“You must ring up after I have gone and put off the luncheon and the manicurist. I shall see Lady Ariadne this morning and I’ll tell her myself that I must give up the treasure hunt.”
She adjusted her hat and laid some colour on her face and lips, whilst her maid put her handkerchief and her diary, her vanity case and her key into her hand-bag.
“Why, madam—” the maid cried suddenly. She had opened the little drawer at the side of the mirror, where Corinne kept her money, “ — there were thirty pounds here yesterday. They are gone.”
“I know,” said Corinne in a confusion. “I wanted them yesterday. I will get some more this morning from the ‘Noughts and Crosses,’ after my rehearsal. Will you call me up a taxi and put the suit-case into it?”
The maid closed the drawer. It was none of her business, but she knew very well that the money had been in that drawer when Corinne returned home from the club last night. She closed the bag and carrying the suit-case down the stairs, went out and called a cab to the door. Corinne examined, meanwhile, what she could see of the street from behind the curtain of her window. She did not doubt but that a watch would be established on the house, but she reckoned that she might have an hour or so of grace. It was still not yet ten o’clock and Archie Clutter, who had only secured the necessary money from her during the night, would need a little time to enrol his sentinels. It was very necessary that she should get her suit-case away from the house unseen. She had an excuse to be sure, even if Archie Clutter himself had questioned her at the door of the cab. She was taking a new dress for her new dance to-night to the ‘Noughts and Crosses.’ She was going to rehearse in it that morning. She phrased her excuse to hear how it sounded, whilst she watched from behind her curtain, and she doubted whether it would have satisfied her enemy. Happily, however, there was as yet no sign of any surveillance whatever. Corinne ran downstairs and jumped into the cab. She leaned out of the window:
“If anyone asks for me, say that I shall be back to-night, if not before. Nothing else.”
“Very well, madam,” said the maid. She was fairly well used to erratic devices on the part of her young and pretty mistress; and she saved herself a lot of quite unprofitable trouble by not looking underneath her orders for the reasons of them.
“Tell the driver to go to the club.”
The maid gave the order. But incurious though she forced herself to be, she could not suppress a passing question as to whence came those bruises upon Corinne’s face which showed so pitilessly in the sunlight.
Throughout the journey Corinne kept an eye upon the panel of glass in the back of the cab. Experience had taught her that a boy on a bicycle was chiefly to be suspected. But no boy on a bicycle was following her this morning. However her motto was safety first, and as the commissionaire at the door of the club took her suit-case out of the cab, she said to him —
“You’ll be careful of the case, won’t you? It’s my new dress for this evening.”
She had a shilling or two at the bottom of her bag wherewith to pay the cabman, and she followed the commissionaire into the club where her dancing partner was awaiting her. Corinne was an artist. She had the power of cleansing her mind and her thoughts of all her difficulties and troubles, when she was engaged in her art. In the big empty room where the tables were not yet laid, and instead of an orchestra, an accompanist played upon the piano, within five minutes she had lost herself. There must be swiftness without hurry, an appearance of ease with an exactness of accomplishment, steps which wove the daintiest of intricate patterns yet seemed to obey only the inspiration of the moment. Gran, the dancing-partner, was never satisfied. For him, however exquisite the thing done, there was always some final imperceptible lacquer of perfection missing. Yet even he at the end of the rehearsal that morning declared: “I think that we ought to have a great success tonight.”
“I wonder,” said Corinne slowly, as she stood in her dancing-dress with her heels together, and looked curiously about the room. Her thoughts were free again from the preoccupations of the last hour. She was wondering whether she would dance that night at all in that big room — whether she would ever dance again anywhere. But she was at all events to dance there that night.
She drove from the club to Browden House and was taken at once upstairs to that high room, whence Ariadne overlooked the Park.
Ariadne was singing over some of her music, but she sprang up on Corinne’s appearance.
