“What is it? Oh, please tell me if I have vexed you—oh, please…”
Lady Heritage took her hands away.
“I had forgotten you walked in your sleep,” she said. “I don’t like locked doors as a rule, but I suppose you had better keep yours fastened. I shouldn’t like you to walk into the sea and get drowned, or break your neck falling off the terrace. Get back to your bed. I’m just going to mine. I’ve been working late.” She went out, and it was a long, long time before Jane, who had heard the soft footfalls die away in the distance, dared open the door and take a hasty look along the corridor. It was quite empty.
After another pause she went to the cupboard door and opened it. The flooring stretched unbroken; there was no square hole, and no Henry. She sat down on the floor, hesitated, and then knocked lightly.
Under her very hand a board rose with a little jerk—a line of light showed, and Henry’s voice said softly:
“All clear?”
“Yes, be quick, I daren’t wait.”
“Who was it?”
“Lady Heritage.”
“What did she want?”
“I don’t know. She said she saw a light. Henry, she frightens me, she really does.”
The board rose a little higher.
“A sleuth who gets frightened is no earthly—” said Henry firmly. “Now look here, Jane, I can get you out of this quite easily if you want to come. You are the only person in the house whom I haven’t interviewed. Mr. Ember said that of course I shouldn’t want to see you, as you did not get here until after the leakage must have taken place. I made no comment at the time, but it is perfectly open to me to insist on seeing you, to say that I am not satisfied with the interview, and to take you back to London for further interrogation.”
Henry had opened the trap door about a foot. His face, lighted from below, looked very odd with the chin almost resting on a board at Jane’s feet and the trap held up by one hand and only just clearing his hair. Jane would have wanted to laugh if his last suggestion had appalled her less.
“Oh, you mustn’t,” she said. “If you do that, it’s all up. Mr. Ember would never, never, never, allow you to interview me. He’d be afraid of what I might say, and he’d find some awful way of keeping me quiet. As to letting me go off to London with you, well, if we started we’d certainly never get there. And oh, Henry, please, please go away. I’m sure they suspect something, and if she comes again, or if he comes—oh, Henry, do go.”
“All right,” said Henry. “Now, Jane, look here. I’m off before breakfast, but I can make an excuse to come down at any time if you want me. If anything is going wrong, or you get frightened, or if you want to get out of it write for patterns of jumper wool to the Misses Kent, Hermione Street, South Kensington. It’s a real wool shop and they’ll send you real patterns, but Miss Kent will ring me up the minute she gets your letter. I’ll come down straight away, and you look out for me here.”
“Do you mean you’ll come and stay? Won’t they suspect something?”
“They won’t know,” said Henry. “Don’t ask me why, but send for me if you want me, and be very sure that I shall come. Got that address all right?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll be off.”
“Yes, please go.”
As a preliminary to going, Henry came up a step higher, set the torch on the floor, and took Jane by the hand.
“Don’t get frightened, Jane,” he said. “I hate you to be frightened.”
“I’m not, not really.”
Henry came up another step; the trap now rested on his shoulders.
“Oh, Henry, please…”
“I’m going,” said Henry. He continued to hold Jane’s hand and appeared immovable. Jane could of course have taken her hand away and left the cupboard, but this did not occur to her till afterwards.
Quite suddenly Henry kissed her wrist, and a piece of the red flannel cuff. The next minute he was really gone. Perhaps it had occurred to him that he was a chaperon.
Jane lay awake for a long time.
Chapter Ten
Henry went away by an early train, and Jane came down to what, as a child, she had once described as a crumpled kind of day. She remembered “darling Jimmy” looking at her in a vague way, and saying in his gentle, cultivated voice:
“Crumpled, my dear Jane? What do you mean by crumpled?”
