“No,” said Henry, “but it sounds very much like Molloy.”
“Molloy was supposed to have gone to the States, wasn’t he?”
Piggy had been drawing a neat brick wall at the foot of a sheet of foolscap. He now sketched in rapidly two fighting cats. It was a spirited performance. Each cat had wildly up-ended fur and a waving tail.
“Well, he and Ember told Miss Smith that he was going to the States. I don’t know that that goes for very much.”
“’M, no,” said Piggy. “Well, Bernier passed through Paris yesterday, and is in London to-day. Belcovitch has gone to Vienna. Now, if Bernier is Molloy, he’ll probably communicate with Ember. I was having him shadowed, of course, but the fool who was on the job has managed to let him slip. I’m hoping to pick him up again, but meanwhile…”
Piggy was putting in the cats’ claws as he spoke, his enormous hand absolutely steady over the delicate curves and sharp points.
“There’s nothing more about Ember?” said Henry.
Sir Julian shook his head, and went on drawing. “He wore the white flower of a blameless life in Chicago, and was absolutely unknown to the police,” he said. “There’s a three-volume novel about Molloy, though. You’d better have it to read. Now you go off and have some sleep, and… er, by the way, if Miss Smith… what’s her other name?”
“Jane,” said Henry.
“Well, if she wants to get away at any time, my wife will be very pleased to put her up.”
“Thank you awfully, sir,” said Henry.
When he had gone, Sir Julian asked the Exchange for his private number. He sat holding the receiver to his ear and touching up his cats until Isobel’s voice said:
“Yes, who is it?”
Then he said:
“M’ dear, in the matter of Henry.”
“Yes? Has anything happened?”
“In the matter of Henry,” said Piggy firmly, “I should say, from his conscious expression, that he had brought it off. Her name is Jane Smith.”
“And I mayn’t ask any questions?”
“Not one. I just thought you’d better know her name in case she suddenly arrived to stay with you. That’s all. I shall be late.”
He rang off.
Chapter Twenty
It was not till next day that Jane missed her handkerchief. When she reached her room after saying good-bye to Henry she had rolled the serge dress, the wet felt slippers and the damp stockings into a bundle, and pushed them right to the back of her cupboard. She was so sleepy that she hardly knew how she undressed.
The instant her head touched the pillow, she slept, a pleasant, dreamless sleep, and only woke with the housemaid’s knock.
It was when she was drinking a very welcome cup of tea that she began to wonder whether she was engaged to Henry or not. On the one hand, Henry undoubtedly appeared to think that she was; on the other, Jane felt perfectly satisfied that she had pledged herself to nothing more formidable than a promise to quarrel. A small but very becoming dimple appeared in Jane’s cheek as she came to the conclusion that Henry was possibly engaged to her, but that she was certainly not engaged to Henry. It seemed to her to be a very pleasant state of affairs. It was, in fact, with great reluctance that she transferred her thoughts to more practical matters.
Having dressed, she extracted the bundle of clothes from the cupboard, and decided that the serge dress might be hung up. There were one or two damp patches and several green smears, but the former would dry and the latter when dry would brush off.
“But the slippers are awful,” she said.
They were; the cork soles sopping wet, the felt drenched and slimy. She made a brown paper parcel of them, and put it at the extreme back of the cupboard. The stockings she consigned to the clothes basket.
“I can wash them out later on,” she thought.
It was at this point that she missed her handkerchief. She had had a handkerchief the night before. She was sure of that, because she remembered drying her eyes with it after she had cried.
A little colour came into her face at the recollection of how vehemently she had wept on Henry’s shoulder with Henry’s arm round her, but it died again at the insistently recurring thought:
“I had a handkerchief. I dried my eyes with it. Where is it?”
Not only had she dried her eyes with it, but after that she remembered scrubbing the finger-tips that had touched the slug. The handkerchief must be horribly smeared and wet. It was one of Renata’s, of course, white with a blue check border, and “R. Molloy, 12” in marking-ink across one corner. Imagine buying twelve horrors like that! Mercifully Renata must have lost most of them, for Jane had only inherited four.
She brought her thoughts back with a jerk. Where was it? If she had dropped it in the house it would have been either in the hall, on the stairs, or in the corridor, and one of the housemaids would have brought it to her by now. It must have fallen in the cross-passage where she had stood with Henry, and if it were found…”
Jane moved a step or two backwards, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Of all the first-class prize idiots!” she said, and there words failed her.
If she had dropped it in the cross-passage, it might lie there until Sunday night when she could get Henry to retrieve it, or it might not. Ember—Lady Heritage—Anthony Luttrell, any one of these three people might have business in that cross-passage, in which case a handkerchief, even if stained, was just the most unlikely thing in the world to pass unnoticed. Even if no one went up that passage, it might be seen from the main tunnel. Of course, if it were Anthony Luttrell who found it, it would not matter. But it was so very much more likely to be one of the others.
