Oh, Mr. Wyatt was a wag during these days, and quite the gentleman too. And in addition he got as fine a set of fingerprints of the staff at Upper Theign as man could wish for. But he was not content.
There was a corner in the library at Upper Theign which Lois had annexed. It had a window and a radiator under the window; and a high double book-case set at a right angle to the wall helped to shut it off from the rest of the long room. With an arm-chair, a writing table and a chair adapted to it, Lois had pitched a little encampment here and set it out with her own treasures; a photograph of her mother, an ebony elephant with ivory toes, a travelling clock, a doll and such other paraphernalia as are necessary to a young lady of to-day. So that even when the house was full she was secure in the privacy of this little recess.
Upper Theign was very full on the Sunday between the first day’s shoot and the ball; and after tea upon that day Lois, having helped to set the guests who wished to play bridge at their bridge-tables, sought this corner of the library. There was a letter to be written to Mona at Liverpool, before dinner. The library was empty and only dimly lit. Lois went straight to her corner and, switching on the light above the table, took some sheets of paper from the rack. She was standing at the time, one hand extended towards the rack, the other resting upon her blotting pad as she leaned forward; and under the fingers of the hand upon the blotting pad she felt some particles of grit. It was as if the chimney of a power-station in London had somehow transferred itself to the neighbourhood of Upper Theign. She drew her hand sharply away, and looking down saw that the whole surface of her white blotting pad was thickly sprinkled with a yellow dust. And nowhere else, neither on the table itself, nor upon any book on the table nor upon the chair was there a trace of any dust at all.
Lois shivered suddenly, and an odd little moan burst from her throat. Her heart seemed to drop dizzily from its place. Her knees shook under her so that for a second or two she clung to the table, swaying backwards and forwards over it. That little man was persistent. His persistence frightened her terribly. The absence of any passion in him, of any animosity towards her, made him in an odd way more dangerous. He was just conscientiously and thoroughly carrying on his trade, and it was part of his trade to run her down. Lois had a feeling of nausea. She trembled in a sombre ice-cold shadow of defeat.
But she had none of her mother’s acquiescence. She was a rebel. It was in her nature to march out forthwith against perils which had to be met. And in a little while she was standing upright with her mind clear. That little man must be swept up out of her way. After all, thorough he might be, but he was only a commonplace little piece of insignificance with a ridiculous big moustache, who knew the rules of his trade. It ought not to be very difficult. But whatever she did must be final. She sat down now and took her time. In five minutes she had come to her decision. She tore off the top page of her blotting sheets, carried it with its layer of yellow powder to the fire-place and burnt it. Mr. Wyatt was a cunning little man, too, she reflected. In that dimly-lit room she might very easily have done just what he wanted her to do, if she had not noticed the dust when she turned up the lamp over her table, and tipped it all into the waste-paper basket. Yes, the sooner he was out of her way the better — even if she had to take a big risk to get him out.
As soon as the last of the blotting sheet was nothing but a black rag, she rang the bell. To the servant who answered it she said:
“Robert, do you know where his lordship is?”
“No, miss. I thought he was here.”
The door opened, however, as he spoke and Mark came into the room.
“I was asking where I could find you, Lord Thewliss,” Lois remarked to him with a smile.
“That’s good news,” said Mark. “What can I do?”
“May we have the lights up?”
“Of course.”
He turned towards the servant, who turned on the lights by the switch at the door and went out.
“That better?”
“Much.”
A note of gravity in her voice alarmed Mark instantly. Somewhere there was a rose-leaf crumpled. That must be smoothed out at once.
“What’s the matter, Lois?” he asked solicitously.
“I wonder—” Lois hesitated whilst an uneasy smile parted her lips. “Would you think me very impertinent if I asked you to let me say something to Mr. Wyatt in your presence?” she asked.
Mark was startled. He stood and looked at her, and his face grew dark with anger. But no one knew better than Lois that the anger was not directed against her. He turned and rang the bell.
