Blindfold (28 page)

“I should think so,” said the man. “Was that what you thought you saw?”

“I come over queer,” said Flossie. “I'm not batty—honest I'm not. I come over queer and I run away.”

There was a pause. Was he going to believe her or wasn't he? And if he didn't believe her, what was going to happen next? A cold shudder ran all over Flossie from her head to her feet. Then the hand on her arm relaxed its grasp. It didn't let go altogether, but it held her less tightly. The man said,

“I certainly shouldn't talk about it if I were you. You wouldn't like to be put away in a lunatic asylum, would you? It might happen if you talked—or you might find yourself in the river or under a car some dark night. No, you'd better not talk.”

“Ooh—I
won't!”
said Flossie with heartfelt terror. And with that a car turned out of Western Terrace and she pulled her arm away and ran for it into the light of the corner lamp, and round the corner and up Merriton Street to No. 12.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Mrs Green was in a very bad temper. She was an easy-going woman as a rule, but she didn't like to be put about. She considered that she had been put about something cruel. The lunch things to wash and the tea tray to get ready, and then the tea things to wash up, and then the supper tray and the supper things—all of which was the girl's work and not to be expected of a cook that
was
a cook. Then that there kitten of Kay's must needs get under her feet, the dratted little beast, so that it was going on for a miracle she hadn't come down smack and as like as not broken something. Well, she'd shut it up safe enough now, and without giving it its supper either, and perhaps now she could have her own supper in peace—a plate of the stew, very good and tasty it was, and surprising how much Miss Rowland and Nurse had put away between them, but still there was plenty left.

Mrs Green had a sound, solid appetite. She sat down to a good plateful of stew with a hunk of bread, a slab of yellow cheese, and a bottle of beer. If she'd got to do all the work, she'd got to keep her strength up. She began to eat, slowly and with relish, but instead of feeling soothed her anger kept on mounting in a steady, sluggish tide. She would have the trays to see to and all the washing up on her hands—and Kay off gallivanting with that young man no doubt. Supper things to wash, breakfast things to wash, and that there dratted kitten to clean up after and to feed—and getting in anyone's way just to spite them, the dratted little toad.

Mrs Green stopped munching and called herself a regular right down fool. What did she want to go putting the kitten in the cellar for? What she did ought to have done was to throw it out neck and crop into the street, where it belonged. So she would too, just as soon as ever she'd finished her supper. A sight too easy-going she'd been, letting Kay bring it in, and she wasn't going to keep it, not another day she wasn't. Out it would go, and lucky if it didn't get its neck twisted. All her anger against Kay became directed towards Kay's kitten. She would finish her supper, and then out it would go. She cut a thick slice of cheese and ate it with enjoyment.

Downstairs in the cellar Kay was tying the strip of her handkerchief round the kitten's neck.

Mrs Green's supper was a protracted affair. Washing up or no washing up, she wasn't going to be hurried over her food. She finished the stew, and then she finished the cheese, and then she finished the beer. And then she got heavily to her feet and went into the scullery, where she opened the cellar door and called down the steps to the kitten. She didn't put on the scullery light, because she didn't need it. After five years in the house she didn't need a light to find her way across her own scullery. She just opened the low door and called down into the darkness.

“Here, you dratted little nuisance—come along with you! Puss—puss—puss—”

The kitten had returned through the hole in the party wall between the houses. Curiosity, and a faint smell of food, had taken it into the cellar next to Kay's. There was a hole that it could just squeeze through, and it was hungry, having had nothing to eat since breakfast time. The cellar had been disappointing. There was no food. There was a faint mousy smell, but there were no mice. There was a large, alarming, groaning creature lying on a bed in one corner. It wasn't at all a nice bed. The kitten had wailed its disapproval. And then, miraculously, there had come Kay's voice, calling it. But Kay had been disappointing too. The kitten associated her with milk, but there wasn't any milk. Highly disgruntled, it found itself back in the cellar with the groaning creature. There was something round its neck, something that tickled, something that wouldn't come off in the maddest scampering rush.

