Four Strange Women Page 12

  “Not as Mr. Ebbutt,” admitted the caretaker, “is like some as’ll let a place go to rack and ruin for lack of a ha’porth of paint. We get a very good class here,” he added; “them curtains was fitted at their own expense by one lot.”

  “Really?” said Bobby, for the passing tenant is seldom so generous, and he had already noticed the dark and carefully fitted curtains, exceptional in days before ‘black outs’ became necessary.

  “Spiritualists,” explained the caretaker; “very special tests they were doing for a foreign lady what floated about in the air and such like. What I say is, why didn’t she do it at the Coliseum? Made her fortune, so she would.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Bobby absently.

  He remembered having noticed in Mr. Ebbutt’s list that the Edgware Psychic Research Society had hired the hall two or three times and had also booked it for the next Friday, and he had made a note of their address and of that of the Honorary Secretary, who lived apparently in Walham Green.

  “Do they want you to help while the meetings are on?” he asked abruptly. “I suppose you get something extra for yourself if your help’s required?”

  “It ain’t often,” answered the caretaker with a touch of regret in his voice. “Most on ’em seem to think I go with the hall like. My job is to see as everything’s ready, and next morning clear up like, and if more’s wanted—well, that’s for arrangement. Of course, I keep an eye open to see it’s all locked up proper and no lights left burning or nothing.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s necessary,” agreed Bobby.

  The building included a main hall, a smaller one, what are described as ‘the usual offices’. There was also a basement where was a furnace to provide heat, a coal cellar and so on, and under the main hall a large cellar-like apartment, chiefly used, the caretaker explained, for the boy scouts and girl guides from St. Jude’s. That explained, Bobby supposed, some ancient looking gymnastic apparatus in one corner and iron hooks overhead from which no doubt ropes could be hung for climbing exercises.

  It was a dark, chill, gloomy place, though, no doubt, cheerful enough when filled with the bustling activities of scouts and guides. Not cheerful now, though, and Bobby found himself aware of a curious sensation of discomfort. In the corners, for the caretaker, economical, had turned on only one light, shadows hung heavily, and Bobby could have well believed that some hostile, evil presence lurked there, hiding in the shadows, dodging behind that ancient gymnastic apparatus. The caretaker said suddenly, as if aware of Bobby’s discomfort:—

  “Fair gives you the creeps, don’t it?” He glanced up at the iron hooks beneath which Bobby was standing. “All set and ready for any bloke as wanted to hang himself,” he said, and chuckled as if he found the thought amusing.

  “No windows, are there?” Bobby asked, ignoring this. “How about ventilation?”

  “There’s shafts,” the caretaker said. “It’s a bit deep down for windows.” He shivered again. “Creepy like, ain’t it?” he repeated; “and there’s some of the St. Jude young ladies as won’t come down here at no price. Say it makes ’em go all queer like all over. Bad air most like, which,” confessed the caretaker in a burst of confidence, “it mostly is down here, shafts or no shafts.” Once more he shivered. “Cold as death,” he said, and moved towards the door.

  “One moment,” Bobby said.

  He had noticed in one corner, the corner furthest away, the corner where the shadows lay the heaviest, a closed door. He asked where it led. The caretaker, who by now had reached the foot of the stone steps that led to the upper regions, called back that it led nowhere. It admitted to a small room the owner of the hall kept for his own use for storing purposes. It contained various boxes, a case or two of books, a large safe—too much to ask a bank to take care of and yet of insufficient value to make hiring accommodation elsewhere worth while.

  Bobby noticed that the door was strong and secured by two locks, a yale and a mortice. Evidently intrusion had been carefully guarded against. Bobby had a vague feeling that a peep within that locked chamber might be interesting and might give some information concerning the identity of the somewhat elusive proprietor. But he had no authority to push his inquiries further, no real reason to suspect anything, the explanation given by the caretaker was reasonable enough. So far as the caretaker knew the room had never been opened since first secured some two or three years ago.

