Chapter Twenty-nine

Dear Miss Smith,--I have been trying to get into communication with a Mr. John Wills, who is an assistant of mine, and possibly I have succeeded. But in case, by any mischance, my messages have failed to reach him, I should esteem it as a great favour if you would find him and hand him the enclosed, which is a duplicate of the instructions already posted. I think I have located Miss Reddle, and hope to have good news for you to-morrow. But I am dealing with a man for whose genius I have a profound respect. Miss Reddle is at Gallows Farm, near Whitcomb in Somerset, and, if you do not hear from me by telegram in the course of the day, it is extremely likely that I shall also be there--against my will. I have calculated every contingency; foreseen, I think, most of the possibilities, but there is always a big chance that I may not be as clever as I think I am! Will you therefore remain all day at Charlotte Street? I suggest that you should ask your employer, Mr. Shaddles, to let you off for the day, and, if necessary, show him this letter. He may remember me by name; I met him many years ago.

Yours very truly, Michael Dorn.

The words, “If necessary, show him this letter,” were heavily underlined.

The letter had come by special delivery, a red express label on the face, and the postmark was a town in Somersetshire. Lizzy Smith read it three times, once to master the calligraphy, once to understand it, and once out of sheer enjoyment, for she felt more important with each reading; though it struck her as humorous that Michael Dorn should, in his most extravagant mood, imagine that her flinty-faced employer would grant her leave of absence on the strength of a meeting which he must long since have forgotten and would most certainly disclaim.

The news was too vital to be kept to herself, and she took the letter down to old Mr. Mackenzie, and found him engaged in fitting a new string to his violin.

“Wore it out last night, I should think,” said Lizzy, not unkindly. “I heard you tuning and tuning.”

“Tuning!” said old Mackenzie in surprise. “I was no’ tuning, young lady. Perhaps, to the ear of one who is not acquainted with the peculiar qualities of classical music, it may have sounded that way. I was playing the aria from _Samson and Delilah_. ’Tis a bonny piece.”

He pulled on his spectacles from his forehead, and took the letter from her hand.

“You would like me to read this?” he asked, and when she nodded, he followed the quaint crabbed writing line by line. “It seems very good news,” he said. “Will Miss Reddle be back to-night?”

Lizzy sighed impatiently. It was the sort of question he would ask.

“How do I know whether she’ll be back to-night?” She was annoyed that he was not as impressed as she had expected. “She may not be back at all! Don’t you understand anything you can’t play on your fiddle, Mr. Mackenzie? She may be in the power of this Gallows man! The whole thing now depends on me. Mike understands human nature, and when he got into trouble naturally his mind flew to Elizabetta Smith. That man has got experience.”

“Naturally,” murmured Mr. Mackenzie.

“Now the thing is,” considered Lizzy, her face wearing a frown of profoundest thought, “shall I try to find this fellow Wills first, or shall I go to the office?”

“You might telephone to Mr. Dorn’s flat,” suggested the old man helpfully, and Lizzy was irritated that that simple solution had not occurred to her.

On her way to the office she stopped at the first telephone booth and called Michael’s number, and after a long wait was told there was no answer. The news pleased her rather than otherwise, for the responsibility, vague as it was, gave her a pleasing sense that she was intimately associated with great happenings, though she looked forward with trepidation to her meeting with old Shaddles. That he would grant her the day was a forlorn hope. Much more likely he would point his skinny finger to the door and order her from his room. Nevertheless, though she sacrificed her livelihood, she was determined to be on hand in case her services were required--though what she could do, and in what capacity she could act, she did not trouble to consider.

Before she reached the office she had created three alternative excuses, none of which unfortunately had any relation to the other. Happily she was only called upon to produce two.

Mr. Shaddles had arrived before her; he was invariably the first-comer and generally the last leaver. Without taking off her hat, she knocked at the glass panel, and when his gruff “Come in!” reached her she all but abandoned the interview. He scowled at her as she came in, noted her coat and her hat.

“Well, what is the matter? Why aren’t you at your work? You’re five minutes late as it is!” he demanded.

Lizzy rested her hand lightly on his desk, and in her most genteel voice began:

“Mr. Shaddles, I’m sorry to ask you, but, owing to a family bereavement, I should like the day off.”

“Who’s dead?” he growled.

“An aunt,” she said, and added: “On my mother’s side.”

“Aunts are nothing,” said the old man, and waved her to the door. “Uncles are nothing either. Can’t spare you. What do you want to go to funerals for?”

“Well, the real truth is,” said the disconcerted Lizzy, and produced the letter, “I’ve had this!”

He took the message with apparent reluctance and read it through with typical care. He sat for a long time, and she thought he was searching for misspelt words--a horrible practice of his.

“There is nothing about your aunt in this,” snarled Mr. Shaddles.

“Mr. Dorn has been more than an aunt to me,” said Lizzy with dignity. “It is my pet name for him. And if he’s not dead, he may very well be.”

