Rogue's Holiday

by Maxwell March

  “But of course you didn’t,” he said. “Why should you? But tell me, what form did this remarkable malady take?”

  Judy blushed. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I was just very pale and weak. It seemed to work all right.”

  “But naturally, it would. How extremely clever of you! Well, Miss Wellington, Marguerite’s right: you must be absolutely worn out after your excitements of the day.”

  Marguerite rang the bell, and Judy looked at her. The woman read the unspoken question in the girl’s eyes and held out her hand.

  “My dear child,” she said, “don’t worry. We’ll get hold of your uncle, and you can both have sanctuary here for as long as you like. This is an out-of-the-way place. If the worst comes to the worst it’s quite a little fortress. You go to bed now and sleep, and in the morning I shall have good news for you, I’m certain of it.”

  Judy’s eyes grew big with gratitude.

  “Oh, Marguerite, you’re a darling,” she said, and kissed the woman impulsively.

  Marguerite Ferney sat very stiff and straight in her nest of cushions, and Judy, looking at her, wondered why the beautiful face should assume such a mask of pallor at the caress.

  Anna, the big, rather grim-faced woman who had accompanied them on their flight from the Arcadian, conducted her to her bedroom. She had not been taken to the room on her first arrival, and now was rather surprised to find it a smallish room on the top floor of the house, which was, although very comfortably furnished, oddly cold and uninviting.

  “Here you are, miss. I think you’ll be comfortable here. I’ve unpacked your things and put them away in the cupboard, as I imagine you’ll be staying some little time.”

  The maid spoke in an odd expressionless voice, and although she smiled at the girl there was nothing sincere about her, and she moved and spoke, Judy thought, as though she were an automaton.

  She went out, and the girl was left alone. As she undressed and prepared for bed it occurred to Judy that the thing which made the room so uninviting was the fact that the window was set rather high in the wall. The room had been a nursery at some time, she decided, for there were thin but very firm iron bars across it on the outside.

  She had pulled back the curtains and was standing staring out across the sea, now just a grey mist in the dusk, when there was a tap on her door, and the maid Anna reappeared.

  “Miss Marguerite has sent you a cup of tea, miss,” she said. “She always takes it herself just before going to bed and thought you might care to have some.”

  Judy thanked the woman. Although it was high summer, the evening was chill, and the hot tea was inviting.

  Anna set the tray down on the bedside table and began to fold up Judy’s discarded clothes for her.

  As she sipped the tea the girl watched the woman at work and reflected that it must be very pleasant to be wealthy enough to have a lady’s maid to look after one: rather like having a nurse again, she decided.

  The tea was very strong and tasted almost bitter, and although Judy added a considerable amount of cream from the little silver pitcher, it did not seem to lose its odd, distinctive flavour.

  She caught Anna looking at her thoughtfully as she set down the pitcher.

  “I’m sorry if it’s a bit strong, miss,” she said. “I’m afraid you don’t like it.”

  Judy was quick to sense the note of disappointment in her voice and was anxious not to hurt her feelings.

  “It’s perfectly all right, Anna,” she said, gulping down the remainder of the liquid. “Thank you so much for bringing it.”

  She set the cup down upon the tray, and the woman hurried over and, picking it up, bade her a hasty good-night.

  Her departure was so rapid that Judy was astonished. She turned towards the bed, and as she did so was conscious for the first time of a queer numb sensation which seemed to be spreading rapidly over her. Her senses reeled. The outlines of the furniture became blurred and indistinct. She felt drowsy and as though every bone in her body had suddenly become made of lead.

  A great fear seized her. Even her thoughts were becoming confused, but she remembered the tea and the odd bitter taste in it.

  By sheer force of will she dragged herself towards the door. Her fingers closed upon the handle. The weight of her limbs was dragging her down, and the insufferable drowsiness was becoming more irresistible at every moment.

  She turned the handle and pulled, only to meet resistance. In her terror she threw off for a moment the powerful narcotic drug and tugged at the door with all her strength, but the wood remained firmly in place, and with her last conscious thought she realized that it was locked and she was a prisoner.

