this game of deduction and see if I can play it any better than you
do. You knew that my mother was a Spaniard, and you supposed, quite
wrongly, that I had some connection with the Spanish Embassy. Why
should a woman in my position meet a man in his position secretly,
and in the Square garden? How could he get into the Square garden
unless I lent him a key? There must be a romance here. Romance fits
well with the Spanish blood, doesn’t it? Briefly, you scented a love
affair. The man had robbed me, and I wanted to get my pearls back.
But I did not want the world to hear that story about me.” She
looked a malicious devil as she was saying all this. “You are quite
right,” she continued. “I do not want the world to hear any such
story. Two hundred and fifty pounds would not be too much to pay for
your silence.” She took a step or two towards the writing-table.
“Shall I write you a cheque?” she said.
By this time I had become rather angry myself. “I don’t know,” I
said, “whether you mean to admit in this way that I had thought
correctly, but if you suggest that I had come here to blackmail you,
or that you can offer me money in that way----”
Here Lady Meskell, somewhat to my surprise, burst into peals of
laughter. She sat down and rubbed her fat hands together cheerfully.
“You are a very good girl,” she said. “I thought you were from the
first. But I was just making sure. No, unromantic though it may
seem, there is no _liaison_ between myself and the man--he happens to
be a cook--whom you saw leaving the garden. But, amid your mistakes,
you made one or two very happy guesses. It is true that he took my
pearls, and that I knew all along he had taken them, and that I knew
his name. The advertisement will keep on appearing for the rest of
this week. I have my own reasons for that. But, as a matter of
fact, the pearls were returned to me the day before yesterday. I
have got them upstairs, and I will show them to you, if you like,
before you go.”
“They were returned to you by this cook man?”
“Oh, dear, no! That wouldn’t have done at all. I can’t compound a
felony. At any rate, if I do, there must be no evidence of it. My
friend the cook quite understood that. A nice, ruddy-faced cabman
brought the pearls back and described how his little girl had found
them in the gutter, and had supposed them to be beads and had worn
them ever since. He knew it was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, and
he knew that I knew. But we went through it all with perfect
solemnity. My expert went over the pearls to see that they were all
right, and the bank-notes were handed to the cabman. But I think
that as you’ve been so clever--a little too clever, perhaps--you
ought not to be left in the dark as to the rest of the story. I did
not want to prosecute, because I did not want to have everybody
laughing at me, and they would certainly have laughed. Tell me, did
you find out nothing else about me?”
“Two or three other things. You were connected in different ways
with several charities. Then again, you----”
“That’ll do. It began with the charities. I came across this good
gentleman in hospital. He is an Italian; he has a bright and sunny
imagination, and he told me strange stories of streets at the back of
Tottenham Court Road. After demanding a pledge of secrecy he
confessed himself to be an Anarchist.”
“Then it was romantic, after all?”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t. I am sometimes inclined to think that nothing
ever is. But I thought it was romantic. I was as bad in that
respect as you are. He had something on his mind, which he wished to
tell me. He was to leave the hospital next day--I could not go to
see him, nor would it be safe for him to call at my house. I had
servants who knew him. He gave me the name of one of them, and quite
correctly too. I have no idea how he got hold of it. Would I give
him a meeting one evening in the Square garden? What he had to tell
me was a matter of life and death. It was a matter, in fact, that
concerned the life of the greatest in the land. He was most urgent
and most serious. If it were found out that he had betrayed the plot
his own life would be forfeited. I told him that luckily I was in
the habit of walking in the Square garden on fine summer evenings. I
am inclined to think that he knew this already. I would go to the
summer-house in the middle of the garden, and half an hour later he
might join me there, coming in from the other side of the Square.
Well, he came.”
“Wasn’t it very rash of you?”
“Very likely. I may be a lot of other things, but I am not a funk.
I carried a useful weapon--it was not a dagger or revolver, but
merely a police whistle. I was not in the least afraid of him. He
kept it up splendidly to the very end. He told me a long and
beautiful story, illustrated by plans of Buckingham Palace. The
plans looked quite all right, but no woman can understand plans, and
my knowledge of the interior of Buckingham Palace is very limited.
