Rogue's Holiday

by Maxwell March

  “Oh no, sir,” he said. “Not at all, sir. Of course not, sir.”

  “Then you’re wrong,” David said, leaning back in the deep cane chair. “I am bored. Bored stiff. I’m wondering why on earth I came. The gilded life of the English pleasure seeker does not appeal to me.”

  “Oh, don’t say that, sir!” Old Charlie was shocked. “It’s because you don’t go in for it, if I may say so, sir. When I saw you the first day, sitting ’ere, I thought you was waiting for someone who ’adn’t turned up.”

  David grimaced. The old man was not far out. Three days, three precious days, and there was no sign of Sir Leo, although a suite awaited him.

  Old Charlie shook his head.

  “If it was raining I could understand it,” he said. “But it’s lovely weather. Look at the sun on them red and white bathing tents. They’re quite a picture. The Lido hasn’t got anything on Westbourne this year. Why, we’re filling up even this great place, sir. More coming every day. You ought to be about, enjoying yourself.”

  David shook his head, and the old man eyed him thoughtfully.

  “Now—no offence, sir,” he said at last. “No offence meant and none took, I’m sure. But if you—er—if you ’ad a lady, now, to go about with...”

  David laughed outright.

  “I don’t like ladies,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Don’t like ladies, sir?” Old Charlie evidently gave the young man up as hopeless. “Well now, fancy that!”

  Then an idea occurred to him as a possible explanation for this odd peculiarity in a young man.

  “Perhaps there’s one lady who’s not ’ere, sir?” he ventured diffidently.

  “No,” said David, shattering his hope. “No lady anywhere, thank God.”

  “Well!” said Old Charlie in despair. “Well! I’ll bring you a nice iced lager, sir.” He padded off sadly.

  David rose to his feet and wandered over to the reception desk, where he inquired somewhat forlornly if there were any messages for him.

  He had received the usual answer and was idly turning over some of the advertising matter spread out upon the desk when there was a little commotion behind him, and he turned to see a new arrival.

  The porter came first, carrying two large suitcases, and behind him, leaning heavily on the arm of the commissionaire, was a girl who wore a squirrel coat wrapped tightly round her slender form, although the day was bright and hot.

  The little procession came slowly up to the desk where he stood. As they came abreast of him the girl turned to her escort and dropped something into his hand.

  “Thank you. I’m quite all right now,” she said. “It was only getting in and out of the car fatigued me.”

  David was agreeably surprised. In his own private opinion most women had ugly voices: either two low and intentionally vibrant, or too high and liable to become shrill on the least provocation.

  But this was something quite different. This was a nice voice; gentle but not consciously so, musical and unaffected.

  He turned to look at the girl and was startled by the pallor of her face. Apart from this extraordinary paleness she was really very lovely, and the young man who had just said he did not like women found himself looking at her with more than common interest.

  She was very fair, and small honey-coloured curls showed under the brim of her little hat. Her eyes were grey, with fine arched eyebrows, and her features really extraordinarily well chiselled.

  David took in all these facts subconsciously. They were not things in which he interested himself, as a rule.

  Consciously, he was fascinated by her fragility. She looked so weak, so extraordinarily pathetic, that instinctively he glanced round for the trained nurse who, he felt sure, must be in attendance.

  She was quite alone, however, and presently he heard her speaking to the clerk.

  “I am Miss Judy Wellington. I wrote to you about a room.”

  “Oh yes, Miss Wellington. Number forty-nine, on the first floor, overlooking the sea.”

  The clerk also seemed startled by her appearance.

  David remembered the room number because it was next door to his own room, number fifty.

  Old Charlie was waiting over by his chair with the iced lager, but he did not move.

  The girl signed the register and was turning away when the clerk spoke awkwardly.

  “Excuse me, but—er—I mean—are you all right, Miss Wellington? Could I ring for a maid to take you upstairs?”

  A faint smile passed over the girl’s face.

  “Oh no, thank you,” she said gently. “I’m quite all right. I’m a permanent invalid, of course, but I’m quite able to walk if I go slowly.”

  She turned away and followed the man with her bags, moving very slowly. The clerk looked after her.

  “What a damned shame,” he said impulsively, and David looked up. The remark had expressed his own thoughts completely.

  He went back to his seat and sat sipping his drink thoughtfully, idly speculating about the girl.

  After a moment or so he pulled himself together and reverted to the subject which until this moment had had all his attention: a possible alternative to the story Sir Leo Thyn had told him in the secretary’s room at the Senior Bluffs, and what it could possibly have been that young Ingleton-Gray had not sunk low enough to do.

  But the recollection of the girl returned to him. Presently he rose and walked out into the terrace garden and down the wide steps to the sea.

  It was all very bright, very gay. Brown-skinned young women in the scantiest of costumes lay on brightly striped rugs in the sun; all rather like a revue, David thought.

  He was going back through the hotel garden when for the first time since his arrival at Westbourne he caught sight of a figure he recognized.

  The man was seated alone on one of the marble benches, surveying the horizon with much the same sort of lordly detachment which David himself had affected some minutes before. He did not see the inspector at once, and that young man had leisure to observe him.

