CAPTURED
Demoniacal, terrifying, she towered above the frightened woman, and
Greta cowered and held up her hand as though to ward off a blow.
“Get on the telephone, quick, and tell him he needn’t come. Invent any
excuse you like! Hurry!”
In a trembling voice Greta called the number.
“He’s gone,” she said, and looked up at her mistress.
“All right, hang up, you fool!” Anita was breathing quickly. New lines
showed in her face; she looked like an old woman.
“Send somebody down to the door and tell him he needn’t come.”
“But, Anita,” wailed the other, “I can’t do that! I must see him,
Nita. What a stupid thing you are! What difference does it make? If
you don’t like him you needn’t show yourself. And if I send down a
message like that he’ll be awfully suspicious! You remember how the
police came just because my wretched doctor told somebody I had a
gunshot wound in the leg?”
There was reason and intelligence in this, and though the woman was
quivering between fear and fury, she had no course but to assent, and
when, ten minutes later, the doctor’s foot sounded on the stairs
outside, Anita Bellini disappeared into the bedroom, but did not go
beyond earshot.
He was an elderly man, rather talkative and fussy, short and stout,
with a cherubic face and short white side whiskers.
“Bless my soul, I remember you now!” he said. He was one of the loud
and jovial race of doctors that is fast dying out. “I remember you
very well. You used to be a friend of the Dawlishes, didn’t you? Poor
old Donald! What a good sort! Now let me look at this leg of yours.”
He examined the wound, which was little more than a scar, and, to
Greta’s dismay, pronounced her fit to travel.
“You’ll have to take care of yourself for a week or two,” he said
conventionally, and returned to the topic his examination had
interrupted. “Yes. I was with old Donald two days before he died, from
morning till night, hoping against hope that I could do something for
him. For twenty-four hours I never stirred from his side. Poor old
Donald! He died six hours after I left him, with my dear friend, Sir
Paul Grayley, one of the best doctors that ever lived.”
Old Dr. Wesley was blessed with this disposition, that all the people
he knew were the best people that ever lived, and all who were bereft
of his acquaintance came under the generic heading of “poor souls.”
“Very bad business about his boy, poor soul!” He shook his hoary head.
“Terribly bad business. I didn’t know Peter personally--never met him.
But when I heard of this fearful thing he’d done, I said to myself,
‘My boy, if the news has to be broken to Donald you’re the man to do
it.’”
He was very talkative, very delightful, very human, but Greta was
annoyed with him and gave him little encouragement to stay. As for the
woman standing in the darkness of the bedroom, had her wishes
materialized, old Doctor Wesley would have been swept from the face of
the earth.
Presently he was gone, and she came out from her listening post.
“Apparently you can move without dying,” she said sarcastically.
“Apparently I can, if I want to move.” Greta’s voice was husky. She
was back in her last trench, conscious of a great shortage of
ammunition. “And I don’t want to move, and that’s flat! I can’t
understand why you hate that dear old man. I admit he’s fearfully
chatty, but that’s no reason why you should throw a fit at the mention
of his name.”
“When I want your opinion about my peculiarities I will ask you for
it,” bullied Anita, and it was a wrong move, as she realized.
Mrs. Gurden shrugged her shoulders rapidly.
“If that’s the tone you’re going to adopt,” she said, with an heroic
assumption of boldness, “the sooner we part the better, Anita. You’ve
stopped the paper, but I think I’m entitled to some money instead of
notice; and if it comes to that, I’ve had no salary for a month. And
as to going down to your beastly old Towers, I simply won’t, so
there!”
The princess forced a smile.
“My dear Greta, you’re getting theatrical. But I realize you’re not
quite yourself. Now don’t be a little fool. Come and rest with me for
a week or two. There are one or two big schemes I want to talk over
with you, and afterward we’ll pack up and go to Capri or Monte Carlo
or somewhere’s a little more cheerful than Wimbledon.”
“I won’t!”
It required a tremendous amount of courage to utter those two words of
defiance, but it was zero hour to Greta Gurden, and for the moment she
had all the ferocity of a mad sheep.
“I simply won’t! If I’ve got to earn my own living, I’ll earn it. I
can get a job on _Fleet Fashions_. I was offered one last week. I’m
tired of your domination and your bullying, and--well, I simply won’t
go to Wimbledon, and that’s a fact!”
