Anthony Interviews a Suspect
Anthony had not had very much experience with women. In the brief
instant after the girl had spoken it occurred to him with some force
that his ideas on the subject might require drastic revision. Women
were not necessarily weak, helpless creatures. Names such as Joan of
Arc, Boadicea, Florence Nightingale, Queen Elizabeth, occurred to him
with startling rapidity. Were they weak, helpless creatures? They were
not. Nor was the girl who was standing in front of him and regarding
him now with cold, haughty eyes. Anybody less weak and helpless,
anybody more obviously capable of looking after herself could hardly
have existed.
“I am Miss Cross,” she repeated in frigid tones. “What do you want?”
Anthony’s tongue seemed to have become jammed. His mission, which had
seemed a moment before so altogether right and proper, suddenly took
on the aspect of the most fatuous thing ever conceived by misguided
human mind. Even to connect this beautiful, proud creature with the
mere idea of bare self-interest appeared a kind of blasphemy.
“Oh, I—I wanted to speak to you for a minute,” he managed to stammer.
“But it doesn’t matter.” At this point Anthony ought to have turned
about and run off at top speed with his tail between his legs, making
a noise like a flat pancake. But he couldn’t. By some curious action
of nature his feet seemed to have taken root in the ground.
“Are you connected with the police?” the girl asked with incredible
scorn.
“Great Heavens, no!” cried Anthony, genuinely shocked. “I should think
not! Great Scott, no! Good Lord, no!”
The girl’s uncompromising attitude relaxed slightly. “Then why did you
want to see me?” she asked, as if very few people except the police
ever wanted to see _her_.
“Well, it was just about something I thought I ought to tell you,”
Anthony mumbled. “But it doesn’t matter. I see that now. It doesn’t
matter a bit.”
Curiosity could be seen struggling with resentment in the girl’s face.
Strangely enough, curiosity won.
“You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve come all this way out to speak
to me, and now you’ve got here you’ve decided that it doesn’t matter?”
she said, and actually a faint hint of the merest shadow of a
suspicion of a smile flitted for a quarter-of-a-second into and out of
her eyes.
“Now I’ve seen you, I’m quite sure it doesn’t matter, Miss Cross,”
Anthony said simply.
“Well, thank Heaven my appearance seems to impress somebody
favourably,” murmured the girl wearily, more to herself than the
other, and for an instant the mantle of pride she had been wearing
seemed to drop from her and she looked utterly forlorn and miserable.
Anthony was emboldened into a sudden decision. “I’ll tell you why I
came, Miss Cross, after all. I just came to say that if you wanted any
help in the present circumstances, I should be very proud to— That is
to say, I should like you to know that—I mean——” He ceased
floundering, for the girl’s eyes were regarding him steadily with an
expression in their depths which he was finding peculiarly
disconcerting.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” she said haughtily. “I was not
aware that I needed any ‘help.’”
“No, of course not,” Anthony stammered. “Naturally not! I was only
thinking that——”
“And I must decline to discuss my private affairs with a stranger! So
if there is nothing else——” She paused, obviously waiting for him to
go.
Anthony felt himself becoming annoyed. He knew that his recent
embarrassment had made him look a fool and he resented the fact; he
knew that his motive in seeking speech with this girl had been a
completely altruistic one and here she was treating it as a piece of
unwarrantable impertinence, and he resented that still more.
“In that case,” he said stiffly, “there is nothing more to be said,
and I must apologise for bothering you. Though I think you should
understand,” he added on the impulse of the instant by way of a
parting shot as his temper momentarily got the better of his manners,
“I think you should understand that possibly your private affairs will
soon be becoming of some interest to the public at large, Miss Cross.”
The girl coloured violently and for a moment seemed incapable of
speaking. Her eyes blazed, she clinched her small fists by her sides
and her dark head was flung back as if to meet an actual attack.
“If you’ve come here to insult me——” she choked out.
“But I haven’t!” said Anthony in considerable alarm at this unexpected
result of his thrust. “I simply meant that I’ve come down here with a
friend of mine who’s working for the _Daily Courier_ and he said
something about getting you to give him an interview. I thought you
ought to know.”
As abruptly as it had arisen the girl’s anger disappeared and
something very like fear took the place of the fire in her eyes. She
stared at Anthony widely.