  CHAPTER XII

  The Angry Man

  “I’M FINISHED, MARSH. I can’t go on any longer. This is more than I can stand.”

  Few people would have recognized Sir Leo Thyn in the man who stood trembling before the great desk at which Saxon Marsh was seated.

  Any doctor would have pronounced him in urgent need of medical treatment. His nerves had gone completely, and it was a trembling, shrunken old man who stood cowering in his friend’s luxurious suite.

  “We shall lose everything. We’re beaten, Marsh. Our only chance is to lay hands on all we’ve got and clear out of the country.”

  Saxon Marsh did not appear to hear. He was writing, and only an increased pallor in his cheeks betrayed any uneasiness in his state of mind.

  There was silence in the room, broken only by the scratching of his pen.

  Sir Leo brought his fist down with a crash upon the desk.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “It’s our only chance. We must clear out. I shall go to Greece. I’ve got enough money to live there quietly, for a time, at least. Are you coming with me, or must I go alone?”

  Saxon Marsh raised his head slowly, and for a long moment his cavernous eyes rested upon the other man’s face. Then he pressed a bell, and immediately a secretary entered.

  Marsh spoke without glancing at him.

  “Has Johnson returned?”

  “Yes, Mr. Marsh. Here is the message.”

  The secretary laid an envelope on the table and went out quickly. All Saxon Marsh’s employees seemed to share his own strange inhuman quality.

  Saxon Marsh tore open the envelope, glanced at the contents, and then, opening a drawer in the desk, took out a sheet of paper.

  “There, Thyn,” he said. “In this envelope is a first-class ticket which will see you as far as Marseilles. There are also five one-hundred-pound notes for immediate expenses. Sign this paper and they’re yours. Any of my secretaries is trustworthy, and you can arrange with one of them, or with your own man, to have your own private fortune transferred to a bank out there.”

  Thyn took up the paper with a trembling hand. For some minutes he studied its contents. Then it dropped from his fingers and fluttered down upon the polished wood of the desk.

  “This empowers you to take full charge of the Gillimot fortune,” he said. “Good heavens, man, do you realize what you’re doing?”

  Saxon Marsh shrugged his thin shoulders.

  “Certainly,” he said. “I’m assuming your responsibilities. In other words, you’re stepping out, and I’m taking over. Don’t imagine, my dear Thyn, that I’m going to pull this thing off for you to step in afterwards and share the profits. Either you stay and play your part or you leave it entirely to me.”

  A travesty of a smile passed over Sir Leo’s face.

  “This is a legal document,” he said. “You must have had it prepared for some days.”

  “I admit the eventuality had occurred to me,” said Marsh, “and I was prepared for it. Make up your mind, though.”

  “If I refuse?”

  Marsh refused. “I don’t think you will. You’re frightened. Only a moment ago you were urging me to run away. Now you’re afraid of your own suggestion. If you think we’re going to fail, now’s your chance to get out. If you don’t, stay behind and take the risk.”<
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  A discreet tap on the door interrupted the conversation, and the same secretary entered. He laid a slip of paper on the table and went out again. Marsh glanced at it and tossed it over. It was a memorandum slip containing the cryptic message:

  D. B. has returned from interviewing landlady at chauffeur’s lodgings. Appears to have learned nothing.

  Saxon Marsh smiled.

  “Our inspector is getting worried,” he said. “A very tenacious man, Thyn. He should be working for us. Ever since you made your idiotic mistake of blabbing out your fears to him he has been working like a fiend in his attempt to get hold of Marguerite Ferney’s whereabouts. I shall let him try a little longer. After all, he may find something of use. Policemen sometimes do.”

  He laid a peculiar emphasis upon the word “policemen,” and Sir Leo gulped.

  “It’s madness,” he said hoarsely. “It’s madness to stay. The game’s up, Marsh. Why not admit it?”