He accepted ten sovereigns, under protest, to enable him to get out
of the country. As I left the summer-house he helped me on with my
cloak. That was his opportunity. I did not discover the loss until
I got back to my own house. Even then, when I felt certain that he
had stolen my necklace, I could not quite bring myself to disbelieve
his story. It was so circumstantial, so full of details, so correct
in every point in which I was able to check it. I drove at once to
Scotland Yard, and it was not till I was actually there that I made
up my mind to say nothing about my Italian friend and his story. I
dreaded the courteous smile of an inspector who could put his hand at
any time on any Anarchist in London. I merely notified them that I
had lost the pearl necklace and gave a description of it. I wished
to recover it and to let my cook friend go scot-free--not on his own
account, but because I could not bear that my friends should know
what an idiot I had made of myself.”
“And what about that servant who knew the Italian?”
“Simplicity itself. He did not know the Italian, nor did the Italian
know him. The Italian merely knew that I employed a man of that
name. Naturally, one of the first things I did was to satisfy myself
on that point. Really, do you know, when I remember how my
advertisement was worded, it seems to me that you have earned the
reward. Won’t you let me write that cheque?”
“Thanks, very much,” I said, “but I’m afraid I don’t feel as if I’ve
earned it myself. And so I can’t take it. I am sorry to have wasted
your time with my mistakes.” I held out my hand to say good-bye.
She glanced at the clock nervously. “But you mustn’t go yet--not
until you have seen the pearls.” She rang and had the necklace
brought to her. It was just an ordinary necklace, and I could not
imagine why she had bothered about it. I admired it and again said
good-bye.
“But you must stay and have some tea with me. I am quite alone, and
it would be so kind of you. I want you to tell me all about this
marvellous memory of yours. I would give anything if I could
cultivate it in myself.” Once more she glanced at the clock.
It was quite obvious, for some reason which I could not discover,
that she was trying to keep me. I was determined to go. She
implored me to wait at any rate until her carriage could be brought
round to drive me back. She could not bear to think of the amount of
trouble I had taken for her, an entire stranger to me. I might at
least let her carriage take me home. But I immediately determined to
walk. She still tried one or two frantic excuses for keeping me, but
I was firm, and a minute or two later I was outside in the Square. I
walked round to the other side of it, and there, in the Square
garden, pacing up and down, was a man of about forty, of a foreign
appearance, wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet
collar, and a hard felt hat.
And then I knew what a remarkably clever woman, and, at the same
time, what an absolute fool Lady Meskell was.
I was one of the few people in London who were not surprised some few
weeks later when her marriage with an Italian cook made paragraphs in
the papers. She had met him, it was said, in a hospital, where she
was visiting, and the two had fallen violently in love with one
another.
As for the necklace, I have not the least doubt that it was really
dropped in the street, and really found by the cabman’s child, and
that the fortunate chef had nothing whatever to do with it. It is
very wrong, of course, but I own that when I thought of the rapidity,
the brilliance, and the convincing character of Lady Meskell’s lies
to me, I had some feeling of envy. It was only the chance that I
decided to go at the time when he was waiting for her in the Square
garden that gave her away to me. I could not have done as well for
myself in so tight a place.
VII
A QUEER COMMISSION
For a time things went very badly. My luck was right out. A point
was reached when I doubted if I could continue to afford four
shillings a week for the quite invaluable services of Minnie Saxe. I
was determined that this should be almost the last of my economies.
I was quite willing to economise on food and firing and--yes, even on
dress. But I did not want to make my own bed any more. I had to get
the more sordid part of the work of living done for me. Naturally I
was not anxious that Minnie Saxe should discover the badness of my
luck and the lowness of my exchequer. She accepted without comment
my statement that I found tea and bread-and-butter the best breakfast
if one were going to work in the morning. She said nothing when I
found it was more hygienic to work in a cold room. When she came in
unexpectedly one night and caught me in the very act of dining on tea
and bread-and-butter she became extremely bad-tempered and was rather
rude. Next morning she informed me that her cousin at Yarmouth had
sent them a present of a box of kippers, and her father had taken the
liberty of asking if I would accept six with his best thanks for all
my kindness to her. I went into my own room to cry, and then came
back and had a kipper for breakfast. They were remarkably good
kippers, fat and well-liking.
