Dear Miss Smith,--I have been trying to get into communication with
a Mr. John Wills, who is an assistant of mine, and possibly I have
succeeded. But in case, by any mischance, my messages have failed to
reach him, I should esteem it as a great favour if you would find him
and hand him the enclosed, which is a duplicate of the instructions
already posted. I think I have located Miss Reddle, and hope to have
good news for you to-morrow. But I am dealing with a man for whose
genius I have a profound respect. Miss Reddle is at Gallows Farm, near
Whitcomb in Somerset, and, if you do not hear from me by telegram in
the course of the day, it is extremely likely that I shall also be
there--against my will. I have calculated every contingency; foreseen,
I think, most of the possibilities, but there is always a big chance
that I may not be as clever as I think I am! Will you therefore remain
all day at Charlotte Street? I suggest that you should ask your
employer, Mr. Shaddles, to let you off for the day, and, if necessary,
show him this letter. He may remember me by name; I met him many years
ago.
Yours very truly,
Michael Dorn.
The words, “If necessary, show him this letter,” were heavily
underlined.
The letter had come by special delivery, a red express label on the
face, and the postmark was a town in Somersetshire. Lizzy Smith read
it three times, once to master the calligraphy, once to understand it,
and once out of sheer enjoyment, for she felt more important with each
reading; though it struck her as humorous that Michael Dorn should, in
his most extravagant mood, imagine that her flinty-faced employer
would grant her leave of absence on the strength of a meeting which he
must long since have forgotten and would most certainly disclaim.
The news was too vital to be kept to herself, and she took the letter
down to old Mr. Mackenzie, and found him engaged in fitting a new
string to his violin.
“Wore it out last night, I should think,” said Lizzy, not unkindly. “I
heard you tuning and tuning.”
“Tuning!” said old Mackenzie in surprise. “I was no’ tuning, young
lady. Perhaps, to the ear of one who is not acquainted with the
peculiar qualities of classical music, it may have sounded that way. I
was playing the aria from _Samson and Delilah_. ’Tis a bonny piece.”
He pulled on his spectacles from his forehead, and took the letter
from her hand.
“You would like me to read this?” he asked, and when she nodded, he
followed the quaint crabbed writing line by line. “It seems very good
news,” he said. “Will Miss Reddle be back to-night?”
Lizzy sighed impatiently. It was the sort of question he would ask.
“How do I know whether she’ll be back to-night?” She was annoyed that
he was not as impressed as she had expected. “She may not be back at
all! Don’t you understand anything you can’t play on your fiddle, Mr.
Mackenzie? She may be in the power of this Gallows man! The whole
thing now depends on me. Mike understands human nature, and when he
got into trouble naturally his mind flew to Elizabetta Smith. That man
has got experience.”
“Naturally,” murmured Mr. Mackenzie.
“Now the thing is,” considered Lizzy, her face wearing a frown of
profoundest thought, “shall I try to find this fellow Wills first, or
shall I go to the office?”
“You might telephone to Mr. Dorn’s flat,” suggested the old man
helpfully, and Lizzy was irritated that that simple solution had not
occurred to her.
On her way to the office she stopped at the first telephone booth and
called Michael’s number, and after a long wait was told there was no
answer. The news pleased her rather than otherwise, for the
responsibility, vague as it was, gave her a pleasing sense that she
was intimately associated with great happenings, though she looked
forward with trepidation to her meeting with old Shaddles. That he
would grant her the day was a forlorn hope. Much more likely he would
point his skinny finger to the door and order her from his room.
Nevertheless, though she sacrificed her livelihood, she was determined
to be on hand in case her services were required--though what she
could do, and in what capacity she could act, she did not trouble to
consider.
Before she reached the office she had created three alternative
excuses, none of which unfortunately had any relation to the other.
Happily she was only called upon to produce two.
Mr. Shaddles had arrived before her; he was invariably the first-comer
and generally the last leaver. Without taking off her hat, she knocked
at the glass panel, and when his gruff “Come in!” reached her she all
but abandoned the interview. He scowled at her as she came in, noted
her coat and her hat.
“Well, what is the matter? Why aren’t you at your work? You’re five
minutes late as it is!” he demanded.
Lizzy rested her hand lightly on his desk, and in her most genteel
voice began:
“Mr. Shaddles, I’m sorry to ask you, but, owing to a family
bereavement, I should like the day off.”
“Who’s dead?” he growled.
“An aunt,” she said, and added: “On my mother’s side.”
“Aunts are nothing,” said the old man, and waved her to the door.
“Uncles are nothing either. Can’t spare you. What do you want to go to
funerals for?”
“Well, the real truth is,” said the disconcerted Lizzy, and produced
the letter, “I’ve had this!”
He took the message with apparent reluctance and read it through with
typical care. He sat for a long time, and she thought he was searching
for misspelt words--a horrible practice of his.
“There is nothing about your aunt in this,” snarled Mr. Shaddles.
“Mr. Dorn has been more than an aunt to me,” said Lizzy with dignity.
“It is my pet name for him. And if he’s not dead, he may very well
be.”
