Sylvia listened with astonishment that changed quickly to alarm. The voice was that of Nigel Rawnsley, speaking as one having authority.
“One of you stay here,” he went on, “and see that nobody leaves the flat. The other come with me. Take the library first.”
The door opened, and for an amazed moment Nigel stood staring at the library’s sole occupant.
“Sylvia!” he exclaimed. “What on earth brings you here?”
His tone so resembled her mother’s that all Sylvia’s latent opposition and obstinacy were called into play.
“Have you any objection to my being here?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It was rather a surprise.”
“As I don’t always warn you beforehand, I’m afraid a good many things I do must come as a surprise to you.”
“And to yourself?”
“You must explain that.”
“Surely no explanation is needed?”
“No explanation is wanted. We can start level, and I needn’t bother to explain my presence here.”
Nigel hastened to welcome a seeming ally.
“I imagine Aintree could supply that,” he said.
She drew herself suddenly erect in a pose that demanded his right to use such words. The vindictiveness of his tone and the jealousy of his expression warned her that the Seraph lay in formidable peril.
“I want to find what Aintree and his friends have done to my sister, and I suppose you have a little account to settle with him in respect of an uncomfortable few days you lately spent at Maidenhead.”
“Do you imagine he had any hand in that?” she asked contemptuously.
“He knew where to look for you,” was the significant answer, “and he found that out from the woman he’s been hiding in these rooms. As it’s too much trouble for him to find out where my sister is, I’ve called to gain that information from the lady herself.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Search the flat.”
“And if she isn’t here?”
“She was.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, I admit I didn’t see her. It may have been any one. But there’s a very strong probability, and I’m going on that.”
“And if there’s no one here now?”
“She must have got away.”
“Yes, I think I could have worked that out for myself.”
“What d’you mean?”
“What are you going to do if you find no one?”
“If there’s no woman now, the woman who got away was Miss Davenant. If Aintree has been harbouring Miss Davenant.…” He paused delicately.
“Well?”
“I’m afraid he’ll have some difficulty in persuading a judge not to sentence him to a considerable term of imprisonment.”
“You’ll have him arrested?”
“That is one of the regrettable but necessary preliminaries. I shan’t do anything.”
“Except rub your hands?” she taunted.
“Not even that,” he answered with supercilious patience. Then, seeing no profit in pursuing his conversation with Sylvia, he raised his voice to summon the detectives into the library. “We’ll take this room first,” he told her, “and then leave you undisturbed.”
The detectives did not answer his summons immediately and he turned to fetch them from the hall. As he did so Sylvia saw him start with surprise. Two paces behind them, an unseen auditor of their conversation, stood Elsie Wylton. With a slight bow to Sylvia she entered the library and in the Seraph’s interests requested Nigel to carry out his search as quickly and silently as possible.
“He’s sleeping now,” she said, “but he’s been awake most of the night, so please don’t disturb him. If you’ll search the other rooms, I’ll stay here and talk to Miss Roden.”
Nigel retired with a nicely blended expression of amazement, humiliation and menace. As the ring of his footsteps grew gradually fainter, Elsie turned to Sylvia with outstretched hands.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she began. “I was afraid.…”
“How long has he been ill?” interrupted Sylvia in a voice of stern authority.
“It’s some time now.…”
“And how long have you been here?”
There was an unmistakable challenge in her tone. Elsie’s thoughts had been so much concerned with the Seraph, her mind was so braced in readiness to meet Nigel’s attack, that for the moment her own share in the quarrel with Sylvia was forgotten. The library door stood open; outside in the hall the amateur detective was directing operations.
“Some time,” she answered with studied vagueness.
The simmering suspicions of eight ambiguous weeks were brought to boiling point in Sylvia’s mind.
“How long?” she repeated.
Elsie leaned forward, a finger to her lips; before she could speak, the hall was filled with the creak of heavy boots and Nigel appeared in the doorway.
“She’s not here,” he announced.
“Who were you looking for?” Elsie inquired, masking her impatience at his untimely return.
“Your sister.”
“Oh, I could have told you that.”
“She was here.”
“Was she? What a pity you didn’t come sooner! Why, Mr. Merivale invited you on Sunday, he told me. When he met you at your Club. I’m afraid you and the—er—gentleman outside have had your journey in vain.”
Nigel’s face flushed at the taunt and a certain uncomfortable prospect of polite criticism from the Criminal Investigation Department he had undertaken to educate.
“Not altogether,” he said.
“No?”
“We’ve found Aintree.”
“Ah; yes. I wanted to get him away to the sea, but he’s not fit to move yet.”
“He may have to.”
“Not yet.”
“A warrant for his arrest won’t wait for him to get well—and away.”
Nigel had never learned to disguise his feelings, and the threatening tone of his voice left no doubt in Elsie’s mind that he was rapidly becoming desperate and would double his stakes to retrieve his earlier losings.
“So you’re arresting him?” she said.