With a little growl of rage, the kitten squeezed through the hole by which it had come and emerged into the large cellar under the kitchen of No. 16. The thing round its neck wouldn't come off. Neither scratching, rolling, twisting, nor flying round in circles would get rid of it. The only thing that happened was that the bow which had stuck up at the back of its neck slipped round under its chin, where it tickled worse than ever.

And then the door at the top of the cellar steps opened noisily. A delicious smell of stew came rushing down, and Mrs Green's voice called, “Puss—puss—puss!” With a loud ecstatic mew the kitten ran, tail erect, towards that lovely satisfying smell. Mewing, purring, and trembling with ecstasy, it reached the top step, to be instantly snatched up and carried at arm's length across the kitchen, along the passage, and out of the door into the area. Mrs Green's hands were large and nubbly. The one that, held the kitten left its head and tail visible, but not much else. If Kay's cambric bow had still been sticking up on end, it is just possible that Mrs Green might have noticed it as she passed through the lighted kitchen—possible, but not probable, because her mind was of the sort which admits but one idea at a time, and that one slowly. At the moment what she wanted to do was to get rid of that dratted girl's dratted kitten, and the sooner the better. She acually mounted the area steps, and, flinging the kitten across the pavement into the gutter, she slammed, first the area gate, and then, breathing heavily but triumphantly, the area door—“And if the next girl tries bringing livestock in on me, I'll soon let 'er know as this is a kitchen and not a menagerie!” With this to support her Mrs Green addressed herself to the washing up.

It was not an auspicious moment for Miles Clayton to put in an appearance. Mrs Green came to the door with “Drat!” written all over her, and when she saw who it was that had knocked, she would have banged the door on him if he hadn't been too quick for her and got his foot across the sill again.

“Mrs Green, I won't keep you a minute.”

Mrs Green stepped back heavily in order to glare at him the better.

“Here, young man, I've had about enough of this! You take your foot out of there, or I'll send for the police!”

“Miss Rowland would like that—wouldn't she?” said Miles. “No, look here, Mrs Green, I really won't keep you. And I know you've got extra to do and all that, but if you would just tell me where that taxi came from—the one Kay went off in—I'd be most awfully obliged to you—I really would.” He put out his hand as he spoke, and Mrs Green saw a Treasury note in it.

Next moment the note was crackling between her fingers. Very free with his money, the young man. Better to walk out with than to get married to, that sort. She put the note into her apron pocket and said,

“What do you want to know for?”

“Well, I do.
Please
, Mrs Green.”

“Well, they mostly has their taxes from the garridge round at the back.”

“What name?”

“Well, I don't rightly know the name. You can't miss it. You go up into the Square and you turn right, and it's the first on the right again—Barnabas Row, and the garridge is right at the back of us here, though what you want with it is more than I know.”

Miles took a step towards her.

“Mrs Green—you did see her go?”

Mrs Green made a snorting sound. The Treasury note was safe in her pocket.

“What do you think I am, young man—a liar? Course I seen her go! Down the steps and into the taxi, like I told you. And if you 'aven't got nothing better to do with your time than to stand here gossiping all night, well I 'ave, and I'll thank you to take yourself off and let me get on with my work!”

She slammed the door as soon as Miles removed his foot, after which there was nothing for him to do but climb the area steps into the street. It was in his mind to go round to the garage, but as it was getting toward nine o'clock on a Sunday evening it was likely enough that there wouldn't be anyone there.

As he let the area gate fall to with a clang, something rubbed against his ankle. Looking down, he saw a small dark creature which incontinently opened its mouth and wailed. It was Kay's kitten, and as he picked it up and it rubbed itself against him mewing and purring, it came to him with a sort of shock that it wasn't like Kay to have left the kitten behind her. What was he going to do about it? He blenched at the idea of knocking Mrs Green up again. It seemed extremely likely that she had slung the kitten out. She had grumbled at Kay bringing it in.

