As James came out of the office, he was aware of a young man in a blue serge suit and a bowler hat. The slight tilt of the hat displayed tightly crinkled hair of a flaming red which took James straight back to his school study and a fag who always burned the toast for tea. The eyes under the bowler’s brim were a light, dancing hazel. James knew him at once, but before he had time to speak the young man darted at him and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Hullo, ’ullo, ’ullo! Got you in one! Daphne said I would find you here. I can’t think why we haven’t run into each other before. Last time you chucked a dictionary at my head.”
“I expect you had burnt the toast, J.J.,” said James.
“No, not that time—it was the big ink-bottle all over your best flannel bags. Well, well, I dropped out of the blue last night. Literally, you know—I’ve just flown from India. And I want to buy a car. And Daphne said ‘Run along and do my cousin James Elliot a good turn,’ and I said, ‘What James Elliot?’ And then she produced the family tree, and I discovered that you really were my James Elliot—old school tie and that sort of thing. So I said ‘Done!’ But Sally—by the way, you know my sister Sally, don’t you?”
James said yes, he did know Sally.
“Well,” said Mr. Jock West, “have you been having a row with her or something?”
James said no, he hadn’t been having a row, and why should he?
“Well, I don’t know, but she didn’t seem to want me to come round. No keenness about my doing you a good turn, so to speak. She and Daphne weren’t seeing eye-to-eye about it, if you know what I mean, so I left them to it and buzzed along.”
“Very nice of you, J.J.,” said James rather grimly.
So Sally had tried to prevent her precious Jocko from coming near him. The sooner Sally adjusted herself to the idea that he and Jocko were going to be brothers-in-law, the better. He said,
“What sort of car do you want?”
Jocko grinned. He had rather a pale face and a lot of freckles.
“Something fast and nippy. Something that will push a hole in the speed-limit and leave the cops guessing. Quelquechose de sportif,” he added with an atrocious French accent. “And never mind the price.” He smote James again. “My good man, do you realize that I’m full of money? You don’t because I don’t, and I don’t because Aunt Clementa’s lawyers have only just coughed up, and I’d got to the point when no one would give me another ha’porth of credit—dirty dogs! So until I’ve landed out a good round dollop on something I shan’t believe the money’s real. Has Sally told you about my Aunt Clementa?”
“She said she’d left you some money.”
Jocko tipped his hat on to the back of his head and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Some money! Did she tell you how much it was? Five thousand—”
“Five thousand pounds?”
“A year!” said Jocko. “Think of it! Get it into the head—if you can! I haven’t been able to yet. Fifty pounds a year and my pay—that was my form. Sally had a godmother who left her three hundred a year, but my little private income was fifty. And Aunt Clementa leaves me five thousand pounds a year and a stately home of England—also a hush-hush letter which got lost when I fell over a precipice in the Tyrol last year! By the way, Sally will be livid if she knows I’ve told you that. She’s got the most frightful bee in her bonnet about the letter, and the accident, and all that. I suppose she hasn’t said anything to you about it?”
“Why should she?” said James. “If you don’t mind expense, and want a really first-class sports model—”
Jocko declined the red herring.
“Oh, well, she might, you know. Of course I don’t know how well you know her.”
“You’d better ask her,” said James, and began to talk about cars in a firm, professional voice.
He was assisted by the appearance of Mr. Parkinson, but presently, Jocko having demanded a trial run, he found himself heading in the direction of the Great West Road.
“I should think she’d be just what you want.”
“Well, I’m going to try ’em all,” said Jocko. “And we’ve got to get somewhere where we can let her out. Thirty miles an hour’s no use to me—I’d just about as soon walk. Didn’t Sally tell you about the house Aunt Clementa left me? It’s called Rere Place. Aunt Clementa was a Rere—the last of the family. They’ve got a coat-of-arms with three rere-mice in it—bats, you know—and I think they were a pretty batty lot. There are some awfully queer tales about the house. Sally hates it, but I’m going to live there.”