He looked out of the window, scratched his rough chin angrily, then glared round at her.

“You can have the day,” he said, and she nearly dropped with amazement.

Murmuring her incoherent thanks, she was making for the door.

“Wait.”

He put his hand in his pocket, laid a note-case on the table, and took out three bank-notes.

“You may not want these,” he said; “I cannot conceive that you will, but you may. I shall require you to give me a very full account of any expenses you incur. If you need a car, hire one from the Bluelight Company--they are clients of ours, and they allow me a rebate.”

Like a woman in a dream, Lizzy staggered out the office. Each note was for £20. She had no idea there was so much money in the world.

She did not answer the clerk whom she passed on the stairs, and had not wholly recovered by the time she reached Hiles Mansions. Mr. Dorn was not in, the liftman told her unnecessarily; and Mr. Wills had not called since the previous day. Lizzy went out into the Brompton Road, called a taxicab magnificently, and, reaching Charlotte Street, discovered she had only sufficient loose cash to pay the fare.

Such a tremendous happening could not be reserved to herself, and she took Mr. Mackenzie into her confidence.

“Shaddles is a grand man,” said Mackenzie soberly, “a big-hearted fellow.”

Lizzy shook her head.

“I don’t know whether I shall get into trouble with the police for taking this money from the poor old man,” she said. “He has been strange for a long time: I’ve seen this coming on for days. When he raised Lois Reddle’s salary to three pounds a week I knew something else would happen.” She looked at the three notes in awe. “They get like that when they’re about ninety,” she said. And then a great inspiration came to her--so daring, so tremendous, that it left her gasping.

Borrowing some loose change from the old man, she dashed down to the telephone box from which she had called Hiles Mansions and gave Lady Moron’s number. The footman who answered her told her that her ladyship was in bed.

“Oh, pray don’t trouble,” said Lizzy in an exaggerated tone. “Will you ask his lordship to hop along?”

“To what, madam?”

“To speak to me,” corrected Lizzy.

“What name shall I give him?”

“Tell him the Lady Elizabetta,” said Lizzy, and lolled languidly against the cork-lined ’phone box as she would have lolled had she been a person of title.

She had to wait for some time before his lordship, who was sound asleep at that hour, could be aroused and sufficiently interested in the caller to come down to the drawing-room, where there was a telephone extension.

“Hullo?” he asked feebly. “Good morning and all that! Sorry I didn’t catch your name.”

“It’s Miss Smith,” said Lizzy in a hushed voice, and she heard Selwyn gasp.

“Really? Not really? I say, there’s been an awful bother here! Everything’s at sixes and sevens, and all that sort of thing. That beastly bounder, Chesney Praye--you remember the fellow--bird of prey, what?” (Even Lizzy could not laugh at that hour in the morning.) “Well, he’s in the library with her ladyship!”

“Listen--Selwyn!” She had to summon all her courage to voice this familiarity. “Can you see me? You know where I live--you were coming to dinner to-night; but I want you to come before. There’s something I want to see you about, something--well, I can’t describe it.”

“Certainly,” he interrupted. “I’ll come right along. I’m supposed to go to the South Kensington Museum to see some models, but---- All right, colonel, thank you very much for calling!”

The tone was louder and more formal. Lizzy, not unused to such innocent acts of deception, guessed that a servant or his mother had come into the drawing-room.

She went back to her lodging with a feeling of exaltation. Not only had she secured the aid of a member of the aristocracy, but she had also, with great daring, and exercising a woman’s privilege, addressed him by a name which, to say the least, was intimate. She confided to Mr. Mackenzie, with an air of nonchalance, that she was expecting Lord Moron to call upon her, and he was impressed to a gratifying extent.

“I told him to drop in--I know him rather well.” Lizzy flicked a speck of dust from her skirt with a fine air.

“Is that so?” he asked, looking at her in wonder. “Well now, I never thought that one of the Morons would ever do me the honour of entering my house! They’re a fine family, a handsome family. I remember the old earl: he frequently came to the theatre, though not, I fear, in the most presentable condition.”

Miss Lizzy Smith was not interested in the old earl. She was, however, immensely absorbed in the new one; and when Lord Moron’s taxicab pulled up at the side-walk she was at the door to admit him.

“I say, what an awfully jolly kitchen!” he said, looking round at a room of which even Lizzy was not particularly proud.

“I wouldn’t have asked your lordship here----” she began.

“I say, don’t give us any of that ‘lordship’ stuff,” he pleaded. “I’m Selwyn to my friends. That’s a wonderful frying-pan: did you make it?”

Lizzy disclaimed responsibility. But he had his views, apparently, upon culinary apparatus, had invented an electric chafing-dish, and had plans for a coke oven. Until then she had not known that coke was ever cooked.

“I’ve often thought I’d like to run away from this awful ‘my-lording’ and do some work. I’ve got a bit of money of my own that even her ladyship can’t touch--and you can bet your life that it’s pretty well tied up, old thing, if she and the bird of prey can’t get their hooks into it!”

