The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “X. marries her then?” I asked in polite incredulity. “Oh, he should certainly lose no time.”

  “She may not accept you at once.”

  “Come and get your coat, Seraph.”

  “But she will later.”

  “Come and get your coat,” I repeated.

  “Ah—you don’t believe me—well.…”

  I gave him my two hands and pulled him out of his chair.

  “Can you foretell the future?” I asked with a scepticism worthy of Nigel Rawnsley. “What time shall I breakfast tomorrow? What shall I have for supper tonight? What tie shall I wear next Friday fortnight?”

  The Seraph shook his head without answering.

  “Very well, then,” I said decisively.

  “But you don’t know either.”

  Of course he was right.

  “I may not know now,” I said, “but I shall make up my mind in due course, and do whatever I’ve made up my mind to do—whether it’s choosing a tie or.…”

  “Proposing to Joyce. Exactly. I’ve never pretended to tell you more than what’s in your own mind.”

  “You talked about the woman X. was going to marry, not merely propose to. The last word doesn’t lie with X.”

  “True. But if I know what’s passing in Joyce’s mind?”

  “Does she know herself?”

  “No! That’s the wonderful thing about a woman’s mind, it’s so disconnected. She’s none of a man’s faculty of taking a resolve, seeing it, acting on it.… That’s why I said she might not accept you at once.”

  “You know her mind better than she does?”

  As my interest rose, the Seraph became studiedly vague.

  “I know nothing,” he answered. “I merely suggest the possibility that a woman may form a subconscious resolution and not recognise it as part of her mental stock-in-trade for weeks, months, years.… If you wait for her to recognise it, you may find you come too late; if you come before she recognises it, you may find you’ve come too early.”

  I helped him into his coat as the three girls descended the stairs.

  “Not a very cheerful prospect for X.,” I suggested.

  “X. had better help her to recognise her sub-conscious ideas,” he answered.

  I felt a boy of twenty as we drove down St. Aldates, hurried across Tom Quad, shed our wraps and struggled into the hall. The place was half full already, and the orchestra, with every instrument duplicated and Lorino thundering away at a double grand, had started an opening extra. Youthful stewards, their shirt-fronts crossed with blue and white ribbons of office, hurried to and fro in excessive, callow zeal; bright among the black coats shone the full regimentals of the Bullingdon; while stray followers of Pytchley, Bicester and V.W.H. contributed their colour to the rainbow blaze.

  My charges dutifully spilt a drop from their cups in my honour, but at the end of an hour they were free to follow their own various inclinations. There was no sign of Joyce in the ball-room, but I found her at length by the stair-head, gratefully drinking in the fresh air, flushed—or so I fancied—and occasionally passing a hand across eyes that looked tired and strained. I gave her some champagne and led her to her brother’s room. Two armchairs that I had purchased in the luxury-loving twenties seemed somehow to have withstood seven undergraduate generations.

  “You were quite the last person I expected to find here,” I said, after telling her of my meeting with Dick.

  “I was quite the last person a lot of people expected to find here,” she answered.

  “Dick has a lot to be thankful for. So—for that matter—have others.”

  “Dear old Dick! he has a lot to put up with, if that’s what you mean. If he hadn’t been a steward, they wouldn’t have admitted me. Oh, the staring and the glaring and the pointing and the whispering!”

  I now appreciated the reason of the bright eyes and pink cheeks.

  “If you will espouse unpopular political causes,” I began.

  “I’m not complaining! This was nothing to what I’ve been through in the past. It’s all in the day’s work. What are you doing in Oxford?”

  I helped myself to one of Dick’s cigarettes. He kept them just where I used to keep mine. On second thoughts I put it back and ran my hand along the under-side of the mantelpiece to the hidden shelf where I used to keep cigars maturing. Dick had followed my admirable precedent. I commandeered a promising Intimidad, feeling all the while like the ghost of my twenty-year-old self revisiting the haunts of my affection.

  “At the moment I met you, I was feeling very old and miserable,” I said, when I had told her of the party committed to my charge. “Time was when I counted for something in this place, porters touched their hats to me, I could be certain of an apple in the back of the neck as I walked through the Quad. Now the hall is filled with young kings who know not Joseph. There are not twelve men or maidens who recognise me.”

  “Perhaps they don’t know you.”

  “That,” I said, “is not very helpful.”

  “I’m sorry. There are about two hundred people in that hall who know me, but only four recognised me. You were one. I’m grateful.”

  “But what did you expect?”

  “I wasn’t sure. You came with the enemy.”

  It was time for me to define my attitude of political isolation. I told her—what was no more than the truth—that I owed no allegiance to king, country, church, or party. I have never been interested in politics, and twenty years’ absence from England have made me nothing if not a citizen of the world. I cared nothing for the great franchise question, it was a matter of indifference to me whether the vote was granted or withheld. On the other hand, I have a great love of peace and comfort, and resent any effort to force me into a position of hostility.

