CHAPTER I
V
FOR several panic-stricken minutes after she left the garage, Marilyn walked about in an aimless sort of way. She tried to persuade herself that somehow, for some unknown reason, Pat might have lingered in the district. But soon the absurdity of such an idea forced itself upon her. Why
should
Pat do that? To the best of her belief Marilyn would not be visiting the hotel until Wednesday. She had no reason whatever to think that the urgency of events would bring her young sister there sooner.
“Then what would be the most likely thing for her to do when she found the hotel no longer existed?” Marilyn asked herself distractedly. “What would
I
do in the circumstances?”
Surely the most obvious and urgent thing would be to re-establish contact with her one ally in order to disc
u
s
s
—or even report—changed plans.
“Would she dare to phone home?” thought Marilyn. “Risky—but what else could she do? She would have to risk Mother’s answering instead of me, of course. But then she could always just hang up quietly if Mother did reply. She may even have tried that already! In fact, I ought to be at home now, so as to get any message before the parents return.” And, galvanised into action by the sheer relief of having something specific to do, Marilyn made for the nearest Underground station as fast as she could. Once in the train, she fumed and counted and recounted the stations on the map opposite her and wondered if a taxi would have been quicker. But she had been rather lavish with taxis recently and the expense of this undertaking were already proving distinctly more than she and Pat had anticipated.
Fortunately, it was only five minutes’ walk from her local station to the flat, and Marilyn did it in just under three. She was panting when she emerged from the lift, and she gave an extra gasp when she realised that a completely strange young man was standing outside her front door.
“Good morning,” he said, before she could address him. “Are you by any chance Marilyn Collamore?”
“Yes.” Marilyn regarded him suspiciously. “Who are you
?
”
“My name’s Jerry Penrose and—”
“Oh, I know about you
!
” She immediately became wary. “You met my mother, didn’t you? And you did some self-appointed sleuthing about my sister.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he replied stiffly. “But if you would prefer me to take no further interest, just say so and I’ll go away without giving you your sister’s message.”
“
Message?
You’ve got a message from Pat?” Marilyn’s whole attitude changed. “Oh, no—please don’t be offended. I’m sorry if I was curt, but we’re all a bit on edge, you know. Come in, anyway—” She began to fumble for her key, but the young man stopped her.
“Don’t you know you should never invite strange men in when you’re on your own?” he said severely. “I might be any sort of crook, for all you know.”
“Oh, rubbish,” retorted Marilyn lightly. “You’ve been reading too many thrillers.”
“I begin to think I’m living one, from the ridiculous and mysterious way you and your sister are going on,” he replied crossly. “But anyway, I don’t want to come in. I promised Pat I would see you alone, and she seemed certain her parents would be out this morning
—
following some preposterous false clue, if I’m not mistaken.” He looked severely at Marilyn, who withstood the glance with admirable coolness.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?” he asked, with a return to his rather stiff manner. “In case they came in, I mean.”
“Can’t you just give me her message and leave it at that?”
“No, I can’t.” Suddenly he looked extraordinarily obstinate. “I’m not prepared to go on following instructions meekly and blindly. I agreed to deliver your sister’s message, since she made such a point of it. But I intend to ask some questions of my own in return.”
Marilyn eyed him without favour at that. But she could not afford to make terms of her own at the moment. She needed too badly to know Pat’s message. So a little ungraciously she said,
“Come on, then. We’ll go and have some coffee at a place round the
corner
. Even if Mother and Dad come home, they won’t look for me there.”
In silence they retraced their steps to the lift,
descended to the ground floor and walked the short distance to the coffee-shop. It was as though neither was prepared to accept the disadvantage of speaking first. And only when they were seated at the back of the dim coffee lounge did Marilyn say briskly, “Well, now tell me Pat’s message. And first of all, how did she get it to you
?
”
“She telephoned me at my office. I think I must have mentioned the firm I work for when she and I talked together on the cross-Channel boat. She told me her father was an artist, and I explained that I too was an artist of sorts. Commercial art with Morgan and Petersfield. She evidently remembered the name.” He seemed pleased that at least Pat had remembered this much about him. But Marilyn urged him on to the real point.
“Go on. When did she telephone?”
“Hardly more than an hour ago, I’d say. She was evidently a good deal distressed and she said—” his manner softened perceptibly—“that I was the only person to whom she could turn.”
Marilyn, who knew how wonderfully well Pat could conduct this sort of conversation, nodded understandingly.
“She said she was going to be unable to keep an appointment with you.” He stopped and stared hard at the girl opposite. “Is that correct?
Was
there an appointment between you two
?
”
“If she said so, it isn’t for me to deny it,” replied Marilyn, who thought that was pretty diplomatic. “I’m asking you a question,” he said angrily.
“And I’m not answering anything until I hear the whole message,” retorted Marilyn.
They glared at each other in a hostile manner, as though each were trying to decide who held the better cards. Then he seemed to remember that his principle business was to deliver the message, for he went on rather sulkily,
“She said—and she made me repeat the words, to make sure I got them right—that I was to tell you she would leave a message with the garage man; that you would understand what this meant when you got there.”
“Clever old Pat!” exclaimed Marilyn in immense relief, before she could stop herself. For of course, Pat would not expect her to make the discovery about the non-existence of the agreed hotel until she arrived to keep her Wednesday appointment. No doubt she had made a fruitless attempt to telephone, banking on the fact that inevitably her parents would have gone to Westcliff after receiving her letter. And, finding her sister also not at home, she had had to involve this tiresome young man, rather than risk Marilyn losing her head when she found their frail line of communication had snapped.
