Miss Brent slackened her pace. So, behind her, did the apotheosis of the ordinary, Detective Officer C. D. Fields. Although melting, as it were, into the townscape and not by look or action deviating from his paradoxically intense normality, he kept his attention upon Miss Brent and neither saw nor noticed—as why should he?—that behind him, at a distance approximately equal to his own from Miss Brent, came another man. . . .
Miss Brent was looking at the numbers upon the stone pillars of the gateways. She came to Number 19A; hesitated; seemed for a moment about to pass—and then, with a squaring of her slim shoulders, set a hand to the latch of the gate, thrust it open and marched up the path leading to the steps and the front door.
4
It was a quarter to four in the afternoon when Miss Brent set her fingers to the doorbell of Anthony Gethryn’s house.
Ten minutes earlier, in Lucas’ office, Anthony had got to his feet and said:
“HI be off. Pike, be a good fellah and call me if there’s anything new. See you both in the morning.”
“Where ‘re you going?” Lucas’ tone was not free of suspicion.
“Home,” said Anthony and smiled. “Only home.”
Pike said: “I’m sorry, sir. I was hoping you’d come with me to have a look around Hines’s house and Jenks’s place.”
Anthony looked at him. “Haven’t they been gone over yet?”
Pike said reproachfully: “You know me better than that, sir. Search warrants were out before one o’clock, and a couple of men have been in each place ever since. But I was going to go round now and see what they’d found. Or missed.”
Lucas said: “I wish all the department were as keen on everything as Pike always is on your affairs.”
Pike looked at Anthony: “You might as well come along, sir.”
“I suppose,” said Anthony, “I might.”
And so it was that instead of reaching his house at the moment when Miss Ada Brent was talking to White, Anthony, with Pike beside him, was changing the whole course of this history by driving through Hyde Park on his way to the solemn wastes of Bays water.
5
At ten minutes to four Avis Bellingham sat in the bay window of Lucia Gethryn’s drawing room.
Lucia bent forward and laid a hand upon the arm of her friend. She said:
“Avis, I think that for an intelligent woman you’re a perfect idiot. Why don’t you tell him?”
“I can’t!” said Avis Bellingham.
Lucia said almost angrily: “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”
Avis shook her head. “No, it isn’t. Don’t you understand?’ It’s a sort of new angle on the ‘love me for myself alone’ idea.”
“But he doesn’t know!”
“Exactly. But suppose I told him and then found that he didn’t—didn’t——” Avis cut herself short. “What’s the use of talking about it anyway!” She turned her head and looked out of the window and down across the front garden to the broad straight sweep of Stukeley Gardens.
Lucia said: “Listen to me! I think that if you don’t tell——”
She was brought to an abrupt stop. The whole pleasing frame of Avis Bellingham had suddenly stiffened and now her right hand grasped Lucia’s arm with fingers which dug painfully into the flesh.
Lucia said, staring: “What’s the matter?”
Avis was looking straight down into the garden, her eyes wide with astonishment. She said as if to herself:
“It’s—it’s impossible! What on earth . . She stared fixedly down.
“What is it?” Lucia bent forward and herself looked down. She saw beneath her, walking slowly along the path from door to gate, the slim and smartly dressed figure of a woman. She said:
“Who is it? Tell me.”
“My God!” said Avis and leapt to her feet and ran. She wrenched open the door with such force that the handle crashed against the inner wall. She ran for the stairs and started up them. As she ran she shouted breathlessly: “Tom! Tom!”
6
Not Anthony nor Pike nor the men who had been in each place before them found anything in the small shabby house of Mr Hines or the soulless, cheap flat of Mr Jenks which might not have been there and these places sheltered humdrum and law-abiding persons.
It is no matter for wonder, therefore, that Anthony, upon returning to Stukeley Gardens at a little after six-thirty, should revile with lurid and choicely patterned cursings the ill luck which had led him to miss the phenomenon of Miss Brent’s visit to his house.