At intervals during the morning, Jane continued to argue the question, or rather two questions. First, the probabilities for and against the handkerchief being discovered; and second, should she, or should she not, go and look for it herself in defiance of Henry’s prohibition? She had spoken the truth, but not the whole truth, when she told Henry that she hated the idea of going into the passages alone. She hated going, but she wanted to go. Most ardently she desired to find things out before Henry found them out. It would be nice and safe to sit with her hands in her lap whilst Henry explored secret subterranean caverns, and unravelled dangerous conspiracies—safe but hideously dull. When Henry had finished exploring and unravelling, he would come along frightfully pleased with himself and want her to be engaged to him, and he would always, always feel superior and convinced that he had done the whole thing himself. It was a most intolerable thought, more intolerable than green slime and being alone in the dark. It was at this point that Jane made up her mind that she would go and look for her handkerchief herself without waiting for Henry.
Having made her decision, she found an unlooked- for opportunity for carrying it out, for at lunch Lady Heritage announced her intention of putting in several hours of laboratory work, whilst it transpired that Ember was going out in the two-seater car which he drove himself, and that he was quite uncertain when he would be back. Jane at once made up her mind that, as soon as the coast was quite clear, she would slip down into the passages. She would wait until lunch had been cleared and the servants were safely out of the way. No one was likely to come into the hall, and the whole thing would be so much less terrifying than another midnight expedition.
Ember excused himself before lunch was over, and she heard him drive away a few minutes later; but Lady Heritage sat on, her untasted coffee beside her. She sat with her chin in her hand, looking out of the window, and it was obvious enough that her thoughts were far away. She was probably unconscious of Jane’s presence, certainly undesirous of it, and yet, for the life of her, Jane could not have risen or asked if she might go. Once or twice she looked from under her lashes at Raymond’s still white face. There was a new look upon it since yesterday. She was sadder and yet softer. She looked as if she had not slept at all.
After a very long half-hour she turned her eyes on Jane. There was a flash of
surprise and then a frown.
“You needn’t have waited,” she said in a cold voice, and then got up and went out without another word.
Jane took a book into the hall and sat there.
Presently she caught a glimpse of Raymond’s white overall in the upper corridor, and heard the clang with which the steel gate closed behind her. She sat quite still and went on reading until all sounds from the direction of the dining-room had ceased. Silence settled upon the house, and she told herself that this was her opportunity.
She ran up to her room, changed into the serge dress, and put on a pair of outdoor shoes. She did not possess an electric torch, and the question of a light had exercised her a good deal. The best she could do was to pocket a box of matches and one of the bedroom candles which was half burnt down. She then went downstairs, and, after listening anxiously for some moments, she once more moved the heavy chair and, climbing on it, began to feel for the knots on the panelling. As her fingers found and pressed them, she heard, simultaneously with the click of the released spring, a faint thudding noise. With a spasm of horror she knew that some one had passed through the baize door that shut off the servants’ wing. The sound she had heard was the sound of the door falling back into place, and at any other moment it would have gone unnoticed.
Fortunately for herself Jane was accustomed to a rapid transition from thought to action. She was off the chair, across the hall, and sitting with a book on her lap when the butler made his usual rather slow entrance.
She had recognised at once that it would be impossible for her to replace the chair and escape discovery. It stood in the shadow, and she hoped for the best.
Blotson crossed the hall and disappeared into Sir William’s study.
Jane gazed at a printed page upon which the letters of the alphabet were playing “General post.” After some interminable minutes Blotson reappeared. He shut the study door, approached Jane, and in a low and confidential voice inquired would she have tea in the hall, the drawing-room, or the library.
“Oh, the library,” said Jane, “the library, Blotson.” And with a majestic, “Very good, miss,” Blotson withdrew.
Blotson’s “Very good” always reminded Jane of the Royal Assent to an Act of Parliament. It was doubtless a form, but how stately, how dignified a form.
When the chill superinduced by the presence of Blotson had yielded to a more natural temperature, Jane went on tiptoe across the hall and replaced the chair. It was a comfort to reflect that it had escaped Blotson’s all-embracing eye. With a hasty glance she swung the panel inwards, slipped through, and closed it again.
She descended all the steps before she ventured to light her candle, and she was careful to put the spent match into her pocket. Renata’s dress really did have a pocket, which, of course, made the dropping of the handkerchief quite inexcusable.
The passage was much less terrifying when one had a light of one’s own instead of the distant glimmer of somebody else’s and the horrid possibility of being left at any moment in total darkness, with no idea of one’s whereabouts or of how to get out.
Jane’s spirits rose brightly. To dread a thing and then to find it easy provides one with a pleasant sense of difficulty overcome. In great cheerfulness of spirit Jane walked along until she came to the cross-passage on her right. She turned up it, walked a few steps holding her candle high, and there, a couple of yards from the entrance, lay the handkerchief rolled into a wet and very dirty ball. She picked it up gingerly, and put it into her convenient pocket.
“And I suppose I ought to go back at once; but what a waste, when every one is safely out of the way, and I’ve got through the really horrid part, which is opening that abominable spring.”
Jane hesitated, weighing the duty of a swift return against the pleasure of exploring and perhaps getting ahead of Henry. The recollection that Henry had forbidden her to explore turned the scale—towards pleasure.
