“Murch?” said Mr Hines. “Murch . . . Murch . . . Ah!” His forefinger stopped at the bottom of a page. “Here we are. Murch. . . . Yes . . . hmmm . . . Yes . . . hmmm. Now in service with Lady Ballister. Wife of one of our most famous soldiers, Mr Schumacher. I very much fear——”
Garrett frown. A sinking sensation attacked his stomach. He said a little sharply:
“But she isn’t. She gave Lady Ballister notice some time ago and left just recently. I thought . . .”
The eyes behind the spectacles regarded him with wonder, “Left? A position like that! Are you sure, Mr Schumacher? I——”
“If I wasn’t sure,” said Garrett shortly, “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Tsck-tsck!” Mr Hines was perturbed. He pressed a bell upon his desk and after a moment the door opened and the round-faced girl stood at Garrett’s elbow. She was given orders and departed.
She was back again in thirty seconds, bearing a card from an index-system drawer. She laid this before her employer, who studied it and frowned and made little cheeping noises.
“Nothing here! Nothing here!” said Mr Hines and pushed the card away from him and sat back and regarded his acolyte. He said: “Murch has not telephoned, Miss Burns? You have not heard from her at all?”
The girl shook her head. “Nothing, Mr Hines.”
The little man was perturbed. “Curious!” he said. “Curious ! Did you say . . . ?” He looked inquiry and again the girl shook her head.
“No, Mr Hines. Murch paid all the commission due as early as last March. There would have been another payment to come on the third of December.”
“Tsck!” said Mr Hines. “Tsck! Tsck!” His plump little hand waved the girl away. He looked across the table at Garrett with a glance of real concern. He said: “I am sorry, Mr Schumacher. Very sorry indeed. But these things will happen. Every now and then girls leave us. . . . Now, if you will allow me, I think I can find you exactly what you require even though Janet Murch is no longer in our hands. . . Once again he pulled the ledger towards him and began running a forefinger down its columns.
“I’m sorry,” said Garrett. “But I really do want Janet Murch.”
Mr Hines looked up from the ledger. He raised plump shoulders and spread his hands. From behind the glittering glasses his soft brown eyes looked at Garrett sadly. He said:
“Once more I must apologize, Mr Schumacher, but you heard what my secretary told me. Murch has thrown up a very good position without consulting us and, moreover, has not come back to us. We must therefore strike Murch from our books!” His kindly little mouth closed in a firm line.
Garrett shifted in his chair. “You mean that you can’t even give me her address?”
“We-ll . . The tone was doubtful.
Garrett hastened to remedy tactlessness. He said hurriedly:
“Of course I should insist upon your taking a fee for the information.” His left hand made a suggestive gesture towards his right breast pocket. “Should we say . . .”
“Tsck-tsck!” said Mr Hines again but this time with a different intonation. “Very handsome of you, I’m sure! But really, Mr Schumacher, might I suggest that we try and get you something else. We have many good girls on our books. Excellent girls. I do not wish to boast in any way but I think I may say that, particularly in the nursemaid line, we can do better for you than any similar establishment in London. I can say that with no fear of contradiction.” Once more he turned to the still open ledger. “Now for instance, I see, purely by chance, that we have here—momentarily disengaged——”
Garrett interrupted. “I’m sorry. But I do want Janet Murch.”
The little man closed the ledger with a slam. He smiled a defeated but friendly smile. “Janet Murch’s address? Very well, Mr Schumacher.” He pressed a bell and the roundfaced girl came again and was bidden to bring back Murch’s card and returned immediately with it. Mr Hines adjusted pince-nez. He picked up the card and cleared his throat. He said:
“Murch’s address, Mr Schumacher, is care of Mrs Bellows, 148A Iron Court, Stockholm Lane, W.” He laid down the card and over it beamed at his visitor.
But Garrett did not answer the smile. Once more there had come to him that feeling of emptiness. Once more he was at a dead end. He said after a moment during which Mr Hines gazed at him with concern:
“That won’t do. I got that address from Lady Ballister. Yesterday. I went there but failed to get in touch with Janet Murch. Mrs Bellows is her aunt and Mrs Bellows left two or three days ago and the rooms have been given up.”
