The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  “I hate it a thousand times more than the passages,” she said.

  Her feet moved slowly and unwillingly. In the far corner there were two more arches. She thought she would just see what lay beyond them and then return. She took the one on the right hand first. It ran along a little way and then terminated in a small round chamber which was full of packing-cases. She returned and went down the second passage. She was just inside it when with startling suddenness she found herself looking at her own shadow. It lay clear and black on the brick floor in front of her. Some one had turned on the electric light.

  Jane’s candle tilted and the wax dropped. Her horrified eyes looked about wildly for a place of refuge. The light showed her one. Within a yard of the entrance there was an arched hollow. With a sort of gasp she blew her candle out and bolted for the shelter. The whir of the electric bell sounded as she gained it, sounded and then ceased. She heard Ember say, “Quite a good run, wasn’t it?” and a voice which she did not expect answer, “Well enough.” The voice puzzled her. It was a pleasant voice, deep and rich. It had something of a brogue and something of a twang.

  A most unpleasant light broke upon Jane. It was the voice of the Anarchist Uncle. It was the voice of Mr. Molloy.

  Jane got as far back into her hollow as she could. It was not very far. There had evidently been a tunnel here, but the roof had fallen in, and the floor was rough and uneven with the debris.

  She heard the two men moving in the room beyond, and she experienced a most sincere repentance for not having attended to the counsels of Henry.

  “And now we can talk,” said Ember. “You’ve got the cash?”

  “Not with me,” said Mr. Molloy.

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, just in case…”—a not unmelodious whistle completed the sentence.

  “They paid the higher figure?”

  “They did,” said Mr. Molloy. “Belcovitch was for taking their second bid, but I told him ‘No.’ Belcovitch has his points, but he’s not the bold bargainer. I told him ‘No.’ I told him ‘It’s this way—if they want it they’ll pay our price.’ And pay it they did. I don’t know that I ever handled that much money before, and all for a sheet or two of paper. Well, well—”

  “You should have brought the money with you. Why didn’t you?”

  In the now brightly lighted laboratory Molloy sat negligently on the end of a bench and lifted his eyebrows a little.

  “Well, I didn’t,” he said.

  “Where is it?”

  “In a place of safety.”

  Ember shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well, we’ve pulled it off,” he said. “By the way, the fact of the sale is known. We’ve had an interfering young jack-in-office down here making inquiries, and Sir William has gone up to town in a very considerable state of nerves.”

  “The Anarchist Uncle,” said Jane to herself, “has been selling the Government Formula ‘A.’ He doesn’t trust Mr. Ember enough to hand the money over. Pleasant relations I’ve got!”

  Molloy whistled again, a long-drawn note with a hint of dismay in it.

  “I wonder who let the cat out of the bag,” he said.

  “These things always leak out. It doesn’t really signify. With this money at our command we can complete our arrangements at once, and be ready to strike within the next few weeks. You and Belcovitch had better keep out of the way until the time comes. He should be here in four days’ time, travelling by the route we settled; then you’ll have company. You must both lie close here.”

  “That’s the devil of a plan now, Ember,” said Molloy. “We’ll be no better than rats in a drain.”

  “Well, it’s for your safety,” said Ember. “They’re out for blood over this business of Formula ‘A,’ I can tell you, and there’s nowhere you’d be half so safe.”

  Jane was listening with all her ears. She decided that Mr. Ember’s solicitude was not all on Molloy’s account. “He thinks that if Molloy and Belcovitch are arrested, they’ll give him away over the big thing in order to save themselves. I expect they’d be able to make a pretty good bargain for themselves, really.” She heard Molloy give a sulky assent. Then Ember was speaking again:

  “I want to check the lists with you. Not the continental ones—I’ll keep those for Belcovitch—but those for the States and here. I’ve got them complete now, but I’m not very sure about all the names. Hennessey now, he’s down for Chicago, but I don’t know that I altogether trust Hennessey.”

  “It’s late in the day to say that,” said Molloy.

  “Well, what about Hayling Taylor?”