“He has obligingly piled up so much evidence against himself,” he answered with a lift of the eyebrows.
“The same kind of evidence that led you to search these rooms for my sister?”
Nigel stood rigidly on his dignity.
“That will be forthcoming at the proper time and place.”
“Unlike my sister,” she rejoined in a mischievous undertone.
“Possibly she may be forthcoming when Aintree has been arrested.”
A provoking smile came to disturb the last remnants of gravity on Elsie’s face, lending dimples to her cheeks and laughter to her eyes.
“Possibly he won’t be arrested,” she remarked.
“You will prevent it?”
“I leave that to you.”
“It’s a matter for the police. I have no part or lot in it.”
Elsie laughed unrestrainedly at his stiff dignity.
“You’ll move heaven and earth to spare yourself a second humiliation like the present,” she told him with a wise shake of the head. “It’s ridiculous enough to search a man’s rooms for a woman who isn’t there, but you can’t—you really can’t arrest a man for harbouring a woman when there’s no shred of evidence to show she was ever under the same roof.”
Her mockery deepened the flush on Nigel’s thin skin to an angry spot of red on either cheek.
“You forget that several of us visited this place the day after Miss Roden disappeared,” he answered.
Elsie looked him steadily in the eyes.
&nbs
p; “I have every reason to remember it.”
“Your sister was here then.”
“You saw her?”
“I heard her.”
“You heard a woman.”
“It was your sister or yourself.”
“Or one of a million others.”
Nigel thumped out his points on the top of a revolving bookcase.
“I had the house watched. No woman entered or left till yesterday. Barring two nurses, and they’re accounted for. You or your sister must have left here yesterday.”
“And not come back?”
“No.”
“Well, that makes it much easier, doesn’t it? If one went out and never came back, and you find the other here the following day, it looks … I mean to say, a perfectly impartial outsider might think, that it was my sister who got away and I who remained behind.”
“Exactly. And it’s on the same simple reasoning that Aintree will be arrested.”
Nigel crooked his umbrella over his arm and slowly drew on his gloves. It was a moment of exquisite, manifest triumph. Elsie stood disarmed and helpless; Sylvia was too proud to ask terms of such a conqueror.
“All the same, what a pity you didn’t come before the bird was flown!” Elsie suggested with the sole idea of gaining time.
“It’s something to have found Aintree at home,” Nigel returned.
“And you’re going to arrest him for harbouring my sister?” Elsie walked into the hall and stood with her fingers on the handle of the door. Her heart was beating so fast that she felt sure she must be betraying emotion in her face. There was only one way of saving the Seraph, and she had resolved to take it. That it involved the immediate and irrevocable sacrifice of her reputation did not disturb her: she was filled with pity and doubt—pity for Sylvia, and doubt whether Nigel would accept her sacrifice. “I suppose—you’re quite certain—he wasn’t harbouring—me?”
Nigel’s unimaginative mind hardly weighed the possibility.
“There’s no warrant against you.”
“Fortunately not.”
“Then why should he harbour you?”
Elsie waited till her lips and voice were under control. Then she turned away from Sylvia and faced him with the steadiness of desperation.
“It’s a very wicked world, Mr. Rawnsley.”
There was a moment’s silence: then Sylvia leapt to her feet with cheeks aflame.
“D’you mean you were here the whole time?”
“Some one was. Ask Mr. Rawnsley.”
“Were you?”
“D’you think it likely?”
“How should I know?”
Elsie hardened her heart to play the unwelcome rôle to its bitter end.
“You know my character, you’ve not had time to forget my divorce or the way I thrust myself under the noses of respectable people. Have I got much more bloom to lose?”
“It’s not true! The Seraph … he wouldn’t!”
“You used to see us about together.”
“There’s nothing in that!”
“Enough to make you cut him at Henley.” Each fresh word fell like a lash across Sylvia’s cheeks, but as long as Nigel dawdled irresolutely at the door it was impossible to end the torture.
“Will you say whether you were here the whole time?” she demanded of Elsie.
“’Course she wasn’t,” Nigel struck in. “There are convenances even in this kind of life. Merivale was here the whole time.”
“Was he?” Elsie asked. Every new question seemed to suck her deeper down.
“I have his word and the evidence of my own eyes.”
“You know he was actually living here? Not merely dropping in from time to time? It’s important, my reputation seems to hang on it. If I was the woman Lord Gartside found, and Mr. Merivale didn’t happen to be living here to chaperon us, the Seraph couldn’t have been harbouring my sister, but it’s good-bye to the remains of my good name. And if Mr. Merivale was here, I couldn’t have been living here too, and the Seraph may have harboured one criminal or fifty. Which was it? I don’t like to guess. Mr. Rawnsley, just tell me confidentially what you believe yourself.”
Nigel bowed stiffly and prepared to leave the room.
“As the conduct of the case is not in my hands,” he answered loftily, “my opinion is of no moment.”
Elsie held the door open for him, shaking her head and smiling mischievously to herself.
