The doctors will tell you sometimes that motoring is good for the
nerves; and since so many of them now buy cars, and there's no man like
a doctor for looking after his own flesh and blood, I suppose they mean
what they say. All the same, I wish I'd had a doctor with me the night
I picked up Mabel Bellamy; for if his nerves had stood that and he
hadn't given himself quinine and iron for the next two months, why, I'd
have paid his fee myself.
You see, it was a rum job from the very beginning of it. I was working
for Hook-Nosed Moss at the time, and, being Lent, and half the
theatrical ladies of position doing penance down at Monte Carlo, we
weren't exactly knocking a hole in the Bank of England--nor, for that
matter, even earning our fares to Jerusalem. Moss came down to the
garage in the West End gloomier and gloomier every day; and one morning
when I saw that he'd pawned his diamond shirt-stud (the same that we
called "The Bleriot"), why then, says I, Lal Britten, keep off the
Stock Exchange and don't put your last thirty bob in Consols, wherever
else you place it.
Now this was the state of things when one morning, early in the month
of March last year, we were rung up from a public telephone call in
Bayswater, and the covered Napier was ordered for a house in the
Richmond Road, Bayswater--a locality with which I was unfamiliar, but
which Moss declared must be all right, since the gentleman who lived
there knew that we had a Napier car and therefore was in a manner
introduced to us. Half an hour later he discovered that Richmond Road
was nothing better than a mean street of lodging-houses, and, my word,
didn't he reel off his instructions to me like texts out of a copy-book.
"Dot's a shame, Britten," he said, coming round by the bonnet of the
car, which I was tuning up for the trip--"I was deceived by the dabe of
the street. We must have our modey before they have the goods. Mind
that now, you dote drive a mile unless they pay the shinies. Three
guideas id your pocket and then you drive 'em. Are you listening,
Britten?"
I managed to give him a squirt of oil out of my can--for we do love
Moss, and then I told him that Nelson on the quarter-deck of the
_Victory_ wasn't more alive to his duties.
"Three guineas cash down and then I drive 'em. Is this a round trip to
see the beauties of Surrey, Mr. Moss, or do I return to my little cot
after the ball is over? I'd like to know on account of taking my Court
suit, if you don't mind."
"Oh," says he, "you're ordered for ded o'clock, so I suppose id's the
light fadastic toe, Britten. But mide you get your modey--or I'll stop
your salary, sure. Three guideas and what you cad hook for yourself--I
shan't touch that, Britten--I dow how to treat my servants well."
I laughed at this, but didn't say too much for fear he should find out
that he'd got a patch of oil as big as a football on the back of his
beautiful new spring suit, and when he had told me that the party's
name was Faulkland Jones and had given me the number of the house, I
got on with my work again and soon had the three-year-old Napier
running as well as ever she did in all her life. Nor did anything else
happen until ten o'clock that night, at which hour precisely I drove
her up to the house in the Richmond Road, Bayswater, and sent a small
boy to knock at the door.
It was a twopenny-ha'penny shop, and no doubt about it; a two-storied
day-before-yesterday lodging-house, with a bow window like a
Métallurgique bonnet and a door about as big as the top of your
gear-box.
So far as I could see from the road there was only one lamp showing in
the place, and that was on the off-side, so to speak, in a little
window of a bedroom--but the boy said afterwards that there was a glim
in the hall, and he was old enough to have known. Taken altogether,
you wouldn't have offered them thirty pounds a year for the lot unless
you had been a Rothschild with a cook to pension off--and what such
people wanted with a Napier limousine at three guineas the job I really
could not have said. This, however, was no business of mine; so I just
gave the lad a penny and settled myself down in my seat until the
Duchess in the apron should appear.
It wasn't a long time I had to wait, perhaps five minutes, perhaps ten.
I told the police, when they questioned me afterwards, to split the
difference, for none but a policeman could have told you what it had
got to do with my story. When the door did open at last, a couple of
men carrying a basket came down the bit of a garden, and the first of
them wished me "Good evening" very civilly. Then they let the basket
down softly on to the pavement and began to talk to me about it.
"How strong's your roof?" asked the first, speaking with a nasal twang
I couldn't quite place. "Will it take this bit of a basket all right?"
