The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “He’ll be walking nowhere till Wednesday at earliest,” I said with great determination.

  Paddy cut a cigar, and assumed an air of dissatisfaction.

  “I’d have ye remember the days of grace,” he grumbled.

  I shrugged my shoulders without answering.

  “Where’s me pound of flesh?” he demanded. “Manin’ no disrispec’ to Miss Mavis,” he added apologetically to Nigel.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you to find her,” I said.

  “Can the Seraph?”

  “I don’t suppose so. In any case he can do nothing for the present.”

  Paddy returned to his cigar and we smoked in silence till Nigel picked up the threads where they had been dropped.

  “You say Aintree’s ill,” he began cautiously. “If I were disposed to regard the time of illness as so many dies non, would he be in a position to find my sister by the end of the week?”

  “Frankly, I see no likelihood.”

  “It’s an extra five days.”

  “What good can they do? Or five weeks for that matter?”

  “You should know best.”

  “I have no more idea where your sister is than you have, and no better means of finding out.”

  “And Aintree?”

  “In speaking for myself, I spoke for him. If he knew or had any means of finding out he’d tell me.”

  Paddy flicked the ash off his cigar and entered the firing line.

  “When the days of grace have expired, ye’ll have yer contract unfulfilled?”

  “And we shall be prepared to face the consequences.”

  “Och, yer be damned! Is the Seraph?”

  “He can’t help himself.” I had sowed sufficient good seed and saw no profit in staying longer. “I shall see you both tomorrow at noon?”

  “Not me,” said Paddy. “I’ve searched the place once.”

  “You, Nigel?”

  “If I think fit,” he answered loftily.

  “I only ask, because you mustn’t worry the Seraph. You can search his rooms, but you mustn’t try to cross-question him. He’s not equal to it.”

  “I think you’d be wise to accept the extension of time.”

  “My dear man, what’s the good? If we can’t find your sister, we can’t. Saturday’s no better than Monday. As Monday was the original time, you’d better stick to it and get your search over.”

  “If Aintree’s ill.…”

  “Humbug! Nigel,” I said. “If you believe we’re harbouring a criminal, it’s your duty to verify your belief. If you think you can teach Scotland Yard its business, bring your detectives and prove your superior wisdom. Bring ’em tomorrow; bring ’em tonight if you like, and as many as you can get. The more there are,” I said, turning at the door to fire a last shot, “the more voices will be raised in thanksgiving for Nigel Rawnsley.”

  The following morning I just mentioned to the Seraph that we need expect no search-party that day, and then went on to complete certain other arrangements. Raymond Sturling called in on the Tuesday morning to report his success in the negotiations for Mountjoy’s villa at Rimini. I rang up my solicitor and told him to conclude all formalities, and on the Wednesday afternoon dropped in at Carlton House Terrace, and mentioned that Maybury-Reynardson had cleared up odds and ends of work and felt justified in accepting my vicarious invitation to accompany the Governor of Bombay as far as Genoa. On Thursday I called at Chester Square.

  Elsie’s car was standing at the door when I arrived, and she had paid me the compliment of putting on all the clothes I had most admired on the previous Sunday. Very slim and pretty she looked in the white coat and skirt, and when she smiled I could almost have said it was Joyce. The face was older, of course, but that difference was masked when she dropped the black veil; the slight figure and fine golden hair might have belonged to either sister.

  I complimented her on her appearance, and suggested driving round to Adelphi Terrace. The Seraph was still rather weak and in need of attention, and though I had two nurses in the flat to look after Joyce, they would not be there for ever. As we crossed Trafalgar Square into the Strand I recommended Elsie to raise her veil.

  “Just as I thought,” I murmured as we entered Adelphi Terrace. My plain-clothes Yorkshireman was watching the house from the opposite side of the road; Nigel was watching my plain-clothes Yorkshireman from the corner of the Terrace.

  “Bow to him,” I said to Elsie. “He may not deign to recognise you, but he can’t help seeing you. Quite good! Now then, remember that sprained ankle!”