  “You won’t convert me, Joyce,” I said. “No more will the Rodens. I refuse to mix myself up in the miserable business. Friends and enemies, indeed! I have no enemies, but as a friend I wish I could persuade you to accept the fait accompli. You’re up against force majeure, you’ll have to give in sooner or later. Why not sooner?”

  “Why give up at all?”

  “You’re striking at an immovable body.”

  “What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body?”

  “Is it an irresistible force?”

  “Have you seen Mavis Rawnsley the last few weeks?”

  The question was asked with fearless, impudent abruptness.

  “I don’t know her to speak to,” I said. “You remember we caught sight of her that night the Seraph took us to the theatre.”

  “The night I undertook to convert the idlest man in the northern hemisphere? Yes.”

  “The night that same idler undertook to re-convert you. I’ve not seen her since.”

  “Has her father?”

  “You must ask him.”

  “I will. In fact, I have already. ‘Where is Miss Rawnsley? A rumour reaches us as we are going to press.…’ You’ll find it all in this week’s New Militant, I had such fun writing it.”

  “What was the rumour?”

  “We—ell!” Joyce put her head on one side and pretended to spur her memory. “Some one said Mavis Rawnsley had disappeared. Nothing in that, of course; you’ve disappeared before now. Then some one else said she was being held to ransom till her father was converted to the suffrage. That interested me. None of the papers said anything about it; you’d have thought Mr. Rawnsley was making a mystery of it. However, I wanted to know, so I’m asking the question in the leading article. Perhaps he’ll write and tell me. Do you love me enough to give me a match?”

  I lit her cigarette and talked to her for her soul’s good.

  “As I say, my law’s pretty rusty,” I told her in conclusion, “but you may take it as quite certain that the penalty for abduction is rather severe.�
��

  “Brutally,” Joyce assented with unabated cheerfulness. “But you’ve got to catch your criminal before you can imprison him.”

  “Or her.”

  “And you can’t catch without evidence.”

  I wandered round the room in search of two cushions. I found only one, but women do not need cushions to the same extent as men.

  “That’s the most banal remark I’ve ever heard from you,” I told her. “There never was a criminal yet that didn’t think he’d left no traces, never one that didn’t think he was equal to the strain of sitting waiting to be arrested. They all end in the same way, get frightened or become reckless—”

  “Which am I?”

  “Neither as yet. You’ll become reckless, because I don’t think you know what fear means.”

  “Reckless! Me reckless! If I have a glass roof put to the editorial room of the New Militant, will you climb up and see my moderating influence at work? If it hadn’t been for me, we should have been prosecuted over the first number.”

  “I suppose that’s Mrs. Millington?” I hazarded. An echo of her fiery pamphlets and speeches had reached me during the heyday of the arson and sabotage campaign.

  “What’s in a name?” Joyce asked sweetly.

  “Nothing at all. I agree. You tell me there’s some one who has to be restrained. I tell you you’ll be arrested the day after your restraining influence is withdrawn.…”

  Joyce bowed her assent.

  “And that will happen when you’re invalided home from the front.”

  Joyce bowed again. “Me that never had a day’s illness in my life,” I heard her murmur.

  “It’ll be a new experience, and you’ll have it very shortly if I know anything of what a woman looks like when she’s overworked, over-worried, over-excited. However fit you may be in other ways, you’re man’s inferior in physical stamina. For the ordinary fatigues of life.…”

  “But this wasn’t!” The interruption came quickly in a tone that had lost its early banter. “Elsie’s case comes on at the end of this week. I’ve been with her, I didn’t want to come tonight, but she made me—so as not to disappoint Dick. It’s not very pleasant to sit watching any one going through.… However, don’t let’s talk about it. You were giving me good advice. I love good advice. It’s cheap.…”

  “And so very filling? I’ll give no more.”

  “Don’t stop, it’s a wonderful index. As long as people give me good advice, I know I need never trouble to ask them for anything more.”

  I weighed the remark rather deliberately.

  “You were nearer being spiteful then than I’ve ever heard you,” I said.

  “But wasn’t it true? The only three people I can depend on not to give me good advice are Elsie, Dick and the Seraph.”

  “The only three who’ll give you anything more?”

  “Among the non-politicals. I’ve got politicals who’d go through fire and water for me,” she declared proudly.

  “I can believe it. But only those three among the rest?”

  “Those three.” She sat looking me in the eyes for a moment, then a mischievous smile of commiseration broke over her face. “My friend, you’re not suggesting yourself?”

  “I’m waiting to be asked.”

  “It would be waste of time. You’ve not been living your own sinful selfish life all these years for nothing. If a crash ever came—it’s kindly meant, but I should have to put you under instruction for six months before I could be certain of you.”

  “You won’t get six months.”

  “Then it’s hardly worth starting, is it? In any case we shall win without needing to call in outside help. What about getting back to the ball-room?”

  I exhibited my unfinished cigar.

