Four Strange Women (29 page)

Bobby explained briefly.

“I think you had better see a doctor,” he added. “You don't look too good and you've had a bit of a rough time. Who shall I ring up?”

“No one,” Lord Henry answered with vehemence. “I don't want any one fussing round here. I'm all right.”

“You don't look it,” said Bobby dryly. “If you won't have your own man, I shall ring up for the police doctor. Police will always send someone.”

The threat was sufficient. Plainly the very last thing Lord Henry wanted was police action of any sort or kind. He muttered sulkily a name and address.

“I do feel a bit dicky,” he admitted and proved it, for when he tried to get to his feet he could hardly stand.

“Better lie down again,” Bobby said, supporting him.

“Don't be an ass,” Lord Henry snarled. “I've been lying down all the blessed night. I never want to lie down again.”

Bobby thought that very reasonable, and helped him to get seated once more. He asked for another drink, but Bobby, returning from the phone, said the doctor would be round as soon as possible, and he had better wait till then. Meanwhile Bobby offered to put on the kettle to make some coffee, if any were available. Lord Henry received this very ungraciously, declaring that he didn't want slops, but very nearly fainted in the middle of his tirade. So Bobby made him a little more comfortable with cushions, gave him some water with a faint dash of whisky in it to placate him, which it failed to do, and then said:— “Why not tell me what really happened?”

Lord Henry, a little better now, looked at him warily. “I have told you,” he said. “Pals of mine. Silly practical joke. That's all. Nothing to it.”

“I know a good deal already,” Bobby remarked. “It is very important I should know more. What's happened here, doesn't stand alone. It links up.”

“What with?” Lord Henry asked, and now his deep voice was harsh and troubled, and once more there seemed to come into his eyes an obsession of some horror they dared not contemplate.

“With the death of Mr. Baird in Wychwood Forest,” Bobby answered slowly. “With the death of Lord Byatt, too, and of Mr. Andrew White.”

To that Lord Henry made no answer, but he forgot to hide his eyes, he forgot to keep his face hidden, and Bobby could see very plainly how he fought to preserve his self- possession, to crush down thoughts it was as though he dared not entertain lest they might overthrow his sanity.

“I wish you would go,” he said hoarsely. “Please go.” Bobby shook his head. He felt the other was in no condition to be left alone. Once before he had seen a man look like that, at the moment when he had realized that all in which he trusted had failed him utterly. That man had committed suicide, and Bobby was not sure that Lord Henry was very far from seeking the same sad refuge. He said:— “Look here, if you won't tell me what happened, will you tell your doctor? He won't be long. Or is there any friend I can ring up, any relative? There are things sometimes that are too much for one man to face alone.”

“I've got to,” Lord Henry muttered in a voice so low Bobby could hardly hear it. Then he said in slightly louder tones:— “Get me a drink, will you? there's a good fellow. I need it. A real drink, I mean.”

His face was so ghastly, his expression so strained and tortured that Bobby felt he must obey. It was almost neat whisky that he brought. Lord Henry drank it at a gulp. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. A little awkwardly Bobby stood by and watched. It is no pleasant sight to see a human soul lost in a black agony of doubt and of despair and be unable to offer any help, to be in ignorance even of the cause. Silently, almost motionless, as Lord Henry sat, somehow Bobby knew well that he was struggling desperately to retain his self-control, even his sanity perhaps. Without even opening his eyes, he muttered:—

“Please go. Why won't you go?”

“Because I don't think you are in a fit condition to be left alone,” Bobby repeated. “I think you would feel better if you would tell me what happened—at least, I can guess what actually happened. I mean the rest of it. You aren't like this merely because you have been knocked out and tied up all night. There's something more.”

Lord Henry made no answer.

Bobby went on:—

“I shall have to tell the doctor the condition in which I found you.”

“A practical joke,” Lord Henry said again. “That's all. What's that to do with him?”

“I shall report of course to the authorities. They will wish to investigate,” Bobby said.

“A practical joke,” Lord Henry repeated. “No affair of theirs.”

“A queer practical joke,” Bobby retorted. “What would have happened if I had been away? Suppose I had gone back to Midwych for a week or two and I had never got that key?”

Lord Henry gave him a twisted smile.

“Oh, she thought of that,” he said. “She thought of everything. She said she would keep a look out, and if you didn't turn up by noon she would come herself to let me loose.”

