MIKE SAID NOTHING--THERE WAS NOTHING
TO SAY
“You might do worse than lunch with me,” said Michael Pretherston.
He stood outside Felton House with the girl whose belongings in one
small Gladstone bag had been deposited on the curb, pending the
arrival of a taxi-cab.
“Why should I lunch with you?” she asked insolently. “I thought you
were going to pinch me.”
“Your vulgarity is appalling!” said Michael, shaking his head in
reproof. “I cannot pinch you in the vulgar sense. I have no desire to
perform that operation in the corporeal sense. You had better
compromise and lunch with me.”
The girl hesitated.
“Think of my reputation,” she said.
“Thoughts of your reputation keep me awake at night,” answered Michael
lightly and called a taxi.
They found a little restaurant in Soho and in an underground cellar
where the bad ventilation was compensated for by a blaze of light,
they ate their simple meal.
“Now, Kate, I want to ask you what your little game is,” said Michael;
“and I need the information because I know it isn’t a little game.”
“I was scared sick over those pearls,” said the girl, ignoring the
question. “It would have been horrible bad luck to have been taken for
a job I had nothing to do with and such a paltry job, too!”
“You owe me something,” said Michael.
“I owe you more than I can ever repay you,” said the girl
significantly.
“I suppose one of these days,” suggested the detective after an
interval of thought, “you will instruct some of your hired pals,
Gregori or the Colonel or little Stockmar, to inflict on me a painful
injury.”
“You!” said the girl scornfully. “If there were not men like you in
the police we should have been destroyed years ago! You are a sort of
an insurance scheme and it pays us to keep you alive and well. Why,
Crime Street would go into mourning the day you were buried.”
“You are not trying to be rude to me, are you?” he asked.
She looked at him slyly from under her long lashes and her eyes were
dancing with fun.
“Why do you think I went to Lord Flanborough?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I’m blessed if I know,” he confessed. “Of course, I knew it was you
the moment I heard of the rapid typewriting and the Italian songs. Now
listen: I am not trying to speak to you for your good.…”
“Don’t!” she said laconically.
“But I have often wondered why a well-educated girl and a nice girl,
as far as I know to the contrary, should prefer the life of a crook
to.…”
“To earning £2 or £3 a week and working all day to earn it,” she
finished for him; “to living my life in one little room on a top floor
in Bloomsbury, waiting my turn every morning for my bath. To being
made love to by the assistant manager and sacrificing my immortal soul
for a half-a-crown dinner and a bottle of red wine! It is funny, isn’t
it! I have had the experience for professional purposes and I don’t
like it a bit, Mike.”
She looked at him straight in the eyes. She had dropped her air of
flippancy, her slang; the voice that spoke was not to be distinguished
from that of any other gentlewoman.
“You see, a woman is differently circumstanced to a man. She wants
nice things and her attitude toward life, and indeed the whole of her
conduct, depends entirely upon the degree of niceness she requires.
Men don’t do things for women for nothing. They lend to their men
friends all the money in the world and are grateful if they get it
back. They expect nothing more than their money and are surprised when
they get it. But if I were a typist in a city office and I borrowed
£2 from the assistant manager or from the chief bookkeeper or a fiver
from one of the partners, why, Mike, I should be booked for supper on
Wednesday. Men want more from women than a _quid pro quo_; they want
two _quid pro quo_. In return for the £2 I borrowed, I should pay
interest well outside the range of the multiplication table. Suppose a
man lent you £2 and asked you in exchange, not only to repay the
money, but to renounce all your dearest principles for the sake of the
loan; if he asked you to betray your friends, where you had been loyal
to them, and lie, where you had been truthful; break your word where
you had been faithful, be a thief where you had been honest? Would you
surrender every reticence, every honourable instinct, every precious
faith?”
Mike said nothing. For there was nothing to say. He paid the bill and
escorted the girl to a cab.
“I am not going to be sorry for you,” he said; “you are having The
Life. One of these days I shall come along and take you; but I shall
hate it. Hop in, Kate!”
Kate literally hopped into the waiting taxi, waved her hand in
farewell and was gone.
Michael Pretherston stood for fully five minutes on the edge of the
pavement, meditating upon what the girl had said. She had struck a
responsive note in his soul, for she spoke no more than was the truth,
as he knew.
He went, a little sadly, back to headquarters, remembering en route
that he had forgotten to write the report. Should he go back to the
Yard and compose it from memory or should he return to the
unsympathetic atmosphere of Felton House? He decided upon the latter
and surprised Lord Flanborough in the act of taking an afternoon nap.
Michael was full of apologies and was so unusually respectful that his
lordship forgot to be annoyed.
“Moya’s out,” he explained.
“I will endeavour to bear up,” replied Michael, seating himself at his
lordship’s desk and preparing to take a note of the circumstances
which had led to his lordship’s call for assistance. He finished the
report, blotted and folded it and placed the document in his pocket.
“I only want to ask you one or two questions and they concern Kate--or
Miss Tenby, as you call her. I’m afraid I gave you a shock this
morning.”
“It was certainly a surprise,” admitted Lord Flanborough cautiously;
“who is this Kate? We have made a very careful search of the house but
nothing is missing so far as we can tell.”
Michael laughed.