“You’re not going to chuck the army!”
“I don’t think so. I’d rather like to do a spot of racing at Brooklands, but I haven’t made up my mind. I’ve got six months’ leave, and I thought I’d open up the house and see how I liked it. Besides, there’s that letter. I expect the old girl was batty, but there’s just the chance—Did I tell you about the letter, or didn’t I?”
“You didn’t tell me what was in it,” said James.
“Not didn’t—couldn’t. You see, I don’t suppose I ever read it, because Sally says I got it at breakfast, and she says I began to read it and shut up and put it in my pocket. And then we all went climbing, and I took a toss, and the next thing I knew was about three days later, and I couldn’t remember anything about anything. I mean I couldn’t have sworn that I’d had my breakfast that day, or gone climbing, or taken a toss, so naturally I didn’t remember whether I’d ever finished reading the letter or not. If I did, I’d forgotten all about it, but quite likely I didn’t. And the letter was gone. That’s where Sally’s bee comes in—she swears somebody pinched it, and I’m not at all sure she doesn’t believe that somebody tried to do me in. Now I ask you—”
James gave a quick glance at him. He had an air of being innocently surprised, but then J.J. always did look innocent when he knew he had burned the toast. He thought there was a gleam in the greenish hazel eyes.
James said nothing.
Jock West laughed.
“Cautious Scot—aren’t you? How much did Sally tell you?”
“You might ask her,” said James with his eye on the road.
“Hang it all, Elliot, who could possibly want to do me in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, there you are. All the same, I’d like to know what was in that letter. I wonder if I did read it all, because I can only remember—”
“Oh, then you do remember some of it?”
“Suppose I do?”
James glanced at him again.
“Then I think I should shut my mouth on it.”
XIX
James got no answer from Sally. By the third evening he had reached the point of ringing Daphne up to ask whether she had delivered his letter. Daphne’s voice, irritatingly sweet, came fluting over the wire.
“Of course, darling. I gave it to her at once—that evening. She was at the Osbornes’, and I pushed it under her cloak when she was going away and said, ‘Hush—not a word!’ And, darling, if it’s any comfort to you, she blushed like fury. I really do feel a little bit sorry for poor Henri, because he’s very devoted, and everybody’s been saying that they’re engaged, or just going to be, for simply ages.”
James said something short and rude about Henri, and rang off. He then looked up Ambrose Sylvester’s number and dialled it. Just what he would have done it if had been Ambrose himself, or the decorative Hildegarde, or the devoted Henri who had answered, he did not stop to think, and fool’s luck favoured him. It was Sally who said “Hullo!”
James’s heart gave an uncomfortable thump. He said in a voice that sounded like someone else’s,
“Sally, is that you?”
There was a pause. Then Sally said,
“Yes. Who is it?”
“James. Sally, why didn’t you answer my letter? Daphne says she gave it to you. Sally—darling—”
“You’ve got the wrong number,” said Sally in a small cold voice. “Will you ring off, ple
ase.” And with that the receiver was hung up and the line went dead.
James, quite white with anger, returned to the studio and raged up and down there, restraining himself with a good deal of difficulty from kicking holes in his cousin Gertrude’s canvases. He felt a special urge to kick a hole in Eve. Several holes. It would have been extraordinarily assuaging to fling Eve down on the studio floor and stamp on her, and her symbolic lobster, and her horrible blue tadpole.
He tore himself from this thought to sit down and write a violent letter to Sally, but when he had written about five sheets he got up suddenly and crammed them into the stove, where they burned away to nothing in about half a minute. A second letter followed the first. It ran less to violence and more to passion. James found himself writing at great speed, and without stopping to think, the sort of things which it had never previously occurred to him that anyone in real life could possibly write, or think, or say. The fact that he was not only doing it, but doing it in the most unreserved manner so appalled him that he stopped in the middle of the third sheet and cremated the document.