An exclusive diet of tea and bread-and-butter would perhaps be good
for many people, but it does not act as a stimulus to the
imagination. The editors at this time sent my work back with
commendable promptitude; but I did get one little story placed in
_Tomlinson’s Magazine_, which I had considered to be altogether too
high for me and had only attempted in desperation. I had a
mutton-chop for dinner the night I received my cheque, and this gross
feeding, acting on an already enfeebled constitution, as they say in
the obituaries, led me to believe that I could write just the kind of
serial that _Tomlinson’s Magazine_ would like. I planned it all out
that night. Next morning I took a ’bus to the City to see the editor
of _Tomlinson’s Magazine_ and tell him all about my idea.
He consented to see me. He seemed to be a very young man and very
tired, and had the fingers of a confirmed cigarette-smoker. An older
and a fatter man was standing by his side when I was shown in, and
was handing him some proof sheets for inspection.
“Cut out ‘A Mother’s Prayer,’ and fill up with small jokes.
Otherwise all right.” The fat man went out and the editor turned to
me. I began to tell him my business.
“About a serial story!” he said. “All right, send it in and we’ll
read it.” He rose from his chair and glanced at the large, framed
notice on the wall. The notice said--
“YOU CAN SAY IT ALL IN FIVE MINUTES.”
I followed the glance and looked back at him. “So I can,” I said,
“and I don’t want to waste any time over a long story unless I know
that it has, at any rate, a chance.”
“Certainly,” he said. “Quite natural. The first few chapters and a
synopsis will be enough.” He was opening the door and shaking hands
with me. The fat man was in the passage outside, and he called to
him that after all he would let that “Mother’s Prayer” stand. Some
people liked a bit of sentimental verse now and then.
I got on a ’bus to go home and felt incompetent and hopeless. I rode
on the top, and in front of me sat a well-dressed man, making pencil
notes. In Piccadilly he got up, and as he passed me I noticed that
he had a strong face, full of character. A moment later I noticed
that he had left his pocket-book behind him. I picked it up and
dashed after him.
“Pardon,” I said, as I handed the book to him, “but you left this on
the ’bus.”
He took off his hat and looked at me keenly with deep-set, blazing
eyes.
“Thank you,” he said. “My house is quite near, in the Square here.
I should like to speak to you of this, if you can spare a few
minutes.”
“I don’t want a reward,” I said bluntly, “and I don’t see what there
is to say.”
“I never dreamed of offering you a reward.” He grinned pleasantly.
“You really insult me in supposing that I could have made the
blunder. But you have done me a very great service, and I wish you
to understand how great it is. I shall wish very probably to speak
to you on quite a different matter. We cannot talk here. Come, my
name is Wentworth Holding, and only respectable people live in
Berkeley Square.”
“Very well,” I said. “My time, unfortunately, is not valuable. I
will come. I know your name, of course. In fact, I once met an
agent of yours, a Dr. Morning.”
He looked at me sharply. “Were you the honest medium?” he said.
“I was.”
“You impressed Dr. Morning and his wife very favourably, especially
his wife.” I certainly had not thought so at the time. “He couldn’t
make out how you got mixed up with that crew. You will have to tell
me that, for I can’t make it out either, and I hate puzzles.”
I laughed. “Oh, I’ll tell you anything you like about that,” I said.
The library of his house was on the ground floor. Every available
inch of wall space was covered with book-shelves, and when I sat down
I noticed that the books near me dealt principally with Satanism. He
remained standing, opened the pocket-book, and showed me that it
contained twenty bank-notes of fifty pounds each.
“These,” he said, “are of comparatively little importance. These
pages of memoranda are worth more. At any rate there are people in
the City who would have given you a good deal more for them. If you
had read them you would have had very little difficulty in finding
your market. Don’t you think you had better have slipped the book
into your pocket and said nothing?”
I hated this kind of thing. “No,” I said bluntly. “Why say these
things?”
He looked at me long and seriously. “You are,” he said, “in many
respects exactly like Charles. Charles,” he added, “is my son. He
is a singularly quixotic young man, and at present he’s in the deuce
of a mess.”
What on earth was I to say to that? As I did not know, I said
nothing.
“May I ask,” he said, “if you have any occupation or profession?”
“I write stories which are not accepted. I have tried other
things--taking good ideas to a business man, for instance. But I
could do nothing with it. My time is my own.”
“You live alone?”
“Quite alone.”