“You needn’t worry about that. Kate is not a pilferer. Her real name
is Katharine Westhanger; they call her Kate and she is the Colonel’s
niece. Her age is eighteen or nineteen, and from a child she has been
brought up to regard the world as her oyster. Her mother was a
wholesome parson’s daughter, her father was a rascal who was kicked
out of the army in ’89 for an offence against the Law of Property. Her
maternal grandfather was General Sir Shaun Masserfield, the greatest
strategist the British army has ever held--Kate inherits his genius
but has not learnt his code. Her father died when she was a child and
her uncle, who is a greater scoundrel than her father was--the family
on the Westhanger side has a criminal history which goes back at
intervals for two hundred years--completed her education. Kate has
been brought up to be a thief, but a big thief. She is, I believe, the
brains of the biggest criminal organisation in the world. Every member
of the gang has been taken, but no evidence has ever been offered
against Kate. She plans the big swindles and each one is bigger than
the last--but never once have we traced the offence to her door.”
“Why is it that the police--?” began Lord Flanborough.
“The police, my dear Flanborough,” said Michael wearily, “are human
beings who have to deal with human beings. They are not angels, nor
thought readers, nor are they clairvoyant. The laws of this country
are so framed that the criminal has six chances to every one possessed
by his enemy. We know Kate was concerned in that big bank smashing
exploit which took two million crowns from the treasury of the Bank of
Holland. It was Kate who organised the raid upon the London jewellers
in June of last year. Kate is the mother of Crime Street. You don’t
know that thoroughfare, but one of these days I’ll introduce you to
it, if you are curious--but I warn you that if you expect to steep
your soul in sordidness, you will be disappointed--it is the most
respectable street in London. Her ingenuity is remarkable, her
patience beyond praise, and that is partly why I have come back: I
want to know why she was here and what she was doing?”
“As I say…” began Lord Flanborough again.
“For Heaven’s sake,” interrupted Michael, “don’t tell me that you
haven’t missed things! I tell you Kate would not touch a pin in your
house. In the first place she is a well-off woman. Why in Heaven’s
name should she bother her head about your belongings? I don’t
suppose, if she had the full run of your house, she could find £100
worth of realisable property! No, that is not why Kate came to you.
How long has she been here?”
“Nearly a month,” said Lord Flanborough, a little annoyed that the
result of his own private investigations had so utterly failed to
impress a representative of Scotland Yard.
“What work has she been doing?”
“Ordinary secretarial work for Moya. She came with excellent letters
of recommendation.”
“You can forget those,” interrupted Michael testily; “the gentleman
who wrote them lives at No. 9, Crime Street and his name is Millet.”
“She was a wonderful typist,” began his lordship, who was seeking
about in his own mind for some excuse which would explain why he had
been deceived.
“That I also know. She is, as you say, one of the fastest typists in
the world. In fact, no aspect of her education has been neglected. She
speaks five languages and read French fluently when she was nine. What
work has she done for you?”
Lord Flanborough considered for a while.
“She has copied a few letters and reports.”
“What kind of reports?”
“Reports from our South African companies. You see, Michael, I still
retain the direction of most of my old interests.”
“Were they very important--the reports, I mean?”
“Yes and no,” replied Lord Flanborough slowly; “they were merely
records of output, cost of production and projected shipments.”
“On what other work was she employed?”
“Let me think,” said Lord Flanborough.
“I _am_ letting you!” replied Michael tartly. “You used to have a very
private code-book if I remember rightly.”
“That is true,” said Lord Flanborough, “but of course, she did not see
that.”
“Where did you keep it?”
“In my desk,” said Lord Flanborough.
“Is it possible that she could have seen it?”
“It is possible, but wholly impossible that she could have copied it.”
“For how long a time together was she left alone?”
“Five minutes was the longest period she was left in the library
alone,” said his lordship after consideration.
Michael fingered his chin.
“Did you ever come into the library and find her in a semi-fainting
condition?” he asked.
Lord Flanborough looked at him with open-mouthed amazement.
“Did she tell you?”
Michael shook his head.
“No, she has told me nothing. I gather from your question that there
was such an occurrence?”
“It is remarkable that you should ask the question,” said his
lordship. “I _did_ come in one morning to find the poor girl--er, the
wretched girl, in a semi-fainting condition.”
“And you went out and got her a glass of water and sent for your
housekeeper, I suppose,” said Michael, his lip curling.
“Yes, I did,” admitted his lordship.
“Which means, in plain language,” smiled Michael, “that you surprised
her in the act of examining some of your private documents and that
whilst you were getting the water and calling assistance, she was
replacing whatever she was looking at where she had found it. Did she
on any other occasion draw your attention, on your entering the room,
to some peculiar circumstance, such as one of the pictures not hanging
straight or a broken vase?”
Again Lord Flanborough looked astounded.
“Yes, once she pointed to the china cupboard and asked me who cracked
the glass. As a matter of fact, the glass was not cracked at all,” he
explained.
“But you went over and examined it?”
“Naturally,” said his lordship.
“That was exactly the same trick,” said Michael; “whilst you were
making your inspection she was able to replace any documents she had
been examining and close the drawer--if they were in a drawer. Now, I
wonder what her game is?”
“You don’t suggest,” began his lordship in alarm, “that she is
scheming to rob me?”
“I hope not,” said Michael gravely; “from the idea of your being
robbed, the imagination reels.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so sarcastic. I am afraid you have never quite
forgiven Moya--”
“I bless Moya every time I think of her,” said Michael quickly; “she
rendered me the greatest service that one human being can render to
another, when she refused me. I hope to do better than Moya. As Moya’s
father, you utter a pained protest. I know, I know,” said Michael, and
he waved his hand cheerfully from the door.