose they’re awfully good-hearted people, but they really are rather—well—you know.’
‘Of course I do! But they are enormous fun, particularly “Ernie”, and both of them have guts. I’ve arranged to go out to Africa with them to-morrow, the 27th, on the Union Castle boat.’
‘Does your mother mind you going?’ asked Patricia.
‘Naturally she is a bit upset,’ he answered, ‘but I persuaded her finally by putting it to her that finding these diamonds is the only chance of us being able to go on living at Harcourt.’
‘Why?—were the death duties so bad’
‘No, but my father had been living on his capital—like lots of other landlords—for years before he died. I had to give up my hunters and the place is practically shut up. We haven’t even got enough money to keep it in good repair.’
Patricia’s lovely hazel eyes gleamed. ‘Won’t it be wonderful,’ she said softly, ‘if you really do find a fortune? It must be dreadful to see that lovely old place, which has always been your home, going to rack and ruin.’
‘It seems almost like a fairy story, doesn’t it?’ Michael agreed, ‘but I must have a shot at it.’
‘Yes, but if you do find any diamonds and get them out of the country how will you manage to dispose of them?’ she asked thoughtfully.
‘Oh, we’re not worried about that,’ he assured her. ‘Ernest has a friend in Hatton Garden. Not a crook, you understand, but a legitimate diamond dealer. If this thing comes off we could well afford to offer him a handsome share of the profits to market the stones.’
‘Won’t he be taking a certain risk?’
‘Perhaps, but Ernest says that if there’s big money in it he is quite certain that his friend would come in with us.’
‘I see. Did you have an awful bother raising your expenses for the trip?’
He shook his head. ‘Not too bad. The Bennetts
are putting up five hundred pounds apiece, and I could only manage three hundred, but as I contribute the leopard skin they are very generously counting that as the balance of my share. They are anxious to buy your necklace of monkey skulls, too—as you won’t be using it yourself.’
‘I know,’ Patricia said slowly, her eyes on Michael’s face. ‘George rang me up about it this morning; but Daddy asked me to give it to him to keep as a curiosity, and when I gave him George Bennett’s message he flatly refused to part with the thing.’
‘What a pity!—so now that Sandy has lost the knobkerrie my kaross is the only clue we’ve got.’
‘What do you mean about Sandy losing the knobkerrie?—What’s happened, Michael?’
‘Oh, of course you don’t know—well, when he turned up at Simpson’s last night he said he’d been in a taxi smash and had lost the knobkerrie in the confusion.’ Michael looked at his pretty cousin, a little smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.
‘Michael! I believe you’re pulling my leg …’ Patricia leaned forward and tapped his knee solemnly, her eyes twinkling. ‘It’s no good, my boy—you can’t deceive the Wise Woman of Surbiton!’ She pulled such a comical face—imitating the nut-cracker jaws of an old toothless gipsy—that Michael burst out laughing. He began to feel that he had known this amusing new cousin for years.
‘All right. I give in! The Wise Woman of Surbiton shall know everything; though,’ he added with a mocking grin, ‘I should have thought a really wise woman would not have needed a nit-wit like me to elucidate the mystery! However—here goes. Sandy didn’t say much while the Bennetts were there except to tell us that he is sailing for Africa on the 29th—that is, a day later than the Union Castle boat—but he’s travelling by the Italian Line from Marseilles, so he will be in Cape Town a day before us. He refused to join our party in the search—in fact, he says he knows so much about the dangers of illicit diamond smuggling that he wouldn’t dream of embarking on the adventure at all. After my halfbrothers had left he became much more forthcoming though, and just as we were leaving he asked me to lunch with him to-day.’
‘Go on,’ urged Patricia. ‘You’re getting me all excited—what really did happen?’
‘It seems that he had had the idea of looking up all the people to whom old John left his money in the hope of getting some information out of them, although he says that he was doing it for the fun of the thing, not with any serious intention of following it up. He found that Lucy Benton had left her flat but he ran Rubenstein to earth somewhere down in Whitechapel. Then he got Roger Philbeach to meet him by appointment. Philbeach suggested taking him up to some pub that he was thinking of buying, for a drink, then as they were running through Regent’s Park in the taxi the wine-wallah pointed to a car that was speeding a bit. When Sandy leaned forward to look out of the window, Philbeach picked up the knobkérrie and smashed him over the head.’
‘Good gracious!’
‘Pretty hot, wasn’t it? When poor Sandy came to again the taxi man was shaking him and telling him that he had reached the address that his friend had given in Golders Green. Of course, Philbeach had disappeared and the knobkerrie with him.’
‘But how extraordinary, didn’t the taxi man or anyone in the street notice what was going on?’
‘Apparently not. You know what a filthy night it was, and at that hour Regent’s Park is practically deserted. Philbeach must have just propped Sandy up in a corner, got out when they reached the pub and told the taxi to drive to this place in Golders Green.’
‘What have the police got to say about it?’
‘Nothing. Sandy went out to Wembley this morning, where this chap Philbeach lives, and discovered that he packed up and cleared out last night. It was only a sort of boarding house and he hadn’t been living there for long. After that Sandy got his previous address from the wine firm that the fellow worked for, which proved to be another place of much the same kind at Harrow. They couldn’t tell him anything there either. He can’t remember the name of the pub, so he says it is not worth the bother of going to Scotland Yard. I think he’s right, too; after all he wasn’t sufficiently badly hurt for the police to take it up as a case of attempted murder and one can hardly expect them to excite themselves about the recovery of an old knobkerrie.’