  They returned upstairs, neither of them sorry to leave those gloomy vaults behind. Bobby had another look round, noted that in addition to the front entrance there was a back way in from the street behind, whereby, the caretaker informed him, provisions or extra furnishings required could be brought into the hall without the vans entering Mountain Street.

  “Saves blocking it up with vans and such like when there’s a do,” explained the caretaker.

  There was also a path running round the hall from Mountain Street to the back, between the building and the busy road into which ran both Mountain Street and those parallel with it. The path was separated from this road by a high fence, in it one gate opposite a side door admitting to the hall.

  It followed, therefore, that the hall could be entered and left in three different ways—by the front entrance in Mountain Street, by the back door in the street behind, and by this side door and the gate in the fence into the busy cross road.

  Bobby looked a little thoughtful over an arrangement that seemed to him almost too convenient, and as the caretaker was showing him this side entrance and pointing out how handy it was to be able to slip in and out unnoticed as and when desired, a policeman’s helmet appeared over the fence and the light of a policeman’s lantern shone upon them.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said, recognizing the caretaker. “I heard someone and I just wondered, as it’s a bit late.”

  “Showing a gent, round,” explained the caretaker. “It ain’t Reynolds this time.”

  “Think you’re funny, don’t you?” growled the constable and walked off.

  The caretaker, who evidently did think he was funny, indulged in a loud guffaw. Bobby asked what the joke was and why Reynolds. It appeared that two or three years ago a man named Reynolds, a chauffeur, had disappeared with his employer’s jewellery—especially with two wonderful diamond ear-rings and a diamond pendant valued at a very large sum—‘thousands hand thousands,’ said the caretaker in parenthesis, adding an extra aspirate for emphasis. A large reward had been offered and the policeman they had just seen had been very excited because he was certain he had noticed a man answering to the description of the fugitive hiding behind the Mountain Street hall fence. ‘In the exact very spot where we was’, explained the caretaker in another parenthesis. But in spite of instant and careful search no trace of Reynolds had been found. It had got to be quite a local joke, more especially because the constable stuck to his story in spite of official disbelief and a snub from a worried D.D.I., aware that Reynolds had been seen simultaneously in a score of widely separated localities. None the less the constable, still persistent, spent a good deal of his own time for the next two or three weeks, prowling about in the firm belief that the missing man was hiding somewhere in the district.

  “Got it on the brain like,” said the caretaker, chuckling again. “Everyone was laughing about it.”

  A local joke evidently. Bobby remembered the case well enough, though he had never been called upon to do any work in connection with it. It had presented no unusual features. The dishonest servant decamping with his employer’s jewellery is fortunately rare but by no means unknown. Bobby did remember vaguely some story about the man’s wife having protested very violently her husband’s innocence when the police called to question her, so violently indeed that she had had to be arrested on a charge of assault—something to do with a rolling-pin, Bobby believed, or had it been a frying pan?—though the assault charge had not been pressed and she had been let off with a warning by a bench evidently sorry for her and ready to make allowances. Bobby felt qui
te sympathetic towards the constable who plainly thought that his information had been unduly neglected by his superiors and that so he had missed a chance of bringing off a valuable arrest. Then he dismissed the matter from his mind, said good-bye to the caretaker, and went off to eat a solitary and meditative meal.

  That there was something odd about the Mountain Street hall he was fully convinced, but what it could be he was quite unable to imagine. These are strange, unsettled times and Bobby’s thoughts ranged far. Irish, for example, plotting murder in the name of that liberty in whose name it is indeed true that so many crimes have been and are committed. Then, too, Bobby knew that some of the extreme supporters of fascist and allied movements were trying to get possession of stocks of arms. He wondered if there were arms hidden behind that carefully locked door in the basement of the hall and if perhaps secret drilling was going on there?

  He could not think it very likely. Possible perhaps, for there is no folly such extremists may not commit, and already there was a smell of war in the air to make hot heads hotter still. Gambling perhaps! More likely in a way. But generally an empty house or flat is used. Cock fighting?