“Thank you,” said Lois in a voice of quiet gratitude.
Mr. Wyatt was summoned peremptorily, and when he came he was asked to step forward. There was an ominous note in his employer’s voice which Wyatt did not like at all. Nor was he at all taken by the aspect of Lois who stood very cold and aloof, watching his nervous approach with a pair of big implacable mysterious eyes. She was certainly not homey at this moment. She had never within his knowledge looked less homey, but she was more amazingly than ever a crasher.
“Only,” Mr. Wyatt reflected apprehensively, “I am, I fear, the one who is going to be crashed.”
And though he twirled his moustache to a most debonair angle, it was in the spirit of a French noble of 1790 concerned to make a comely ending in the collar of the guillotine.
“Miss Perriton has asked me to send for you, Mr. Wyatt,” said Mark coldly. “She has something which she wishes to say to you.”
“Quite,” replied Mr. Wyatt unhappily.
“A little petition to make, that’s all,” Lois explained with an appealing meekness.
“Petition!” cried Mark, up in the air in a moment. “My dear Lois, you will make no petitions to Mr. Wyatt, I beg of you.”
“No, no, of course not,” said Mr. Wyatt.
“This little one — yes,” Lois entreated. “You’ll see how necessary it is.”
She turned back to Mr. Wyatt, and though her face smiled her eyes scorched him. “I am going to beg you when next you want my fingerprints to come and ask me for them openly. I can assure you that you are just as likely to get them that way as by setting traps.”
The attack was abrupt and more fatal because of its abruptness. Mr. Wyatt had expected a few carefully graduated questions. Did he suspect Miss Perriton? If so, of what did he suspect her? But she took his breath away and apparently Lord Thewliss’, too. For Lord Thewliss gasped and with an accent of incredulity cried:
“Fingerprints? Wyatt has been after yours, Lois?”
“I may be wrong,” Lois answered sweetly, and she described the condition of her blotting pad and its complete contrast with the rest of her little corner. “I ascribed it to Mr. Wyatt, because I could not think of anyone else who was likely to treat me in that — perhaps furtive — way. All the more I ascribed it to him, because I knew that he had been giving some attention to my room at Brooke’s Market.”
“What?” cried Mark in a menacing shout. “You did that too, Mr. Wyatt?”
“Of course I may be wrong,” Lois went on very meekly. “I don’t want to do an injustice to anyone. And if I am wrong, I apologise humbly to Mr. Wyatt.”
Mr. Wyatt said to himself:
“That’s my finish,” and he contemplated Lois with a reluctant admiration.
He knew now that no words could put so fine an edge to Lord Thewliss’ exasperation, as words suggesting that she should make a humble apology to the private inquiry agent. But she had known it from the first and had used it at the last. He had made a bad mistake in not appreciating the authority this girl had with Lord Thewliss.
“I might have known, too,” he reflected ruefully, now that all reflection was too late. “Those journeys to Liverpool — my reports. I forgot the human element.”
That was the truth. He was a man of measurements and collated facts and records searched. He was without inspiration and curiosity. He could follow a trail like a dog, but the why and
the object were for the dog’s master.
“Well, Mr. Wyatt?”
“Yes, my lord, yes.”
“You accept Miss Perriton’s statements?”
“Quite, my lord, quite.”
“Yet I gave you, as I very clearly remember, some altogether categorical instructions. My staff — yes, but Miss Perriton was definitely excepted from my staff.”
“Yes, my lord. That is so.”
“Well, Mr. Wyatt?”
Lord Thewliss, who had sat down in an arm-chair, stared blackly at the unhappy man and waited for an answer. Mr. Wyatt shifted from one foot to the other. The crasher had done for him. He was rolled, bowled and pitched. There was a sort of defence, no doubt. He had disobeyed his categorical instructions. Why? Because he was certain that the fingerprints upon that envelope with the many seals were the fingerprints of a woman. He had kept that item to himself. Because of his knowledge he had suspected Lois Perriton from the first; and his chief object in transferring his investigations to Upper Theign was to secure the irrefutable proof. But he had failed to secure it, and he would only make his case the worse now if he told what he knew. No one would believe him. It would be an aspersion, a slander, a mere beastly act of malevolence and revenge. He said:
“My lord, I find myself in a very difficult position.”