“So there’s nothing for it but a general arrest? Well, che sera sera: I suppose it’ll be all over in a week or two, and then we shall be let out in time to see the fun. It’ll be worth it. I wish women were admitted to your Club, it ’ud be so amusing to hear your friends chaffing you about your great mare’s nest. ‘Well, Rawnsley, what’s this I hear about your giving up politics and going to Scotland Yard?’ Men are such cats, aren’t they? Every one would start teasing you at the House, the thing ’ud get into the papers, they’d hear of it in your constituency. Can you picture yourself addressing a big meeting and being heckled? A woman getting up and asking how you crushed the great militant movement and brought all the ringleaders to book? One or two people would laugh gently, and the laughter would spread and grow louder as every one joined in. They’d laugh at you in private houses and clubs, and the House of Commons. They’d laugh at you in the streets. Funny men with red noses and comic little hats would come on at the music halls and imitate you. They’d laugh and laugh till their sides ached and the tears streamed down their cheeks, and you’d try to live it down and find you couldn’t, and in the end you’d have to leave England and live abroad, until they’d found something else to laugh at. You’re going? Not arresting us now? Oh, of course, you haven’t got the proper warrant. Well, I expect we shall be here when you come back. Good-bye, and good luck to you in your new career!”
The door closed heavily behind his indignant back, and Elsie turned a little wearily to Sylvia, bracing herself for an explanation that would be as hard as her recent battle. The mockery had died out of her voice and the laughter out of her eyes.
“Shall I go and see if the Seraph’s awake yet?” she temporised, “or would you prefer to leave a message?”
Sylvia tried to speak, but no words would come—only a dry, choking sob of utter misery and disillusionment. With hasty steps she crossed to the door and fumbled blindly for the handle.
“Miss Roden! Sylvia!”
“Don’t call me that!”
“I’m sorry. Miss Roden, I’ve got something to say to you!”
“I don’t want to hear it, I only want to get away!”
“You must listen, your whole life’s at stake—and the Seraph’s, too.”
The mention of his name brought her to a momentary standstill.
“What is it?” she demanded.
“You must shut that door.”
“I won’t.”
Elsie wrung her hands in desperation. Outside on the landing, three paces from where they were standing, Nigel Rawnsley had paused to light a cigarette.
“It’s about—the woman who was here,” she whispered as he began to descend the stairs.
“Was it you?”
Elsie shook her head.
“No, say it! say it! Yes or no.”
The sound of Nigel’s descending footsteps had abruptly ceased at the angle of the stairs.
“For God’s sake come back inside here a minute!” Elsie implored her.
“I won’t, it’s no good; I shouldn’t believe you whatever you said. If you weren’t here, why did you say you were? And if you were— Oh, let me go, let me go!”
With a smothered sob she broke away from Elsie’s restraining hand and rushed precipitously down the stairs. Nigel tried to walk level with her, but she passed him and hurried out into the street. Elsie closed the door and walked with a heavy h
eart into the library. On a table by the window reposed the bouquet of flowers that Sylvia had brought—lilies, late roses and carnations, all white as the Seraph loved them. Taking them in her hand, she tiptoed out of the room and across the hall to the Seraph’s door. He was still sleeping, but awoke in the early afternoon and inquired whether any one had called.
“The search-party,” Elsie told him, forcing a smile.
“Who was there?”
“Young Mr. Rawnsley and two detectives.”
“Was that all?”
The pathetic eagerness of his tone cut her to the quick.
“Wasn’t it enough?” she asked indifferently.
The Seraph shielded his eyes from the light with one hand.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I used to think I knew when other people—some people—were near me. I fancied—when I was asleep—I suppose it must have been a dream—I don’t know—I fancied there was some one else quite close.”
He turned restlessly on the bed and caught Elsie’s fingers in a bloodless, wasted hand.
“How did you keep the search-party out?” he inquired.
“I didn’t. They came in, and looked into every room. For some unaccountable reason,” she added ironically, “Joyce was nowhere to be found.”
“Were they surprised to see you here?”
“A little. I told them you were seedy and I’d called to inquire.”
The Seraph lay silent till he had gathered sufficient strength to go on talking.
“I suppose they really thought you’d been here the whole time?”
“Oh no!”
“But how else.…”
“I don’t know,” Elsie interrupted quickly. “You must ask them who the woman was Mr. Rawnsley heard the first time he was here. They couldn’t say it was me without suggesting that you and I were both compromised.”
She sprinkled some scent on a handkerchief and bathed his forehead.
“Do you think you can get some more sleep, Seraph? I want to get you well as soon as possible, and then I must take you abroad. London in August isn’t good for little boys.”
“Where shall we go?”
“I must join Toby and Joyce at Rimini.”
The Seraph sighed and closed his eyes.
“I can’t go there yet. They’ll be—frightfully happy—wrapped up in each other—all that sort of thing. I don’t want to see them yet.”
The Classic Mystery Novel Page 52