  But that is an affair of the open air and the north country. Prize fighting with the bare fist? Plenty of possibilities, no doubt, for many queer things go on in London, some merely foolish—Bobby had heard tales of meetings held to raise the devil as though that ever-present personage needed any raising—some comparatively innocent, some mildly criminal, like gambling or cock fighting. He even thought of the Nazis, but in tolerant England the Nazis had no need for such elaborate precautions. They could assemble anywhere and plot to their heart’s content, probably with a British policeman stationed at the door to see they were not interrupted, though also very likely with two or three emissaries of the Special Branch among them, since tolerance and watchfulness are riot mutually exclusive, as is often believed.

  By the time he had finished his meal Bobby had thought himself into complete mental confusion. He decided to forget the Mountain Street hall for the time, but to try to be present at the next meeting of the Edgware Psychic Research Society, of whom he had not been much surprised to find no trace in the directory, as also Walham Green appeared ignorant either of the society’s honorary secretary or even of the street which he had given as his address. Fortunately the directory had been more helpful in giving the address of Lord Henry Darmoor.

  This was in a large and expensive block of flats overlooking Hyde Park, on the fourth floor, and so commanding a very pleasant and extensive view. Bobby was a little surprised to find two large leather bags standing in the corridor outside the open door of the flat. He wondered if Lord Henry were on the point of departure and then noticed that the bags bore the initials ‘A.B.C.’ He knocked at the open door and at once there appeared a thin, elderly, grey-haired man, neatly and quietly dressed. His whole manner and appearance was that prim, respectful, alert, of the manservant, and yet that he had been drinking was also perfectly plain. Unusual, to say the least, since butlers and valets who drink too much do not keep their places for long. Then, looking again, Bobby felt that there was more than that, something at once angry, pathetic, outraged, something oddly reminiscent of the look in the eyes of the dog that, expecting a caress, has received a kick instead.

  “No one in,” he said thickly to Bobby, and tried to push past him, past a Bobby puzzled and interested and therefore determined to find out what it was all about, since in this queer, unusual business, a clue might lie in anything that was also unusual and queer.

  “Are you Lord Henry Darmoor?” he asked, and the other stopped and stared, very much surprised, as Bobby had hoped he would be, and also a little flattered, as Bobby had also hoped.

  “My name’s Clements,” he said. “Been with the family since that high”—he indicated a height of about twelve inches—“and now turned off like—like, like a lost dog.”

  “Nonsense,” Bobby said sharply, and for the moment indeed he felt it was nonsense, for Lord Henry Darmoor had not struck him as a man likely to behave brutally or unreasonably, nor indeed had Lord Henry in general that kind of reputation.

  There are still families who keep up the old feudal tradition that between master and man there is a mutual obligation as strong on one side as on the other, and Bobby knew that in the Darmoor clan that idea was still believed in and acted upon.

  “Unless,” Bobby said deliberately, “there was a jolly good reason.”

  Clements, who had made a dive for his bags and succeeded in clutching only one of them, straightened himself and glared indignantly at Bobby.

  “Call it a good reason,” he demanded, “that I wouldn’t believe he wanted to do the dirty, even if it was only a bookmaker, and no references, neither, only for Miss Barton, what’s as sweet and kind a young lady as ever was, and told him straight out he had got to.”

  “Let me help you with those,” Bobby said, securing one of the bags. “But look here, you know, I know Lord Henry well enough to be sure—”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Clements said, supporting himself against the wall, for he was not finding it altogether easy to stand upright. “Well, let me tell you, he’s changed, he’s not the same man, he’s different. A gentleman as was a gentleman, and so I’ve often said when others were telling at the ‘George and Dragon’ about their gentlemen and the way they carried on what would have brought a poor man up before the beaks. That’s as may be, I used to say, but my gentleman is a gentleman what is a gentleman, and now turned off like—like—”

  This time Clements could find no suitable simile and showed some inclination to weep on Bobby’s shoulder.

