Lydia Beale gathered up the scraps of paper that littered her table,
rolled them into a ball and tossed them into the fire.
There was a knock at the door, and she half turned in her chair to meet
with a smile her stout landlady who came in carrying a tray on which
stood a large cup of tea and two thick and wholesome slices of bread and
jam.
"Finished, Miss Beale?" asked the landlady anxiously.
"For the day, yes," said the girl with a nod, and stood up stretching
herself stiffly.
She was slender, a head taller than the dumpy Mrs. Morgan. The dark
violet eyes and the delicate spiritual face she owed to her Celtic
ancestors, the grace of her movements, no less than the perfect hands
that rested on the drawing board, spoke eloquently of breed.
"I'd like to see it, miss, if I may," said Mrs. Morgan, wiping her hands
on her apron in anticipation.
Lydia pulled open a drawer of the table and took out a large sheet of
Windsor board. She had completed her pencil sketch and Mrs. Morgan
gasped appreciatively. It was a picture of a masked man holding a
villainous crowd at bay at the point of a pistol.
"That's wonderful, miss," she said in awe. "I suppose those sort of
things happen too?"
The girl laughed as she put the drawing away.
"They happen in stories which I illustrate, Mrs. Morgan," she said
dryly. "The real brigands of life come in the shape of lawyers' clerks
with writs and summonses. It's a relief from those mad fashion plates I
draw, anyway. Do you know, Mrs. Morgan, that the sight of a dressmaker's
shop window makes me positively ill!"
Mrs. Morgan shook her head sympathetically and Lydia changed the
subject.
"Has anybody been this afternoon?" she asked.
"Only the young man from Spadd & Newton," replied the stout woman with a
sigh. "I told 'im you was out, but I'm a bad liar."
The girl groaned.
"I wonder if I shall ever get to the end of those debts," she said in
despair. "I've enough writs in the drawer to paper the house, Mrs.
Morgan."
Three years ago Lydia Beale's father had died and she had lost the best
friend and companion that any girl ever had. She knew he was in debt,
but had no idea how extensively he was involved. A creditor had seen
her the day after the funeral and had made some uncouth reference to the
convenience of a death which had automatically cancelled George Beale's
obligations. It needed only that to spur the girl to an action which was
as foolish as it was generous. She had written to all the people to whom
her father owed money and had assumed full responsibility for debts
amounting to hundreds of pounds.
It was the Celt in her that drove her to shoulder the burden which she
was ill-equipped to carry, but she had never regretted her impetuous
act.
There were a few creditors who, realising what had happened, did not
bother her, and there were others....
She earned a fairly good salary on the staff of the _Daily Megaphone_,
which made a feature of fashion, but she would have had to have been the
recipient of a cabinet minister's emoluments to have met the demands
which flowed in upon her a month after she had accepted her father's
obligations.
"Are you going out to-night, miss?" asked the woman.
Lydia roused herself from her unpleasant thoughts.
"Yes. I'm making some drawings of the dresses in Curfew's new play. I'll
be home somewhere around twelve."
Mrs. Morgan was half-way across the room when she turned back.
"One of these days you'll get out of all your troubles, miss, you see if
you don't! I'll bet you'll marry a rich young gentleman."
Lydia, sitting on the edge of the table, laughed.
"You'd lose your money, Mrs. Morgan," she said, "rich young gentlemen
only marry poor working girls in the kind of stories I illustrate. If I
marry it will probably be a very poor young gentleman who will become an
incurable invalid and want nursing. And I shall hate him so much that I
can't be happy with him, and pity him so much that I can't run away from
him."
Mrs. Morgan sniffed her disagreement.
"There are things that happen----" she began.
"Not to me--not miracles, anyway," said Lydia, still smiling, "and I
don't know that I want to get married. I've got to pay all these bills
first, and by the time they are settled I'll be a grey-haired old lady
in a mob cap."
Lydia had finished her tea and was standing somewhat scantily attired in
the middle of her bedroom, preparing for her theatre engagement, when
Mrs. Morgan returned.
"I forgot to tell you, miss," she said, "there was a gentleman and a
lady called."
"A gentleman and a lady? Who were they?"
"I don't know, Miss Beale. I was lying down at the time, and the girl
answered the door. I gave her strict orders to say that you were out."
"Did they leave any name?"
"No, miss. They just asked if Miss Beale lived here, and could they see
her."
"H'm!" said Lydia with a frown. "I wonder what we owe them!"
She dismissed the matter from her mind, and thought no more of it until
she stopped on her way to the theatre to learn from the office by
telephone the number of drawings required.
The chief sub-editor answered her.
"And, by the way," he added, "there was an inquiry for you at the office
to-day--I found a note of it on my desk when I came in to-night. Some
old friends of yours who want to see you. Brand told them you were going
to do a show at the Erving Theatre to-night, so you'll probably see
them."
"Who are they?" she asked, puzzled.
She had few friends, old or new.
"I haven't the foggiest idea," was the reply.
At the theatre she saw nobody she knew, though she looked round
interestedly, nor was she approached in any of the _entr'actes_.
In the row ahead of her, and a little to her right, were two people who
regarded her curiously as she entered. The man was about fifty, very
dark and bald--the skin of his head was almost copper-coloured, though
he was obviously a European, for the eyes which beamed benevolently upon
her through powerful spectacles were blue, but so light a blue that by
contrast with the mahogany skin of his clean-shaven face, they seemed
almost white.