White, with discreetly composed face masking his admiration of what he afterwards described to friends as “No more an’ no less than a nepic”, maintained discreet silence.
“And why the frostbitten hell,” said Anthony, “nobody had enough sense to try and get in touch with me immediately is more than I can understand.”
White coughed: “Excuse me, sir, that was suggested, but after the mistress and Mr Garrett and Mrs Bellingham had read the note the young lady left, sir, the decision was took to wait till you returned.”
“Note!” said Anthony. “Where’s Mrs Gethryn?”
“In the drawing room, sir,” said White—and was alone, watching the long legs of his master take the first flight of stairs three at a time.
7
The note, written in a curiously small, neat script, said:
DEAR SIR:
Knowing you are interested re Arthur Jenks and therefore re a great deal more which I could tell you about, I think you might find it worth your while for us to have a quiet talk. Shall give you a ring re this later.
A. BRENT.
“My God!” said Anthony and looked from the face of his wife to the face of Avis Bellingham.
“What is it? What is it?” The two women spoke in unison. Dark eyes and blue searched Anthony’s face.
“Re!” said Anthony.
His wife said: “Beast! I thought you’d found something.”
Avis Bellingham said: “What does it mean, Anthony? Her coming here like that!”
Her host lifted his shoulders: “Search me!”
Lucia said: “Haven’t you any idea?”
Anthony looked at her. “Plenty. Not tidy, though. Either of you women see her?”
Lucia laughed. “I should think we did. I thought Avis had gone mad. We were sitting on the window seat there——”
“Exchanging confidences,” said Avis, “all girlish.”
Lucia said: “And suddenly Avis grabbed my arm and pointed down into the garden. I didn’t know who it was. I only saw a girl. But Avis went hurtling out of the room and up the stairs like a mad horse. . . .”
Avis said: “I went to get Tom. I dragged the poor boy out of bed and got him to the windows just in time to get a good look at the back of Miss Brent. I had an idea, you see, Anthony. I thought it was brilliant! I thought that perhaps——”
“Miss Brent might be alias Murch!” said Anthony and smiled at her. “You think, don’t you?”
Avis shrugged with a disconsolate lifting of her shoulders. “Not to much avail. As far as Tom knows—Miss Brent is Miss Brent. Her back certainly isn’t the back of either of the teashop women. Not a bit like, Tom said. He was almost cross with me.”
“He was, was he!” said Anthony; then broke off as the door opened to admit a White who exhibited unwonted signals of excitement.
“Sir!” said White. “A young woman, sir. On the telephone, sir. Gave the name of Brent, sir. Seems to——” He never finished his sentence. He saw, for the second time within a half-hour, how quickly his employer could move.
In 19A Stukeley Gardens there are several telephones but the nearest to the drawing room is upon the little table in the alcove at the foot of the stairs. It was, therefore, to this that Anthony ran. Above him, at the head of the flight, White and Lucia and Avis Bellingham crowded, listening unashamed. Anthony’s voice came up to them clearly. They heard:
“Yes, speaking. . . . No: there’s no nonsense—this is Ant
hony Gethryn. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . They told me that you’d called. I am sorry I wasn’t in. . . . Yes, I certainly could, or would you rather come here? . . . I see. Give me the address then. . . . No, you needn’t be in the least alarmed. I assure you that if I say I won’t tell the police I mean it! . . . Thank you. You flatter me. . . . Are you speaking from home? Oh, you haven’t a telephone—very wise! . . . One-six-three Swinburne House. . . . Yes; yes I do. Near Sloane Square. Yes. . . . Nine forty-five, then. . . . Good-bye.”
The receiver clicked back upon its base.
CHAPTER XVII
THERE IS a certain sedate and not uncomely cheerfulness about Sloane Square; but in the environs to the southeast this quality is stillborn at best; and in Daisy Street, which sullenly and most efficaciously belies its name, it has not been, is not and never will be existent.