“Tsck! Tsck!” said Mr Hines and then, “Dear me!” He mused for a moment, placing his elbows upon the arms of his chair and the tips of his outspread fingers together. He said at last over the finger tips:
“Really, Mr Schumacher, I don’t want to appear pressing—it is a motto of KJB never to press a client—but I would like to suggest, especially in view of all the circumstances, that you let us try and provide you with some other young woman. Murch really seems to have been behaving in a most curious way and I think that perhaps someone steadier . . .”
Garrett shook his head. “No. I must try and get in touch with the Murch woman.” He pulled himself together. “I’ll go off and see what I can do.” With effort he smiled across the table at the plumpness of Mr Hines. “You’ve been very kind.” He rose. “More than kind.” He got himself to the door, followed by exclamations of distress from the little man. With his fingers upon the handle he turned. “Of course,” he said with effort, “if I have to give up Murch Til come back to you.”
He closed the door firmly and a moment later was out again in Brabazon Street. But now, although the sun still shone, it seemed only a cheerless and dirty little backwater.
CHAPTER X
MR SHELDON GARRETT walked rapidly across the Savoy lounge. His step was springing and his pace was rapid and a wide smile of welcome was upon his face; but Avis Bellingham, looking up from the chair in which she had been awaiting him, saw that the face itself was bloodless and drawn and that the smiling eyes were strangely glittering. She held up a hand to him and he took it in both his own and bent over it and raised it to his lips. The eyes of Mrs Bellingham widened a little.
“Here we are!” said Mr Sheldon Garrett. “Here we are! Here we are!” His tone was louder than was normal with him; and he still retained the gloved hand.
“Tom!” said Avis Bellingham and stared at him. “You’re tight!”
He released the hand. He made a gesture in the grand manner. “You mock one,” he said, “who has this day stared into the jaws of death.”
Mrs Bellingham continued to regard him with gravity. “I should like some lunch,” she said.
They walked side by side out of the lounge and into the grillroom and Garrett went on talking. He was still in speech as they sat at his corner table and it was in a froth of words that he ordered their meal.
Avis Bellingham looked at the cocktails. She said: “I think I should have yours as well.” Her tone was light enough but there was a faint frown between the eyes which still looked, with something puzzled in them, at her host.
“Beautiful,” said Sheldon Garrett, “you can have as much to drink as you like; but you cannot have my drink. No!” He drained his glass and set it down. “You see, darling, I am a shattered wreck! A bundle of nerves! Only an hour since, almost did I embrace the Grim Reaper——”
She said sharply: “Tom! What on earth are you talking about?”
He waved a hand towards windows through which showed, instead of the daylight which the hour should have brought, only a greyish-yellow vapor.
“Fog,” he said. “London fog. The motorist’s enemy, the doctor’s friend, the stand-by of the American novelist. Observe Sheldon Garrett himself, at a few moments short of noon, clutching his stout staff, whistling to his dogs and plunging out into the perpetual night. Observe him making slow but valiant way across the Strand and then, by devious and dingy ways, coming at last to the theatre——”
�
��What theatre?” said Avis Bellingham.
Garrett stared. “What theatre! There’s only one theatre. The rest are mere mumming booths. The theatre is that where Sheldon Garrett’s masterpiece is now showing.” He lifted the glass which the waiter had just filled and drank and set it down again nearly empty.
“We left our hero battling through the fog. We battle with him as he swings along, insouciant, and comes at last to the little alleyway down which he must plunge in order to reach the stage door of the one and only theatre. Does he gain the entrance without untoward incident? He does not—because Death tries to bar the way! Over the stage door is a scaffolding where large men in unseemly trousers have for weeks been endeavouring to replace three bricks and a beam. Today the large men were not working, for fog is bad for their chests. But during their absence something untoward happened upon the scaffolding—so much so that our hero, singing a snatch of Touranian melody, is just about to pass beneath the scaffolding when there comes from above him a tearing, rending, avalanche-like sound and there swiftly descends, from a height of about thirteen feet, an enormous balk of timber! . . . Any ordinary man would inevitably have been annihilated. Not so, however, our hero: light-footed as a chamois, he let out a piercing shriek and jumped. The timber struck the place where he had been, knocking off his hat in the process and—yes indeed!—splitting the flagstone upon which it fell. . . . If you like this story please tell your friends. There will be another adventure of Sheldon Garrett in our next number. . . .”