  With a footman on one side and myself on the other, she was half carried out of the car, across the pavement and into the house. The ankle grew miraculously better when she forgot herself, and started to run upstairs; I date its recovery from the moment when we passed out of my Yorkshire friend’s field of vision.

  I said good-bye to the Seraph while Elsie was in Joyce’s room. I never waste vain tears over the past, but when I saw him for the last time, weak, suffering and heart-broken—two large blue eyes gazing at me out of a white immobile face—I half regretted we had ever met, and heartily wished our parting had been different. Ill as he was, I could have taken him; but it would have been an added risk, and above all, he refused to come. As at our first meeting in Morocco, he was setting out solitary and unfriended—to forget.…

  Despite our dress-rehearsal the previous day, an hour had passed before Joyce appeared in the white coat and skirt, black hat and heliotrope dust-coat. She greeted me with a weak, pathetic little smile, bent over the Seraph’s bed and kissed him, and then suffered me to carry her downstairs. As in bringing Elsie into the house, the footman and I took each an arm, across the pavement into the car. My Yorkshire friend watched us with interest, and I could not find it in my heart to grudge him the pleasure. He must have found little enough padding to fill out the spaces in his daily report. And all that his present scrutiny told him was that a woman’s veil was up when she entered a house, and down when she left it.

  We drove north-west out of London, to the rendezvous fixed by Raymond Sturling on the outskirts of Hendon. Maybury-Reynardson awaited us, and directed operations while we shifted Joyce into a car with a couch already prepared. Her luggage had been brought from Chester Square in the morning and was piled on the roof and at the back.

  “A mariage de convenance,” Sturling remarked with a smile, as he saw me inspecting the labels.

  “Lady Raymond Sturling. S.Y. Ariel, Southampton,” was the name and destination I found written.

  “It may save trouble,” he added apologetically. “I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

  His foresight was justified. We drove slowly down to Southampton and arrived an hour before sunset, Joyce in one car with Maybury-Reynardson, Sturling with me in the other. I had anticipated that all ports and railway termini would be watched for a woman of Joyce’s age and figure, and we were not allowed to board the tender without a challenge.

  “My wife,” Sturling explained brusquely. “Yes, be as quick as you can, please. I want to get her on board as soon as possible. Sturling—aide-de-camp to Lord Gartside, to Bombay by his own yacht. There she is, the Ariel, sailing tomorrow. These gentlemen? Mr. Merivale and Dr. Maybury-Reynardson. Friends of Lord Gartside. That all?”

  “All in order, my lord.”

  “Right away.”

  As the tender steamed out I turned to mark the graceful lines of the Ariel. She was a clean, pretty boat at all times, and when I thought of the service she was doing two of her passengers, I could have kissed every plank of her white decks. Her mainmast flew the burgee of the R.Y.S., and the White Ensign fluttered at her stern; I remember the official reports had announced that the new governor would proceed direct to Bombay, calling only at Suez to coal. The Turkish flag flying at the foremast showed that Gartside was taking no steps to correct a popu
lar delusion.

  “Lady Raymond Sturling’s” nurses arrived by an early train on Friday morning, followed at noon by Gartside in a special. We sailed at three. Paddy Culling sent wireless messages at four, four-thirty and five: “Sursum corda” was the first; “Keep your tails up” the second; and “Haste to the Wedding” completed the series.

  I was not comfortable until we had passed out of territorial waters. Any one nurse may leave her patient and walk abroad in search of air and exercise: the second must not quit the house till the first has returned. I remembered that too late, when our two friends were already on board; and until I heard the anchor weighed, I was wondering if the same thought had stirred the sluggish imagination of the plain-clothes Yorkshireman. Whatever his suspicions, it appears that he did not succeed in making them real to Nigel. If he had there would have been no undignified raid on Adelphi Terrace next morning, and the feelings of one rising young statesman need not have been ruffled.

