Four Strange Women (3 page)

“But why did Miss Barton want you to tell me all this at this time of night?” Bobby asked. “You understand I shall have to report to Colonel Glynne, to Scotland Yard as well. They may want to see both you and Miss Barton.”

“That's O.K. with us,” his visitor answered. “There's nothing more, only Billy Baird.”

“What about him?”

“Well, we're pals, you see, me and Billy,” Lord Henry explained; and if his rich, deep tones that seemed almost a language in themselves, did not now tremble with the deep adoration that before had vibrated in every syllable, yet none the less they showed a deep and genuine emotion, “we've been pals ever since we were kids at the same prep school. It was through Billy I met Gwen. Gwen likes him, too.”

He paused. Bobby, looking at him, saw that he had become a little pale, saw that enormous mouth of his quiver at the corners, saw a small bead of perspiration trickle down the side of his nose and hang there, ridiculously suspended. Why, Bobby did not know, but the close air of the room seemed filled suddenly with dark and strange forebodings, and the shadows in the corners, as it were, to hide monstrous and incredible things. He said sharply, for he knew well there was more to come:—

“Yes. Well?”

The answer came almost in a whisper, yet every syllable full and clear.

“First there was Byatt and then there was Andy White and now Gwen thinks that perhaps Billy is going the same way.”

Bobby remembered ruefully that Olive had sent him home with strict injunctions to get a good night's rest so as to be sure to be looking his very best and brightest for his forthcoming interview with Colonel Glynne. It was fortunate that the arrangement was for him to dine at the colonel's house in the evening—‘so that we can make each other's acquaintance', the colonel had written—and for the formal interview to take place the next morning. He could therefore leave London by a comparatively late train, so that he would be able to lie late in bed, provided, that is, he ever got there, which was beginning to seem to him increasingly doubtful.

“Miss Barton is waiting outside, you said, didn't you?” he asked. “Will you ask her to come in for a moment?”

“Right-oh,” responded Lord Henry with alacrity, making for the door, and on the way knocking over a chair with a crash that Bobby fully expected would bring an indignant and protesting landlady on the scene.

In the hall Lord Henry fell over the door mat, got the door open, called in what he meant for a whisper but that sounded like the leader of community singing giving out an announcement:—“I say, Gwen, old girl, can you come in for half a sec?”

Further sounds suggested that Lord Henry had fallen either up or down the front door steps; and Bobby was a little glad to think he was leaving and would not have to face the reproaches of his landlady and his fellow lodgers over a nocturnal disturbance that was beginning to sound like a minor air raid. Then Lord Henry returned, ushering in a small, reluctant figure in a neat, close-fitting tweed costume.

Bobby somehow had been expecting someone of what is called the ‘glamour' type. His first impression now was of a shy, hesitating, rather ordinary-looking girl, not noticeable in any way except for the unusual pallor of her complexion. She did not seem to be much made up, except that her lips were unnaturally crimson. Like a small curved splash of red they showed against that strangely pale skin, and behind them he caught a glimpse of two rows of white, regular teeth, small and pointed. Her features seemed to him small, regular, undistinguished; and when she came into the room she gave him first a shy, embarrassed, almost apologetic smile, and then seemed to be trying to efface herself in a corner of the room, as if offering mute apology for being there at all. Bobby was aware of a momentary amusement as he contrasted this timid, insignificant little figure with the almost passionate adoration Lord Henry's tones had managed to convey. Strange, he felt, that a girl whose presence could be so easily forgotten, as he indeed was already almost forgetting it, could awake so much devotion. He remembered vaguely a case he had once heard of in which a man of experience and social standing had fallen wildly in love with a little typist who struck everyone else as entirely insignificant, who had entirely failed to understand the man's passion, who had indeed been merely frightened by it, so scared, in fact, that finally she had disappeared in a panic, whereon the man had committed suicide. Apparently this was a similar case, with the fortunate exception that Gwen Barton, whether she understood or not, appeared at any rate to be accepting the devotion offered her. Bobby hoped it would not turn out badly, that she would have sufficient character and self-control to live up to the part for which she had been cast, though he was not sure that the frightened air with which she seemed to wish to hide herself in the nearest corner was altogether promising in that respect. But Lord Henry had no idea of letting her efface herself like that.