The sense of shock deepened perceptibly. It wasn't a bit like Kay to have gone away and left her kitten to Mrs Green's angry mercies. Then, on the top of that, a quick thought stabbed like a knife. Kay wouldn't have done it.

He reacted against this by reminding himself coldly that kittens were a drug on the market, and that in this light, or rather absence of light, it was quite impossible to be sure that this particular kitten was Kay's.

He walked to the next lamp-post with the creature nuzzling and purring under his chin. It was a very determined kitten. It clung to his tie with all its dozens of claws, and shrieked with fury when he detached it and held it up under the light. It certainly looked like Kay's kitten. It was dark and faintly striped, and it had a singularly piercing mew. It was when it stuck its chin in the air and shrieked that he saw the draggled bow. He fingered it, and the kitten bit his finger and scratched him with its hind legs, after which it scrambled to his shoulder and sat rubbing and purring against his ear.

He thought he had better get the bow off. He'd better have a look at it. The little beast might strangle itself. Good riddance of course, but still—Kay's kitten.… Who had tied this thing round its neck? Not Mrs Green. It was a strip off somebody's handkerchief. Kay's handkerchief?… But why should Kay tear a strip off her handkerchief and tie it round the kitten's neck?…

The kitten walked up and down on his shoulder and tickled him with its tail while he smoothed out the strip of cambric and held it to the light. It might have K's name on it. What would that mean? Would that mean anything?

There wasn't any name on the cambric. There was only an odd irregular streak or smear, or rather two streaks, one straight, and the other like a V set sideways. That was his first impression. And then, horribly and suddenly, he realized that the smear was blood, and that the straight streak and the V-shaped one if brought together would form a capital K. They were about half an inch apart, but if you brought them together they made a K. If you tried to write in the dark, you might make a letter like that. You couldn't do it with your eyes open and seeing.

A cold horror came over him as he stared at the strip of cambric. Why should Kay tear a strip from her handkerchief and write, or try to write, upon it in the dark? The streaks were blood, and he thought they had been made with a pin or a splinter, because the threads of the thin white stuff were dragged, as if something sharp had been used. In one place they were torn.

The cold horror gained upon him. In what desperate straits had Kay tied that stained cambric round her kitten's neck? And where was she? In the dark. That much was sure, for the two parts of her initial letter would have joined if she had been able to see what she was doing. He no longer thought of going to the garage in Barnabas Row. If a hundred to one chance came off and he were to find the driver who had picked up Kay's box that afternoon, he knew exactly what the man would say and how he would describe his fare—a blue serge coat and a grey hat. Kay's clothes; not Kay herself. And he wouldn't have seen a face, only a hand holding a handkerchief to eyes that might or might not have been weeping. He ought to have guessed it at once when Mrs Green said that Kay had her handkerchief up to her face. Kay's box had gone, and someone in Kay's clothes had gone with it, but Kay herself was somewhere in the dark, desperately hoping that her message might be found and understood.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Flossie Palmer was alone in the kitchen when the front door bell rang. The cook had gone to bed, but as it was still only a quarter to ten, Gladys had not come in, and goodness only knew when Mr and Mrs Gilmore would be home. After what had happened earlier in the evening she would just as soon have had someone about while she went to the door. Cook was as good as dead once her door was shut, and Gladys wouldn't be in a minute before half past ten, so it wasn't any good shilly-shallying. A vague thought of just leaving the bell to ring until it got tired presented itself, but Aunt's upbringing had not been without its effect, and Flossie dismissed this temptation. She wouldn't open the door except on the chain though, not for nothing in the world.

Whoever it was that was ringing was in a mortal hurry, for the bell went on ringing all the time she was coming upstairs and all the time she was crossing the hall. She didn't come very quickly, but she came, and when she got to the door she made sure that the chain was fast, and then she slid the bottom bolt and pulled back the catch.

The door opened a couple of inches. Flossie's heart banged and her knees shook.