She had four inches of candle and a whole box of matches. She had at least two hours of liberty, and, most important of all, she felt herself to be in a frame of mind which invited success. The question was where to begin.
On the right-hand side there was only this single passage. Jane did not feel attracted by it. She was almost sure that it must lead to the potting-shed, and to descend from conspiracies to garden lumber would indeed be an anti-climax.
On the left there were four passages. Jane walked back along the way she had come. The first passage left the main tunnel at an acute angle which obviously carried it back under the main block of the house. Jane decided to explore it. She held her candle high in one hand and her skirts close with the other. The passage was low, and she had to bend a little. After half a dozen yards she came to a flight of steps. They were wet, slippery, and very steep. Jane stood on the top step and looked down.
The walls oozed moisture, the candlelight showed her a pale slug about five inches long—Jane said six to start with, but, under pressure from Henry, retreated as far as five and would not yield another half-inch; she also said that the slug waved its horns at her and was crawling in her direction. Right there, as the Americans say, she made up her mind that this would be a good passage to explore with Henry, later on. She caught a glimpse of another slug on a level with the fifth step, whisked round, and ran.
“The one point about slugs is that they can’t run,” she said as she came back into the main corridor.
Without giving herself time to think, she plunged into the next opening on the left. It ran at right angles to the central passage, and was comparatively dry. It kept on the same level too, and Jane, trying to make a mental plan, thought that it must run under the house, cutting across the north wing. It occurred to her that there might be vaults of some kind under the terrace, and that this passage would perhaps lead to them. If this were so, it must soon either curve gradually to the left or take a sudden sharp turn. She wished she had thought of counting her steps, but it was difficult to pace regularly on a slippery floor and in such a poor light.
Just as she had begun to think that the passage must run out to sea, she came to the sharp turn which she had expected. A wall of black rock faced her, to her right a tunnel ran in at a sharp angle, and to her left there was a dark stone arch, a few feet of a new sort of tunnel built of brick, and then a steel gate exactly like the gates which shut off the laboratories in the house above.
Jane stared at the gate as if she expected it to dissolve into the surrounding darkness. The candlelight danced on the steel. It was rusty, but not so very rusty, and therefore it could not have been for very long in its present position. She came closer and touched it. It was real.
Her amazing good fortune almost overcame her. What a thing to tell Henry! What a justification for flouting his orders!! What a score!!!
Jane transferred the candle to her left hand, put out a right hand which trembled with excitement, and tried the gate. It was open. For a moment she drew back. Like the child who sits looking at a birthday parcel, the mere sight of which provides it with so many thrills that it cannot bring itself to cut the string and unwrap the paper, Jane stood and looked at her gate, her discovery—hers, not Henry’s.
As she looked, her eyes were caught by a small knob on the right-hand wall. It was about four feet above the floor and quite close to the steel bars. It was made of some dull metal and looked exactly like an electric-light switch. By going quite close to the gate and looking through she could see that a cased wire ran along the bricks on the same level, and she remembered that Henry had said the passages were wired.
Had Henry been first on the field after all? She turned, held her light high, and looked back. The wire went up to the roof and ran along until she lost it in the darkness. She reflected hopefully that Henry might have seen the wire much farther along, and turned back again.
Her fingers were on the switch when a really dreadful thought pricked her. Suppose the switch controlled some horrible explosive! It might turn on a light, most likely it di
d; but, on the other hand, it might let loose a raging demon of destruction that would blow the whole place to smithereens. It was an unreasonable thought, the sort of thought that one dismisses instantly in the daylight, but which by candlelight in an underground tunnel assumes a certain degree of credibility.
“The question is, am I going on or not?”
The silence having failed to supply her with an answer, she said viciously, “You’re a worse rabbit than Renata,” shut her eyes, held her breath, and jerked the switch down.
Through her closed lids came a red flash. She clung to the switch and waited. A drop of boiling wax guttered down upon her left forefinger. She opened her eyes and saw the steel gate like a black tracery against a lighted space beyond. With a quickly drawn breath of relief she pushed the steel gate, took one step forward, and then stood rigid, listening to the muffled yet insistent whir of an alarm bell. After one horrified moment she pulled the door towards her again. The sound ceased. Jane considered.
As a result of her consideration she turned out the electric light, opened the gate, slipped through, and closed it again so quickly that the bell was hardly heard. She did not allow it to latch, and, stooping, set a piece of broken brick to hold it ajar. The candlelight seemed very inadequate, but she decided that she must make it do, and holding it well up in front of her, she came through a brick arch into a long chamber with walls of stone.
Jane looked about her with ignorant, widely opened eyes. She had never been in a laboratory, but she knew that this must be one. The printed page does not exist for nothing. The vague yellow light flickered on strange cylindrical shapes and was flung back by glass jars and odd twisted retorts. A great many appliances, for which she could find no name, emerged from dense shadow into the uncertain dusk.
“It’s like a mediaeval torture chamber—only worse, colder—more calculating! It’s a sort of torture chamber. I hate it. It gives me the grues,” said Jane.
She moved slowly down the room. It was quite dry in here. There was no slime, and there were no slugs.
The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery Page 17