Avis Bellingham looked from her own empty plate to Garrett’s full one. “Will you please eat?” she said.
Garrett picked up knife and fork. “And that,” he said with bitterness, “is all the reaction I get.” But he began to eat and was at last silent.
Avis put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands and stared at him. She said after a moment:
“I know what’s the matter with you. I mean, as well as being tight.”
Garrett set down knife and fork. “I am not tight! I never get tight! And there’s nothing the matter with me.”
“Eat!” she said. “I think, Thomas, that something’s gone wrong with your—your puzzle. I’ve been with you nearly an hour and you haven’t mentioned it. And I don’t think that just because something nearly fell on you you’d drink so much in the morning.”
Garrett looked at her in silence. He was smiling but the smile was awry. “There’s nothing wrong with my ‘puzzle’ as you call it; nothing wrong at all! How could there be when the whole affair’s in the capable hands of Colonel Gethryn? No, nothing’s wrong at all—nothing beyond the fact that although we know the woman’s name we can’t find out where she is or get hold of anyone who can tell us anything! No, there’s nothing wrong! And even if there was, why should I care? Like Mehitabel, my motto is: Toujours gai!”
For the first time the half-searching, half-puzzled look left the blue eyes of Mrs Bellingham. “Oh, Tom,” she said, “I’m so sorry! But it’s probably only a temporary check; and Anthony Gethryn’s hands are capable. More than capable. Once he’s started something like this he doesn’t stop. I’ll bet you he’s doing something now, at this minute!”
The smile left Garrett’s face. “What he’s doing at this minute is to wait. That’s all he can do. We’ve got one line and one line only. Somewhere in Scotland—maybe—there’s an old aunt of the Murch woman. Gethryn’s got lines out for her. . . .” He put the smile back upon his face. “They won’t catch her of course. But what the hell if they don’t! Toujours gai!”
2
They had coffee in the sitting room of Garrett’s suite. Outside the windows the fog pressed, grey-yellow and heavy, unabashed by the lights within.
“Have some brandy?” said Garrett and from a cupboard brought two great bubbles of glass and a dust-smeared bottle. His guest shook her head.
“It’s good, darling!” said Garrett. He poured a liberal dark gold splash into each glass.
Avis Bellingham sat straight. She said:
“I don’t want brandy. Nor do you.”
Garrett sat upon the edge of the table. He took his glass in cupped hands and began gently to swirl its contents. He looked at her over the glass. He said:
“How wrong you are! But you look adorable like that: so few women can be angry and wrong and lovely all in one expression!” He lifted the glass and sniffed at its bouquet and put it to his lips.
“I don’t think ” said Avis Bellingham, “that I like you like this.” Her mouth was smiling but her eyes were not. “I can only hope that whoever it was was wrong about in vino veritas. . . .” She leant forward. “Tom, do please be nice!
“Nice?” said Garrett. “Nice! What a word! But I know what you mean. Haven’t I been nice? Am I not now nice? Shall I not go on being nice? Nice, forsooth!” He drained his glass and set it down and picked up the other. He said:
“Nice!” and then, raising the second glass: “A toast; a toast! Your husband, God blast—I mean, bless him!”
She started. The smile that she had been striving to keep upon her face was wiped away. She looked at Garrett with a gaze he found it difficult to meet. She said with an odd inflection:
“That’s the first time you’ve mentioned George. D’you know that, Tom? And since that evening you paid your first visit to the flat, we’ve——”
He took the glass from his lips and interrupted. “Let us not speak of the man! He cramps my style! Whenever I look at you his wraith rises gibbering before me! Whenever I follow the rustle of your skirts, my heart pounding, I feel him dogging my very footsteps! I am like one who turns no more his head, because he knows a Frightful Fiend doth close behind him tread! . . . That’s apt! . . . How I dislike the man! My New England conscience gives him a power which my libido refutes! I am on the horns of a Dilemma—see under Zoo. I am a poor thing and not even mine own. My heart is yours to tread and I dare not—durst not!—put it beneath your number fives!”