“Now then, Gwen,” he said, “don't look so scared even if Owen is a policeman.”

She came forward then, and Bobby noticed that she moved with an unusual, silent speed and certainty, hovering for a moment in her corner as if afraid to issue from it, and then across the room and by his side almost before he knew she had moved. Lord Henry muttered the usual formula of introduction, and she held out a small hand with long, curved, pointed crimson-tinted nails—coloured finger nails being apparently the only concession apart from the use of her brightly-coloured lipstick, she made to the prevailing craze for cosmetics, since the thin, almost transparent pallor of her skin seemed untouched by powder or rouge. Hitherto he had not noticed her eyes, hidden behind heavy, half-closed lids, and now when she looked up at him he thought how dull and almost lifeless they seemed, and yet with a pin point of light somewhere safely tucked away in their dark depths as if at any moment they might blaze into sudden, unexpected life. He took her hand and felt a kind of heat run through him from her grip, as from equally unexpected hidden fires. The vigour of that grip told him, too, that for all her slight build she possessed plenty of strength, nervous though, perhaps, rather than muscular. Something unusual about her, Bobby thought, if only one could find it out, but whatever it was, probably explaining and no doubt justifying the evident depth and sincerity of Lord Henry's devotion. Now his deep voice boomed out:—

“Beauty and the Beast, eh? that's what you're thinking, isn't it?” 

Bobby wasn't thinking anything of the sort, for ‘beauty' was the last epithet he would have thought of applying to Gwen Barton. ‘Ordinary, insignificant, commonplace' were more appropriate adjectives, he thought, except for that hint of something hidden in her, ‘burning bright' within, as it were, that no doubt explained Lord Henry's—‘infatuation', was the word that came to Bobby but he felt it so obviously unfair that hurriedly he changed it in his mind to ‘passion'. Gwen was saying in her quiet little voice:—

“I've heard such a lot about you, Mr. Owen. At darling Olive's. The girls there can't talk of anything else; only when they stop, you find you've spent twice as much as you meant to. Only you don't mind, because they always find something to suit you better than you ever thought anything could.”

Bobby was not pleased. He knew enough of the powers and capacities of Olive's head assistant to believe what Gwen said, and he did not wish to think of himself as a selling point in a campaign for more and better and ever dearer hats. He said:—

“Miss Barton, Lord Henry tells me—”

He paused abruptly. He had hardly seen her move, and yet now she was back across the room at Lord Henry's side. As she reached him she looked up at him, and he, though brought up in all that tradition of restraint and self-control so strong in the British governing class, went pale and was visibly shaken. There was indeed as it were a flame of passion passing between the two of them that quite startled Bobby. She seemed to feel this, for abruptly she veiled her eyes behind those dark lashes of hers and those heavy lids, and then turned and facing Bobby again seemed once more to be the small, pale, hesitating ordinary-looking young woman she had appeared on her first entrance. She said softly:—

“Mr. Owen, if ever I tell this stupid boy I won't have anything more to do with him, it'll be because he will keep on about Beauty and the Beast. I'm no May Grayson, worse luck, and if Harry's a beast, he's rather a nice one. Only if he keeps on calling himself one, I shall make him wear a collar and chain and go about on his hands and knees.”

“Right-oh,” said Lord Henry, and promptly dropped on hands and knees at her feet. “Anything you say.”

“Don't be ridiculous, get up,” she told him sharply, yet with a note in her voice that showed, Bobby thought, she was gratified by his prompt obedience. “Mr. Owen, isn't he just too silly?”

“Lord Henry has been telling me,” Bobby said, unheeding this and thinking it was time to get to the point, “that you are disturbed about a friend of his. Will you please tell me why? You know, of course, that I am a police-officer. I believe that is why you've come?”

She flashed—there is no other word to describe the swift, sure silence of her movements—across the room again and was once more at his side. Her head hardly came to his shoulder, her eyes were hidden, she spoke quickly and clearly.

