THE NIECE
ADELE LEAMINGTON occupied a small room in a small house, and there were
moments when she wished it were smaller, that she might be justified in
plucking up her courage to ask from the stout and unbending Mrs. Watson,
her landlady, a reduction of rent. The extras on Jack Knebworth’s lot
were well paid but infrequently employed; for Jack was one of those
clever directors who specialized in domestic stories.
She was dressing when Mrs. Watson brought in her morning cup of tea.
“There’s a young fellow been hanging round outside since I got up,” said
Mrs. Watson. “I saw him when I took in the milk. Very polite he was, but
I told him you weren’t awake.”
“Did he want to see me?” asked the astonished girl.
“That’s what he said,” said Mrs. Watson grimly. “I asked him if he came
from Knebworth, and he said no. If you want to see him, you can have the
use of the parlour, though I don’t like young men calling on young
girls. I’ve never let theatrical lodgings before, and you can’t be too
careful. I’ve always had a name for respectability and I want to keep
it.”
Adele smiled.
“I cannot imagine anything more respectable than an early morning
caller, Mrs. Watson,” she said.
She went downstairs and opened the door. The young man was standing on
the side-walk with his back to her, but at the sound of the door opening
he turned. He was good-looking and well-dressed, and his smile was quick
and appealing.
“I hope your landlady did not bother to wake you up? I could have
waited. You are Miss Adele Leamington, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“Will you come in, please?” she asked, and took him into the stuffy
little front parlour, and, closing the door behind her, waited.
“I am a reporter,” he said untruthfully, and her face fell.
“You’ve come about Uncle Francis? Is anything really wrong? They sent a
detective to see me a week ago. Have they found him?”
“No, they haven’t found him,” he said carefully. “You knew him very
well, of course, Miss Leamington?”
She shook her head.
“No, I have only seen him twice in my life. My dear father and he
quarrelled before I was born, and I only saw him once after daddy died,
and once before mother was taken with her fatal illness.”
She heard him sigh, and sensed his relief, though why he should be
relieved that her uncle was almost a stranger to her, she could not
fathom.
“You saw him at Chichester, though?” he said.
She nodded.
“Yes, I saw him. I was on my way to Goodwood Park—a whole party of us
in a char-à-banc—and I saw him for a moment walking along the
side-walk. He looked desperately ill and worried. He was just coming out
of a stationer’s shop when I saw him; he had a newspaper under his arm
and a letter in his hand.”
“Where was the store?” he asked quickly.
She gave him the address, and he jotted it down.
“You didn’t see him again?”
She shook her head.
“Is anything really very badly wrong?” she asked anxiously. “I’ve often
heard mother say that Uncle Francis was very extravagant, and a little
unscrupulous. Has he been in trouble?”
“Yes,” admitted Michael, “he has been in trouble, but nothing that you
need worry about. You’re a great film actress, aren’t you?”
In spite of her anxiety she laughed.
“The only chance I have of being a great film actress is for you to say
so in your paper.”
“My what?” he asked, momentarily puzzled. “Oh yes, my newspaper, of
course!”
“I don’t believe you’re a reporter at all,” she said with sudden
suspicion.
“Indeed I am,” he said glibly, and dared to pronounce the name of that
widely-circulated sheet upon which the sun seldom sets.
“Though I’m not a great actress, and fear I never shall be, I like to
believe it is because I’ve never had a chance—I’ve a horrible suspicion
that Mr. Knebworth knows instinctively that I am no good.”
Mike Brixan had found a new interest in the case, an interest which, he
was honest enough to confess to himself, was not dissociated from the
niece of Francis Elmer. He had never met anybody quite so pretty and
quite so unsophisticated and natural.
“You’re going to the studio, I suppose?”
She nodded.
“I wonder if Mr. Knebworth would mind my calling to see you?”
She hesitated.
“Mr. Knebworth doesn’t like callers.”
“Then maybe I’ll call on him,” said Michael, nodding. “It doesn’t matter
whom I call on, does it?”
“It certainly doesn’t matter to me,” said the girl coldly.
“In the vulgar language of the masses,” thought Mike as he strode down
the street, “I have had the bird!”
His inquiries did not occupy very much of his time. He found the little
news shop, and the proprietor, by good fortune, remembered the coming of
Mr. Francis Elmer.
“He came for a letter, though it wasn’t addressed to Elmer,” said the
shopkeeper. “A lot of people have their letters addressed here. I make a
little extra money that way.”
“Did he buy a newspaper?”
“No, sir, he did not buy a newspaper; he had one under his arm—the
_Morning Telegram_. I remember that, because I noticed that he’d put a
blue pencil mark round one of the agony advertisements on the front
page, and I was wondering what it was all about. I kept a copy of that
day’s _Morning Telegram_: I’ve got it now.”
He went into the little parlour at the back of the shop and returned
with a dingy newspaper, which he laid on the counter.
“There are six there, but I don’t know which one it was.”
Michael examined the agony advertisements. There was one frantic message
from a mother to her son, asking him to return and saying that “all
would be forgiven.” There was a cryptogram message, which he had not
time to decipher. A third, which was obviously the notice of an
assignation. The fourth was a thinly veiled advertisement for a new
hair-waver, and at the fifth he stopped. It ran:
“Troubled. Final directions at address I
gave you. Courage. Benefactor.”
“Some ‘benefactor,’” said Mike Brixan. “What was he like—the man who
called? Was he worried?”
“Yes, sir: he looked upset—all distracted like. He seemed like a chap
who’d lost his head.”
“That seems a fair description,” said Mike.