She was safe, at all events — safe and unhurt!
“I was passing. I saw that all your windows were alight,” he said to excuse himself for his unconventional visit.
Corinne beckoned him into the parlour, and as soon as he had entered, she closed the door. Upon a small round table at the end of the couch stood a tumbler quite half full of a deep brown drink, and beside the tumbler a bottle of liqueur brandy.
“Yes?” she asked, her eyes still upon his face, quiet, mysterious, telling him not one smallest thing of the purposes behind them.
“I thought, perhaps, that you had a party,” he went on.
“No. There was no party.”
He caught a transient hint of irony in the girl’s voice, but otherwise it revealed as little as her eyes. There had been one dominating idea in Strickland’s mind these two years past — the idea of Ariadne Ferne. Perhaps, even more than he had ever realised, that idea struck the notes of thought and word and action. He reacted to it; it had become an instinct; and instinctively, because Corinne was secret, he practised secrecy too, lest frankness might in some way do harm to Ariadne.
“I was misled then,” he said. “For in the distance I saw a man in evening dress come out of the alley, and I thought that he must be coming away from you.”
“Yes,” Corinne replied. “I have had a great shock to-night.” With a swift and surprising movement, she picked up the tumbler, half full of old brandy, from the console and swallowed its contents in a single draught.
“A pleasant shock,” she continued. “For Leon Battchilena has come back to me. It was he whom you saw. Good night”; and Strickland went out from the house.
XVII. AT PEACOCK FARM
IF JOHN STRICKLAND had turned to the right when he came out of Stratton Street the next morning into Piccadilly, he might very likely have spared himself the bitter sorrows and perplexities which were so soon to enmesh him. For, in that case, he would have gone straight to Ariadne Ferne with his story of the startling experience which had befallen him on the previous night. He did, indeed, hesitate for a few moments upon the pavement as to which way he should turn. But in the end he turned to the left — in search of Mr. Angus Trevor, at the offices of The Flame newspaper.
“Archie Clutter has a latch-key for Corinne’s house” — that was the master thought in his mind, by which all his other thoughts took colour. “He can go in and out at his pleasure. There is no outcry when he goes in. Corinne and he are in a conspiracy together, and, since she lied to me about her visitor, that conspiracy means nothing but harm to Ariadne. We are to be kept in the dark until such time as they think it convenient to show their hand.”
Ariadne and he had been jockeyed. Corinne’s fear, so vividly shown at the “Noughts and Crosses” Club, took on now quite a different complexion. She was afraid that her conspiracy was in danger of detection.
“She played her little comedy at her house that night, the more completely to pull the wool over our eyes,” he reasoned, and, as he recalled his meticulous search of the premises with the two girls nervously close upon his heels, he could have kicked himself for an innocent before the whole City of London, its Lord Mayor and its Aldermen, with the Recorder thrown in.
“Happily, Ariadne won’t stand for treachery. That’s one thing,” he argued.
Treachery was, to her, the one black, unpardonable crime. She stood firm upon that principle, a lighthouse upon a rock in the Atlantic, She did not slander her friends, and her friends must not slander her, She did not trick them, and they must not go about to get the wind of her. But could he prove treachery to her loyal mind? Suppose that she were to answer:
“But you were mistaken last night. It was Battchilena, I know, for Corinne says so.”
No, it was better to turn to the left and seek Mr. Angus Trevor. Angus Trevor had given him a hint that the whole truth had not been told at Elizabeth Clutter’s inquest.
“If I were to work at it,” he had said, “I should try to discover whether Corinne had dropped a word or two, before her friend’s death, to the effect that she expected a handsome legacy in the immediate future. For that is just the sort of imprudence which a girl harassed by creditors is likely to commit.”
In his distress Strickland read a good deal more of meaning and suggestion into those words than they could bear.
“Trevor knows something,” he assured himself. “And if I can only get it out of him, some definite evidence that Corinne had a hand in that woman’s death, she shall leave for the Continent by the first boat and leave for good.”
Thus he argued, and thus he turned to the left instead of to the right upon his urgent business. But he reached the newspaper office at an hour which was premature. Murchison had not arrived. There was no sign of Trevor: The Flame as yet was burning low; the great ship was running at quarter speed; from roof to basement hardly a plank quivered; the throb of its machinery was measured and sedate. Strickland read the paper upside down for a considerable time in the ante-room to the editor’s office. Then Murchison arrived, barked pleasantly at him, and telephoned for Trevor. Trevor unfortunately lived at Brixton and, though he came with all speed, yet another half-hour was consumed before he entered the office.
“You want to see me, Colonel Strickland?” he asked.
“Very much.”
“The same subject?”
“Yes.”
He reminded Trevor of the words he had used.
“I meant no more than I said, Colonel Strickland,” Trevor replied. “That is how I should have set to work, if I had set to work. But I never did. I never had any reason to.”
Trevor was speaking now with a distinct reserve in his voice, and John Strickland was utterly disappointed.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I have brought you from home to no purpose, I am afraid.”