He walked up and down the room once or twice and then sat down in a
chair opposite to me. “Would you have any objection,” he said, “to
telling me rather more about yourself? I can assure you that I do
not ask from idle curiosity, and if you wish it, nothing that you say
will be repeated.”
“I don’t think,” I said, “that there are any dark secrets in my life.
At the same time I don’t know why I should tell you anything.”
“No more do I,” he repeated. “Except that I have some delicate work
that I want done and that I think you are one of the few people who
could do it for me properly.”
“That’s all right,” I said, “I want work. I’ll tell you.”
I gave him a rapid sketch of what I had done. I noticed at the time
that it was still more a sketch of what I had failed to do. He put
in a keen question here and there. At the end he turned to me with a
smile.
“Now,” he said, “I am going to speak to you plainly, Miss Castel. I
should imagine that your father was a clever fool.”
“He was--but I don’t let you say so. You can speak quite plainly
about myself.”
“Certainly,” he said. “We will begin then with you. You have a
decided taint of the clever fool in your disposition. For the rest,
you are a singularly honest lady; you look pretty; you inspire
confidence, and you have tact. You are not, perhaps, the most
perfect person I could find for the work I wish to have done, but the
work presses, and it might take me months to find anyone better. The
work concerns my son Charles. Do you know him?”
“No,” I said.
“He is, I am sorry to say, a very good young man. He is quixotically
good. I get very little amusement out of spending money myself, but
I had hoped that my only son would have some gift for it. He has
none. He has never from childhood done an extravagant thing. He
buys cheap clothes, and when I get angry in consequence he tells me
that these are not the things which matter. He might marry
brilliantly, but he will not. He has decided to marry a poor girl
who has worked for her living. I don’t mind that in the least, but,
if you will pardon me the expression, I am damned if he is going to
marry Miss Sibyl Norton.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Matter with her? Haven’t I said the name?--Sibyl Norton.”
“Yes, but I don’t know it.”
“You don’t want to know it. It’s a name that gives itself away.
It’s obviously not a real name. It’s dishonest; it’s stagey; it
makes the whole room smell of patchouli.”
I laughed. “Really,” I said, “this is very extravagant. Is that all
you’ve got against her?”
“No. I dislike her type of mind and her personal appearance. She is
quite respectable, has failed on the stage, and is as cunning as a
cartload of monkeys. She talks of virtue and she thinks of the main
chance. She lives with a tow-coloured aunt, who has less
individuality than I ever met in anybody in my life. It is with the
greatest possible difficulty in conversation with her that one can
manage to remember that she is there at all. To come to business,
the work I want you to do is to prevent my son from marrying Miss
Sibyl Norton.”
“How?”
“Any way you like. That’s your affair. When I tell a clerk to get
me out a statement he does not say ‘how?’ He knows how to do it, and
he knows that I don’t.”
I got up to go. “Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t think I care about
this kind of thing.”
“Do, for Heaven’s sake, sit down! I am quite serious about this.
Look here, I’ll give you all the help I can. Why do you suppose I
had a thousand pounds in my pocket this morning? It is not like a
millionaire; it is especially not like me. Often and often I have
had to borrow my ’bus fare from the conductor, who knows me, because
I have no money whatever in my pocket. I had that money with me this
morning because I wanted an argument. A thousand pounds is as good
an argument as I know, except more thousands. I had been down to
Dingleton’s, the private detective’s. I meant to go in there and
tell them to buy this girl off. A thousand pounds was to be the
first instalment of her price. When I came there I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t go inside their beastly office. It was too low down on
Charles. Their underbred and under-educated agents would have made
some blunder or other, and Charles would never have forgiven me. But
I expect the woman is to be bought, and that you will be able to buy
her. A discreditable past would be of very little assistance,
because Charles is a quixotic fool. The more he learned that she was
the last kind of woman a man ought to marry, the more his insensate
chivalry would drive him to marry her.”
“Why should one be able to buy her off? I presume your only son is
your heir?”
“He is, at present. But I can disinherit him to-morrow. That point
might be made clear to Miss Norton. I think a woman of her
astuteness will find the simplest little sparrow in the hand worth
more than an entire aviary of humming-birds in their native freedom.”
“I don’t know your son, and I don’t know her.”