“We meet at Portman Square at midnight. You know that?” she said. “It’s arranged, isn’t it? — that you dance to-night at half-past eleven. I’ll pick you up at the ‘Noughts and Crosses’ just before twelve.”
“I can’t come,” said Corinne.
Ariadne looked at her friend with surprise. Then her faced changed.
“My dear,” she said, and she drew Corinne to the window. With the lightest of fingers she touched those blue marks on either side of the dancer’s face. “Oh!” she murmured incredulously. She saw the tears gathering in Corinne’s eyes. She settled her in a low chair and herself sat in a window-seat by the side of her.
“What has happened? Tell me!”
And with a few calculated omissions Corinne told the story of her appalling experience, of the crime planned against Ariadne, of her own forced complicity, of the end — Maung H’la’s end — which awaited them both, once the ransom was paid over. If Corinne’s vocabulary was unequal to the tale, her shaking voice and frightened eyes so filled it out that Ariadne felt that she herself had been in that room all the while, holding her breath, shivering from head to foot. She passed from incredulity to fear as Corinne had done. The plan of a madman — yes. But — but — there were the newspapers. They told of crimes no less audacious — and of disappearances which were never explained — and of men who went to the scaffold — yes! Given men mad with years of misery and a horrible servitude and starvation, and a fury of disappointment to crown it all — who should say?...
Ariadne looked out of her window. Beneath her there were men and women going briskly about their business, in the street, beyond the railings across the Park. She saw none of them. She, too, saw a glade amongst the pine-trees and two mounds side by side relaid with turf. She saw her little car hidden in some ravine miles away. She saw men who searched and searched in vain. Just for a moment the horror on her face softened as she saw who led the search. She stood up suddenly.
Suppose Corinne had kept the story to herself! Suppose that in two nights’ time, when Clutter came again to visit her, she had made some bargain which would have saved herself!...Might that not have been possible? She laid her hand on Corinne’s shoulder.
“Thank you, my dear! I shall never forget!” she said gently.
“But the danger’s not over!” Corinne exclaimed, turning to her imagination. “Don’t you see that? Neither for you nor for me. The moment he discovers that I’ve fled, that I’ve betrayed him — you haven’t seen him, Ariadne — then sooner or later — both of us — yes, both of us—” and whilst her eyes were fixed upon her friend, her fingers began unconsciously to play over her face, touching lightly the marks of bruises, fitting themselves about her jaws, covering her mouth and lips, until Ariadne could not endure it for another moment.
“Stop, Corinne At once!” she cried, and with a shiver she crossed the room to the fire-place. “That’s horrible,” she whispered.
But the position had nevertheless to be faced. There was a wild beast abroad in the land, stalking Corinne, stalking her, that would lash itself into a still more hideous fury, tread with a still softer and more cunning step when it learned that it had been tricked. The wild beast must be caged.
“You must call in the police, Corinne.”
Corinne shook her head.
“I can’t. Clutter knows that I can’t.”
“Why not?”
A long pause separated the question from the answer.
“I shall be ruined.”
Ariadne was not satisfied. Ruin is a big
and a vague word. This was a moment for precision and clear meanings. If Archie Clutter were arrested, no doubt it must be disclosed that Corinne had spent Elizabeth Clutter’s fortune.
“And that I spent it with Leon,” Corinne added.
Ariadne nodded her head. The revelation would do Corinne harm. But her life was at stake now. Ariadne might protect herself, but Corinne — who could protect her? Besides, people were lenient nowadays, and their memories amazingly short. A season or so abroad — and who would care whether or not she had spent Elizabeth Clutter’s fortune with Battchilena, so long as she brought back to London a new dance.
“After all, the money was left to you, Corinne.”
Again a long interval followed upon her argument. Then Corinne admitted in a low voice —
“But there’s more than that.”
Ariadne was more troubled by Corinne’s refusal to take the only sort of action useful, than she cared to admit even to herself. She had a passion for independence. If she wanted money, she set about making it. If she got netted in troubles, she disentangled herself. She hated asking for help; and if Corinne persisted, it might be that she would have to ask for it. But in that case — she must face a question or two which she had deliberately shirked.