“That I quite understand,” interposed Mark.
“And the best thing which, under the circumstances, I can do is to thank your lordship for your kindness to me over many years and to accept what I know must come — my dismissal from your service.”
He achieved a simple dignity in uttering these words which was quite lost upon his audience. Mark was outraged by Mr. Wyatt’s impudence. Lois had cleared him out of her way, and he no longer existed for her at all. The only answer he got was a cold bow from Mark Thewliss and the words:
“A car shall be ready to take you to the station as soon as you have packed your luggage.”
Mr. Wyatt departed without as much as one consoling twist to his moustache. The door closed upon him, and Lois, who had been standing lifeless as an image of wax, shook her head and moved a step or two away from the fire-place.
“Well, that’s that,” she said.
But she was wrong. “That” was not packed in brown paper, tied up with string and dispatched in quite that simple and complete finality. That was not by any means that. It would have been happier for everybody in that house if it had been. But Mark must smooth out the rose leaves.
“I meant to keep you out of this sordid little horror,” he said remorsefully, and he told her of the theft of his formula and its replacement. “I really did give Wyatt the strictest instructions. I meant you to know nothing about it at all.”
“Why did you want to keep me out of it?” Lois asked. She was standing erect upon the hearthrug with her hands behind her, looking straight in front of her, not at all at him.
“Why?”
To Mark it was very obvious.
“It wasn’t because I am made of sugar, I hope, and might run away to nothing if I was handled.”
There was a note faintly hostile in her voice which distressed Mark enormously. She was offended; and that feeling of hers must instantly be exorcised.
“No, of course not,” he said, and was at a loss. What he wanted to say was that he had an intense distaste that anything ignoble should come near within her vision. But it was impossible that he should even begin to say it. He was not yet used to her. She was still the wonderful revelation. His pride in her still retained the fresh gloss of its novelty, and she herself was glossy and exquisite with the reflected sheen of it. All the more reason, therefore, that he must stand guard over his phrases lest some little word of tenderness should slip out and betray their relationship. As he watched her now, erect, her head thrown back, a trifle mutinous, he longed desperately to tell her all the truth — the truth that never must be told.
He gave her what explanation he could of his orders to Mr. Wyatt.
“I wanted the theft kept as secret as possible, No harm has actually been done. The formula was quite useless without the processes I had omitted. If I could discover the culprit I should be glad — yes. For one thing, I object strongly to anyone taking me for a simpleton,” he exclaimed with a laugh. “But if it got known that I was looking for a thief with the help of a private detective, everybody in my service would have gone about imagining that I suspected him.”
There Lois might have abandoned the subject. She was safe. But she had none of her mother’s submission to calamities which could not be remedied, and all her mother’s courage when some great advantage was to be gained. As Mona had gambled years ago in Frascati’s restaurant, so Lois did now in the library of Upper Theign.
“Of course I am the one person it’s most natural to suspect.”
“You’re the last,” Mark cried vehemently.
But Lois would not be persuaded by his vehemence. She shook her head.
“There’s a great fortune in this process. I am a girl without means, a dependent,” and then she turned her eyes upon him, and with the most natural assumption of anxiety searched his face.
“Do you suspect me?” she asked very quietly.
For a second or two after she had put her question, Lois really quailed. For Mark did not answer. He sat and looked at her with the strangest expression. He kept things up his sleeve, didn’t he? She recalled Derek Crayle’s saying about him And there he sat looking at her intently and speaking never a word. Was he going to say suddenly, “I don’t suspect. I know?”
Lois was frightened, and her fear grew — until he laughed; laughed roundly, like a man who has found a brief and excellent way out of some tangle where words are of no avail. He sprang up and slipped his hand beneath her arm.