“It's Billy,” she said. “Billy Baird. He's such a nice boy and Harry's ever so fond of him and so am I, too, though of course I only know him a little, and Harry's been friends with him all his life—shared the same cradle, didn't you?”

“Same prep school and stuck to each other ever since,” corrected Lord Henry, quite seriously.

“And Billy hasn't too much money, not if he's going into politics, because that does cost lots and lots, doesn't it? and then he's been spending oceans, hasn't he, Harry?”

“Cripes, I should think he had,” confirmed Lord Henry. “He bought some sort of swell ruby thing at Christie's the other day for three thou. Three thou, I ask you, and him needing every blessed penny he's got if he's to nurse any constituency properly. Bought it on the q.t. through Higham's, of Bond Street. Old Higham let it out himself when I was in there the other day. It's only the big deals the old man takes an interest in himself, you know.”

“May Grayson was awfully disappointed,” Gwen went on. “She told me so herself. She's crazy about jewels and wanted to buy, only of course she couldn't afford all that.”

“I asked Billy what was the game,” interposed Lord Henry, “and he said he had a market and hoped to make a good profit.”

“May said it was an awfully outside figure,” remarked Gwen. “I don't think she believed any one would ever give more.”

“If you ask me,” declared Lord Henry, “he's got mixed up with some woman and he bought it for her.” He gave a little nod of defiance at Gwen. “All right, Gwen,” he said, “you needn't believe it. Gwen says,” he explained to Bobby, “it isn't that, because if he gave it to any woman, she wouldn't be able not to show it off, and then every one would know.”

“Well, don't you think so, too, Mr. Owen?” asked Gwen, but Lord Henry swept on unheedingly.

“It's not only that,” he said. “Billy's bought a slap up motor caravan—swell affair, jewelled in every hole, that sort of thing. It must have cost him a packet. I've backed two bills for him, too—three hundred altogether, and he used to get shirty if I even hinted at stumping up to help him along till he got going in politics. Gwen said I ought to, and all he said was I ought to have more sense than to start throwing my beastly money about. Next thing I knew he was touching me himself for coin. Not that I mind, he's welcome—only it's so damn funny, if you see what I mean.”

“All that is surely his own private business, isn't it?” Bobby asked.

“Well, if you put it like that,” said Lord Henry doubtfully. “Only there it is, isn't it? I mean to say. Going off caravanning all by himself. Not like him. Never cared for motoring even. Bridge at the club was his best bet. Now here he is, all on his own and no one knows why. In Wychwood Forest. That's near Midwych, you know.” 

Bobby nodded. Wychwood forest, dating from the days when William the Conqueror ravaged great areas of Yorkshire and Mercia, extended still for many miles north and east of Midwych. Of late years it had become a favourite centre for ‘hiking' and other holiday parties. Even one or two holiday camps had been founded on its outskirts, but generally its dense and ancient woodlands, alternating with bare, open expanses of high moor, were as lonely and deserted as in the days following the passage of the Conqueror's destroying bands. Abruptly Lord Henry said:—

“Billy told one or two chaps at the club he was in love with a girl. Not like him, either. He wasn't a chap to talk about things like that. He never let on who it was. He started going to the Cut and Come Again. He never went to places like that before—serious sort of johnny and dead keen on politics. Wanted to reform everything, only not Bolshevik, you know. Just reform.” Lord Henry emphasized the word with a wave of the hand that seemed to include the universe. “Sound conservative, of course, he was. Night clubs something new for him. It was Becky Glynne he used to dance with there. You know. Old Colonel Glynne's daughter. Set people talking.”

“It's all happening,” Gwen said softly, “just the way it seemed to happen with Andy White and the Byatt boy.”

“Gwen's a bit scared,” Lord Henry said, and he put an arm around her with a gently-protecting gesture. He had the look of one guarding something infinitely precious, infinitely fragile, a look that Bobby never forgot. Gwen snuggled up against him, as if she felt the comfort of the safety that his strong embrace offered, and Lord Henry said again: “Gwen's got the wind up, haven't you, old girl, eh?”