  “When you’re tired of oakum and a plank bed,” I began.…

  “Caught, tried and condemned. If you want to be useful, you musn’t leave it as late as that.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “I’ll come as soon as there’s a warrant out.”

  “Promise?”

  “Faithfully. But there won’t be any warrant if the cause succeeds.”

  “I pray you’ll fail,” was my fervent answer.

  Joyce threw her cigarette petulantly into the fireplace.

  “You’ve spoilt everything by that!”

  “My help was offered to you, not to your ridiculous cause.”

  “We can’t be separated.”

  “Will you bet?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Anything you like!”

  She sprang up and faced me with the light of battle in her eyes. The flush had come back to her cheeks, her lips were parted, and the rope of pearls round her neck rose and fell with her quick, excited breathing. I shall not easily forget the picture she presented at that moment. The room was lit by a single central globe, and against the background of dark oak panels her black dress was almost invisible. Standing outside the white circle of light, her slim fragile body was hidden, but through the shadows I could see the shimmer of her spun gold hair and the wonderful line of her gleaming white arms and shoulders.

  “Anything you like!” she repeated in confident gay challenge.

  “I hold you to that.”

  Fifteen years ago I bought a scarab-ring in Luxor. After losing it once a day for a fortnight, I had it fitted with ingenious couplings so designed that when I caught it in a glove the couplings drew tight and clamped the ring to the finger. When last I found myself in Egypt, my Arab goldsmith had been gathered to his fathers, and the secret of those couplings is vested in myself. Three London and two Parisian jewellers have told me they could unravel the mystery by cutting the ring to pieces. Short of that, they confessed themselves baffled.

  “Hold out your hand, Joyce,” I said. “No, the other one. There!”

  I slipped the ring on to her third finger, stepped back to the table, and lit a cigarette. This last was purely for effect.

  Joyce looked at the ring and tried to move it.

  “No good,” I said. “You may cut the ring, which would be a pity because it’s unique; and it’s not yours till you’ve won the wager. Or you may amputate the finger, which also would be a pity, as that too … well, anyway, it won’t be yours to amputate if I win the bet.”

  Again she tried to move the ring, again without success.

  “Will you take it off, please?”

  I shook my head.

  “You said I might fix the wager.”

  “Take it off, please!” she repeated, frowning disapproval upon me. Unfortunately, like Mrs. Hilary Musgrave, she looks uncommonly well when she disapproves.

  “Shall we go back now?” I suggested. “I’ve finished my cigar.”

  “A joke may be carried too far,” she exclaimed, stamping her foot as I remember seeing her stamp it as a wicked, flaxen-haired child of five.

  “Heaven witness I’m not joking!” I protested. “Nothing I could say would move you in your present frame of mind; the wager gave me my chance. It’s a ring against a hand, and on the day that sees you separated from your infernal cause, I come to claim my reward. As long as you and the cause remain unseparated you may keep the ring. I’m backing my luck; I always do, and it never fails me.”

  Joyce gave the ring a last despairing tug, and then with some difficulty drew the finger of her glove over it.

  “How long must I wait before I may have the ring cut?” she asked.

  I had not considered that.

  “Till my death?” I suggested.

  “Sooner than that, I hope.”

  “Oh, so do I. I want to win the wager and get my stakes back.”

  Joyce passed out before me into the quadrangle, buttoning her glove as she went. I was feeling elated by what had passed, elate
d and quite deliciously surprised to find how short-lived her anger had been.

  “I’m afraid I’m bound up with the cause more intimately than you think,” she began with unexpected gentleness. “For—let me see—three years now people have been trying to show me the error of my ways, and I go on just the same. Men and women, friends and relations, a Suffragan Bishop.…”

  “Quite a proper distinction,” I interrupted. “Neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring.”

  “…and the only result is that I sink daily deeper into the mire.”

  “But this is where I come in.”

  “Too late, I’m afraid. Listen. I used to have a little money of my own. I’ve sold out every stock and share I possessed to help found the New Militant. I’m living on the salary they pay me to edit it. That looks like business, doesn’t it?”

  I straightened my tie, buttoned the last button of my gloves, and mounted the first step of the Hall stairs.

  “Living out in the East,” I said, “I have learnt the virtue of infinite patience.”

  Joyce remained silent. It occurred to me that I had left an important question unasked.

  “When I win my wager,” I began.

  “You won’t.”

  “Assume I do. No one likes losing bets, but would you seriously object to the consequences?”

  Joyce gave me the wonderful dawn of a smile before replying.

  “I’ve never given the matter a thought,” she answered.

  “Subconsciously?” I suggested in a manner worthy of the Seraph.

  She shook her head.

  “Well, give it a thought now,” I begged.

  “It wouldn’t make much difference whether I objected or not.”

  “If you honestly object, if you think the whole thing’s a joke in questionable taste, I’ll take the ring off here and now.”

  Joyce began to unbutton her glove, then stopped and looked at me. I suppose my voice must have shown I was speaking seriously; her eyes were soft and kind.