“I’ll convince you that I don’t suspect you, Lois.” He led her across the room to a bookcase. He lifted his hand to a shelf on which were ranged the volumes of Robert Browning He took down one of them. “Have you ever read this?”
Lois recited the title aloud.
“How Pacchiaroto worked in Distemper? No.”
“No, nor Hoyle either. It’s one of a great man’s distressingly light moments. Turn to page 34.”
Lois turned over the leaves, and on the broad margin of the page she saw some minute handwriting with algebraical figures dotted in and out amidst the writing.
“Hiatus number one,” said Mark.
He took her arm again and marched her to another bookcase. From a shelf he removed a volume and handed it to her.
“The Plays of Mrs. Aphra Behn,” Lois quoted.
“Nobody but an incipient dramatist would read them willingly, and he wouldn’t get to page 87.”
Lois turned the leaves and found page 87. Along the top and the bottom of the print the minute handwriting was repeated.
“Hiatus number two,” said Mark.
He replaced the book and —
“The other exhibit I have to show you,” he announced, “is in the particular corner annexed, squatted upon and thereby owned by my secretary.”
He guided her towards her corner and suddenly she stopped. It was only for a moment — but let it be held in her extenuation, that without the third omitted process the formula was still of no use, still had no value. Mark Thewliss felt the drag upon his arm as she drew back. But he was in the mind to make the proof of his confidence complete. He led her into her alcove, and from the bookcase projecting at the side he took down a battered old school book.
“Xenophon’s Anabasis,” Lois read.
“Xenophon’s a household name, of course, but only students read him, and any student would pass away in disgust if he saw that edition. Page 123. The third hiatus.”
“Yes,” said Lois.
He lifted the book again on to its high shelf and brought her back to the fire-place.
“Now, Lois! You and I are the only two people in the world who know where the missing stages of my universal process are to be found. N
ot even Derek knows.”
“Yes,” returned Lois thoughtfully. It seemed that some anxiety still troubled her. “But with the help of the rest which we know to have been stolen, couldn’t those three stages be discovered? I mean by some accomplished chemist?”
Mark shrugged his shoulders.
“Possibly, no doubt. But, after all, I am not the only man who has been experimenting, and no one else has succeeded.”
“But it is possible,” Lois insisted. That it should be possible was a very important point for her now that she had been let into the whole secret.
“No doubt,” and Mark laughed again. “Derek dins that possibility into my ears twenty times a day. But that’s not the important thing. This is. I have proved to you that I don’t suspect you.”
Again some passing shade of trouble darkened the girl’s eyes and fleeted across her face. Then she smiled.
“You have,” she said.
“Good! You’ve got to run away and dress and so have I, or we shall be late for dinner. We nowadays take a little more time than you.”
He hurried out of the room with a nod and a smile. Lois sank down into a chair and stared into the fire. Her mother had gambled at Frascati’s and had lost. Lois had gambled at Upper Theign and had won.
XXV. THE BALL AT UPPER THEIGN
OR SO IT seemed. But even the cleverest of young people may make a mistake under the stress of a sudden panic, as Lois did on the night of the ball when she snapped off the electric light. The Monday was a very busy day at Upper Theign. There were the men to be got off to the coverts, luncheon to be supervised at one of the farm-houses, and the final preparations to be made for the ball. Neither Olivia nor Lois had any leisure, and by the time when a card inscribed “Lord Thewliss” had been fixed upon the outside of the library door to secure him a sanctuary from the hubble-bubble of the night, it was time for them to dress for dinner.
Very soon after dinner the guests began to arrive, and it was not really much before midnight when Olivia felt that her duties were fulfilled With her mind and her eyes now free she saw that Derek was dancing with Lois Perriton; and she recognised with an angry reluctance that in her dress of pale green chiffon, with her white skin and coppery hair, her slim, tall figure and her lovely face, the girl did make an entrancing picture. All the more eagerly therefore she stopped the pair of them as they came round to her.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 608