"Why," says I, "it might depend on what you've got inside that same.
Have I come for the washing, or do I drive your plate to the Bank of
England?"
The second, the taller man of the two, laughed at this; but the first
seemed very uneasy, and it was not lost upon me that he glanced to the
right and the left of him as though afraid that someone would come up
and hear what his friend had to say next.
"I guess it's neither one nor the other," the first speaker went on.
"We're playing theatricals at the Hampstead Town Hall to-morrow night,
and these are the dresses. We want you to take them up to the Boundary
Road, St. John's Wood--I'll show you the house when we get there; but
it's called Bredfield, and you'll know it by a square-toed lamp up
against the side-track. Perhaps you can give us a hand with the
baggage--and say, have you any objection to gold when you can't get
silver?"
He passed up a sovereign and I put it inside my glove. Moss had told
me to collect the shekels before I drove them a mile, and so I told the
pair of them as I was getting down the luggage ladder, which
fortunately I had brought, not knowing the job. A bit to my surprise
they paid up immediately, but I made no remark about that; and when I
had signed the receipt by the light of my near-side lamp, I helped them
up with the basket and soon had it strapped to the rails in a way that
satisfied even the nervous little man with the saucer eyes.
Many have asked me if I had no suspicions about that basket, was not
curious as to its contents, and remarked nothing as we hoisted it up.
To these I say that the men themselves were the chief actors in the
business; that they lifted the baggage from the pavement, and that my
task was chiefly to guide it to the rails and to make it fast when I
had got it there. Otherwise, this basket was no different from any
dress-basket you may see upon half a dozen four-wheelers the first time
you look in at a railway station; and I should be telling an untruth if
I said that I thought about it at all. Indeed, it was not until we got
to the Boundary Road, and I stopped at the house called Bredfield, that
so much as a notion of anything wrong entered my head. There, however,
I did get a shock, and no mistake; for no sooner had I pulled up than I
discovered that I had come on alone, and that neither the big man with
the Yankee accent nor the little man with the saucer eyes had deigned
to accompany me.
Well, I got down from the driver's seat, opened and shut the door as
though to be sure that neither the one nor the other was hiding under
the seat, and then I rang loudly at the front door bell and waited to
see what fortune had got in her lucky-bag.
Had the men told me plainly that I was to go alone, I should never have
given the matter a second thought; but I could have sworn that the pair
of them were inside the limousine when I started away from the Richmond
Road, and how or where they got down I knew no more than the Lord
Chancellor. It remained to be seen if the people in the house were any
wiser; and you may be sure that I was curious enough by this time, and,
if the truth must be told, not a little frightened.
Boundary Road, as many will know, is a quiet thoroughfare in St. John's
Wood, most of the houses being detached, and many of them having twenty
feet of garden back and front. This particular house was larger than
ordinary, and owned an odd iron lamp fixed above the garden gate and
conspicuous a hundred yards away. Unlike the shanty in the Richmond
Road, nearly every window showed a bright light; and I don't suppose I
had waited twenty seconds, though they seemed like a quarter of an
hour, when the front door flew open and one of the prettiest
parlourmaids I have ever clapped eyes upon came running down the path,
and asked, even before she had opened the gate, if the lady had arrived.
"Why," says I, quickly enough, "that she certainly has not, being took
to dine with the Grand Duke Isaac at the Metropolitan Music Hall. But
her dresses are here, miss, and if you like to try on any of 'em before
she arrives, why, you're welcome so far as I am concerned."
She laughed at this and came out on to the pavement. I have said she
was pretty, but that's hardly the word for it. If she went on the
Gaiety stage to-morrow, she'd be the talk of the town in a
fortnight--and as for her manners, well, it isn't my place to remark on
those. Affability appeals to me wherever I find it, and if Betsy
Chambers isn't affable, then I don't know the meaning of the term.
"Where have you come from?" she asked me as we stood there; "have you
come from Scotland?"
"More like from Scotland Yard in these times," says I; "why should you
ask me that?"
"Because the gentleman said that his wife would be arriving from
Scotland to-night, but that he would not be here until to-morrow. I
wouldn't have stopped in the house for anything if he had not said she
was coming!"