A long narrow strip of dirty greyness flanked by frowning boxes of brick in which, presumably and unreasonably, certain human beings have their habitation, Daisy Street, born, as it were, out of nothing, culminates fittingly in the giant and frowning and prisonlike bulk of Swinburne House. Swinburne House is monument to the memory of a certain Joseph Hardcastle who—perhaps self-consciously influenced by his surname—inflicted upon a patient city half-a-dozen grim barracks known collectively as the Hardcastle Improved Homes for Workmen. Naturally enough, no member of the labouring classes has ever been known to inhabit a Hardcastle Home; the grim stone warrens—each with its hundreds of flats—are populated by all manner of other types of person. Here are clerks and harlots, typists and chorus men; Nonconformist pastors and drunken pressmen; earnest female students; frivolous male students; struggling young doctors; lachrymose widows; parsimonious Eurasian demi- barristers; retired merchant seamen; elementary schoolmistresses; and all the other thousand and one odds and ends of that drab gallimaufry known as the lower middle class.
If Daisy Street by day—even in rare sunshine—if grey and desolate reminder of the calculating bitterness of civilization, by night its hopelessness is abysmal. It is not clean enough nor rich enough to give any promise of hope; not poor enough nor dirty enough to achieve the lurid colourings of adventurous poverty. There is little enough life in Daisy Street during the hours of daylight—except when the flood of City workers from Swinburne House surges up its length to catch their morning train and down its length to snatch their evening meal—but at night, save for belated and momentarily high-living inhabitants of Swinburne House and an occasional empty taxi, there is no life at all. And so it was empty and dead and dark as the long black car of Anthony Gethryn nosed into it from Sloane Square. Upon the windshield of the car a fine drizzle had begun to settle and through the open window on the driving side came gusts of that soft yet painfully penetrating cold wind in which London winters seem diabolically to specialize.
“God-forsaken place!” said Anthony over his shoulder.
Dyson grunted.
Flood said: “Beats Poplar!” He peered out of the window. “Where’s the place?”
“Here,” said Anthony and slid the car to the left-hand curb and switched off the engine.
The three climbed out into the wet dim silence. The sound of the car doors slamming was like artillery. Anthony shivered, turning up the collar of his dinner jacket to protect the silk.
Dyson said: “Ought to have worn a coat,” and buried his chin in the upturned collar of the oil-stained burberry which shrouded his own lank form. Flood tilted back his head to look up from under down-drawn hat brim at the lowering bulk of Swinburne House. He said:
“Looks like Dartmoor.”
Anthony led the way, across the black and faintly shining surface of the road, to the frowning archway of the side entrance. He halted beneath the arch, peering out across the dark wastes of the concrete square around whose four sides rose the dismal walls of Mr Hardcastle’s memorial to ugliness.
Dyson said: “What’s the number?”
“One-six-three.” Anthony moved nearer to the far mouth of the little tunnel.
Dyson said: “Across, to the right. Fourth entrance on the far side.”
“Datas!” Flood said. “The Man Who Forgets Nothing.
“Come on!” said Anthony and, head down, walked with long strides through the archway and out into the drizzle- swept darkness of the courtyard.
The sound of three pairs of feet rang out with a muffled echo sent back fourfold by the towering, window-pierced walls. There was no other sound.
They came to the far side of the rectangle and passed along it to the fourth doorless entrance. Over this, as over its fellows, there glimmered a feeble yellow gaslight encased in a lantern of dirty glass and cheap wrought iron. Dyson said: “One-six-three’ll be on the fourth floor.”
Anthony said: “Thanks. You two wait here. And be inconspicuous.” His voice was pitched low.
Flood said: “What about coming with you? We could go up to the next landing and wait. We’d be nearer.”
“Too near,” said Anthony. “If Brent’s genuine you might scare her out of usefulness.”
Dyson said: “If it’s a trap we’re too far away here.”
“You stay put!” said Anthony and was gone.