He looked out of the window, scratched his rough chin angrily, then
glared round at her.
“You can have the day,” he said, and she nearly dropped with
amazement.
Murmuring her incoherent thanks, she was making for the door.
“Wait.”
He put his hand in his pocket, laid a note-case on the table, and took
out three bank-notes.
“You may not want these,” he said; “I cannot conceive that you will,
but you may. I shall require you to give me a very full account of any
expenses you incur. If you need a car, hire one from the Bluelight
Company--they are clients of ours, and they allow me a rebate.”
Like a woman in a dream, Lizzy staggered out the office. Each note was
for £20. She had no idea there was so much money in the world.
She did not answer the clerk whom she passed on the stairs, and had
not wholly recovered by the time she reached Hiles Mansions. Mr. Dorn
was not in, the liftman told her unnecessarily; and Mr. Wills had not
called since the previous day. Lizzy went out into the Brompton Road,
called a taxicab magnificently, and, reaching Charlotte Street,
discovered she had only sufficient loose cash to pay the fare.
Such a tremendous happening could not be reserved to herself, and she
took Mr. Mackenzie into her confidence.
“Shaddles is a grand man,” said Mackenzie soberly, “a big-hearted
fellow.”
Lizzy shook her head.
“I don’t know whether I shall get into trouble with the police for
taking this money from the poor old man,” she said. “He has been
strange for a long time: I’ve seen this coming on for days. When he
raised Lois Reddle’s salary to three pounds a week I knew something
else would happen.” She looked at the three notes in awe. “They get
like that when they’re about ninety,” she said. And then a great
inspiration came to her--so daring, so tremendous, that it left her
gasping.
Borrowing some loose change from the old man, she dashed down to the
telephone box from which she had called Hiles Mansions and gave Lady
Moron’s number. The footman who answered her told her that her
ladyship was in bed.
“Oh, pray don’t trouble,” said Lizzy in an exaggerated tone. “Will you
ask his lordship to hop along?”
“To what, madam?”
“To speak to me,” corrected Lizzy.
“What name shall I give him?”
“Tell him the Lady Elizabetta,” said Lizzy, and lolled languidly
against the cork-lined ’phone box as she would have lolled had she
been a person of title.
She had to wait for some time before his lordship, who was sound
asleep at that hour, could be aroused and sufficiently interested in
the caller to come down to the drawing-room, where there was a
telephone extension.
“Hullo?” he asked feebly. “Good morning and all that! Sorry I didn’t
catch your name.”
“It’s Miss Smith,” said Lizzy in a hushed voice, and she heard Selwyn
gasp.
“Really? Not really? I say, there’s been an awful bother here!
Everything’s at sixes and sevens, and all that sort of thing. That
beastly bounder, Chesney Praye--you remember the fellow--bird of prey,
what?” (Even Lizzy could not laugh at that hour in the morning.)
“Well, he’s in the library with her ladyship!”
“Listen--Selwyn!” She had to summon all her courage to voice this
familiarity. “Can you see me? You know where I live--you were coming
to dinner to-night; but I want you to come before. There’s something I
want to see you about, something--well, I can’t describe it.”
“Certainly,” he interrupted. “I’ll come right along. I’m supposed to
go to the South Kensington Museum to see some models, but---- All
right, colonel, thank you very much for calling!”
The tone was louder and more formal. Lizzy, not unused to such
innocent acts of deception, guessed that a servant or his mother had
come into the drawing-room.
She went back to her lodging with a feeling of exaltation. Not only
had she secured the aid of a member of the aristocracy, but she had
also, with great daring, and exercising a woman’s privilege, addressed
him by a name which, to say the least, was intimate. She confided to
Mr. Mackenzie, with an air of nonchalance, that she was expecting Lord
Moron to call upon her, and he was impressed to a gratifying extent.
“I told him to drop in--I know him rather well.” Lizzy flicked a speck
of dust from her skirt with a fine air.
“Is that so?” he asked, looking at her in wonder. “Well now, I never
thought that one of the Morons would ever do me the honour of entering
my house! They’re a fine family, a handsome family. I remember the old
earl: he frequently came to the theatre, though not, I fear, in the
most presentable condition.”
Miss Lizzy Smith was not interested in the old earl. She was, however,
immensely absorbed in the new one; and when Lord Moron’s taxicab
pulled up at the side-walk she was at the door to admit him.
“I say, what an awfully jolly kitchen!” he said, looking round at a
room of which even Lizzy was not particularly proud.
“I wouldn’t have asked your lordship here----” she began.
“I say, don’t give us any of that ‘lordship’ stuff,” he pleaded. “I’m
Selwyn to my friends. That’s a wonderful frying-pan: did you make it?”
Lizzy disclaimed responsibility. But he had his views, apparently,
upon culinary apparatus, had invented an electric chafing-dish, and
had plans for a coke oven. Until then she had not known that coke was
ever cooked.
“I’ve often thought I’d like to run away from this awful ‘my-lording’
and do some work. I’ve got a bit of money of my own that even her
ladyship can’t touch--and you can bet your life that it’s pretty well
tied up, old thing, if she and the bird of prey can’t get their hooks
into it!”