“Well, it's noon now,” Bobby said, glancing at a clock on the mantelpiece. There was a knock at the door. “That'll be the doctor,” Bobby said and went to open it.

When he did so, it was Becky Glynne he saw standing there.

“Oh, you, you,” he stammered, and she stared back at him with a dismay and a surprise equal to his own.

“Oh, you, you,” she repeated, echoing him. Recovering slightly she said:— “It is Lord Henry Darmoor's, isn't it? I wanted to see him. It doesn't matter. I'll come back another time. I rang up but I couldn't get an answer. I'll come back.”

She was turning to go but Bobby stopped her.

“Were you here last night?” he asked, and the thought was in his mind that her famous ‘cannon ball' service could have been well diverted to the swinging of a stocking filled for the occasion with sand.

From within came Lord Henry's voice in a shout:—

“I won't see any one, I tell you I won't see any one.”

Ignoring utterly Bobby's question, though it had plainly startled her, Becky said:—

“I will come another time.”

She turned and began to hurry away. Bobby called to her to stop and made a step or two to follow her. As he did so a violent push from behind sent him staggering across the corridor against the opposite wall. His hat and his umbrella came flying after him and before he could recover himself the door of the flat was violently slammed. Lord Henry had seen and seized his opportunity.

Ruefully Bobby picked up hat and umbrella. He felt it was no use knocking for re-admission and he had lost Miss Glynne, who had darted into the lift and was probably already out of the building. There was nothing for him to do but to depart also, deeply puzzled by this new development and as worried and uneasy as ever he had been in all his life. Again and again he was being faced with this problem of an unknown woman, whom he could never identify, about whom all information was always refused or else profession of ignorance made. And if he did seem to find some sort of trace or indication, invariably it was each time someone different to whom that trace or indication appeared to lead. Yet possibly all these hints and indications he had seemed to find, were all misleading, all the creation of his own too active fancy. It might be, for instance, that Leonard Glynne was not really living with any woman. The traces of feminine influence visible in his flat might merely be due to the passing presence of his sister. It might be that Becky shared the flat with him when she came to town. And her recent visit might be entirely unconnected with recent events. Lady May's photograph was widely circulated and no doubt to be found in many odd places. Mrs. Reynolds might have fled from him merely to avoid further police questioning, and the woman who seemed so fond of singing Welsh songs might be merely an ordinary street singer. Nor was there any real proof, for that matter, that it really had been General Hannay whom Marsh had seen the other night. Possibly Marsh had been deceived by some chance resemblance, Miss Hannay had merely been offended at finding a policeman enquiring for her father, and some girl perhaps merely amusing herself with the impressionable little Mr. Eyton.

Not that Bobby for one moment really believed all this, but his head was beginning to go round with the strangeness and the multiplicity of his thoughts. In the entrance hall he found the attendant he had spoken to in the corridor outside Lord Henry's flat.

“Lord Henry is in,” Bobby told this man, “but I don't think he is in a fit condition to be alone. I persuaded him to let me ring up a doctor”— Bobby repeated the name and address of the doctor Lord Henry had mentioned—“so I expect he'll be here in a few minutes. I couldn't stay myself because Lord Henry wouldn't let me, and I shouldn't be much surprised if he didn't refuse to let the doctor in. You might give the doctor my card and tell him what I say. I am quite sure myself Lord Henry needs attention.”

The man, suitably impressed, promised to do as requested, and Bobby added carelessly:—

“Oh, by the way, are you sure you didn't recognize the lady who came in with him last night?”

“Quite sure,” the man answered, and added:—“If there's any funny work, I don't want to be mixed up in it. End up with me getting the sack as like as not. If you want to know anything more, you go and see the manager.”

“So I would,” Bobby answered, “only I don't think there's anything he could tell me—or you either for that matter.”

The man looked relieved, and Bobby, in the act of turning away, shot out another question:—

“Did you notice the lady's shoes?”

“Shoes?” the other answered staring. “No. Why? Why should I?”

“Marble floor,” Bobby pointed out. “Heels of lady's shoes rather go tap-tap on it, don't they? I've noticed that. Did hers, do you remember?”

“Well, I did notice,” agreed the man, “how quiet she went—there was no one else about, quiet time it was before the tenants come back when they've been out for the evening. I do remember now you mention it how quiet they walked across the floor, none of that tap-tapping from high heels.” He seemed suddenly to take alarm. “Look here,” he said, “I don't know what's on, but, police or no police, I'm answering no more of your questions. You go and see the manager, if you want to.”