"Then you're alone, my dear?"
She tossed her head.
"Yes, I am, and that's why all the lamps are lighted."
"Why, to be sure," cried I, "there might have been a man under the
bed;" but she was too polite to notice this, and I could see she was
very much afraid of sleeping alone in that strange house, and I don't
wonder at it.
"I can walk up and down the front garden all night, if you like," said
I, "or maybe I could sleep on the drawing-room sofa, if you prefer it.
Is this the first time they have left you alone here?"
She looked at me in surprise.
"I was only engaged yesterday from the registry office in Marylebone.
This is a furnished house, and they have taken it for three months
certain. The gentleman comes from Edinburgh and the lady is an
American. They haven't got a cook yet, but hope to have one by
to-morrow. Whatever shall I do if they never come at all?"
"Oh," says I, "try on her dresses and see how they suit you. Suppose
we get the basket in to begin with. Here's a chap coming who looks as
though he could lay out sixpence if he hadn't got a shilling; we'll
enlist him and then talk about supper afterwards. Is your name Susan,
by the way? The last nice girl I met was called Susan, and so I
thought----"
"Oh, don't be silly," says she; "my name's Betsy, and if you squeeze my
hand like that, some one will see you."
I told her it must have been done in a moment of abstraction, and then
I hailed the "cab runner" who was loafing down the road; and, what with
him and a messenger boy in a hurry, we got the basket down and lifted
it into a big square hall and laid it almost at the foot of the
staircase, up which we should have to carry it presently.
Somehow or other it seemed to me over-heavy for a clothes' basket; but
I said nothing about it at the time, and, telling Betsy I would return
in a minute, I went back to my car to turn off the petrol and see that
all was shipshape. When I entered the house again, and almost as soon
as I had shut the door, the queerest thing I can remember happened to
me. It was nothing less than this--that the girl, Betsy, came toward
me with her face as white as a sheet; and, before I could utter a
single word or ask her the ghost of a question, she just slipped
headlong through my arms and lay like a dead thing.
Now, this was a nice position to be in and no mistake about it. The
girl limp and helpless in my arms, not a soul in the house, me not
knowing where to lay hands on a drop of brandy, to say nothing of a
glass of water, and, above all, the peculiar feeling that something not
over-pleasant must have frightened Betsy, and that it might frighten me
before many minutes had passed. Listening intently, I could not at
first hear a sound in all the house--but just when I was telling myself
not to be a fool, I heard, as plainly as ever I heard anything in my
life, a sigh as of some one groaning in pain; and at that I do believe
I dropped the girl clean on to the floor and made a dash into the
nearest room in a state of mind I should have been ashamed to confess
even to my own brother.
What did it mean, who was playing tricks with us, and what was the
mystery? I looked round the apartment and made it out to be the
dining-room, plainly furnished, well lighted, but as empty of people as
Westminster Abbey at twelve o'clock of a Sunday night. A smaller room
to the right lay in darkness, but I found the switch and satisfied
myself in a moment that no one was hidden there; nor did a search in
every nook and cranny near by enlighten me further. What was even
worse was the fact that I could now hear the groaning very plainly; and
when I had stood a minute, with my heart beating like a steam pump and
my eyes half blinded with the shadows and the light, I discovered, just
in a flash, that whoever groaned was not in any room of the house,
neither in the hall nor upon the staircase, but in the very basket I
had just laid down and should have carried to the floor above before
many minutes had passed.
I am not going to state here precisely what I thought or did when I
made that astonishing discovery, or just what I felt at the moment when
I tried to understand its significance. Perhaps I could not remember
half that happened even if I tried to do so. My clearest memory is of
a dark, silent street, and of me standing there, bare-headed, with a
fainting girl in my arms, and a civil old chap with white whiskers
asking again and again, "My good fellow, whatever is the matter and
what on earth are you doing here?" When I answered him it was to beg
him for God's sake to tell me the name of the nearest doctor--and at
that I remember he simply pointed to the house opposite and to a brass
plate upon its door.
"I am Mr. Harrison, the surgeon," he said quickly; "I am just buying a
motor, and so I crossed the road to look at yours. Tell me what has
happened and what is the matter with the woman."