  Saxon Marsh dipped a pen into the ink and handed it to his erstwhile friend.

  Sir Leo hesitated and was lost. He seized the pen and scribbled his name at the foot of the document.

  Without a word the other man took it from his trembling hand and passed him the envelope.

  “Bon voyage, my friend,” he said, smiling.

  Sir Leo turned back, his face convulsed with rage.

  “I believe you’re double-crossing me,” he said.

  Saxon Marsh drew out the document the other had just signed.

  “Suppose we tear it up?” he suggested. “I’m quite prepared. Only make up your mind; there’s no time to lose. If our young friend is not rescued from the amiable Marguerite Ferney I may wish that I had taken your advice. And there is also the young inspector to consider. Hurry, man, hurry. There’s work to be done.”

  Sir Leo drew back from the desk.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll go. I can’t stand it any longer.” And without once looking behind him he strode out of the room.

  Saxon Marsh looked after him. Then a smile spread over his face, and, after a few seconds had elapsed, his long thin hand reached out and touched a bell.

  The subservient secretary was with him in a moment.

  “Has Johnson gone?” Saxon Marsh’s voice was unusually soft.

  “Yes, sir. He’s followed Sir Leo.”

  “Good, good.” As though to give more force to the monosyllable, Saxon Marsh nodded on the word. “That’s right, Marshall. You may go, but don’t forget to keep me informed at every step.”

  The young secretary opened his mouth as though he would ask a question, but the expression in his employer’s eyes silenced him, and he moved noiselessly out of the room.

  Left alone, Saxon Marsh leant back in his chair and smiled. For some time he seemed lost in contemplation of singularly happy thoughts, but gradually the smile vanished from his face as a new expression took its place, and in that moment Saxon Marsh looked a very formidable enemy, a fit match indeed for Charles Carlton Webb.

  At the precise moment that Saxon Marsh sat contemplating the flight of his partner, Sir Leo Thyn, Inspector David Blest was engaged in doing what no policeman should ever think of attempting, even in cases of considerable emergency. He was breaking into a hotel room.

  It was nine o’clock in the evening, and the upper floors of the hotel were deserted. Even the chambermaids were off duty, and the time was admirably suited to his project.

  Marguerite Ferney had occupied a suite of three rooms on the third floor, and when David had succeeded in effecting an entrance by means of a piece of bent wire manipulated with a dexterity which would not have disgraced a professional cracksman, he found himself in a sitting room which still smelt faintly of an exotic perfume and which still bore traces of its recent occupation.

  David knew quite well what he was doing and had decided to take the risk. The one thing firmly fixed in his mind was the fact that Judy was in danger and that she must be discovered at all costs.

  He set about his task with that methodical thoroughness which is the outcome of a Yard training. He searched all three rooms, moving slowly through them without appearing to hurry in the least, and yet with an odd precision and a meticulous tidiness.

  Every scrap of paper was examined, every drawer pulled out, every cupboard door opened, every corner and waste-paper basket turned over.

  The maid’s room and Miss Ferney’s own luxurious bedroom yielded nothing which could be considered a clue, unless the empty perfume bottle labelled “Vérité, Rue des Marchands, Paris” could be said to be one.

  Looking at it, David was inclined to think not. After all, Vérité’s was a large concern, and it was unlikely that they would remember the name and address of the person who had bought the bottle, even were there sufficient time to ask them.

  He went on with his search, steadily growing more and more despondent, and the sick feeling of alarm for Judy overpowering him.

  And then, just as he was giving up hope, he made a discovery. In the bottom of a waste-paper basket in the sitting room he found a torn half sheet of blotting paper. He spread it out upon the little escritoire in front of the window and examined it carefully.

  At first he thought it was going to profit him nothing. The centre of the page was an undecipherable mass of blottings, and he was about to throw it away disconsolately when something caught his eye, and he held the paper closer to the light.

  Then an exclamation of satisfaction escaped him. Embedded in the thick, soft paper was the indentation of words evidently written with a hard pencil on a thin sheet of paper placed over it.