Bobby produced half a crown and handed it over. “What you've told me may be very important,” he said. “I don't know yet and I don't quite see where it fits in, but I expect I shall dream of high heels to-night.”

“But she hadn't high heels,” the attendant protested.

I know, I know,” Bobby said as he hurried away.

All this had taken so much time that Bobby's very healthy appetite now asserted itself and he went to look for luncheon. This, he has always felt, was natural and defensible. Even detectives must eat. But he did linger over his meal longer than was absolutely necessary. Coffee and a cigarette are merely agreeable accessories. He knows they could very well have been dispensed with, and so have been saved twenty or thirty minutes that might, though of course also they might not, have meant so much. True, he had much to think over after his recent experience, but the time for thought was later on, not now when action was required. Also he proceeded to Count de Legett's office by bus and even walked part of the way for the sake of his digestion. That, however, was natural, since taxis are luxuries whose appearance in an expense sheet is apt to cause a minor earthquake. Of course, had he known what urgency there was, a taxi there would have been, even if he had to pay for it himself, but on the whole he does not feel that, the cigarette and coffee apart, he can accuse himself of any waste of time.

However, regrets are futile, as regrets always are, and the simple fact is that when he reached De Legett's office, he found it smiling and excited, as gay indeed as an old- fashioned and extremely dingy London office can well be, and learnt that Mr. de Legett had departed about ten minutes previously, that his destination was unknown, but not his purpose, and that when he returned to work in a few days he would return as a married man and would introduce to his staff his newly-wedded wife whose identity, he had said smilingly, must, for certain reasons, be kept a secret till then.

“We are all awfully excited at the idea of seeing her,” one of the clerks told Bobby. “He's taken such pains to keep it dark.”

“No one has any idea who she is?” Bobby asked.

“Not the foggiest,” said the clerk. “He's been as close as an oyster.”

“No one knows where he has gone?” Bobby asked again.

“Not the foggiest,” repeated the clerk. “We're running a sweepstake—seaside, country, South of France, Italy, Switzerland, Paris, elsewhere, and two blanks, of which,” added the clerk ruefully, “I've drawn one—just my luck.”

Bobby thought grimly that there was yet another destination that to him, at least, seemed possible—the destination that had been reached already by others in strange and sinister procession.

He left in a troubled and depressed mood, and it was now he began to remember that half-hour or so he had spent dawdling over coffee and cigarette. Now it seemed there was nothing to be done but wait and hope for some sign to show his fears were unfounded.

He went back to Bond Street and there, after talking for a little to the commissionaire, he asked if he could see Mr. Higham. Permission was only secured with some difficulty, Mr. Higham not being much inclined to disturb himself for any official under the rank of superintendent at the least —chief constables and assistant commissioners preferred.

Bobby's insistence prevailed in the end, and Mr. Higham, imposing, aged, and dignified, but still very alert, explained at once that in no circumstances except perhaps in the case of a direct order from the courts, would he even refer to any transaction with any client. Bobby pointed out that he already knew a good deal, and gave details to prove it. Mr. Higham retorted that if clients chose to talk about their own business, that was their own business, but made no difference to the absolute discretion his firm had always and would always observe. Under pressure, however, he agreed, and even admitted that it was puzzling, so far as so Olympian a person could be puzzled, that up to the present nothing had been heard of the missing Byatt sapphires or of those other pieces of jewellery disposed of by the firm in which Inspector Owen seemed so curiously interested. The diamond ear-rings and pendant stolen by the chauffeur, Ted Reynolds, who also had so mysteriously disappeared, had certainly not as yet been offered anywhere for sale. Nothing again had been heard of the wonderful diamond necklace purchased by Mr. Andrew White—a historic piece, of which even the stones would be recognizable should such a vandalism as breaking the necklace up have been perpetrated. Certainly there was nothing known to suggest it was in the possession of Lady May Grayson, for whom ostensibly it had been bought. True, she was known to have a passion for jewels, and a ring she sometimes wore was set with what looked very like the famous Blue John diamond, though she always declared it was only a replica. Naturally the point could only be decided by an expert examination which she had not offered and no one had a right to demand. Mr. Higham showed himself faintly displeased by Bobby's knowledge of the fact that the late Mr. Baird, victim of the notorious Wychwood Forest tragedy, concerning which the more vulgar papers had recently published so many columns, had purchased from Christies through Messrs. Higham a very fine diamond and ruby bracelet.