The girl who sat with him was fair, and to Lydia's artistic eye,
singularly lovely. Her hair was a mop of fine gold. The colour was
natural, Lydia was too sophisticated to make any mistake about that. Her
features were regular and flawless. The young artist thought she had
never seen so perfect a "cupid" mouth in her life. There was something
so freshly, fragrantly innocent about the girl that Lydia's heart went
out to her, and she could hardly keep her eyes on the stage. The unknown
seemed to take almost as much interest in her, for twice Lydia surprised
her backward scrutiny. She found herself wondering who she was. The girl
was beautifully dressed, and about her neck was a platinum chain that
must have hung to her waist--a chain which was broken every few inches
by a big emerald.
It required something of an effort of concentration to bring her mind
back to the stage and her work. With a book on her knee she sketched
the somewhat bizarre costumes which had aroused a mild public interest
in the play, and for the moment forgot her entrancing companion.
She came through the vestibule at the end of the performance, and drew
her worn cloak more closely about her slender shoulders, for the night
was raw, and a sou'westerly wind blew the big wet snowflakes under the
protecting glass awning into the lobby itself. The favoured playgoers
minced daintily through the slush to their waiting cars, then taxis came
into the procession of waiting vehicles, there was a banging of cab
doors, a babble of orders to the scurrying attendants, until something
like order was evolved from the chaos.
"Cab, miss?"
Lydia shook her head. An omnibus would take her to Fleet Street, but two
had passed, packed with passengers, and she was beginning to despair,
when a particularly handsome taxi pulled up at the kerb.
The driver leant over the shining apron which partially protected him
from the weather, and shouted:
"Is Miss Beale there?"
The girl started in surprise, taking a step toward the cab.
"I am Miss Beale," she said.
"Your editor has sent me for you," said the man briskly.
The editor of the _Megaphone_ had been guilty of many eccentric acts. He
had expressed views on her drawing which she shivered to recall. He had
aroused her in the middle of the night to sketch dresses at a fancy
dress ball, but never before had he done anything so human as to send a
taxi for her. Nevertheless, she would not look at the gift cab too
closely, and she stepped into the warm interior.
The windows were veiled with the snow and the sleet which had been
falling all the time she had been in the theatre. She saw blurred lights
flash past, and realised that the taxi was going at a good pace. She
rubbed the windows and tried to look out after a while. Then she
endeavoured to lower one, but without success. Suddenly she jumped up
and tapped furiously at the window to attract the driver's attention.
There was no mistaking the fact that they were crossing a bridge and it
was not necessary to cross a bridge to reach Fleet Street.
If the driver heard he took no notice. The speed of the car increased.
She tapped at the window again furiously. She was not afraid, but she
was angry. Presently fear came. It was when she tried to open the door,
and found that it was fastened from the outside, that she struck a
match to discover that the windows had been screwed tight--the edge of
the hole where the screw had gone in was rawly new, and the screw's head
was bright and shining.
She had no umbrella--she never carried one to the theatre--and nothing
more substantial in the shape of a weapon than a fountain pen. She could
smash the windows with her foot. She sat back in the seat, and
discovered that it was not so easy an operation as she had thought. She
hesitated even to make the attempt; and then the panic sense left her,
and she was her own calm self again. She was not being abducted. These
things did not happen in the twentieth century, except in sensational
books. She frowned. She had said almost the same thing to somebody that
day--to Mrs. Morgan, who had hinted at a romantic marriage. Of course,
nothing was wrong. The driver had called her by name. Probably the
editor wanted to see her at his home, he lived somewhere in South
London, she remembered. That would explain everything. And yet her
instinct told her that something unusual was happening, that some
unpleasant experience was imminent.
She tried to put the thought out of her mind, but it was too vivid, too
insistent.
Again she tried the door, and then, conscious of a faint reflected glow
on the cloth-lined roof of the cab, she looked backward through the
peep-hole. She saw two great motor-car lamps within a few yards of the
cab. A car was following, she glimpsed the outline of it as they ran
past a street standard.
They were in one of the roads of the outer suburbs. Looking through the
window over the driver's shoulder she saw trees on one side of the road,
and a long grey fence. It was while she was so looking that the car
behind shot suddenly past and ahead, and she saw its tail lights moving
away with a pang of hopelessness. Then, before she realised what had
happened, the big car ahead slowed and swung sideways, blocking the
road, and the cab came to a jerky stop that flung her against the
window. She saw two figures in the dim light of the taxi's head lamps,
heard somebody speak, and the door was jerked open.
"Will you step out, Miss Beale," said a pleasant voice, and though her
legs seemed queerly weak, she obliged. The second man was standing by
the side of the driver. He wore a long raincoat, the collar of which was
turned up to the tip of his nose.
"You may go back to your friends and tell them that Miss Beale is in
good hands," he was saying. "You may also burn a candle or two before
your favourite saint, in thanksgiving that you are alive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the driver sulkily. "I'm
taking this young lady to her office."
"Since when has the _Daily Megaphone_ been published in the ghastly
suburbs?" asked the other politely.
He saw the girl, and raised his hat.
"Come along, Miss Beale," he said. "I promise you a more comfortable
ride--even if I cannot guarantee that the end will be less startling."