“Tom!” said his visitor sharply. “Shut up!”
He reached behind him for the bottle upon the table and splashed more brandy into his glass and lifted the glass and drank.
“And that,” said Avis, “is not the way to drink good brandy! If you must wallow, at least do it like a gentleman!” Her words came fast and her pallor was a match for his.
He set down the glass and dropped upon one knee before her in transpontine humility. He said, tripping a little over his words:
“Pour scorn upon me! Vilify me! Ridicule my hopeless passion! I love it, I’m a masochist!” He reached out his hands towards her in traditional supplication. “I love you, madame! I——”
Avis Bellingham got to her feet. Her face was very white and the blue eyes blazed fire through a sheen which glittered. She said:
“Damn you! I hate you!”
Garrett was left staring at a door, the echo of its slamming ringing in his ears.
3
Anthony Gethryn picked up his telephone.
“When you get him,” said Lucia, “ask him to dinner.” Anthony spoke into the telephone; then over his shoulder. “They’re getting him.” He waited.
Lucia said: “And I wont ask Avis.”
Anthony turned again. “Why not?”
“Fog!” said his wife. “And they’re in love but aren’t sure of it—at least, he isn’t for some reason.”
Anthony said: “Wrong, aren’t you?” And then into the telephone: “Ah, that you, Garrett? . . . Gethryn here. . . . Dine this evening? . . . Yes, do. There’s nothing yet but there might be. . . . What? . . . Yes, if the fog’s still on, come by tube. Strand to Knightsbridge. When you get out of the station . . .” He gave explicit directions and rang off and turned his chair to look across at his wife. He said: “Sound picture of dramatist in dumps!”
And that was at five minutes past five.
4
It was a quarter to seven when Garrett left the Savoy, coming through the centre swing door and out into the court. The fog was worse; the ai
r was chill and there was no breath of wind. The lights from the lamps and the windows of the hotel and the portico of the little theatre did not diminish obscurity; they merely thinned the greyish-yellow curtain of vapor, misleading men who had thought light means vision.
A cold and acrid stinging of his nose and throat made Garrett pull his muffler up about his mouth. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat and walked slowly along towards the lights of the Strand—yellow nimbuses behind the veil. He passed the portico of the theatre and, keeping close to the wall, reached the broad pavement of the Strand and turned left along it. His progress was now easier. The roadway, indeed, was crowded, with long lines of monstrous shapes crawling nose to tail westward and eastward but the pavement was almost bare of pedestrians. Counting the corners carefully and only twice having to halt to avoid collision with other humans, he got safely into John Street and then, by brushing the railings of the houses with his left shoulder, came with creditable speed down the hill and at ‘ last into Villiers Street and across it to the Strand tube station.
He found the booking office and bought his ticket and plunged beneath the surface of the earth. He experienced for the first time that sense of gratitude to the makers of the underground railway which is no uncommon feeling for a Londoner. The tubular, tiled warrens were brightly lit and evenly temperatured, and a man could see so far as his eyes would let him. And here, too, were men and women—many men and women—who were real and sure stepping, not dim and furtive and blundering wraiths.
At the end of the corridor leading to his platform Garrett found himself walking with small shuffling steps by reason of the pressure of his fellow creatures. He had a mental vision of a town beneath the earth; of men living, with the common sense and security of badgers, beneath the surface of an unfriendly world only to be entered in adventure.
He came out of the corridor and onto the platform. It was black with people. Of inclination and by reason of pressure behind him he went forward. In front of him was a little clear space at the edge of the platform. Beside him men and women were converging on it. He marked out the clear space for himself and with two long strides was there. He hoped that when the train came in it would have the grace so to arrange its length that there was a door immediately in front of him. Idly he glanced up and to his right at the hanging electric signboard. It would, he felt, be in keeping with this bad day if the next train proved to be omitting Knights bridge from its halts; but when the letters of the sign sprang into life he saw that in this small thing at least he was lucky.
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