He had just begun a third letter which was to combine poignant reproach and the sort of phrases that would go straight to Sally’s heart and wring it, with perfect restraint, dignity, and a regard for the fact that he was going to be Sally’s husband and must therefore begin as he meant to go on and take the upper hand. Not, it will be perceived, a notably easy task.
He was, in fact, finding it notably difficult, when he heard a faint sound of something. It was so faint that he wasn’t quite sure whether it had just begun or whether he had been hearing it for some time. The trap was open, or he might not have heard it at all.
He went half way down the stair to listen, and the knocking came again. There was someone at the outer door.
James went to it, drew back the bolt, and let in a rush of cold wind, and Sally. She was bare-headed, and wrapped in her black velvet cloak. When he put his arms round her she felt as cold and stiff as a piece of wood. He kissed her, and she shivered and pulled away, and went before him up the stair, climbing slowly and as if each step were an effort. They came into the studio, and he shut the trap. They stood looking at one another, and neither of them had said a single word. Curious, primitive business of love. He had tried to hold her, and she was not to be held. His touch had said all that the burned letters could have said for him, and she would have none of him, and of his love. She stood under the light, very cold, very pale, clutching at her cloak and looking at him with bright, reproachful eyes. She was Sally who had been most dear and tender and had turned suddenly into this inaccessible stranger. Why, she could have looked at him no differently if he had insulted her in the street. This was not to be borne, and he had no intention of bearing it. He said in an abrupt, matter-of-fact tone,
“What’s the matter?”
Sally’s eyes were as angry as the green fire which has fed on salt. They really seemed to have flames in them, little dancing emerald flames. She said with a cutting edge to her voice,
“I told you not to write, and you wrote. I told you not to telephone, and you rang me up. Can’t you get it into your head that it’s dangerous?”
James said, “Drop it!” and then, “It’s no good your taking that sort of tone with me. You can’t drive me, and you’d better not try.”
Sally glared.
“I don’t want to try.”
“And I won’t be spoken to like that either! What’s wrong with this show is that you’re trying to run it and it’s got out of hand. You tell me I’m to do this, and that, and the other, and I’m not to do this, and that, and the other, and all the time you’re keeping me in the dark, telling me the bits you choose and keeping back the bits you don’t choose. And if you ask me, you’re making a damned muddle of the whole thing, and if there’s any dirty work going on, you’ll land yourself, and me and J.J. in some particularly nasty mess!”
“I didn’t ask you,” said Sally breathlessly. “I don’t ask you anything except to leave me alone—and mind your own business—and not write, or telephone, or try and see me.”
James looked at her with a good deal of sternness and some surprise.
“And how are we going to get married if I’m not to see you, or write to you, or call you up? I do wish you’d be practical.”
A bright, becoming scarlet leapt into Sally’s cheeks. She stamped with vigour upon Gertrude Lushington’s best Persian carpet.
“We’re not going to be married!”
“Oh, yes, we are.”
Sally stamped again.
“We’re not!”
“Why?” said James.
“We c-can’t,” said Sally, and burst into a flood of tears.
James experienced the most conflicting feelings of tenderness and anger. He wanted to shake Sally till her teeth chattered, and he wanted to put his arms round her and kiss away her tears and tell her not to cry any more, because everything was going to be all right. Impossible to do both these things at once, so he did neither. Instead he used an odious hectoring tone and remarked,
“Girls always cry when they’ve got the worst of it.”
“I haven’t got the worst of it!” said Sally, choking partly with sobs and partly with rage. She found a flimsy scrap of handkerchief and dabbed fiercely at her eyes.
James’s mood changed suddenly. This quarrel was taking them nowhere, and they hadn’t got time for it. All very well to quarrel when you have plenty of time to make it up again, but what time had he and Sally? Just this little space—to talk, to plan, to know each other’s mind, to touch hands, to kiss, to say goodbye. They could quarrel another time—at leisure—
He came to Sally, pulled her up close, and kissed her.