  “Wouldn’t have been no reference either,” he said, recovering himself slightly, “if it hadn’t been for Miss Barton, God bless her, and too good for him, she is.”

  “What was it all about?” Bobby asked as they made their way towards the lift, Clements carrying one bag and he the other, his help being apparently now accepted as quite natural.

  “That I ain’t telling,” Clements declared firmly. “ I know my place and I know my duty even if turned off like a mongrel dog, and I didn’t even think he meant it, for it was a dirty trick, and one no gentleman ought to have thought of, nor no one else neither, even if only a bookmaker.” He put down the bag he was carrying. “Trustworthy and honest as the day he knows I am, or would he have gone off Lord knows where and left me to pack my own bags and get out, same as he said, and not a thing in them, not so much as a pocket handkerchief as isn’t mine and isn’t his’n.”

  He seemed to feel this last sentence wasn’t quite right, and then appeared inclined to open the bags on the spot so that Bobby could see the contents for himself. Bobby checked this design, however, for it was neither the bags nor their contents that interested him.

  “Changed!” he said. “You say Lord Henry has changed? How do you mean? in what way?”

  “In every way,” answered Clements gloomily, “and if you want to know what I think, there’s some woman got hold of him, and what’s more I believe Miss Barton knows it and that’s what’s troubling her. Crying she was and not my place to ask, but there was a photo she had and it wasn’t her.”

  “Know who it was?” Bobby asked.

  “I didn’t see it proper, she hid it quick, poor young lady, but what I say is, there’s a woman got hold of him and that’s what done it, and Miss Barton knows. For,” said Clements with dignity, as the lift appeared, “there’s nothing sends a man to the devil so quick as when the wrong woman gets hold of him.”

  CHAPTER XII

  GWEN

  Bobby found a taxi for the tearfully grateful Clements, made a mental note of the address Clements gave in case it might be advisable to get in touch with him later on, and then went back into the block of flats to see if he could pick up any further information.

  He found the porters suspicious and uncommunicative. They knew nothing about Lord Henry or his movements. They also made it plain that they were not in the
habit of retailing gossip to strangers. Bobby did not think it well at this stage to explain his official position or use it to get his questions answered, so he accepted meekly the rebuffs he received from the uniformed giants he spoke to and went back to his rooms, and all the way there seemed to echo and re-echo in his mind those words:—

  ‘There’s nothing sends a man to the devil so quick as when the wrong woman gets hold of him.’

  Only who was the wrong woman? Plenty of women to choose from certainly. Mrs. Jane Jones, for instance, who certainly was not Mrs. Jane Jones; and Gwen herself; and Hazel Hannay, whose father was afraid; and Becky Glynne, bitter and disillusioned; and Lady May, whose photograph had so odd a habit of turning up near dead men; and perhaps even the vanished wife of the little journalist so interested in the forest where the latest tragedy had taken place; and for that matter all the rest of the feminine population of the country. Clements had no idea of her identity, apparently, and even if Gwen herself knew or suspected anything, it was hardly a matter on which as yet Bobby had any right or ground for inquiry.

  In the morning he rang up Lord Henry’s flat but got no reply. He took his way there and again there was no reply when he rang. Apparently the flat was unoccupied and a passing porter, one he had not seen before, told him he thought Lord Henry was away in the country somewhere. Bobby had Gwen’s telephone number, so he rang her up next, and though she seemed surprised to hear from him and not quite sure of his identity at first, she promised to wait in for him if he would come round at once. Her address was in one of those huge blocks of flats for people of moderate means that recently have sprung up all over London like mushrooms in a field after heavy rain. This particular building, in north London, was, Bobby noticed, of unusual size, and occupied an island site between three busy roads, possessing therefore the advantage that nearly all its windows faced outwards and got a fair share of such light as the dim London skies afford. There was a swimming bath in the basement, a squash court on the roof, shops on the street level, a cinema, a restaurant, so that the management’s boast that a resident could obtain amusement, supplies, exercise, all the needs of life indeed, under the one roof, was fully justified.