A SILK SHAWL
Children--little Elizabeth and that unseen boy of his! Peter Dawlish
walked up and down his cramped room, his hands in his pockets, an
unlighted cigarette between his lips. The hopelessness of it all!
Where and how could he begin his search? That baby of his belonged to
the world of unreality, to the mists of dreams. Elizabeth was real. He
could see those wide, frightened eyes of hers, the transparent pallor
of her face. He shut his eyes and there she was again, frail,
delicate, pleading for help he was powerless to give.
He was alone in the house. Through the thin partition walls which
separated one jerry-built cottage from the other he heard the sound of
a man and a wife quarrelling. In the street a boy was whistling flatly
a popular tune. If Mrs. Inglethorne were here he would have the truth
though he had to choke it from her. Who else would know but she?
He had been such a short time in the lodging that he was not even
acquainted with her friends; the slinking little thieves who came to
barter and haggle over the property they had stolen knew no more of
her than that she was a mean and grinding bargainer. She had no
cronies to come and spend the evening with her; by very reason of her
peculiar business, she could not risk the giving or taking of
confidences.
The police had been to the house and made a perfunctory search, their
object being to discover other evidence against her. But they had
looked only for articles of value which she might have purchased;
lengths of cloth and silk--she specialized in this trade--and they
were not particularly concerned about Elizabeth. Nobody cared very
much about Elizabeth, except Leslie and he.
This thought occurred to him as he walked to and fro--and thought
breeds thought. Might he not, searching with another object, discover
what they had overlooked--one fragment of a clue that would bring him
to the child? Why should he be concerned? What legal or moral right
had he to detach Mrs. Inglethorne’s daughter from her legal guardian?
He considered this matter, only to brush it aside. Presently he
carried the lamp downstairs, with the faintly pleasurable hope which
comes to all who engage in secret searches.
The woman’s room was accessible. The lock he had broken had not been
repaired. He went in, put the lamp on the mantelpiece and looked
around. Search parties usually leave chaos behind them, but the police
in their investigation had, if anything, tidied the room. There were a
number of dresses, obviously the woman’s, stacked on the bed. Two
oleographs that once decorated the wall had been lifted down--clean
squares on the wall paper marked their old position. By the side of
the clothes was a square wooden box, of the kind that soldiers use for
the transportation of their possessions. This had been opened and was
unlocked. The lid had jammed upon a wedge of cloth as it had been
closed, and there was a gap of an inch.
Where would a woman like Mrs. Inglethorne keep papers? Or did she keep
papers at all? He tried to remember the habits of her type, acquired
at second hand from his fortuitous acquaintances in Dartmoor Prison.
Under her bed? But the police had obviously rolled up the mattress and
made that elementary examination. There was nothing here--nothing. He
opened the big black box, disparagingly. And then he saw, with a
quickening interest, that the inside of the lid was almost covered by
newspaper cuttings which had been pasted on the wood. Here was
revealed Mrs. Inglethorne’s “scrap-book,” and incidentally her
favourite daydream. A headline caught his eye.
HEIRESS TRACED BY HER BABY SOCK
Another headline ran:
CHILD’S MOTHER TRACKED BY INITIAL ON
INFANT’S GOWN
He carried the lamp to a little table and read the cuttings carefully.
They all dealt with one subject: The identification of unknown
children that had brought fabulous fortunes to the lucky person who
had traced their descent. Some of the cuttings were very old, yellow
with age, and scarcely decipherable. Evidently Mrs. Inglethorne’s
collection covered a long period.
He supposed the police had searched the box, which was nearly filled
with little cylinder-shaped bundles tied around with tape. Linen,
coarse calico, cotton--diving into the mass, his fingers touched silk.
The bundles had once been white, but constant fingering and dust had
left them an indescribable hue. He untied a bundle and opened it. It
consisted of a child’s cotton nightdress, a little pair of woollen
shoes, and a small knitted shawl. Pinned to the shoes was a scrap of
paper on which was written in an illiterate hand the words: “Mrs.