Here was a resistance which Anita Bellini had never anticipated. There
was not the stuff of sweet reasonableness in her. She had made her way
in the world by the force of her character, and her simulations had
been confined to hiding her too-frequent fits of anger. It was not in
her to persuade; she must command or do nothing.
“You’re going to make me look foolish. I’ve promised----”
“I don’t care what I make you look.” Greta’s head was quivering with
determination. “It’s not my fault. And whom have you promised?”
Without waiting for a reply, she said:
“You know how I loathe that house at Wimbledon and those awfully
creepy Japanese men of yours.”
“Javanese. They’re quite nice people. If you refer to your
encyclopædia you will discover they are inoffensive, peace loving,
and domestic.”
But sarcasm was wasted on Greta.
“That may be or may not be,” she said. “All I know is that I’m not
coming with you.”
“Stay and be--stay till to-morrow!” exclaimed the elder woman. “I
shan’t waste my time or go down on my hands and knees to you. You owe
me a lot, Greta----”
“You owe me a month’s salary,” said the spirited Greta, with admirable
courage, “and three months’ notice.”
Her hands trembling with rage, Anita tore open her bag and flung a
packet of one-pound notes on the table. Without another word she
strode out of the room and shut the door so violently that the whole
house shook.
Greta Gurden sat bolt upright, shivering with triumph, yet with a
sinking sense of terror at what the morrow would bring forth. She had
charred her boats but she had not burned them. Her shaking hand
grabbed the telephone.
“Put me on to Scotland Yard,” she said.
She heard the weary sigh of the operator.
“Is Scotland Yard blessed with a number?” she asked.
Greta hung up the phone and looked round in search of the directory.
But apparently Scotland Yard had no number, nor did there seem to be
such a place on the face of the earth. She was to learn later that the
official designation was New Scotland Yard, but she did not dream of
looking under the “N’s.” And then she remembered Leslie Maughan, and
the “M’s” yielded a good result. She waited for a while after she had
given the number, and then:
“Yes. I want to speak to you.”
“Yes, Mrs. Gurden.”
Greta started.
“How did you know?”
She heard a laugh.
“I always remember voices, especially nice voices like yours,” said
the mendacious young lady from Scotland Yard.
“I want to see you very much--very badly, I mean--tremendously.”
“In fact, you want to see me,” said Leslie. “I’ll come along.”
It required some persuasion to induce Lucretia to wait for the arrival
of Mr. Coldwell.
“Very well, then,” said Leslie patiently. “Wait in the street. You’ll
catch your death of cold, but I don’t suppose that will worry you very
much. You might even hobnob with a policeman. I trust you.”
“I should jolly well say you did!” said the indignant Lucretia.
She compromised by sitting on the baggage in the passage, the door
being propped open with a weight. She found it a little more drafty
than the street.
Greta’s boats seemed a little more burned than she could have desired
when she surveyed the desolation just before Leslie’s arrival. She had
little stamina for quarrelling, and already her mind was a confusion
of fear and penitence when Mrs. Hobbs, who had returned for her
evening duties, showed the girl into the dining room.
“It’s awfully good of you to come.” Greta was her conventional self;
grabbed the girl’s hand in both of hers; used that old and artless
trick of looking up pleadingly into her visitor’s face. “I’m so
worried, my dear. The truth is, I’ve quarrelled with Anita. Definitely
and finally,” she said, recovering a little of her lost ground. “The
paper is dead, as you’ve probably heard--you know everything at
Scotland Yard. That means I’m out of a job, though I can get one
to-morrow by asking. Anita has behaved abominably. I should never have
dreamed, after all I’ve been to her, the thought and care and
experience I have devoted to her, as it were---- Do take your hat and
coat off. Shall I ask the maid to make you a cup of tea?”
Leslie, secretly amused, shook her head. She guessed that the woman
had changed her mind since she first sent for her. It was hardly
likely that she would trouble to telephone about one of those quarrels
which, if her information was accurate, were not an infrequent
occurrence between Greta Gurden and the princess.
“Of course, I’ve nothing to tell you that would harm Anita.” Mrs.
Gurden planted one foot firmly on shore, and prepared, figuratively,
to splash the waves of her venom with the other. “But she’s so
peculiar--and such a temper! I shouldn’t be surprised if she goes off
in a fit of apoplexy one of these days.”
“What is her trouble now?”
Greta could tell her this much, she decided, without disloyalty to her
late employer. The very thought that she was “late” filled her with
dismay.