“That’s all right.”
Strickland was gathering up his hat and his gloves. No doubt his dejection was very visible. He had once more encountered a wall separating him from the secret of the maze. Angus Trevor went to the window and looked out of it. He was a very busy young man, and people flitted in and out of his existence without leaving memories behind them as a rule. But he did remember that he had felt an unusual friendliness towards Strickland. He began, indeed, to feel it again now. Probably Strickland had some very sound reason for pursuing his inquiry.
“You see,” he said, “news is news. It’s my business to get it and make the most of it — and I won’t say that, if it was for the paper, I wouldn’t go a step or two farther to get it, than I otherwise would. But I am not out for hounding people down — especially a girl who has come up to the top from nowhere, and has made a little corner for herself in the world, which she fills very daintily. You see that, Colonel Strickland?”
“Yes, I do.”
“On the other hand, I would like to serve you if I could.”
Strickland put his hat and his gloves down again. Trevor took a turn across the room and stopped in front of him.
“Suppose you got the whip hand of Corinne, Colonel, what do you mean to do?”
Strickland answered him frankly.
“I should insist upon her leaving England at once.”
“For how long?”
“I can’t say. A very few months, perhaps.”
Angus Trevor nodded his head. He had been reviving his memories of Strickland’s previous visit, and of certain hints which had then been dropped.
“Until a certain marriage takes place, eh?”
The question was an uncomfortable one. During these last few days Strickland had become a little less confident that the good ship, The Gallant Adventure, would ever set out upon its voyage.
“I can’t say that,” he said awkwardly. “I had better say, until I lift the embargo. It can’t be for very long. Something must happen.”
He was thinking of Archie Clutter, since, very soon, Archie Clutter must play his hand for what it was worth. Trevor, however, read into the words anothe
r meaning. If that marriage were not after all to take place — why, another might. He was inclined even more to help Strickland if he could.
“I feel more and more certain,” Strickland continued, “that unless I can interfere a catastrophe will happen — not the little thing I used to fear — scandal and mud-slinging and a horrible defaming laughter — but a real catastrophe. I have still no actual evidence to offer you, but I know that Corinne is plotting and lying. And this, perhaps — I don’t know whether it will weigh with you at all — probably not—” He began to hesitate, but rather over a choice of words than from any reluctance to express his mind. He had to express a conviction which, on the face of it, was no more than a foolish superstition. He could only hope to secure Trevor’s help by proving that from the bottom of his soul he himself believed it.
“Long ago I had a presentiment that this trouble was coming. It may sound ridiculous to you, but I was certain from the first moment when I was conscious of it, that it was the one premonition and warning out of a hundred which comes true. And — this is the point — every single thing that has occurred since in connection with it, has borne me out. Yes, that’s absolutely true. It’s like some monstrous malady which grows and deepens and spreads, regularly, steadily towards some dreadful conclusion which the doctor hides from you. Oh, I want to avoid that conclusion. I want a cure. I must seek for it everywhere.”
Whether the argument convinced Trevor or not, the sincerity and fire of the appeal certainly persuaded him.
“As a matter of fact, I did run back here after I had left you on your first visit,” he said. “But you had gone. And on thinking it over, I was glad that you had gone. Just wait here for a moment, will you?”
Trevor hurried out of the room and returned again after the space of a few minutes, and there was a briskness in his manner of which there had been no sign before.
“Now first of all,” he said as he lit a cigarette. “I can’t promise you any success. It’s a chance, the merest chance; but I gather that you are willing to spend your time over a chance.”
“Certainly,” said Strickland.
“You have a car?”
“Yes.”
“And the whole day free?”
“Yes.”
“For we may not be back until late this evening.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Strickland assured him.
“Very well, What I ran back here the other day to give you was an address, but, as a matter of fact, the address would have been no use to you if you had applied for it by yourself. But to-day I’ll come with you. I have an hour’s work to do, perhaps a little more.” Trevor looked at his watch. “I shall be free at one o’clock.”
Strickland rose and gathered up once more his hat and his gloves.
“Then the sooner I leave you alone, the better,” he said. “If you will come to Pall Mall” — he mentioned the name of a club in that reserve of clubs— “as soon as you have finished, I will have some luncheon ready for you and the car at the door. We shall take less time that way than if we started in a big car from this neighbourhood.”
Thus it was decided. Strickland went off to his club, and telephoned thence to his garage for his big car. That done, he called up Lady Ariadne Ferne, and was told that she had left the house and was not expected back for luncheon. For a second time that day chance dropped its pinch of sand into the complicated machinery of his life. Ariadne had herself telephoned to him at his flat in Stratton Street before twelve o’clock and had left an urgent message to be delivered to him the moment he returned. But he had not returned to his flat, just as he had not turned to the right at the corner of Stratton Street; and the message was not delivered until all its use had long since vanished.