Larse, boy, ten days old, measles, nine months.” Here then was the
beginning and end of Mrs. Larse’s boy. “Measles, nine months” was his
epitaph.
She was a baby farmer; he had guessed that. He opened another bundle
hopefully. Somewhere here would be a reference to Elizabeth. The
second package had nothing but a coarse calico robe and a penned
inscription: “Young girl named Leavey, five days, whooping cough, six
weeks.” One by one he unrolled these little tragedies, and few indeed
were they who had not their death certificates inscribed laconically
at the end. Some had two papers, identically inscribed. He supposed
that the repetition was due to Mrs. Inglethorne’s careless and
haphazard system of “bookkeeping.”
He had examined twelve and took out the thirteenth, wondering what
potency there was in that lucky or unlucky number. The nightdress he
unrolled was of the finest linen, the most expensive of all he had
examined. The shawl was of heavy silk, and the microscopic shirt of
the most delicate flannel. For some time he could not find the
inscription, but eventually it was discovered inside the shawl. Only
three words, but they set his heart beating.
“Miss Martha’s girl.”
The bundle dropped from his nerveless hands. “Miss Martha’s girl!”
He took the letter out of his pocket. “I have found a home for your
son and----” He read again the pencilled words “Martha’s servant.” And
Martha’s servant was--Mrs. Inglethorne!
Miss Martha’s girl. This woman could not have made a mistake. One by
one he examined the clothes separately, and then, pinned to the inside
of the dress, near the collar, he found a second paper written in the
same hand, and, reading it, he uttered a hoarse cry.
“Miss Martha’s girl Elizabeth.”
Feverishly he untied the other bundles but found no further clue. His
knees were trembling as he mounted the stairs, the precious garments
close to his heart. Putting down the lamp on the table, he examined
again these pitiful souvenirs. He must see Leslie at once. Not daring
to leave the clothes behind, he folded them and put them into his
pocket. He used the silk shawl as a neckcloth under his thin overcoat;
the night was bitterly cold, but it was not the warmth of the soft
fabric which brought a glow to his heart.
The windows of the flat were in darkness, but he remembered that they
had heavy velvet curtains, and possibly they were drawn. Ringing the
bell, he waited. There was no answer. He rang again. And then a man
appeared from a near-by doorway and strolled up to him.
“Who do you want?” he asked, in a tone of authority. Peter guessed
that he was a detective.
“I want Miss Maughan. My name is Dawlish.”
“Oh, Dawlish, yes. Miss Maughan isn’t in. She is staying at Inspector
Coldwell’s house in Finchley. There is nobody in the flat.”
He did not hide his disappointment; he was so full of his discovery
that he had to tell somebody. He had to see her. The detective gave
him the inspector’s address and he walked across the Charing Cross
Road, intending to make his way to the tube station. He reached the
other side of the road, and then something made him look back at the
windows of her apartments. And in that instant he saw a quick flicker
of light, as though somebody had turned on an electric hand lamp for
the fraction of a second and had extinguished it immediately.
Peter stopped. Somebody was in Leslie’s room. He walked slowly across
the road. The detective had disappeared; was, in point of fact,
walking to the back of the block to visit his fellow watcher. As Peter
stood, hesitating, he saw the street door move slightly, and, acting
on an impulse, he pushed it wide open and took one step into the
darkness.
“Who’s there?” he said, and that was all that he remembered.
Something soft and heavy fell with a thud on his head, crushing his
soft hat as though it were paper. He stumbled on to his knees, and a
second blow laid him prostrate, the blood trickling down his face and
staining the soft silk that had once enwrapped his child.
There were no loiterers in Charing Cross Road that bitter night, when
a chill northwest wind sent people hurrying to the shelter of their
homes. There was no lounger to tell the detective of three people who
had walked hurriedly across the sidewalk into the car which was
drawing to the curb at the very moment Peter pushed open the door.