“A—a _reporter?_” she muttered. “Good Heavens, has it come to that
now?”
Men are curious creatures. A moment ago Anthony was severely annoyed
and wanted nothing better than to make this extremely crushing young
lady severely annoyed too. The instant he had succeeded in doing so,
he had been filled with alarm. Now that he had changed her mood once
more, from anger to fear, he began to feel the worst kind of inhuman
brute imaginable.
“No, but look here,” he said eagerly, “there’s nothing to be alarmed
about. They always do it, you know. Interviews and all that. He’s an
awfully nice chap too. Roger Sheringham, the novelist, you know.
Cousin of mine, as a matter of fact. I dare say he won’t try to see
you at all if you don’t want him to. Sure he won’t! I’ll tell him,
shall I? Dash it all, there are crowds of other people he can
interview if he must interview somebody. I was against it at the time,
to tell you the truth, but he thought you might want to be interviewed
for some reason or other. I’ll tell him, Miss Cross. Don’t you bother
about that. I’ll see it’s all right.”
It was doubtful if the girl had understood a single word beyond the
general drift of what Anthony was saying. She continued to stare at
him; but mechanically, as if paying attention only to her own
thoughts. When next she spoke her voice was under control again,
though her words were a little halting.
“Then am I to understand that—that the London papers are taking an
interest in—in my cousin’s death?” she asked.
“I’m afraid they are,” said Anthony humbly, apologising for the London
paper _en masse_.
The girl shifted her gaze and contemplated the horizon with unseeing
eyes, busy again with her thoughts. Anthony, judging he had received
permission to exist a little longer, made advantageous use of his
reprieve by contemplating her.
She really was extraordinarily pretty, he had no difficulty in
deciding. He liked her slimness and grace, he liked the way her head
was set on her neck, he liked the way her black hair curled over her
ears, he liked her wrists and her small feet, he liked— But why reduce
Margaret Cross to a catalogue? There was nothing about her Anthony did
not like. When he got back to his lodgings he would probably think
this over and the realisation would suddenly strike him that this was
the one girl in the world for him—expressly designed and manufactured
by a thoughtful Providence for the sole purpose of delighting,
harassing, maddening and ultimately very greatly gratifying one
Anthony Walton, bachelor. The realisation had already struck him
exactly twenty-three times before and twenty-three times he had
mistaken the intentions of Providence; but this time it was the _real_
thing. It always was.
Anthony continued his contemplation, each second more raptly than
before.
Suddenly the girl appeared to come to a decision. She turned to him
with an impulsive movement, and to his relief Anthony saw that she was
smiling.
“Will you come and sit down here a minute, Mr.——?”
“Walton!” Anthony supplied hastily.
“Mr. Walton. I owe you an enormous apology, I’m afraid. It was very
kind indeed of you to think of coming along to give me warning. I was
a pig to you.”
“Not a bit,” Anthony averred, scrambling eagerly down the little bank
to join her on the little grassy ledge a dozen feet down from the
cliff’s lip. “It was most natural. I ought to apologise if anyone
should. Frightfully tactless.”
“Not at all!” said the girl warmly. “It was entirely my fault. But if
you’ll forgive me, we’ll say no more about it. Now let’s sit down here
and make ourselves comfortable, because I’m going to take you at your
word.”
“Do, please,” Anthony said earnestly, as he seated himself on the
warm, springy turf at her side. “I should be awfully proud.”
The girl clasped her arms round her knees and stared out to sea.
Anthony, glancing at her covertly, noted with approval the firm and
resolute lines of her profile. She could not be more than one- or
two-and-twenty, he decided, but even he could read an experience
beyond her years of the world, its trials and its anxieties in the
tiny lines of care about her mouth and the faint markings on her white
forehead.
“You said something about my needing help,” she said slowly, as if
choosing her words with care. “Well, why should I be silly and pretend
I don’t? I do need it. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you; but I
feel I can trust you, and there’s nobody else to whom I can speak. Not
a single soul. I suppose you know that—that——”
“Yes,” Anthony interrupted gently. “I think I know all the facts.”
“I supposed so, or you wouldn’t have said that.” She fixed her big,
sorrowful brown eyes on Anthony’s face. “But what you don’t know, Mr.
Walton, is that a police inspector from Scotland Yard was with me for
nearly two hours this morning, asking me the most _horrible_
questions!”