“I might say that clever old Pat sounded very much the damsel in distress,” observed Jerry Penrose at that moment, and it was obvious that, like most people who discover that their good nature has been imposed upon, he had arrived at the stage of feeling a bit of a fool and very angry about it.
“Oh, yes, she would,” agreed Marilyn absently, “she would.”
“She was so upset,” he went on grimly, “that against my better judgment, I promised to deliver her absurd message. But by now I’ve come to the conclusion that you girls are involved in some disgraceful kind of prank and behaving abominably to your exceptionally nice mother.”
“Mind your own business,” retorted Marilyn coldly. “We’re grateful for your help over this—this temporary crisis. But I assure you the whole thing is
purely
a private family matter, and I’d take it as a gentlemanly act on your part if you would now forget that you ever received this message.”
“Stop talking like someone in a badly written book,” he countered disgustedly. “Gentlemanly act, indeed! And I’m not forgetting anything just to please you. What sort of a fool do you think I am? I’ve obliged your sister by delivering her message. I’ve even
—
most reluctantly
—
observed her almost hysterical request to make sure that I saw you alone, without your parents knowing. But farther than that I’m not prepared to go. Now
I
am going to ask the questions, and you’re going to give the answers.”
“And suppose I won’t answer?”
“Then I go straight back to the flat and wait until your parents—or at least your mother—comes in. And I put all my cards on the table and tell her that not only have I heard from Pat, but that I’ve been asked to convey a message to you which shows that the pair of you are in some sort of ridiculous collusion over this disappearance.”
“You wouldn’t be such a
sneak,
after promising
Pat to deliver the message without letting the parents know! You wouldn’t go back on your word, surely?”
“I didn’t give my word. I’m not such a mutt as that; and I’m too sorry about your mother’s distress in all this for me to agree to tie my hands without knowing the true circumstances. I promised to deliver Pat’s message to you alone, and I said that, provided you could satisfy me that there was no necessity for me to concern myself further in the business, I would take no further action. But I reserved the right to make that decision only when I had heard what you had to say.”
“And what was her answer to that?” enquired Marilyn cautiously.
“She gave a couple more sobs—” in retrospect he now seemed to attach less heart-rending importance to those sobs than he had when he first began his story—“but then she finally said she would have to agree to my terms, and she would leave it to you to decide how much to say.”
“She put it that way
?
”
“Exactly that way.”
“Well then,” said Marilyn, with a sigh that was not entirely regretful, “perhaps I’d better tell you the truth.”
“That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said so far! Will you have another coffee
?
”
“Yes, please. And a Danish pastry. They have good ones here, and emotion always makes me hungry.” He ordered more coffee and some Danish pastries and watched Marilyn closely as she obviously groped for the right words.
“Just the simple truth,” he told her drily. “You needn’t add any misleading details.”
“The truth is seldom simple,” Marilyn replied a little sententiously, “and in order to explain what happened today I have to tell you other things too. Private, very personal things, since you insist.”
She paused and looked at him accusingly, but he remained unmoved. And after a moment she went on, “It starts with the fact that my parents separated about a year ago. They’re wonderful people, both of them, and Pat and I adore them. For the purposes of this story it doesn’t matter which was right and which was wrong. Anyway, Mother says they were both wrong,” she added, in a sudden burst of confidence.
“I could imagine she would,” he said. “She struck me as an exceptionally civilised and fair-minded person.”
“Did she?” Marilyn immediately looked more friendly, and continued her story more willingly. “In a way it was their business, of course, rather than ours, particularly as we were almost grown-up!” To the young man opposite she looked singularly young and rather pathetic as she made this broad-minded assertion, and his glance softened insensibly as she sighed and went on, “But it
was
our life too, and I just can’t tell you how our world fell apart when it happened. They didn’t mean it to. They thought it was enough to say they both loved us still and that we would always belong to both of them. I think they even imagined it wouldn’t hit us so hard as we were away at boarding school. But you can lie awake and cry just as well in a dormitory as at home. The only difference is that you have to shove your head under the bedclothes if you sniff loudly.”
“You poor kids!” exclaimed Jerry Penrose. “It’s hard to imagine such a situation when one’s own home life has been all right.”
“Was yours all right?” Marilyn looked genuinely interested.
“Oh, goodness, yes! My parents weren’t especially demonstrative, but I suppose they pretty well thought the light shone out of each other. My father died before he was fifty, and my mother never really got over it, though she’s very cheerful and good company. She says you just have to find a new pattern of life and not be too self-pitying. I’m very fond of my mother. That’s partly why I was so sorry for
your
mother when I saw her so anxious and distressed.”
“I know, I know! It’s awful to have to make her so unhappy. But it really is in the best of causes,” Marilyn insisted, in her favourite phrase. “You see, Pat and I are convinced they’re still fond of each other, however bitterly they may have quarrelled. Only Dad stupidly took himself off abroad, and what can you do about reconciling them if they’re hundreds of miles apart
?
Particularly as Dad’s quite dangerously attractive, even now, and the kind that women run after. He truly doesn’t take much notice usually. I mean, he’s not a philanderer or anything drippy like that. But men always fall for subtle flattery if it comes from an attractive female.”