She was standing with a foot upon the fender, her back towards Corinne and her hands resting on the edge of the mantelpiece. There was a mirror in front of her, but she was careful not to look into it. She looked anywhere, indeed, but at Corinne.
“If I am to get hold of anyone to help us, I ought to know what you mean when you say there’s more than that.”
So long as Ariadne had stood alone, she had been content to take her friend on trust. She had been her champion in many a heated discussion. She had no patience with the kind of false friendship which said, “Well, of course, I like her,” to make it clear that the others didn’t and naturally and properly didn’t. The little meannesses of life were an abomination to her. But if she were to bring a partner to help, and a partner who would help wholeheartedly, just because of her, Ariadne, and not at all because of Corinne — then she owed it to that partner that he should know just exactly what he was undertaking. Ariadne was clearer upon that point, the more she thought about it.
“Yes, my dear, you must tell me.”
Corinne, for her part, looked into the mirror. Ariadne’s voice had had no hint of suspicion in it, nor did the reflection of her face show anything but a quiet gravity. But there was a change in the very atmosphere of the room, not so much a chill as a tension. Corinne had a feeling that now at last she was put upon her trial. There were certain omissions which she had made in her narrative. She had to repair them now, and warily.
“He knows,” she said, “that a letter was sent by the Brethren of the Coast in Dutch Guiana asking for money to help him to escape. He would make the most of that if he were arrested.”
“But how?”
“To discredit me,” said Corinne.
Ariadne thought that explanation over, and could make neither head nor tail of it.
“But the money was sent. Three months before Elizabeth Clutter died. You told us both so. I mean Strickland and myself “ — a wave of colour flooded her cheeks as she corrected herself— “in the garden at Ripley.”
“I said that I supposed it was sent,” Corinne answered quickly.
“Yes. Then there’s nothing Clutter could say about that which could hurt you, is there?” Ariadne declared. “Not a thing! On the contrary. For with your influence over Elizabeth Clutter, you could no doubt have prevented that money being sent at all.”
Was there a tiny note of question in the slow and deliberate statement? Corinne, at all events, fancied she detected one. She glanced in a panic at the mirror over the mantelshelf. Was she to lose her friend now? Then was her case indeed without a glimmer of hope. But Ariadne’s head was bent. Corinne could see nothing but her profile, and that gave her no clue.
“Yes, I could,” she said in a passionate appeal. “But I didn’t Ariadne, I didn’t! I take God to witness!”
In Ariadne’s memory there was revived most uncomfortably the ancient rule of grammar, that two negatives make an affirmative. Nor was the rule weakened when the two negatives were frantically expressed. Against her will, doubt flowed in upon her and was repelled and flowed in again.
Corinne had to go on now, since she received no acceptance of her appeal.
“He knows, too, of the supper party at Greymark on the night when Elizabeth died.”
Ariadne swung swiftly about.
“He knows that?...But he can’t...We all agreed that it should be forgotten.”
“Someone has broken the agreement. For he knows. Sitting on the edge of the bed he told me. Yes! Suppose he was to tell that to a judge, and call you all as witnesses! You can see what that would mean for me.”
Ariadne was staring now straight at Corinne.
“Yes, I can,” she said in the strangest toneless voice.
“Ruin — irretrievable ruin — perhaps,” — and Corinne’s voice broke and she wrung her hands in fear, not now of the wild beast from the jungle, but of the man in the scarlet gown and the grey wig sitting up high at the seat of judgment— “yes, perhaps even worse.”