A cold hand seemed to lay itself over Anthony’s heart. “I say, was he
really?” he muttered. “No, I didn’t know that.”
The girl nodded. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her lips
trembled and she turned her head quickly away. A little quiver shook
her body. Then suddenly the control that had borne her up all this
time, ever since that dreadful interview in the morning, gave way
before Anthony’s silent sympathy. She buried her face in her hands and
burst into tears.
“He seems to think—oh, the most awful things!” she sobbed.
Anthony stared at her in dismay. It was bad enough that she should
have burst into tears at all, without the terrible significance of her
last words. He was certain that Margaret Cross was not the sort of
person to give way to tears unless matters had reached an acute
crisis; the fact that she had done so impressed him with the
seriousness of the situation even more than had her decision to
confide in himself, a complete stranger. She must be not only utterly
alone in the world; she was very nearly at the end of her tether as
well.
Masculine sympathy with distressed femininity is nearly always
inarticulate (distrust it when it is not!), but fortunately it has
resource at its command far superior to mere words. Anthony did not
stop to think. He acted instinctively. Putting his arm about her he
drew her toward him without a word and laid her head on his shoulder.
Almost gratefully she buried her face in the hollow of it like a small
child seeking consolation from its mother and continued to weep.
Anthony had the wisdom to let her go on doing so without attempting a
single word of clumsy consolation—though indeed it is doubtful whether
he would have been able to do so had he wished, for he was vaguely
feeling himself almost sanctified by contact with something rather
holy and, for such an outwardly unemotional Briton, there was a most
unusual lump in his throat as he looked down on the sleek dark head
sheltering against his rough coat and felt the sobs shaking the slim
body he held in his arms.
By degrees the girl’s weeping subsided. Her form ceased to quiver and
she gently disengaged herself from Anthony’s encircling arm.
“I’m a fool,” she said, looking at him with rather a watery smile. “Is
my nose disgustingly red?”
“Not a bit!” Anthony lied stoutly, considerably relieved by the smile.
“It’s ripping.”
Margaret dived into her bag and produced a little mirror. Sounds of
dismay issued from her, and a powder-puff was hastily brought into
action.
“That’s better,” she observed a minute or two later, scrutinising her
image with close attention. She turned and faced Anthony with a frank
smile that was a tacit acknowledgment of the bond between them. “Will
you ever forgive me for making such an idiot of myself?”
“Look here,” Anthony said slowly, “I don’t want to butt in on anything
you don’t want to tell me, but wouldn’t you like to tell me the whole
story? You know I’m only too anxious to do anything I possibly can to
help you, and matters seem to be a bit—well, a bit more serious even
than I’d thought. If you would like to let me know the whole
circumstances——?”
He paused, and the girl nodded understandingly. “You mean it’s no good
asking you to help me unless you know what I’m up against?” she said
thoughtfully. “Well, that stands to reason. Of course I’ll tell you. I
was going to before as a matter of fact, only I——” She left the
sentence unfinished and, hunching her knees, resumed her former pose
and gazed out to sea.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” Anthony asked, producing his pipe.
“Of course not. In fact I rather feel I need a cigarette myself. No,
don’t you bother!” she added quickly, as Anthony felt in his pockets.
“I’ve got some of my own particular brand here, and I hardly ever
smoke anything else.”
She produced a cigarette-case from her bag, and Anthony held a match
for her, lighting his own pipe from it afterward. She drew one or two
deep inhalations and sighed contentedly.
“Well, about myself; there’s really very little to tell you. Four
months ago I was in London, broke to the wide—as I had been off and on
for the last seven years. My father was an officer in the regular
army; he was killed in France in 1917, when I was fifteen years old. I
inherited about two hundred pounds from him and, of course, a pension;
the pension was just enough to keep body and soul together if one
lived on rice and cold water, but not much more.” She paused for a
moment as if in thought.
“Unfortunately,” she went on with a touch of cynicism, “it appears
that my father had ‘married beneath him.’ I don’t remember my mother
at all (she died when I was a baby), but I believe that she was the
daughter of a fraudulent bucket-shop proprietor in Liverpool who had
served two terms of imprisonment and my father was more or less
entrapped into marriage with her when he was a young subaltern. He
never hinted a word of all this to me, by the way; don’t think that.
