THE MAN IN THE CAR
LIFE is largely made up of little things, but perspective in human
affairs is not a gift common to youth. It had required a great effort on
the part of Adele Leamington to ask a man to tea, but, once that effort
was made, she had looked forward with a curious pleasure to the
function.
At the moment Michael was speeding to London, she interviewed Jack
Knebworth in his holy of holies.
“Certainly, my dear: you may take the afternoon off. I am not quite sure
what the schedule was.”
He reached out his hand for the written time-table, but she supplied the
information.
“You wanted some studio portraits of me—‘stills,’” she said.
“So I did! Well, that can wait. Are you feeling pretty confident about
the picture, eh?”
“I? No, I’m not confident, Mr. Knebworth; I’m in a state of nerves about
it. You see, it doesn’t seem possible that I should make good at the
first attempt. One dreams about such things, but in dreams it is easy to
jump obstacles and get round dangerous corners and slur over
difficulties. Every time you call ‘camera!’ I am in a state of panic,
and I am so self-conscious that I am watching every movement I take, and
saying to myself ‘You’re raising your hands awkwardly; you’re turning
your head with a jerk.’”
“But that doesn’t last?” he said sharply, so sharply that she smiled.
“No: the moment I hear the camera turning, I feel that I _am_ the
character I’m supposed to be.”
He patted her on the shoulder.
“That is how you _should_ feel,” he said, and went on: “Seen nothing of
Mendoza, have you? She isn’t annoying you? Or Foss?”
“I’ve not seen Miss Mendoza for days—but I saw Mr. Foss last night.”
She did not explain the curious circumstances, and Jack Knebworth was so
incurious that he did not ask. So that he learnt nothing of Lawley
Foss’s mysterious interview with the man in the closed car at the corner
of Arundel Road, an incident she had witnessed on the previous night.
Nor of the white and womanly hand that had waved him farewell, nor of
the great diamond which had sparkled lustrously on the little finger of
the unknown motorist.
Going home, Adele stopped at a confectioner’s and a florist’s, collected
the cakes and flowers that were to adorn the table of Mrs. Watson’s
parlour. She wondered more than a little just what attraction she
offered to this man of affairs. She had a trick of getting outside and
examining herself with an impartial eye, and she knew that, by
self-repression and almost self-obliteration, she had succeeded in
making of Adele Leamington a very colourless, characterless young lady.
That she was pretty she knew, but prettiness in itself attracts only the
superficial. Men who are worth knowing require something more than
beauty. And Michael was not philandering—he was not that kind. He
wanted her for a friend at least: she had no thought that he desired
amusement during his enforced stay in a very dull town.
Half-past four came and found the girl waiting. At a quarter to five she
was at the door, scanning the street. At five, angry but philosophical,
she had her tea and ordered the little maid of all work to clear the
table.
Michael had forgotten!
Of course, she made excuses for him, only to demolish them and build
again. She was hurt, amused and hurt again. Going upstairs to her room,
she lit the gas, took the script from her bag and tried to study the
scenes that were to be shot on the following day, but all manner of
distractions interposed between her receptive mind and the typewritten
paper. Michael bulked largely, and the closed car, and Lawley Foss, and
that waving white hand as the car drove off. Curiously enough, her
speculations came back again and again to the car. It was new and its
woodwork was highly polished and it moved so noiselessly.
At last she threw the manuscript down and rose, with a doubtful eye on
the bed. She was not tired; the hour was nine. Chichester offered few
attractions by night. There were two cinemas, and she was not in the
mood for cinemas. She put on her hat and went down, calling _en route_
at the kitchen door.
“I am going out for a quarter of an hour,” she told her landlady, who
was in an approving mood.
The house was situate in a street of small villas. It was economically
illuminated, and there were dark patches where the light of the street
lamps scarcely reached. In one of these a motor-car was standing—she
saw the bulk of it before she identified its character. She wondered if
the owner knew that its tail light was extinguished. As she came up to
the machine she identified the car she had seen on the previous
night—Foss had spoken to its occupant.
Glancing to the left, she could see nothing of its interior. The blinds
on the road side were drawn, and she thought it was empty, and then
. . .
“Pretty lady—come with me!”
The voice was a whisper: she caught the flash and sparkle of a precious
stone, saw the white hand on the edge of the half-closed window, and, in
a fit of unreasoning terror, hurried forward.
She heard a whirr of electric starter and the purring of engines. The
machine was following her, and she broke into a run. At the corner of
the street she saw a man and flew toward him, as she made out the helmet
of a policeman.
“What’s wrong, miss?”
As he spoke, the car flashed past, spun round the corner and was out of
sight instantly.
“A man spoke to me—in that car,” she said breathlessly.
The stolid constable gazed vacantly at the place where the car had been.
“He didn’t have lights,” he said stupidly. “I ought to have taken his
number. Did he insult you, miss?”
She shook her head, for she was already ashamed of her fears.
“I’m nervy, officer,” she said with a smile. “I don’t think I will go
any farther.”
She turned back and hurried to her lodgings. There were disadvantages in
starring—even on Jack Knebworth’s modest lot. It was nervous work, she
thought.
She went to sleep that night and dreamt that the man in the car was
Michael Brixan and he wanted her to come in to tea.
It was past midnight when Michael rang up Jack Knebworth with the news.
“Foss!” he gasped. “Good God! You don’t mean that, Brixan? Shall I come
round and see you?”
“I’ll come to you,” said Michael. “There are one or two things I want to
know about the man, and it will create less of a fuss than if I have to
admit you to the hotel.”
Jack Knebworth rented a house on the Arundel Road, and he was waiting at
the garden door to admit his visitor when Michael arrived.
Michael told the story of the discovery of the head, and felt that he
might so far take the director into his confidence as to retail his
visit to Sir Gregory Penne.
“That beats everything,” said Jack in a hushed tone. “Poor old Foss! You
think that Penne did this? But why? You don’t cut up a man because he
wants to borrow money.”
“My views have been switching round a little,” said Michael. “You
remember a sheet of manuscript that was found amongst some of your
script, and which I told you must have been written by the Head-Hunter?”
Jack nodded.
“I’m perfectly sure,” Michael went on, “and particularly after seeing
the erasure in the scenario book, that Foss knew who was the author of
that manuscript, and I’m equally certain that he resolved upon the
desperate expedient of blackmailing the writer. If that is the case, and
if Sir Gregory is the man—again I am very uncertain on this
point—there is a good reason why he should be put out of the way. There
is one person who can help us, and that is——”
“Mendoza,” said Jack, and the two men’s eyes met.