Here was the true reason why Corinne dared not move openly against Archie Clutter. Ariadne recalled that evening in all its details — the gay party about the table, Culalla at the head of it with his curious habit of holding a class — a question to one, and a question to another, a glass of champagne to quicken your wits and a considered intelligent answer expected — the open windows, and then Corinne flinging in, flushed, hysterical, on wires from her fingers to her pretty feet, and half an hour afterwards springing up with her loud startling cry— “She’s dead now. I know it. She’s dead now,” and the cry ringing out through the windows across the moonlit lawn and glistening river — just at the hour when Elizabeth Clutter actually did die.
Ariadne had always accepted that outburst as an instance of telepathy between Corinne and her sick friend a hundred miles away in the Isle of Wight. But what would a counsel make of it in a court of law? Or a judge? Yes, it would mean ruin — irretrievable ruin and perhaps worse.
Ariadne moved swiftly across the room and sat down again in the window-seat; at the side of Corinne but a little behind her. She stretched out her hand and laid it on her friend’s arm.
“My dear,” she said, and it was she who now hesitated and appealed. “As far as I am concerned — of course I could never forget that you ran straight along to me with your story — the whole plan to get money out of Strickland through me — so even if—” and she broke off again, though her meaning was clear enough to the one who listened.
“But, you see,” she resumed, “if someone else is to help us, I have got to play fair, haven’t I? So tell me — the whole truth. Did you know that night at Greymark — what was happening?”
“No!” cried Corinne, and she turned with the protest of one who is grievously wounded. “Ariadne! You couldn’t believe it. Of course not.”
Her heart sank as Ariadne persisted. She had been a little too dramatic, perhaps, a little too strident.
“You had no sort of arrangement with the Burmese servant?” Ariadne continued in a low but very steady voice. “About changing those glasses?”
“None, none Ariadne, I swear it! I’d swear it on anything.”
Ariadne had not described herself amiss as primitive. Under her iridescent cloak of gaiety she harboured a good many old-fashioned fears and pieties. Lying on a table within reach of her hand was a curious cross of white ivory with a Christ, beautifully carved in amber, stretched upon it, the crown of thorns upon the head, the hands and feet nailed. Ariadne took up the cross and held it out to Corinne.
“On this, then, Corinne!”
Corinne, on the other hand, was pagan to her fingertips. She took the cross without a tremor into her hands. She bowed her head and kissed the feet of the amber Christ.
&
nbsp; “I am innocent,” she said, in a voice which contrasted very distinctly with that which she had assumed before. She used a grave and convincing simplicity and she had her reward.
For Ariadne crossed at once to the telephone and rang up John Strickland. He, as we know, had turned to the left that morning instead of to the right. Ariadne did not reach him, and her failure was something of a shock to her. She had got used to finding him at the end of the telephone when he was wanted. Even in small needs, there he was — with a Rolls-Royce, a banking-account and all the necessary equipment of a modern knight-errant. Now, when he was most wanted, he suddenly had flown beyond her call. Ariadne was perplexed that such a thing could happen to her; she was also a little hurt with John Strickland, who certainly ought to have known better than to be out of the way when he was needed, and who, poor man, was at that moment prosecuting Ariadne’s interests in his own blind way in the company of Angus Trevor.
Ariadne took a minute or two to recover from this set-back. Then she rang up Lord Culalla at many addresses and finally discovered him.
“He won’t help me,” said Corinne.
None the less, he consented to supply luncheon to the pair of them when Ariadne insisted, and since the luncheon was to be private, at his own house in Carlton Gardens. Corinne drove to it with Ariadne in more than a little trepidation, but Lord Culalla had exquisite manners with women, whether he had come by them in the back blocks of Australia or acquired them later after his arrival in England. He met Corinne with so easy a courtesy that she found it soon difficult to believe that there had been a break of two years in their acquaintanceship.
He listened to their story in his great library after luncheon, and took the same serious view which they took. Here was a wild animal loose, and Heaven only knew to what swift outrage fury and disappointment might spur him when he found that his prize-birds had flown. At the same time he agreed with Corinne that if it were possible, the police should not be invoked.
“None of us want the story of that supper-party at my house told to the world,” he said. “I think there’s a better way.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 80