  While Maybury-Reynardson was paying Joyce his nightly visit, I paced the deck with Gartside, silently and in grateful enjoyment of a cigar. As the light at the Needles dwindled and vanished, we became as reflective as befitted one man who was leaving England for several years, and another who had left her for ever. It was not till we had tramped a dozen times up and down that he broke his long silence.

  “How did you find Sylvia?” he asked in a tone that showed how his thoughts had been occupied.

  I told him the story as she herself had heard it, adding as much of the earlier history as was necessary to convince him.

  “Perhaps I’m not leaving so much behind after all,” was his comment. “Good luck to the Seraph! He’s a nice boy.”

  “He’ll need all the luck he can get,” I answered. “You’ll get oil and water to mingle quicker than you’ll bring those two together. Tell me how it’s to be done, Gartside, and you’ll put the coping-stone on all your labours.”

  In the darkness I heard him sigh.

  “I can’t help you. I’m not a diplomatist, I’m just a lumpy, good-tempered ox. Sylvia saw that, bless her! Poor Paddy!” he added softly. “He’s as fond of her as we any of us were.”

  I mentioned the trinity of wireless messages.

  “That’s like Paddy,” he said with a laugh. “Well, he’s right. You’re the only one that’s come out on top, and good wishes to you for the future!”

  We shook hands and strolled in the direction of our cabins.

  “You don’t want thanks,” I said, “but if you do you know where to come for them.”

  “Oh well!” I heard him laugh, but there was no laughter in his eyes when the light of the chart-room lamp fell on his face. “If I can’t get what I want, there’s some satisfaction in helping a friend to get what he wants.”

  “I’ll have that copied out and hung on my shaving-glass,” I said. “I shall want that text during the next few months.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to bring Sylvia and the Seraph together,” I answered in the same tone I had told Joyce I was going to break the Militant Suffrage movement.

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “God knows!” I replied with a woeful shake of the head.

  CHAPTER XV

  The Raid

  “I can see you flying before the laughter like … tremulous leaves before the wind, and the laughter will pursue you to Paris, where they’ll make little songs about you on the boulevards, and the Riviera, where they’ll sell your photographs on picture postcards. I can see you fleeing across the Atlantic to … the immensity of America, and there the Yellow Press, pea-green with frenzy, will pile column of ridicule upon column of invective. Oh, … do you think it isn’t worth while to endure six months’ hard labour to amuse the world so profoundly?”

  —W.S. Maugham

  Jack Straw

  The appropriate milieu for Individualism is a desert island inhabited by the Individualist.

  Another or others may have expressed the same sentiment in earlier and better language: I have become attached to my own form by use and habit. The words rise automatically to my lips whenever I think of the Davenant women; of Elsie and her obstinate, ill-advised marriage, her efforts to regain freedom, the desperate stroke that gave her divorce in exchange for reputation, her gallant unyielding attempt to win that reputation back.… Or maybe I find myself thinking of Joyce and her loyal long devotion to a cause that lost her friends and money, gained her hatred and contempt, and threatened her ultimately with illness, imprisonment and—well, I prefer not to dwell on the risks she was calling down on her foolish young head.

  It was a courageous, forlorn-hope individualism—the kind that sets your blood tingling and perhaps raises an obstinate lump in your throat—but it was wasteful, sadly wasteful. I remember the night Elsie joined us at Rimini. I met her at the station, escorted her to the Villa Monreale, led her to Joyce’s bedroom, watched them meet and kiss.… “Gods of my fathers,” I murmured, “what have you won, the pair of you, for all your courage and endurance?”

  The individualism showed its most impracticable angularity when you tried to force it into a cooperative, well-disciplined scheme like our escape from England. Sometimes I marvel that we ever got away at all; You could count on Gartside and Sturling, Maybury-Reynardson and the nurses, Culling and the Seraph; they were not individualists. It was no small achievement to make Joyce and Elsie answer to the word of command. Do I libel poor Joyce in saying she would have proved more troublesome had her head ached less savagely and her whole body been less weak? I think not. Elsie certainly showed me that the moment my grip slackened she was bound by her very nature to take the bit between her teeth and bolt to the cliff-edge of disaster.