‘I wonder what this man Philbeach is up to? It looks as though he means to do a bit of treasure-seeking, too.’
‘That’s about the only explanation there is for it and as a matter of fact that’s why, on second thoughts, Sandy decided to tell me what had really happened. He seems to think Philbeach may have a go at trying to get the leopard skin from me.’
‘How could he know that you’ve got it?’
‘I don’t know that he does, but if he’s sufficiently interested in this thing to risk cracking Sandy’s skull he may know the whole family history and even have been watching us yesterday when we walked out of old Bullett’s office with our various bits of native gear.’
Patricia nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose that is a possibility, but why should Sandy take the trouble to invent this silly story about having had a taxi smash?’
‘Oh! that was awfully funny.’ Michael sat back with a sudden chuckle. ‘It seems that he dislikes the Bennetts so much that he couldn’t bear the thought of confessing to having been fooled in front of them.’
‘Quite a reasonable little bit of human vanity, I suppose,’ Patricia smiled. ‘Anyhow, it was nice of him to give you the tip.’
‘He gave me something else as well, which I thought was jolly decent of him, and that’s a book about the place. Look! I’ve got it here.’
‘But how thrilling.’ Patricia took the book and read out the title: “‘The Seven Lost Trails of Africa. A record of sundry expeditions, new and old, in search of buried treasure, by Hedley A. Chilvers.” Have you had a chance to read it?’
‘Yes, and jolly interesting it is. Unfortunately, it only gives about ten pages on our Lost Valley of Precious Stones, that the natives call the “Place of the Great Glitter”, so I was able to run through them on the way out here. It definitely says, though, that early prospectors reached it, and that a number of attempts had been made to locate it since. Of course, Uncle John must have been there about six years before it was written, but naturally the author wouldn’t know anything about that. Anyhow, he confirms all we’ve heard about the difficulty and danger of getting there, and it sounds a most gruesome place from his description.’
For a few moments Patricia sat silent, quickly skimming through the account of her illegal inheritance that was given in the book.
Michael meanwhile picked up a little statuette of a prancing horse from a nearby table. ‘This is jolly nice,’ he remarked. ‘The action is so natural.’
‘Do you like it?’ She looked up with a quick smile. ‘I think that’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.’
‘What! You don’t mean to say you did this?’
‘Yes, I sculpt a bit, you know.’
‘Do you—really! I say, that makes me feel awful small fry. I only just scraped through the engineering exams that my father was so anxious I should take, and I can’t do anything out of the ordinary except speak Portuguese.’
‘That seems a strange accomplishment. Why did you learn it?’
‘Oh, one of my aunts on Father’s side married a Portugoose. She’s a darling and I’ve stayed out there dozens of times ever since I was a kid. The only other thing I’m any good at is handling horses. Do you like horses too?’
‘Yes, I adore them. My one regret is that I can’t live in the country—I have to cheat myself by modelling horses instead of riding them—which I only get the chance to now and then.’
‘You must come down to Harcourt,’ he enthused. ‘We get some damn good hunting. Of course, it’s not quite the same since my father died, but the people round about are most awfully good—and I’m sure I could fix you for a mount.’
‘I should love to. I don’t get much practice but I’m pretty goo
d because horses like me, and I’m game to try any mount you care to put me up on.’ She turned back to the book and when she looked up once more her eyes were grave and a little unhappy. ‘Michael,’ she said suddenly, ‘do you often tell lies to people?’
‘Well—no,’ he smiled, ‘not about serious things. It makes me feel so darned uncomfortable.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, so it does me. That’s why I want to tell you something.’
‘What?’ he asked quietly.
‘Father would be furious if he knew that I had let the cat out of the bag, but we are going to Africa—too.’
6
A Thief in the Night
Once Patricia had made her confession she felt easier in her mind, despite the fact that her father had impressed upon her the necessity of secrecy. Michael’s frankness had made her feel uncomfortable and she felt that as he had kept nothing back from her it was only fair to let him know the true situation.
The knowledge that she was going to Africa after all increased Michael’s disappointment that they could not make the journey together. He could think of no reason for his uncle’s secrecy even if he was determined to travel alone. Patricia could not enlighten him in the least. In exchange for the warning he had given her about Philbeach however, she told him that they had also inquired at Lucy Benton’s late address and Israel Rubenstein’s in Whitechapel the previous afternoon—and added that her father had intended to trace Philbeach through his old firm, if possible that morning.
Over tea he begged her not to go further than the Cape, and at all costs not to allow herself to become involved in any smuggling activities that her father might devise.
She was a little touched by his solicitude but could not help laughing at his romantic desire to treat her as a storybook princess instead of a modern girl.
When they had finished tea they talked for a time about their everyday lives. Then she took him to a small room at the back of the house and showed him her other efforts at sculpture. Patricia felt very mature beside this new cousin who seemed to bring such zest into the ordinary business of living. She heard herself laughing and joking in a way which would have surprised and shocked her father.
The Fabulous Valley Page 4