He was delightfully, restfully vulgar, and Lizzy who only knew this much about electricity, that lamps light up when you turn a switch, without exactly understanding why, could have listened for hours to schemes which might even have interested an engineer. But she had the letter to discuss.

He read it through, and, by stopping at every other line and asking for explanations, understood the gist of it. She had noticed before how, on really important matters, Selwyn had quite intelligent views; and that he was no fool she discovered later in the day, when he confided to her that he had countered his mother’s veiled threats of getting him certified as mentally incompetent to deal with his estate, by making a visit to three Harley Street alienists in consultation, and procuring from them a most flattering tribute to his mentality.

“I don’t know what it’s all about,” he said, as he handed the letter back. And then, answering her pained look: “Yes, I understand the letter, but I mean all these accidents and things--old Braime dropping dead, or something, in the library. Madam is my mother, and I suppose I ought not to loathe her. But she’s fearfully devilish, Miss Smith, fearfully devilish!”

He fingered the red seam on his cheek tenderly.

“You can never be sure what she’s up to, and since that bounder Praye and that awful boozy doctor have been around the house she’s been queerer than ever. Do you know what she told me once? She said that if she thought she’d be any happier by me being dead I’d be dead to-morrow--those were her very words! Dead to-morrow, dear old Lizzy! Isn’t it positively fearful?”

“What a lady!” said Lizzy. “You’ve heard nothing at the house about this business--I mean Gallows Farm?”

He shook his head.

“They never talk in front of me. But _something’s_ happening: I’m sure of that! That chap Chesney has been in with her ladyship since eight o’clock this morning--they told you she was in bed--well, she wasn’t: she was in the library. And the telephone seems to have been ringing all night. I say, what do you think of that detective johnny putting the young lady in gaol? A bit thick, what? I meant to have a few words with him the other morning.”

“He did it for a very good reason,” said Lizzy mysteriously. “I can’t tell you everything, Selwyn; one day you will know the truth, but at the present moment I’m not at liberty to talk.”

“Nobody seems to be at liberty to tell me anything,” said the dismal man. “But what’s the idea of that letter? Somebody’s got her in that place with a fearful name!” He slapped his side. “Tappatt--the chap who worries the wine! You know this fellow--the perfectly horrible doctor! I’ll bet he’s the perfectly awful villain of the piece! He hasn’t been near the house for days, and he had been sleuthing round Chester Square a lot lately. And”--he slapped his knee again--“and there was a trunk call came through from the country last night! I was in the hall when the bell rang, and I’m sure he was the johnny who called. He asked for her ladyship. Gallows Farm: that’s the place he lives!”

Suddenly he jumped up, his eyes bright with excitement.

“She’s there--I’ll bet a million pounds to a strawberry ice! Gallows Farm, Somerset.” He tapped his forehead. “I signed a paper about that, I’ll swear! It is one of the job lots her ladyship bought two or three years ago, or one of her bailiffs bought. She is always buying old properties and selling ’em at a profit. And I know old stick-in-the-mud has got a home somewhere--Tappatt, I mean--because her ladyship said she’d send me there if I wasn’t jolly careful. That rosy-nosed hound has got Miss Reddle!”

They looked at one another in silence.

“You’re a detective, Selwyn!” she breathed ecstatically, and he pulled at his moustache.

“I’m pretty smart at some things--what about a rescue?” said his lordship suddenly.

“A what?” Lizzy’s heart beat faster.

“A rescue,” he nodded. “What about hopping down into Somerset, seeing old stick-in-the-mud, and saying: ‘Look here, old top, this sort of thing can’t be tolerated in civilised society. Hand over Miss Reddle or you’ll get into serious trouble’?”

Lizzy’s enthusiasm died down.

“I don’t think that would make much difference to him,” she said. “And it would be unnecessary, Selwyn; if Michael Dorn is there she will be released this afternoon.”

Selwyn was disappointed.

“Besides,” Lizzy went on, “what would her ladyship say if you were away all day?”

“Blow her ladyship!” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve had enough of her ladyship--I have really. I’ve made up my mind that I’m through with Chester Square, and I’ve got my eye on a dinky little flat in Knightsbridge,” he said rapidly. “I feel it is time I asserted myself. My idea is to live incognito. I’m going to call myself Mr. Smith----”

“Indeed?” said Lizzy coldly.

“It’s a pretty good name. Anyway, Brown is as good.” He amended his plans in some haste. “Now what about a little bit of lunch somewhere?”

An hour later Lizzy went dizzily into the great dining-room of the Ritz-Carlton, and Lady Moron, entertaining a guest at a corner table, looked at her through her lorgnettes and shrugged her large shoulders.

“Selwyn is sowing his wild oats rather late in life,” she said, and Chesney Praye, who had returned from Paris that morning, was mildly amused.