  He was a small man, fastidiously dressed, almost too fastidiously. There was a faint nattiness about him, a flavour of the oversmart, and David smiled to himself.

  Johnny Deane, alias “the Major,” was one of Scotland Yard’s most frequent visitors. By profession he was a “con man,” or confidence trickster, and a place like the Arcadian was just the sort of ground in which he preferred to work.

  At the risk of spoiling Mr. Deane’s holiday David wandered over and sat down beside him.

  “ ’Afternoon, Major,” he said.

  Mr. Deane turned round. For a moment his expression was a complete blank. Then he held out his hand.

  “Well, if it isn’t my old friend from the college,” he said, betraying the soft voice and educated accent which was part of his stock in trade. “Well, well, well, how pleasant it is to run into people one knows.

  “You’re on holiday, I suppose?” he went on affably.

  “You,” said David placidly, “I suppose are on business?”

  The Major smiled. “For once you’re wrong,” he said. “I hate to disappoint you, but for practically the first time in my life I have no need to work.”

  “Oh? Found a wealthy sucker?”

  Johnny Deane blew a cloud of smoke into the air.

  “No,” he said. “No, quite seriously. I wish I could tell you all about it, but I can’t. Not because you’re a policeman, but because I can’t tell anybody. I’ve got a job. Something easy, pleasant, with no risk attached. In fact, it’s all completely aboveboard. Just a little favour for a gentleman I know, and between you and me, old man, it’s going to see me sitting pretty for some time to come. Oh, I’m in clover.”

  David looked at the man and he had the odd impression that he was telling the truth. The Major seemed to divine his thoughts.

  “It’s a fact,” he said. “I don’t mind you hanging about, even. The man I’m doing this thing for knows my record, knows all about
me. I haven’t hidden anything from him. I tell you, I’ve had a bit of luck. I may even be able to go straight after this. When I get my flat in Brook Street you must come and have a drink with me some time.”

  David was interested. He did not believe such stories as a rule, but he knew that Johnny would not be sitting there so placidly by his side if he had anything of which to be afraid.

  “It dropped right out of the air, this thing,” Johnny said confidentially. “I only heard of it the day before yesterday. I was so hard up I thought I should have to go back to the old school for a bit, and then up comes this little job clean out of the air, and here I am, all set for a lovely holiday.”

  “Well, I hope for your sake it’s on the level,” said David, getting up. “Are you staying here, by the way?”

  “No. I’m over at the Queen’s. But I may move over to your place tomorrow or the day after. I hear the food’s better. So long.”

  As David went upstairs to his room he was still thinking about the Major. He was a funny little chap, he reflected, and apart from his criminal habits really not a very bad sort of person. On the whole he was inclined to believe his story, and he wondered who on earth could find Johnny a job that was on the level and was yet suited to his peculiar taste.

  At any rate, here was one little mystery. Even if Sir Leo did not turn up and he had to search for him elsewhere, his visit to Westbourne might not be entirely without interest.

  Then he remembered the girl. It struck him as being peculiar even then that he could not get her face out of his mind.

  He changed in a leisurely fashion, wondering in a vague sort of way if she would appear at dinner. A permanent invalid: it certainly was a shame; a damned shame with anyone as lovely as that.

  He was in shirt and trousers when the crash came, one of the most tremendous thumps he had ever heard.

  He paused, collar in hand, and listened.

  There was silence for a moment, and then quite distinctly a small feminine moan.

  It sounded so near that he started and looked about him in astonishment. The explanation was instantly apparent.

  His own room and the room next door had been intended as part of a suite, so that there was a communicating door between them. The demand for single rooms being great, however, a small wardrobe had been placed over the door so that only the top part of the moulding was visible.

  He hesitated. He was only partially dressed.

  Suddenly it dawned upon him that the room where the crash had occurred must be number forty-nine. It must belong to the invalid girl.

  It sounded as though a chest of drawers had turned over.

  He felt that something ought to be done. His glance wandered towards the wardrobe.

  In a moment he had wrenched it aside. It was empty and quite light.

  It never occurred to him that the door beyond might have been left unlocked, but the moment his hand touched the latch it sprang open, and he found himself on the threshold of the room beyond.

  The first thing he saw was that he had made a mistake. A slender but athletic young person in a bathing suit was lifting an overturned chest of drawers back into position.

  He saw instantly what had happened. She had been indulging in setting-up exercises, wedging her feet under the chest to pull herself into a sitting position. The chest, being empty, was light and had overturned.

  All this took a moment, and he was just about to go back to his room when she turned her head.

  Very few things surprised Inspector David Blest, but on this occasion his eyebrows rose and his mouth fell open, for the face which stared up at him, consternation slowly giving place to alarm on the lovely features, belonged to Miss Wellington, the permanent invalid of the reception hall, and, moreover, her pallor had completely disappeared.

  This was a Miss Wellington who had never been an invalid in her life.