“That’s enough about all that. Done—finished—dead. Come along over here and talk. Gertrude’s sofa isn’t much to look at, but it’s comfortable. Now, let’s be rational and tell each other things. It’s no use your bottling up and then telling me what an oaf I am to come butting in, because, you see, if you don’t tell me things, I’m bound to try and find them out myself.”
Sally faced him on the sofa wet-eyed and scarlet-cheeked.
“Even if I ask you not to?” she said.
James nodded.
“It’s no good. I’m in it, and I’m staying in it. You can’t get me out, and it’s frightful waste of time to try. That’s what I keep saying, only you don’t seem to have taken it in. You’d better start by telling me what happened when I rang up.”
“How do you know anything happened?”
“I should have thought it was obvious. I ring up, you say it’s the wrong number and ring off, and immediately rush round and slang me. Naturally I want to know why. What did happen?”
“It was frightful,” said Sally. “James, you know I asked you not to ring up or anything—and we were all in the library, and I don’t know how much everyone heard.”
“There wasn’t anything to hear. I only said—”
Sally beat her hands together.
“I told you not to ring up—and you said your name, and I said it was a wrong number. And Henri said, ‘He has the name of James this wrong number of yours. But how intriguing! And he makes an assignation? Fi donc, Sally, it is much too dangerous this assignation with a wrong number, even if he have the so respectable name of James. I do not advise you to keep it.’ And Hildegarde looked at me between her eyelashes and said, ‘Be wise, Sally, my dear.’ And Ambrose—”
“Yes?” said James with interest. “What did Ambrose say?”
“Nothing,” said Sally. She drew in her breath with a sob. “He just looked at me as if I wasn’t there. And then he told Hildegarde that they’d be late if she didn’t hurry, and she finished her coffee and they went off. But when we were alone Henri came over and fiddled with the telephone, and presently he said, ‘The man who invented this, he is dead, n’est ce pas?’ and I said, ‘Of course.’ And Henri said, ‘One can be dead a long time, Sally,’ and then he went out of the
room. And I’m supposed to be with Daphne’s party at the Luxe. She’ll cover me all she can, but I mustn’t stay, James—I mustn’t stay—because I think Henri will try and find out whether I was really at the Luxe all the time.”
“And if he finds out you weren’t?”
A little shiver went over her.
“I oughtn’t to have come. Henri said, ‘He has the name of James this wrong number of yours,’ but if he heard that, he may have heard everything else you said.”
James grinned.
“Well, I didn’t say much—you didn’t give me a chance.”
Sally caught her breath.
“You said Daphne’s name, and why hadn’t I answered your letter, and you called me darling. And Jocko is quite liable to say something about you at any moment, and it’s no good telling him not to, because he always forgets and does it. And if he begins to talk about Daphne’s cousin James Elliot and says he was your fag at Wellington, and then it comes out that you’re at Atwells and that it was you who drove that car, how long do you think it will be before something happens? Something—”
“What?” said James in a practical, common-sense voice. The flame of Sally’s anger was dead. Her cheeks were pale and cold. She said in a low, frightened voice,
“What happened to Jackson?”
James took her hands in his.
“Sally—you’ve got to tell me about all this. Someone shot at us at Rere Place.”
He felt her start.
“Who told you it was Rere Place?”
“J.J. did. Sally, do you know who it was who fired at us?”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know anything, James.”
“But you’re guessing—you’re suspecting—being afraid it’s someone.”
“I don’t know—I—”
She tried to get her hands away, but he held on to them.
“Oh, yes, you do—it’s quite obvious. Was it Henri Niemeyer who fired at us?”
Her breath came in a choking sob.
“James—let me go—I don’t know.”
“It might have been? Is that it? Or was it your guardian? Was it Ambrose Sylvester?”
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