“She wanted me to go to Wimbledon to stay there for a month, and I
hate the place, I simply loathe it! I’m rather temperamental; I
suppose all artists are--I mean artists and literary people. And May
Towers gives me the horrors. And, of course, she was terribly rude to
me, in spite of the fact that I am far from well and my leg aches
excruciatingly. Anita is the most unreasonable person. You’ve no idea,
Miss Maughan. Of course we quarrelled, and I simply told her that I’d
have no more to do with her. And then she made a fearful scene because
I asked old Doctor Wesley to come up and see me and tell me whether I
was fit to be moved. She practically cursed me for calling him.
Really, I thought she was going mad. And he’s such a dear old
soul--awfully talkative, of course, but a perfect gentleman, and a
kind man.”
Leslie was sitting at the other side of the table, her hands folded
patiently, waiting for the real story to come. Now she leaned forward,
her eyes upon the woman’s face.
“Doctor Wesley? Was he the Dawlishes’ doctor?”
“A very charming old man but awfully fond of Mr. Dawlish. Except for
six hours just before his death, he was with old Mr. Dawlish for a
whole day and a night--never left his side.”
Leslie hardly heard the next five minutes’ complaint, but when she
came to bring her understanding to bear upon her hostess, Greta was
not much nearer to the reason for her telephone message.
“If anything comes out I can always say, and Anita must bear me out,
that I never knew this wretched man was a woman. The first thing I saw
was Anita and this man struggling, and I wanted to send for the
police. And then those wretched men came in and tried to drag the
pistol out of Druze’s hand--her hand, I mean. And there was I, lying
on a sofa--fainted, my dear, and with simply not a notion in the world
that I was wounded. It may sound strange to you, but it is true. When
I woke up, Anita was going on like somebody who had lost her head. It
was simply ghastly.”
“Did you see Druze again?”
Greta shook her head.
“No--the language she used before the shooting started!” Greta
shuddered. “I simply couldn’t repeat half the words she employed. Of
course, Anita sent me out of the room; said she didn’t know I was
there; but just as I started to go out, my dear--bang!” Mrs. Gurden
grew dramatic and illustrative. “Bang! And then everything went dark.
You know how it does, my dear.”
“I can’t understand quite,” said Leslie. “A few hours after the
shooting I found you at Lady Raytham’s.”
“She sent me--Anita,” Mrs. Gurden broke in. “‘Go to Jane, but tell her
nothing,’ said Anita. ‘Find out all that you can about Druze--how they
parted, if she threatened her.’ Those were her words. You know
Anita--she’s--what is the word? Imperious! I didn’t know whether I was
on my head or my heels--like that Mr. What’s-his-name who’s written a
story about women. I simply had to! And not an idea in my head that a
beastly bullet had gone into my leg. The doctor said that if I hadn’t
run about the wound would have healed right away. It was only when I
got home, my dear, I nearly died!”
She paused to take breath.
“I suppose she’ll come to-morrow and ask me to go back. I’m such a
forgiving nature.”
“If there is anything in life that you value, you will stay here, Mrs.
Gurden,” said Leslie quietly. “I don’t want to frighten you, but I
think it is my duty to warn you that the Princess Bellini’s course is
nearly run. As to Druze----”
She had never thought that Druze was murdered; always she had had at
the back of her mind the possibility of a struggle in which the shots
were accidentally fired. There was a good and sufficient reason why
Anita Bellini should not shoot the mock butler.
When she reached her flat, the front door was closed. She opened it
and turned on the passage light. Lucretia and the grips were gone, she
saw with satisfaction. In the letter box was a blue-lettered cablegram
and she snatched it out and opened it. This was a reply to one she had
sent on her way back from lunch, and she read the message and could
have sung in her joy.
She ran up the stairs, her mind divided between this blessed message
and her interview with Greta Gurden. Greta was in revolt; that much
was clear. But how far would her rage and venom carry her toward a
complete betrayal of her employer? As she passed the hall window, she
noticed that the new safety catch was in place. Really it was
ridiculous to leave the flat at all, she thought. After that one
attempt it was not likely that a second would be made.
She almost regretted now that she had agreed to Mr. Coldwell’s plan.
Throwing open the door of her sitting room, she put out her hand and
turned the light switch. But the room remained in darkness. Had they
replaced the fuses? she wondered, and walked into the room.