  For perhaps two seconds their eyes met, and then David stepped back into his own room with a muttered word of apology and sat down on the bed. As he digested his astonishment he heard her lock the door, and the enormity of his behaviour suddenly dawned upon him.

  And the girl had seen him and had certainly recognized him.

  He sat there cursing himself for some time, and then it suddenly occurred to him to wonder what on earth she was doing.

  Inspector Blest knew very little about young women not of the criminal class, but he knew enough to realize that permanent invalids do not indulge in strenuous physical exercises which upset chests of drawers.

  In the end, however, he returned to his own side of the incident and determined to apologize at the first possible opportunity. He even waited up in his own room for an hour after he was fully dressed in the hope that he might catch her as she came out of her room.

  In this, however, he was defeated, for she did not appear that evening, and it was not until he came up to his room the following morning, after searching for her in vain in the breakfast room, that he met her coming out of her bedroom and tottering slowly down the corridor towards the lift.

  She was pale again. The extraordinary whiteness which he had noticed at their first meeting had returned. Moreover, although it was a broiling morning, she still wore the squirrel coat clutched tightly about her.

  He saw that she recognized him, and she would have passed had he not stopped her.

  “I say,” he began awkwardly, “I feel I must apologize for my extraordinary behaviour yesterday. Only you see, I heard the crash, and I wasn’t dressed, and I wondered if you—well, if someone was hurt.” He hesitated and finished lamely: “I’m so sorry.”

  To his relief she did not snub him. Instead he found two grey eyes resting quizzically upon his face.

  “You saw what I was doing?” she said.

  “I ... saw you put the chest of drawers back, yes,” he said.

  There was a long pause, and then the inspector felt a light touch on his arm, a touch which startled him considerably.

  “Don’t,” said a soft voice, “please don’t tell anybody that I’m not ill, will you? Please——”

  He was surprised at her tone, which was so near entreaty.

  “No,” he said impulsively. “No. All right, I won’t.”

  The girl sighed. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.” She tottered off down the corridor, leaving him completely bewildered.

  It was after lunch when he spoke to her again. All the morning she had sat in his favourite corner, and after lunch took up her position there again. She looked pathetic, and quite absurd in the circumstances, sitting there with her pale face and fur coat.

  Finally he went over to her.

  “Do you mind?” he said.

  She hesitated. “Well, it is very dull here, isn’t it?”

  He sat down. They were alone, and no one was within earshot. He leaned forward.

  “Aren’t you extremely hot in that coat?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Awfully.”

  David edged round to his subject.

  “Look here,” he said, “I don’t want to be inquisitive, and honestly I’d rather do anything than be a nuisance to you, but is it absolutely necessary for you—to—well, to masquerade like this?”

  She met his eyes squarely.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m afraid it is. Please don’t talk about it.”

  David hesitated.

  “I only asked,” he said at last, “because—well, I wondered if your—er—illness would still be necessary if you weren’t in Westbourne. You see,” he hurried on without giving her time to reply, “I’ve got a car. It’s not a very good one, but I thought we might go along to Sandy Bay, which is about fifteen miles down the coast, and have a swim and come back.”

  The girl glanced out over the glistening water. The invitation was obviously attractive. On such a day few people could resist the appeal of that dancing water.

  She looked at him. “I don’t know you at all,” she said.

  “My name’s David Blest,” he
said. “I don’t know anybody here. I’m completely without friends or relations, and I would very much like to drive you down to Sandy Bay.”

  The girl glanced out across the sea once more. Then she rose to her feet.

  “It’s perfectly mad,” she said. “But if you knew what this coat was like——Where’s the car?”

  At half-past five that evening, after the swim of a lifetime, David stopped the car at his passenger’s request ten miles out of Westbourne.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t attend to my make-up while we’re jolting about. This has to be done very carefully.”

  David pulled up, and, leaning back in his seat, surveyed the girl at his side. For three hours crime and criminals had never once entered his thoughts.

  They had not talked about the girl’s affairs, by mutual consent, and for the first time in his life David had been content to let a mystery go unsolved.

  Judy Wellington was not like any other girl he had ever known. She had intelligence and she had charm, and beauty, too, he thought, as he saw her sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks.

  She opened the bag on her knees.

  “Is this necessary?” he said.

  For a moment all the amusement died out of her face, and there crept into her eyes something which he had seen there before and which he recognized only now. It was not surprise or fear, but, surprisingly, grim determination, determination to see something through, at whatever cost.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m afraid it is,” adding lightly, “My ‘illness’ is going to be a bit patchy. I’m afraid this stuff won’t take very well after sea water.”

  “What is it?” he inquired.

  She grimaced. “Frankly, it’s called a beauty mask. It’s stuff you’re supposed to spread over your face at night and wash off in the morning. I discovered it ages ago. It makes me look very ill, don’t you think?”

  “Horribly,” he said, and added abruptly, “I say, I wish you wouldn’t do it.”

  She was grave again immediately.

  “I wish I needn’t, too,” she said. “But I’m afraid I must. And look here, while I’m about it I’d like to thank you very much for this. You see, I don’t suppose I shall see you again after today.”