“Theirs not to reason why . . .” murmured Flood. Dyson grunted.
They stood looking into the darkness of the entrance. To their ears came back the sound of Anthony’s feet on the stone stairs.
2
Beneath Anthony’s shoes the shallow stone treads were hard and the iron of the baluster rail was cold beneath his fingers. It was very dark in Swinburne House. Upon each landing was only one light; a gas jet which flared and flickered and did little else. Upon the stretches of unkind stairway was no light at all.
Anthony went on climbing. He passed the second and then the third landing, seeing little and hearing nothing save the sound of his own footsteps. He achieved the fourth landing and—if Dyson were right—the end of his climbing. He went down the little corridor towards the door over which the gas jet flared and by its meagre flame saw the number beneath it to be 167. One-six-three, then, should be upon the same side, two doors off.
It was. He peered at the door and found a small brass knocker and a bellpush. He put his thumb to the bell and pressed. From somewhere behind the door came a steady, tinny tinkling.
He waited. His ear anticipated movement from within but none came. He set his thumb to the bell again and again pressed and still was rewarded only by the burring tinkle. He took the little brass knocker between finger and thumb and with it beat a smart tattoo upon the door. There was no result save the sound itself and a devitalized echo.
“Hell!” said Anthony Gethryn and without hope tried the handle which projected below the yale lock. Surprisingly it turned in his fingers and the door gave.
There came over his lean face a new expression, curiously blent of wariness and not unpleasant anticipation. He lifted his right leg and with the sole of its foot thrust at the door. It swung inwards. He stood facing the rectangle of absolute darkness which showed where it had been. His arms hung loosely at his sides; his head was thrust a little forward in the attitude of one who listens for the faintest of faint sounds.
But no sound came. He took a step forward and stretched out a long arm and hooked its fingers round the doorjamb. They found a switch and pressed it and the rectangle was black no longer.
He went through the doorway. His eyes darted glances this way and that. He stood in a minute hallway. Facing him was an inner door. He opened it, repeating the procedure he had just now followed. Now light came from beneath a shade .of distressing pinkness. It showed him a small room and plethora of unpleasing furniture whose coverings had a leering daintiness.
He threaded his way through the maze towards a door which stood ajar. He found a light switch and pressed it and passed through and was in a bedroom as unbeauti fully spartan as the living room had been distressfully ornate. But, like the living room, it had no living occupant save himself. He looked about him at
the furnishings. A single iron bed; a cheap chest of drawers with handles of white-chipped enamel; a tin washstand; a dilapidated towel horse; a wooden chair; across the corner by the window a green curtain dependent from a crookedly set brass rail. And, occupying nearly all the floor space, a large cabin trunk of good make and in excellent condition.
He went to the hanging curtain and pulled it aside and found clothes; many clothes—all a woman’s; all good; some even beautiful. He probed among them and found nothing else. He turned back to the trunk and opened it. It was filled, to nearly a quarter of its capacity, with more clothes, obviously recently packed.. He let the lid fall and stood straight and looked about him for a moment and then in two strides was back in the living room. Upon the other side of the window was another door still. He went to it and threw it open.
This time he did not have to grope for a switch. There was light already—from a single, unshaded bulb hanging from the ceiling.
He was in the narrow, cramped strip of a room which served this habitation as kitchen. And he saw, for the first time since his entrance to the flat, signs of humanity.
His eyes widened. He took two paces forward and stared down. He said aloud:
“God Almighty!”
3
Detective Sergeant Joseph Mather (C.I.D.) felt in his pockets for the new packet of cigarettes which should be somewhere on his person. He could not find it—for the excellent reason that it was not there. He cursed thickly beneath his breath, for the night now loomed long and black ahead of him. Outside the dark, cheerless shelter of the doorway in which he stood the drizzle was increasing to a steady fine rain beneath which the dark macadam surface of Daisy Street glistened unpleasantly. The rain did not come into the doorway but the wind—ever increasing in power and coldness—decisively did.
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