And Jane, frowning and direct:
“I mean a thing that’s got crumps in it, Jimmy darling,” and when Mr. Carruthers did not appear to find this a sufficient explanation, she had burst into emphatic elucidation:
“I was cross, and Nurse was cross, and you were cross. (Yes, you were, and I had only just opened the study door ever so little; and I didn’t mean to upset the milk or to break the soap-dish; and oh, Jimmy, you must know what a crump is, and this day has been just chock-full of them. That’s why I said it was crumpled.”
The day of Henry’s departure was undoubtedly a crumpled day. To start with, a letter from Mr. Molloy awaited Jane at the breakfast table. It began, “My dear Renata,” and was signed, “Your affectionate father, Cornelius R. Molloy.” Mr. Ember remarked at once upon the unusual circumstance of there being a letter for Miss Molloy, and Jane, acting on an impulse which she afterwards regretted, replied:
“It’s from my father. Do you want to see what he says?”
“Thank you,” said Jeffrey Ember. He glanced casually at the bald sentences in which Mr. Molloy hoped that his daughter was well, and expressed dislike of the climatic conditions which he had encountered on the voyage. His eyes rested for a moment upon the signature, and quite suddenly he cast a bombshell at Jane.
“What does the ‘R’ stand for?” he said.
Jane had the worst moment of panic with which her adventure had yet provided her. She was about to say that she did not know, and take the consequences, when Mr. Ember saved her.
“Is it Renatus?” he asked. Jane broke into voluble speech.
“Oh no,” she said, “my name has nothing to do with his. I was called Renata after an aunt, my mother’s twin sister. They were exactly alike and devoted to each other, and I was called after my Aunt Renata, and her only daughter was called after my mother.” Here Jane bit the tip of her tongue and stopped, but she had not stopped in time. Mr. Ember’s eyes had left Molloy’s signature and were fixed upon her face.
“And your mother’s name?” he said.
“Jane,” faltered Jane.
“And are you and your cousin as much alike as your mothers were?”
Jane stared at her plate. She stared so hard that the gilt rim seemed to detach itself and float like a nimbus above a half-finished slice of buttered toast.
“I—I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t remember my mother, and I never saw my aunt.” Once again she bit her tongue, and this time very hard indeed. She had been within an ace of saying, “My Aunt Jane—”
“But you have seen your cousin; by the way, what is her surname?”
“Smith—Jane Smith.”
“You have seen your cousin, Jane Smith? Are you alike?”
“I have only seen her once.” Jane grasped her courage, and looked straight at Mr. Ember. He either knew something, or this was just idle teasing. In either case being afraid would not serve her. A spice of humour might.
“You’re frightfully interested in my aunts and cousins,” she said. “Do you want to find another secretary just like me for some one? But I’m afraid my Cousin Jane isn’t available. She’s married to a man in Bolivia.”
At this point Lady Heritage looked over the edge of The Times with a frown, and the conversation dropped. Jane finished her buttered toast, and admired herself because her hand did not shake.
Lady Heritage seemed to be in a frowning mood. This, it appeared, was not one of the days when she disappeared behind the steel grating with Ember, leaving Jane to pursue her appointed tasks in the library. Instead, there was a general sorting of correspondence and checking of
work already done, with the result that Jane found herself being played upon, as it were, by a jet or spray of hot water. The temperature varied, but the spray was continuous. A letter to which Lady Heritage particularly wished to refer was not to be found, a package of papers wrongly addressed had come back through the Dead Letter Office, and an unanswered invitation was discovered in the “Answered” file. By three o’clock that afternoon Jane had been made to feel that it was possible that the world might contain a person duller, more inept, and less competent than herself—possible, but not probable.
“I think you had better go for a walk, Miss Molloy,” said Lady Heritage; “perhaps some fresh air…” She did not finish the sentence, and Jane, only too thankful to escape, made haste from the presence.
Ember had been right when he said that the grounds were extensive.
Jane skirted the house and made her way through a space of rather formally kept garden to where a gravel path followed the edge of the cliff. For a time it was bordered by veronica and fuchsia bushes, but after a while these ceased and left the bare down with its rather coarse grass, tiny growing plants, tangled brambles, and bright yellow clumps of gorse. The path went up and down. Sometimes it almost overhung the sea. Always a tall hedge of barbed wire straggled across the view and spoilt it.