He was delightfully, restfully vulgar, and Lizzy who only knew this
much about electricity, that lamps light up when you turn a switch,
without exactly understanding why, could have listened for hours to
schemes which might even have interested an engineer. But she had the
letter to discuss.
He read it through, and, by stopping at every other line and asking
for explanations, understood the gist of it. She had noticed before
how, on really important matters, Selwyn had quite intelligent views;
and that he was no fool she discovered later in the day, when he
confided to her that he had countered his mother’s veiled threats of
getting him certified as mentally incompetent to deal with his estate,
by making a visit to three Harley Street alienists in consultation,
and procuring from them a most flattering tribute to his mentality.
“I don’t know what it’s all about,” he said, as he handed the letter
back. And then, answering her pained look: “Yes, I understand the
letter, but I mean all these accidents and things--old Braime dropping
dead, or something, in the library. Madam is my mother, and I suppose
I ought not to loathe her. But she’s fearfully devilish, Miss Smith,
fearfully devilish!”
He fingered the red seam on his cheek tenderly.
“You can never be sure what she’s up to, and since that bounder Praye
and that awful boozy doctor have been around the house she’s been
queerer than ever. Do you know what she told me once? She said that if
she thought she’d be any happier by me being dead I’d be dead
to-morrow--those were her very words! Dead to-morrow, dear old Lizzy!
Isn’t it positively fearful?”
“What a lady!” said Lizzy. “You’ve heard nothing at the house about
this business--I mean Gallows Farm?”
He shook his head.
“They never talk in front of me. But _something’s_ happening: I’m sure
of that! That chap Chesney has been in with her ladyship since eight
o’clock this morning--they told you she was in bed--well, she wasn’t:
she was in the library. And the telephone seems to have been ringing
all night. I say, what do you think of that detective johnny putting
the young lady in gaol? A bit thick, what? I meant to have a few words
with him the other morning.”
“He did it for a very good reason,” said Lizzy mysteriously. “I can’t
tell you everything, Selwyn; one day you will know the truth, but at
the present moment I’m not at liberty to talk.”
“Nobody seems to be at liberty to tell me anything,” said the dismal
man. “But what’s the idea of that letter? Somebody’s got her in that
place with a fearful name!” He slapped his side. “Tappatt--the chap
who worries the wine! You know this fellow--the perfectly horrible
doctor! I’ll bet he’s the perfectly awful villain of the piece! He
hasn’t been near the house for days, and he had been sleuthing round
Chester Square a lot lately. And”--he slapped his knee again--“and
there was a trunk call came through from the country last night! I was
in the hall when the bell rang, and I’m sure he was the johnny who
called. He asked for her ladyship. Gallows Farm: that’s the place he
lives!”
Suddenly he jumped up, his eyes bright with excitement.
“She’s there--I’ll bet a million pounds to a strawberry ice! Gallows
Farm, Somerset.” He tapped his forehead. “I signed a paper about that,
I’ll swear! It is one of the job lots her ladyship bought two or three
years ago, or one of her bailiffs bought. She is always buying old
properties and selling ’em at a profit. And I know old
stick-in-the-mud has got a home somewhere--Tappatt, I mean--because
her ladyship said she’d send me there if I wasn’t jolly careful. That
rosy-nosed hound has got Miss Reddle!”
They looked at one another in silence.
“You’re a detective, Selwyn!” she breathed ecstatically, and he pulled
at his moustache.
“I’m pretty smart at some things--what about a rescue?” said his
lordship suddenly.
“A what?” Lizzy’s heart beat faster.
“A rescue,” he nodded. “What about hopping down into Somerset, seeing
old stick-in-the-mud, and saying: ‘Look here, old top, this sort of
thing can’t be tolerated in civilised society. Hand over Miss Reddle
or you’ll get into serious trouble’?”
Lizzy’s enthusiasm died down.
“I don’t think that would make much difference to him,” she said. “And
it would be unnecessary, Selwyn; if Michael Dorn is there she will be
released this afternoon.”
Selwyn was disappointed.
“Besides,” Lizzy went on, “what would her ladyship say if you were
away all day?”
“Blow her ladyship!” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve had enough of her
ladyship--I have really. I’ve made up my mind that I’m through with
Chester Square, and I’ve got my eye on a dinky little flat in
Knightsbridge,” he said rapidly. “I feel it is time I asserted myself.
My idea is to live incognito. I’m going to call myself Mr. Smith----”
“Indeed?” said Lizzy coldly.
“It’s a pretty good name. Anyway, Brown is as good.” He amended his
plans in some haste. “Now what about a little bit of lunch somewhere?”
An hour later Lizzy went dizzily into the great dining-room of the
Ritz-Carlton, and Lady Moron, entertaining a guest at a corner table,
looked at her through her lorgnettes and shrugged her large shoulders.
“Selwyn is sowing his wild oats rather late in life,” she said, and
Chesney Praye, who had returned from Paris that morning, was mildly
amused.