Trevor arrived at the club later than he had announced; and it was two o’clock in the afternoon before the big car set out upon its long journey. It moved at first but slowly amidst the checks and traffic of the streets, its great length and dark, low body swinging round the corners with a silence that was almost sinister. Through miles upon miles of unfinished suburbs where brand-new yellow villas elbowed out of the way low-roofed white houses which had once been farmsteads; along miles upon miles of gleaming tram-lines on each side of which new towns seemed to have sprung up overnight; and then with one bound the car shot into open country, and with a purr of contentment settled to its work.
The two travellers hardly spoke at all. Trevor, with his eyes losing not a detail of the sun-lit countryside as it flashed past the windows, was registering upon his mind his impressions of the journey, of the car, of its speed and gliding smoothness, of hills which rose in front of him, a slender white riband of road between dark trees, and became imperceptibly a downward slope which they descended giddily; was already minting those impressions in phrases and storing them away in corners of his memory for use upon their fitting occasions. Strickland, upon his side, asked no questions. He was not the leader of this expedition. In his own good time the leader would talk. Meanwhile he lived over and over again the hours of the early morning. He saw the small black door open, the light go up in the bedroom on the first floor; he looked again into Corinne’s undecipherable eyes; he saw her gulp down her half-tumbler of neat brandy; he heard her defiant lie— “It was Battchilena”; and the recollection was a shadow upon the landscape, eclipsing the sun. Why should she lie to him who was trying to serve her, unless she meant harm to one of his friends? And there was no other friend whom she could harm but Ariadne.
The car swung over the Chilterns and slid down into High Wycombe. A momentary smile of amusement softened the aspect of Strickland’s face as he considered how little the town could have changed since “the days of Mr. Disraeli.” The famous Red Lion Hotel still stood upon the main street, as it were to bear him company and to comfort him with the evidence that he was not the only relic of those days. High Wycombe was left behind, and some while afterwards, when the shadows were lengthening and the day began to cool, they passed amongst the wide green fields and high elm-avenues of Warwickshire. The city of the famous spires was traversed, and half an hour afterwards, Angus Trevor, after asking a few questions of a passerby, gave an order through the speaking-tube and the car turned off the main road into a lane between high hedges hung with honeysuckle and wild roses. At the end of the lane a clump of trees hid all but the tall, wide chimneys of an old house. Trevor spoke again through the tube and the car stopped.
“It will be better if we arrive a little unexpectedly,” he said.
The two men thereupon descended into the lane. Strickland was lost in surprise. What secrets could an old house buried in the greenery and the trees of the Midlands hold about so recent and feverish a matter as this of Elizabeth Clutter and Corinne the dancer? The very aspect of the place, so quiet, serene and set apart, denied that any solution of the sordid riddle was to be discovered here. Even Angus Trevor was affected with a like fancy. For when he came in sight of the homestead itself he cried out with an incredulous laugh:
“What an office for what a trade! I never saw the house before, and I shall never get used to its application to this business.”
They were standing upon a grass plot where the lane ended. In front of them was the house, a small Tudor manor of black beams and white plaster and windows of an elegance and beauty of which the very secret has been long forgotten. It was surrounded by a tiny moat, and a little wooden bridge, which could still be raised, and by the look of the shining chain and wheel, was still raised of an evening, crossed it in front of the gate. The gate was flanked by old grey walls breast high, over which the two men could see a lawn like an emerald, old yew bushes, cut into the shapes of peacocks, and a flagged path leading to the door.
Trevor crossed the bridge with Strickland at his heels, and marching up the pathway, rang the bell. There was no sign of life about the farm; not even a dog barked; and no one answered the bell. It seemed to Strickland that he had been transported into a land of dreams, or rather into a child’s fa
iry book. For a little conventional, everyday event, yet markedly out of place in this environment, now occurred, producing just that mixture of fantasy and practical things which is the very substance of the fairy-tale. Whilst they waited in the porch a postman, with his sack upon his back and his red-banded shako upon his head, entered the gate and came up to the door with such a bundle of letters in his hand as would have done credit to a City firm. He slipped them all in a tiny Niagara into the letterbox and took himself off again after ringing the bell.
Strickland stared incredulously at Trevor. Trevor nodded his head and looked about that lonely and peaceful scene.
“Yes, seems sort of incongruous, doesn’t it?” he agreed. “But it would seem a damned sight more incongruous if you could guess what was inside those envelopes.”
Trevor rang the bell a third time, and at last a heavy footstep slowly approached within the passage. But the door was not opened. They heard the rattle of the letter-box and the footsteps receded. Trevoi, however, had come to the end of his patience. He hammered upon the door; and the sound of the footsteps ceased altogether. Whoever had fetched those letters was standing, quite still — merely surprised? Or shaken by fear? As though, in this retired nook, he expected some dreadful message. Strickland’s mood was that of one prepared for wonders. The evening light itself lay upon the fields and the silent house was unearthly and magical. Trevor hammered his challenge at the door again, and now it opened and a large, bearded man blocked up the opening.
“This is Peacock Farm, I think?” said Trevor.
“It may be,” the man replied cautiously.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 73