The fact that a powerful electric current ran through the wire and made it dangerous to touch added to the dislike with which she regarded it.
It was a grey afternoon with a whipping wind from the north-west that beat up little crests of foam on the lead-coloured waves and made Jane clutch at her hat every now and then. She thought it cold when she started, but by and by she began to enjoy the sense of motion, the wind’s buffets, and the wide, clear outlook. At the farthest point of the headland she stopped, warm and glowing. The path ran out to the edge of the cliff. On the landward side the rock rose sharply, naked of grass, and heaped with rough boulders. A small cave or hollow ran inwards for perhaps four feet. In front of it, in fact almost within it, stood a stone bench pleasantly sheltered by the overhanging rock and curving sides of the hollow. Jane felt no need of shelter. Instead of sitting down, she climbed upon the back of the bench and, steadying herself against a rock, looked out over the wire and saw how the cliff fell away, sheer at first, and then in a series of jagged, tumbled steps until the rocks went down into the sea.
After a time Jane scrambled down and was hesitating as to whether she would turn or not when a sound attracted her attention.
The path ended by the stone bench, but there seemed to be quite a practicable grassy track beyond.
The sound which Jane had heard was the sound made by a stone which has become displaced on a hillside. It must have been a very heavy stone. It fell with a muffled crash. Then came another sound which she could not place. She looked all round and could see nothing.
Something frightened her.
All at once she realised that she was a long way from the house and quite out of sight. Turning quickly, she began to walk back along the way that she had come, but she had not gone a dozen paces before she heard scrambling footsteps behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the man George Patterson standing beside the stone seat which she had just left. He made some sort of beckoning sign with his hand and called out, but a puff of wind took away the words, and only a hoarse, and as she thought, threatening sound reached her ears.
Without waiting to hear or see any more she began to run, and with the first flying step that she took there came upon her a blind, driving panic which sent her racing down the path as one races in a nightmare.
George Patterson started in pursuit. He called again twice, and the sound of his voice was a whip to Jane’s terror. After at the most a minute he gave up the chase, and Jane flew on, pursued by nothing worse than her own fear.
Just by the first fuchsia bush she ran, blind and panting, into the very arms of Mr. Ember. The impact nearly knocked him down, and it may be considered as certain that he was very much taken aback.
Jane came back to a knowledge of her whereabouts to find herself gripping Mr. Ember’s arm and stammering out that something had frightened her.
“What?” inquired Ember.
“I—don’t—know,” said Jane, half sobbing, but already conscious that she did not desire to confide in Jeffrey Ember.
“But you must know.”
“I don’t.”
With a little gasp Jane let go, and wished ardently that her knees would stop shaking. Ember looked at her very curiously.
Jane had often wondered what his queer cold eyes reminded her of. Curiously enough, it was now, in the midst of her fright, that she knew. They were like pebbles—the greeny-grey ones which lie by the thousand on the seashore. As a rule they were dull and hard, just as the pebbles are dull and hard when they are dry. But sometimes when he was angry, when he cross-questioned you, or when he looked at Lady Heritage the dullness vanished and they looked as the pebbles look when some sudden wave has touched them. Jane did not know when she disliked them most.
They brightened slowly now as they fixed themselves upon her, and Ember said:
“Do you know, I was hoping I might meet you. We haven’t had a real talk since you came.”
“No,” said Jane.
Her manner conveyed no ardent desire for conversation.
“Shall we walk a little?” pursued her companion; “the wind’s cold for standing. I really do want to talk to you.”
Jane said nothing at all. If Ember wished to talk, let him talk. She was still shaky, and not at all in the mood for fencing.
“Well, how do you like being here? How do we strike you?”
Ember spoke quite casually, and Jane thought it was strange that he and Henry should both have asked her the same question. Her reply, however, differed.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Don’t you? My dear Miss Renata, what a really extraordinary number of things you—don’t know! You don’t know what frightened you, and you don’t know whether you like us or not.”