He was a dear. But it’s been rubbed into me pretty thoroughly since by
other charming people.”
“I say,” Anthony put in in acute distress, “please don’t tell me
anything you’d rather not. I mean——!”
“Why not?” asked the girl in a hard voice. “Why shouldn’t I tell you
everything? That police inspector seems to know all about it. Probably
it will be in all the papers to-morrow.”
“But——” Anthony shifted his position and relapsed into uncomfortable
silence.
“Well, the consequence was that my father had been cut off by his
family. They wouldn’t have anything more to do with him. Nor would
they with me. One of his brothers sent five hundred pounds to daddy’s
solicitors to provide for my education and keep me till I was old
enough to earn my own living, but that was as far as any of them would
go. I’m not complaining; in the circumstances it was remarkably
generous of him. That money, with my own two hundred, kept me till I
was eighteen, after that I had to earn my own living. You’ve probably
heard that girls had some difficulty in getting jobs after the war.
It’s perfectly true. I was trained as a shorthand-typist, but
unfortunately nobody seemed to want a shorthand-typist. But I got work
all right. I had to. During the last three years I’ve been a
governess, a shop-assistant, a waitress and a parlour-maid.”
“Good God!” Anthony breathed.
The girl laughed suddenly with genuine amusement. “Oh, you needn’t
pity me for the last. That was the best of the lot. I can’t think why
I didn’t try it sooner. Governessing was the worst I think; but they
do work waitresses rather hard, I must admit. Well, that sort of thing
went on for three years, as I told you; and then I was dismissed from
my proud position of parlour-maid by an irate lady because her husband
wanted to kiss me and was tactless enough to try with the door open. I
boxed his ears for her, but apparently that wasn’t enough, so I was
turned out, with a month’s wages in my bag. I’d just come to an end of
them and was beginning to wonder rather desperately where the next was
to come from, when I got a letter from Elsie—Mrs. Vane, you know.”
Anthony nodded. “Your cousin?”
“Yes; her mother was my mother’s sister. I’d never seen her in my
life—hardly even heard of her, in fact—but to my astonishment she said
that she’d heard I was having rather a rough time and, as she had
plenty of money of her own, would like to extend a helping hand, so to
speak. Anyhow, the upshot was that she invited me to come and live
here, nominally as her companion and with a quite generous salary.”
“Jolly decent of her,” Anthony commented.
The girl glanced at him rather queerly. “Yes, wasn’t it? And very
extraordinary too. But there was something more extraordinary to come.
A day or two after I had arrived she broke the news to me quite
casually that she had made a new will that morning leaving all her
money and everything else unconditionally to me—ten thousand pounds or
more, to say nothing of her jewellery. As you can imagine, I was
absolutely astounded.”
“I should think so. But how topping of her!”
“Very,” said the girl drily. “But you see the position it puts me
in—combined with my excellent grandfather. Rather—difficult, to say
the least, isn’t it? And the trouble is that I’ve simply nobody to
advise me. The solicitor who managed my affairs is dead; George—Dr.
Vane—is—well, he’s not the sort of person one could talk to about this
sort of thing; nor is Miss Williamson, his secretary. I’m absolutely
alone.” She tossed her cigarette out over the sea and laughed a little
bitterly. “So now perhaps you can understand why I’m ready to take
into my confidence the very first person who comes along—though even
that doesn’t excuse my howling on his shoulder, I’m afraid.”
“It’s a perfectly damnable position,” growled Anthony. “I’d like to
wring that inspector’s neck. But one thing’s perfectly clear. You must
talk all this over with my cousin. He’ll help you if anyone can, and
I’m sure he won’t use anything you tell him for the _Courier_ without
your consent.”
The girl nodded slowly. “Ye-es, perhaps that would be best. Roger
Sheringham, you said, didn’t you? I’ve read some of his books. I think
he must be rather a nice person.”
“He is. He’d talk the hind-leg off a dead mule, but he’s a thoroughly
decent chap. Got a half-blue at Oxford, you know. Well, look here, I
was to meet him on these cliffs about this time; supposing if I dash
off and collect him and bring him along right away? I don’t think
we’ve any too much time to waste, you know.”
“You’re awfully kind, Mr. Walton,” said the girl gratefully. “I shall
lie awake for hours to-night cursing myself for being such a perfect
pig to you when you first arrived.”