  Jane listened, and heard name follow name. Ember appeared to be reading from a list. He would name a large town and follow it with a list of persons who apparently acted as agents there. Sometimes these names were passed with an assenting grunt by Molloy, sometimes there was a discussion.

  There are a great many large towns in the United States of America. Jane became stiffer and stiffer. At last she could bear her constrained half-crouching position no longer. Very gingerly, moving half an inch at a time, she let herself down until she was sitting on the pile of broken bricks which blocked the tunnel. The names went on. It was dull and monotonous to a degree, but behind the dullness and the monotony there was a sense of lurking horror.

  “It’s like being in a fog,” said Jane—“the sort you can’t see through at all, and knowing that there’s a tiger loose somewhere.”

  One thing became clearer and clearer to her. Those lists that sounded like geography lessons must be got hold of somehow. Henry must have them.

  After what seemed like a long time Ember folded up one paper and produced another. If Jane had been able to watch Mr. Molloy’s face, she would have noticed that, every now and then, it was crossed by a look of hesitation. He seemed constantly about to speak and yet held his peace.

  “I’d like you to check the names for Ireland too,” said Ember. “Grogan sent me the completed list two days ago. You’d better look at it.”

  Molloy took the paper and ran his finger down the names, mumbling them only half audibly. His finger travelled more and more slowly. All at once he stopped, and threw the paper from him along the bench.

  “What is it?” said Ember, in his cool tones.

  Molloy frowned, got up, walked to the end of the room, and came back again. He appeared to have something to say, and to experience extreme difficulty in saying it. His words, when he did speak, seemed irrelevant:

  “That’s a big sum they paid us for Formula ‘A’” he said. “Did you ever handle as much money as that, Ember?”

  “No,” said Jeffrey Ember, short and sharp.

  “Nor I. It’s a queer thing the feeling it gives you. I tell you I came across with fear upon me, not knowing for sure whether I’d get away with it; but there was a lot besides fear in it. There was power, Ember, I tell you—power. Whilst I’d be sitting in the train, or walking down the street, or lying in my bed at an hotel, I’d be thinking to myself, I’ve got as much as would buy you up, and then there would be leavings.”

  “What are you driving at, Molloy?” said Ember. Molloy’s florid colour deepened. He narrowed his lids and looked through them at Ember.

  “Maybe I was thinking,” he said, “that there’s a proverb we might take note of.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s just a proverb,” said Mr. Molloy. “It’s been in my mind since I had the handling of the money—‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’”

  Ember’s eyes lost their dull film. They brightened until Mr. Molloy was unable to sustain their glance. He shifted his gaze, and Ember said very quietly:

  “Are you thinking of selling us?”

  Molloy broke into an oath. “And that’s a thing no one shall say of me,” he said, with a violence that sent his voice echoing along through the open arches.

  “Then may I ask you what you meant?”

  “Why, just this.” Molloy dropped to an ingratiating tone. “There’
s the money safe—certain—in our hands now. What’s the need of all this?”

  He came forward with two or three great strides, picked up the list from where he had thrown it, and beat with it upon his open hand.

  “All this,” he repeated—“this and what it stands for. You may say there’s no risk, but there’s a big risk. It’s a gamble, and what’s the need to be gambling when we’ve got the money safe?”

  “In plain English, you want to back out at the last moment?”

  “I do not, and I defy you to say that I do.”

  “Then what’s come to you?”

  “Here’s the thing that’s come to me. It came to me when I ran me eye down this list. See there, and that’ll tell ye what has come to me.”

  He thrust the list in front of Ember.

  “It’s Galway you’ve got set down there.”

  “Well, and what of it?” said Ember.