  Gradually he made out some of them, and his satisfaction grew. It was a list of towns, evidently scribbled down in a woman’s hand, and David’s heart leapt as he deciphered them.

  He made out “East Bay,” which he knew to be some ten miles from Westbourne, and then “Greydean,” a small township some few miles farther on in an easterly direction.

  With a thrill of delight he realized his good fortune. He had discovered the route Marguerite Ferney had planned, to give to her chauffeur.

  Folding the precious slip of paper in his wallet, he let himself out of the suite and went noiselessly down to his own room to complete his task. It was not easy.

  Towards the end of the list the towns became illegible, and finally in despair he went down to the bureau for a road map and a gazetteer.

  Here he found a snag. The clerk, although smiling and polite, firmly refused to allow him to take the volumes up to his room, but hospitably offered him the use of the office for so long as he should need it.

  David made the best of a bad job. He was in a hurry. Moreover, there seemed no particular need for secrecy. Rather more from habit than deliberate intention, he kept the overfriendly little clerk at arm’s length. But the man appeared to be bored, and whenever David looked up he saw his watery blue eyes fixed inquisitively upon the list he was making.

  Half an hour’s work left David with the information that Marguerite Ferney’s list of towns had ended, so far as he could tell, at Hintlesham in Kent, but he had no means of telling if the journey ended at that point or if it merely indicated that the chauffeur knew his way from that spot.

  He wrote the name down upon his list and sat looking at it thoughtfully, his mind very far away from the inquisitive clerk whose would-be casual glance was directed upon the paper in front of him.

  Finally David rose, and with a word of thanks hurried out into the lounge. He knew well that he might be setting out upon a wild-goose chase, but on the other hand it seemed most unlikely that Marguerite Ferney would map out a route which she did not intend to take, and Judy was in danger.

  He glanced at his watch. By hard driving through the night he guessed he might reach Hintlesham by six in the morning. The only thing which prevented him setting out at once was a certain guilty feeling concerning his duty to Inspector Winn. It was true that he only held a watching brief, as it were, in the Johnny Deane case, and that Winn was doing
his best to freeze him out, but the fact remained that he was engaged on the job.

  He glanced again at the list he had made out. The temptation was very strong.

  It was at this moment that he felt a touch upon his arm. Swinging round, he caught sight of the little watery-eyed clerk again. The man seemed to be excited.

  “You’re Inspector Blest, aren’t you, sir? I thought so. There’s a telephone call for you. It seems to be urgent. The name is Colonel Cream, sir. Will you take it in my office? You’ll be undisturbed there.”

  David followed the man back into the little room and picked up the telephone receiver.

  “Hallo, is that you, Blest, my boy?” the chief constable’s voice sounded far off and indistinct. “This is a confounded line,” the voice continued. “I can hardly hear you. Now, listen. I’ve got private information that the Northampton police are holding a man on a motoring offence. His description tallies with Birch exactly. I want you to go up there tonight. Have you got a car? Oh, splendid. Well, look, go at once, and don’t tell anyone.”

  “Don’t tell anyone, sir?” David’s voice betrayed his astonishment.

  He heard a smothered explosion at the other end of the wire.

  “Don’t tell Winn,” said the chief constable. “This is completely unofficial, you understand. But I think they’ve got the man, and I want you to bring him in. I can rely on you to do that, can’t I, as a personal favour to me?”

  He rang off, and David hung up the receiver very slowly. The whole business was extraordinarily unorthodox, but from what he had seen of Colonel Cream that did not surprise him.

  Policemen like Inspector Winn may easily be unpopular with their own chief constable.

  He went slowly out again. There was nothing for it. His long training told him that he must obey the Colonel implicitly. He was not a free agent.

  The clue he held to Judy’s whereabouts was slender indeed. A comforting thought occurred to him. If the man at Northampton was indeed Lionel Birch, alias Jim Wellington, then he was more likely to be able to tell him about Marguerite Ferney than anyone else in the world.