There was no sound, no warning. A great hand suddenly gripped her
throat, another covered her mouth. She felt the pressure of a knee in
her back and struggled desperately but unavailingly.
“You scream--you killed!” whispered a voice in her ear, and, summoning
all her strength, she tried to nod in agreement with the unspoken
demand of her captor.
The door closed softly behind her. There were two men. She felt her
ankles gripped and lifted, and she was carried into the bedroom and
laid on the bed.
“You scream--you killed!” said the voice again.
The grip about her throat relaxed, but the evil-smelling hand was
still on her face.
“I won’t scream,” she managed to mumble, and the stifling palm was
removed.
“You scream, I cut your t’roat. You not scream, I not cut your
t’roat--not hurt.”
“I shan’t scream,” she said in a low voice. “May I get up, please?”
There was a whispered consultation in a language which held some
gutturals, and then the man who had first spoken said:
“You sit on a chair, keep very quiet, long time, long time.”
He gripped her by the arm and assisted her back to the dining room,
guiding her to a chair, though there was enough light from a street
lamp for her to pick her way.
There were two men--little men; their heads were not much above her
shoulder. Broad, squat, and, as she had reason to know, immensely
strong. She could not see their faces; by accident or arrangement
their backs were to the window. He who was evidently chief of the two
said something in an unknown language, and his companion withdrew to
the landing, and the hall and landing lights went out. Presently he
came back, and, to her surprise, he was joined by a third. Again there
was a whispered consultation, and the third man disappeared, the other
two squatting on the carpet before her, impassive, silent, watching,
as she guessed, with eyes that did not leave her for a second. A
quarter of an hour they sat thus, and then:
“I speak English liddle bit. I hear English well,” said the man. “I
tell you trut’. Last night you get t’roat cut. This night no hurt.” He
added a phrase she could not understand.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Presently by and by,” said the little man, after he had repeated her
words slowly and had grasped their meaning, “you and me walk into car.
While you walk you see peoples. If you speak to peoples I cut your
t’roat.”
Very definite, but the repetition of the phrase amused her mildly.
“You’re rather monotonous, aren’t you?” she asked. “And after I get
into the car what happens?”
There was a pause while he took this in.
“By and by you see,” he said.
The third man came back now, and she gathered that he was in reality
the leading member of the gang, for on his word the two others
vanished through the door and he took their place.
“You won’t be hurt unless you give us trouble,” he said. To her
surprise he spoke in perfect English. “My patron requires you.”
“Who is your patron?”
It gave her a sense of comfort to know that this queer little shape
could understand all she said, and could converse intelligently. It
made him less of a strange and menacing animal, and removed some of
the terror from the situation. And it delayed the moment when she
would find her cumbersome garter a vital safeguard.
“I cannot answer your questions, miss,” he replied. “But you will not
be hurt. Last night you would have been killed--I myself would have
killed you--but that is not the order to-day. If you are sensible and
quiet, nothing will happen.”
He stood up and looked out of the window; neither the shades nor the
curtains had been drawn, and he could see to the opposite side of the
road.
“I must tell you what will occur,” he said. He had a trick of pedantry
which might have amused her at any other time. “This house is being
watched by the police. After a while they will grow tired and
careless, and then my friend will signal to me that they have walked
away. When that happens we will go.”
She could not see him; she could only guess that his “friend” was one
of the two. She had noticed that all three were dressed in correct
European garb, and the incongruity of their overcoats and derby hats
added a touch of the bizarre.
“Will you therefore sit nearer to the window, at your writing place?
If the telephone rings you will not answer.”
So they sat, he on one side of the table and she on the other, his
eyes roving to the sidewalk, and from the sidewalk to his prisoner.
She saw the limousines stream past on their way to the theatres, and
wondered if, on any stage in London, there would be enacted a drama
quite as improbable as this in which she played a leading part.
After a long interval of silence:
“I suppose you realize that, when I do not arrive at Mr. Coldwell’s
house, he will either telephone or come back for me?”
He nodded.
“We have already made provision,” he said simply. “We have sent him a
telegram in your name, saying that you have been called away to”--he
hesitated--“I cannot remember the town; it is in the west and is on
the sea.”
“Plymouth?” she asked quickly.
“Plymouth,” he said. “The telegram also told him your hotel. Plymouth
is very far, and by the time he discovers you have not arrived”--a
pause--“by that time you will not be here.”
“Where shall I be?” she asked.
But the only answer was a strange, solemn glance.