  “What of it?” said Mr. Molloy. “I was born in Galway, and the only sister I ever had is married there. Four sons she has, decent young men by all the accounts I’ve had of them. If I haven’t been in Galway for thirty years, that’s not to say that I’ve no feeling for my own flesh and blood. Why, the first girl I ever courted lived out Barna way. Many’s the time I’ve met her in the dusk on the seashore, and she half crying for fear of what her father would do. Katie Blake her name was. They married her to old Timmy Dolan before I’d been six months out of the country. A fistful of gold he had, and a hard fist it was. I heard tell he beat her, poor Katie. But ye see now, Ember, it’s the same way with your native place and your first love, ye can’t get quit of them. Now I hadn’t been a month in Chicago before I was courting another girl, but to save my neck I couldn’t tell ye what her name was, and ye may blow Chicago to hell to-morrow and I’ll not say a word.”

  “But not Galway?” Mr. Ember’s tone was very dry indeed.

  “You’ve said it. Not Galway. I’ll not stand for it.”

  Ember laughed. It was a laugh without merriment, cool, sarcastic.

  “Molloy, the man of sentiment!” he said. “Now doesn’t it strike you that it’s just a little late in the day for this display of feeling? May I ask why you never raised the interesting subject of your birthplace before?”

  “Is it sentiment that you’re sarcastic about?” said Molloy. “If it is, I’d have you remember that I’ve never let it interfere with business yet, and I wouldn’t now. Many’s the time I’ve put my feelings on one side when I was up against a business proposition. But I tell you right here that when I see my way to good money and to keeping what I call my sentiment too it looks pretty good to me, and I say to myself what I say to you, ‘What’s the sense of going looking for trouble?’”

  Ember laughed again.

  “I will translate,” he said. “From the sale of the Government formula you see your way to deriving a competency. You become, in a mild way, a capitalist. Luxuries before undreamed of are within your grasp—romantic sentiment, childhood’s memories, the finer feelings in fact. As a poor man you could not dream of affording them, though I dare say you’d have enjoyed them well enough. Is it a correct translation?”

  “It is,” said Molloy.

  “Molloy the capitalist!” Ember’s voice dropped just a little lower. “Molloy the man of sentiment! Molloy the traitor! No you don’t, Molloy, I’ve got you covered. Why, you fool, you don’t suppose I meet a man twice my own size in a place that no one knows of without taking the obvious precautions?”

  Molloy had first started violently, and next made a sort of plunge in Ember’s direction. At the sight of the small automatic pistol he checked himself, backed a pace or two, and said:

  “You’ll take that word back. It’s a damned lie.”

  He breathed hard and stared at the pistol in Ember’s hand.

  “Is it?” said Ember coolly. “I hope it is, for your sake. I’d remind you, Molloy, that no one would move heaven and earth to find you if you disappeared, and that it would be hard to find a handier place for the disposal of a superfluous corpse. Now listen to me.”

  He set his left hand open on the lists.

  “This is going through. It’s going through in every detail. It’s going through just as we planned it.” He spoke in level, expressionless tones. He looked at Molloy with a level, expressionless gaze. A little of the colour went out of the big Irishman’s face. He drew a long breath, and came to heel like a dog whose master calls him.

  “Have it your own way,” he said. “It was just talk, and to see what you thought of it. If you’re set on the plan, why the plan it is.”

  “We’re all committed to the plan,” said Ember. “You were talking a while ago as if you and I could do a deal and leave the rest of the Council out. Setting Belcovitch on one side, weren’t you forgetting to reckon with Number One?”

  “Maybe I was,” said Molloy. “And come to that, Ember, when are we to have the full Council meeting you’ve been talking of for months past? Belcovitch and I had a word about it, and he agrees with me. We want a full meeting and Number One in the chair instead of getting all our instructions through you. It’s reasonable.”

  “Yes, it’s reasonable.” Ember paused, and then added, “You shall have the full Council when Belcovitch comes.”

  Jane on her pile of debris leaned forward to catch the words. Ember’s voice had dropped very low. She was shaking with excitement. Her movement was not quite a steady one. A small piece of rubble slid under the pressure she placed on it. Something slipped and rolled.

  “What’s that?” said Ember sharply.

  “Some more of the passage falling in,” said Molloy, “by the sound of it.”

  “Just take a light and see.”