Jane’s temper carried her away.
“Oh yes, I do,” she said viciously, and looked full at the bright pebble eyes.
Ember laughed.
“What do you think of Lady Heritage? Wonderful, isn’t she?”
“Oh yes,” said Jane. “She’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Too beautiful, don’t you think?”
If she desired to interest Jeffrey Ember, it appeared that she had succeeded. His attention was certainly arrested.
“Why too beautiful?”
Jane had an impulse towards frankness.
“I think she’s too… everything. She has so many gifts, it does not seem as if there could be scope for them all.”
Ember looked at Jane for a moment. Then he looked away. In that moment Jane saw something—she could not really tell what. The nearest that she could get to it was “triumph.” Yes, that was it, triumph.
As he looked away he said, very low, “She will have scope enough,” and there was a little tingling silence.
He broke it in an utterly unforeseen manner. With an abrupt change of voice he asked:
“Ever learn chemistry?”
“No,” said Jane, and then wondered whether she was telling the truth about Renata.
“’M—know what a formula is?”
Jane put a dash of ignorant conviction into her voice:
“Oh, I think so—oh yes, of course.”
“Well, what is it?”
She looked puzzled.
“It’s difficult to explain things, isn’t it? Of course I know ‘formulate,’ and er—‘formal.’ But it’s—it’s something learned, isn’t it?”
Ember’s sarcastic smile showed for a moment. With a horrid inward qualm Jane wondered whether she had overdone Renata’s ignorance.
“A formula is a prescription,” said Ember slowly. “If you remember that, I think you’ll find it all quite simple. So that Formula ‘A’ is simply a prescription for maki
ng something up, labelled ‘A’ for convenience’s sake.
Jane let her eyes become quite round.
“Is it?” she said in the blankest tone at her command. “But… but what is Formula ‘A,’ Mr. Ember?”
“That, my dear Miss Renata, is what a good many people would like to know.”
“Would they? Why?”
“They would. In fact, some of them—person or persons unknown—wanted to know so much that they have gone to the length of stealing Formula ‘A.’ That, at least, is Captain March’s opinion, and the reason for his visit here. So I should be careful, very careful indeed, about betraying any knowledge of Formula ‘A.’”
Jane whisked round, stared blankly, and said in largest capitals:
“ME?”
Then, after a pause, she burst out laughing. “What do you mean?”
“You either know, or you don’t know,” said Jeffrey Ember. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. If you do, I have just given you a warning. A very valuable Government secret has been stolen, and if Captain March were to suspect that you were in any way involved—well, I suppose... I need not tell you that the consequences would be serious beyond words.”
Jane gazed at him in a breathless delight which she hoped was not apparent. The day had been singularly lacking in pleasantness, but it was undoubtedly pleasing to receive a solemn warning of the dreadful fate that might overtake her if Henry should suspect that she knew anything about Formula “A.”
“But I haven’t the slightest idea what Formula ‘A’ can be,” she said. “It sounds frightfully exciting. Do tell me some more. Was it stolen? And how could anything be stolen here?”
“Who frightened you?” he said suddenly.
Jane caught her breath.
“It was a stone,” she said. “I don’t know why it frightened me so. It fell over the edge of the cliff and gave me a horrid nightmare-ish sort of feeling. I started running and then I couldn’t stop. It was frightfully stupid of me.”
They walked on a few paces. Then Ember said: “Captain March will probably come down here again. I managed to save you from an interview with him this time, but if he comes again, and if he sees you, remember there is only one safe way for you—you know nothing, you never have known anything, as far as you are concerned there is nothing to know. You shouldn’t find that difficult. You have quite a talent for not knowing things. Improve it.” He paused, smiled slightly, and went on, “You said just now that it was frightfully stupid of you to be frightened. Sometimes, Miss Renata, it is a great deal more stupid not to be frightened. Believe me, this is one of those times.”
The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery Page 10