  I blame her no more than I blame a dipsomaniac; I bear her no ill-will for causing the one miscarriage in my plans. I am not piqued or chagrined—only sorrowful. Had she obeyed orders, we might have seen her spared the final humiliation, the last stultification of her campaign to win a reputation.

  When I called Gartside to witness my intention of moving heaven and earth to bring Sylvia and the Seraph into communication, I did not mention that I had already taken the first step. We sailed on Friday at three, and at three-thirty Culling was to post a letter I had written to Sylvia. I have no natural eloquence or powers of persuasion, but I did go down on my knees, so to say, and implore her again not to let two lives be ruined if she had it in her power to avert catastrophe. Only a little sacrifice of pride was demanded, but she must unbend further than at their last meeting if she was to overcome the Seraph’s curious bent of self-depreciation.

  Then I frankly worked on her feelings and described the Seraph’s condition when we left Adelphi Terrace. His nerves had broken down during the anxious days before her disappearance; and the strain of finding her, the disappointment of her reception after the event, and the day by day worry of having Joyce in the house and never knowing when to expect a search-warrant or an arrest, had proved far too great a burden for his overwrought, sensitive, highly-strung nature.

  I said it was no more than common humanity for her to see how he was getting on, and made no bones of telling her how bad I thought him. Elsie was due to slip out of Adelphi Terrace on the Friday evening, catch the nine o’clock boat train to Calais, run direct to the villa at Rimini and make all ready for our arrival. I make no secret of the fact that when I wrote to Sylvia I was not at all relishing the idea of the Seraph lying there with no one but the housekeeper and her husband to look after him.

  Perhaps Elsie too did not care for that prospect, perhaps she speaks no more than the truth in saying he grew gradually worse after our departure, perhaps her pent-up individualism was seeking a riotous, undisciplined outlet. Nine o’clock came and went without bringing her a step nearer the Continental boat train. At ten she was still sitting by his bedside, at twelve she had to watch and listen as he
began to grow light-headed. Not until eight on the Saturday morning did she steal away to her sister’s deserted room and lie down for a few hours’ sleep. By that time she had called in her own doctor, veronal had been administered, and the Seraph had sunk into a heavy trance-like slumber.

  He was still sleeping at noon when Sylvia arrived in obedience to my letter. Her coming was characteristic. As soon as she had decided to swallow her own pride, she summoned witnesses to be spectators of what she was doing. Sylvia could never be furtive or other than frank and courageous; she told her mother that she was going immediately to Adelphi Terrace and going alone.

  Opposition was inevitable, but she disregarded it. Lady Roden forbade her going, reminding her—I have no doubt—of Rutlandshire Morningtons, common respectability, and the Seraph’s entire unworthiness. I can picture Sylvia standing with one foot impatiently tapping the floor, otherwise unmoved, unangered, calm and intensely resolute. The homily ended—as is the way of most sermons—when her mother had marshalled all arguments, reviewed, dismissed, assembled and reinspected them a second and third time. Then Sylvia put on her hat, called at a florist’s on the way, and presented herself at Adelphi Terrace.

  The Seraph’s man opened the bedroom door and came back to report that the patient was still sleeping.

  “I’ve brought him some flowers,” she said. “I suppose it’s no good waiting? You can’t say how soon he’s likely to wake up?”

  Something in her tone suggested that she would like to wait, and the man showed her into the library, provided her with papers, and withdrew to answer a second ring at the front door bell.

  Sylvia was still wandering round the room, glancing at the pictures and reading the titles of the books, when her attention was attracted by the sound of men’s voices raised in altercation. Some one appeared to be forcing an entry which the butler was loyally trying to oppose.

  “Here’s the warrant,” said a voice, “properly signed, all in order. If you interfere with these officers in the discharge of their duty, you do so at your own risk.”