“You will meet my son at lunch here to-day. You can meet Miss Sibyl
Norton whenever you like. For, at present, she is getting a
precarious existence as a palmist and manicurist. Pretty
combination, isn’t it? Takes the mystery out of your hand first, and
then cuts your nails.”
“Very well,” I said. “I am going to see these two people.
Afterwards, I will tell you if I can do anything.”
I lunched at the house that day. There were about twenty at the
luncheon-party, and my clothes were all wrong for it, and I did not
care a bit. I had some talk with Mr. Charles Holding, and found that
he answered fairly well to his father’s description. He was noble,
but vacuous. A weak chin spoilt a face that would otherwise have
been good-looking. I would have trusted him better in temptation
than in a street riot. He had a great admiration for Lovelace, and
was horrified that I did not even possess a copy of his favourite
poems. Would I permit him to send me one? I would. He scribbled my
address on his shirt-cuff.
I got away from the house about three in the afternoon. Mr.
Wentworth Holding himself came down the steps with me, apologising
for not being able to let me have his carriage. “You see,” he said,
“you must, of course, go on to Miss Sibyl Norton at once, and she
knows my horses and liveries.”
I had not intended to go at once. I wanted to get home and think
over this extraordinary commission more at my leisure. But, after
all, it did not much matter. A hansom took me to Miss Norton’s dingy
lodgings in Northumberland Street. The tow-coloured aunt received me
in a dusty room and asked whether it was manicure or palmistry.
“Both,” I said.
“Miss Norton’s fee is one guinea, payable in advance, please. I will
give you a receipt.” Then she faded out of the room, saying that
Miss Norton would be down in a minute.
Miss Norton was down in a minute. She wore a theatrical tea-gown,
had a certain amount of pinched prettiness in her face, and seemed to
be a fairly hard case. I talked to her the whole time that she was
polishing my nails. When it came to the other section of her weird
business I asked her if she could tell me anything of the future.
“The law does not permit me to do that,” she said. “But I can tell
you two things about the present which may rather surprise you.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“The first is,” she said, as she peered more closely into the lines
of my hand, “that you have come here with the intention, sooner or
later, of bribing me to give up the man to whom I am at present
engaged. The second is, that you will have no success whatever in
the attempt.” She broke off laughing. “I did not read that in your
hand, of course. I saw you in Berkeley Square conversing earnestly
with Mr. Wentworth Holding this morning. The rest was easy enough to
guess. Charles told me I might expect something of the kind.”
I tried to keep my composure and my dignity, but I do not think I
made a very fine figure. “Perhaps you will tell me,” I said quietly,
“why you would refuse?”
“I will tell you, but you won’t believe it. Money has nothing
whatever to do with the matter. If Mr. Charles Holding were a pauper
it would be all the same to me. If it were necessary, I could earn
enough by this nonsense to keep us both.”
“Well,” I said, “let us get on to something more interesting to me
personally. Will you go on reading my hand, please?”
She took her revenge by giving me a remarkably bad character.
I took a hansom back to my rooms. “Take cabs everywhere when you are
on my business,” Mr. Holding had said, though he seemed to prefer the
’bus himself. The bothering thing was that everybody was quite
right. Mr. Holding had not exaggerated the bad points of Miss
Norton’s character or the weakness of his son. But Miss Norton,
dishonest money-grubber though she was, was perfectly sincere in her
attachment to Charles Holding and was not to be influenced by money
in that particular. The position was impossible of solution, and I
decided that I had nothing to do but to call on Mr. Wentworth Holding
on the following day and tell him so.
I did not find the volume of poems awaiting me, and had not expected
to find it, but there was a letter in my letter-box, which began by
explaining why it had not arrived. Mr. Charles Holding had wished to
have it put into a rather more suitable dress before it was presented
to me. His letter went on to say that his meeting with me had been a
revelation to him. It had compelled him to break off his engagement.
It was not a time to hesitate. Whatever might be the attractions of
the woman whom he had once meant to marry, she had not the high
ideals, the quixotic spirit, the chivalrous devotion to all that is
best which he had found in me. (Naturally, in talking to him I had
humoured him a little in what I knew to be his bent. I even saw that
I had made some impression on him, but this was too astounding.) The
letter went on in rather enraptured terms to speak of the loveliness
of my hair and to propose marriage to me.