  “It might have been a rat,” said Molloy carelessly.

  There was a pause. Jane remained absolutely motionless. If they thought it was a rat perhaps they would not come and look. She stiffened herself, wondering how long she could keep this cramped position. Then, with a spasm of terror, she heard Molloy say, “I’ll have a look round. We don’t want rats in here,” heard his heavy footfall, and saw a brilliant beam of light stream past the entrance of her hiding-place.

  Before she had time to do more than experience a stab of fear, Molloy walked straight past. She heard him go up the passage, heard him call out, “There’s nothing here.” Then he turned. He was coming back. Would he pass her again? It was just possible. She tried to think he would, and then she knew that he would not. The light flashed into the broken tunnel mouth. It flashed on the sagging roof, the damp walls and the broken rubble. It flashed on to Jane.

  Jane saw only a white glare. She knew exactly what a beetle must feel like when it is pinned out as a specimen. The light went through and through her. It seemed to deprive her of thought, volition, power to move. She just stared at it.

  Mr. Molloy using his flashlight cheerfully, and much relieved at a break in his conversation with Ember, received one of the severest shocks of his not un-adventurous life. One is not a Terrorist for thirty years without learning a little elementary self-control in moments of emergency. He did not therefore exclaim. He merely stared. He saw a sagging roof and damp walls. He saw a muddled heap of broken bricks unnaturally clear cut and distinct. He saw the shadows which they cast, unnaturally black and hard. He saw Jane, whom he took to be his daughter Renata. His brain boggled at it. He passed his hand across his eyes, and looked again. His daughter Renata was still there. She was half sitting, half crouching on the pile of rubble. Her body was bent forward, her elbows resting on her knees, her hands one on either side of her colourless cheeks. Her face was tilted a little looking up at him. Her mouth was a little open. Her eyes stared into the light.

  Jane stared, and Mr. Molloy stared. Then, with a sudden turn he swung round and passed back into the laboratory. As he went he whistled the air of “The Cruiskeen Lawn.”

  Jane remained rigid. The beetle was unpinned. The light was gone. But the darkness was full of rockets and Catherine-whe
els. Her ears were buzzing. From a long way off she heard Ember speak and Molloy answer. The rockets and the Catherine-wheels died away. She put her head down on her knees, and the darkness came back restfully.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The clang of the steel gate was the next really distinct impression which Jane received. In a moment she was herself. It was just as if she had been asleep, and then, to the jar of a striking clock, had come broad awake. She listened intently.

  That clang meant that the gate had been shut. One of the men had gone, probably Ember. One of them certainly remained, for she could see that the lights in the laboratory were still on. If it were Molloy, he would come and find her. But it was just possible that it was Jeffrey Ember who had remained behind, so she must keep absolutely still, she knew.

  At this moment Jane felt that she had really had as much adventure as she wanted for one day. She thought meekly of Henry, and soulfully of her tea. Blotson would be laying it in the library. There would be muffins. She was dreadfully thirsty. Jane could have found it in her heart to weep. The thought of the slowly congealing muffins unnerved her. She would almost have admitted that woman’s place is in the home. There is no saying what depths she might not have arrived at, had the return of the Anarchist Uncle not distracted her thoughts. The heavy tread convinced her that it was not Mr. Ember, but she did not stir until he came round the corner and flashed the light upon her face. Jane blinked.

  “Holy Niagara!” said Mr. Molloy. “It was the fright of my life you gave me.”

  Jane scrambled to her feet. She was not quite sure what the situation demanded of her in the way of filial behaviour. Did one embrace one’s Anarchist Parent? Or did one just lean against the wall and look dazed? She thought the latter.

  Molloy turned the light away, and then flashed it back again with great suddenness. Jane shut her eyes. Mr. Molloy pursed his lips and emitted a whistle which travelled rapidly up the chromatic scale and achieved a top note of piercing intensity. Without a word he took Jane by the arm and brought her out of her hiding-place into the lighted laboratory. He then pushed her a little away, took a good look at her, and repeated his former odd expletive: