Hue and Cry (18 page)

Paul Craddock began to speak in Portuguese. Post-office employees do not as a rule know Portuguese, and he found it a useful medium for private conversations with his chief.

“She is here.”

“Where?” Sir George was sharply incredulous.

“Here in this house. I've just seen her.”

“Does she know you've seen her?”

“No, I should say not. She came round the corner in a dark passage, and I walked straight on.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We daren't let her go again; and we can't touch her without a warrant. I think you ought to apply for one.”

“Your reasons?”

“I've been thinking. I'm sure we were wrong in suspecting that she had any purpose—I mean I feel sure she wasn't planted in the house, as we thought at first.”

“Go on.”

“If she'd known what she was taking, or if she'd been sent to take it, she'd never have left London. She'd have gone straight to a certain quarter. I think it's safe enough to have her arrested. If she's got any papers on her, you claim them—they're your private affair. If she hasn't any papers, she does time for taking the diamond and is sufficiently discredited to be negligible in future. If she knows anything, she doesn't know where to take her information. But it's my belief that she doesn't know anything.”

There was a moment's silence, and then Sir George said, “Yes, I think you're right. I feel that way myself. I'll get the warrant and have some one sent down as soon as possible. I don't know if they'll do anything to-night.”

“All right.”

Mr. Craddock rang off and went to dress.

“Brown,” said Miss Candida Long, “I've had an absolutely splendid brain-wave.”

“Oh!” said Mally. “Don't twist like that! I very nearly burned you.” She was waving Candida's thick, fair hair.

“All right—no harm done. Listen, my good girl, and for Heaven's sake don't singe me.”

“I won't if you keep still.”

“You're not listening. Didn't you say you'd left some things at Curston?”

“Yes, I did.”

Mally began to wish she had held her tongue; even a very short acquaintance with Candida made her view with suspicion anything that she described as a brain-wave.

“Well, listen.
Are
you listening? It's an idea—it really is. I'll take you over with me, and you shall fetch your things. I was rather thinking of taking you anyhow, because I do simply hate driving alone.”

“But you wouldn't be alone. There's the rest of the house-party and—Mr. Craddock.”

“Brown, you're not being intelligent. I want to be an absolutely deadly secret. That's why I told you not to open the box with my domino. I want to be quite, quite,
quite
sure that nobody knows me until I unmask—and especially I don't want Paul Craddock to know. I shall just take you along, and you can get your things. I'm going to slip away from here as soon as dinner's over. So you'll be all ready—won't you? And
now
we'll open that box. Prepare to have your breath taken away.”

Mally was certainly a little taken aback. The dress which Miss Long proposed to wear under her domino was calculated to cause a sensation at Curston. Mally pictured Lady Mooring's face, and very nearly burst into disrespectful laughter.

“It's a silver-fish,” said Candida, picking up the glittering tights. “Isn't the tail dinky? It was Paul's idea. We agreed that I hadn't quite enough money to be a goldfish—it would run to five figures, and I've only four. Oh, I say! It
is
rather nice—isn't it?”

Silver shoes; silver stockings; silver tights with the fish scales picked out in glittering diamond points; and the little three-cornered diamond tail, which Candida had described as dinky—it was all as revealing as a bathing-dress, if rather more becoming.

Candida's silver-flaxen hair stood out like a halo. She rose on the tips of her silver shoes and twirled in front of the glass.

“Oh, I do hate to take it off! But I can't go down to dinner in it. I'd love to see Elizabeth's face if I did. She told me once quite seriously that it took her years to get used to ankles. ‘And now, my dear,' she said, ‘nobody minds what they show.' I say, I do look nice—don't I? Here, give me that black thing to go down to dinner in—and hide this with my domino—and don't breathe a word to a soul, or I'll kill you and dump the corpse in the loneliest wood between here and Curston.”

Downstairs Miss Long was greeted with cries of “Not dressed?”; “I say, Candida, you're not going like that?”; and “My dear, what about your fancy dress? Hasn't it come?”

Candida kissed her fingers to them all.

“It's come—it's upstairs. No, Elizabeth darling, I shan't make any one late, because I'm going to drive myself
by
myself, and I'm absolutely the deadliest secret that ever was, and nobody's going to see me till I take off my domino at supper. No, no one's going to know my domino either. I've just told my maid I'll kill her if she tells. You wouldn't like a murder in the house, would you, Elizabeth?”

“My dear!” Mrs. Holmes was rather shocked. She was a large lady, squarely built to take plain tweeds, and looking frankly out of her element in a frightful magenta satin, which she had bought because her dressmaker urged her to. She had bright hair of a shade between red and gold, and a skin like brick-dust. She said “My dear!” and Candida laughed.

“Yes, darling, I
said
you wouldn't like it. Who do I go in with? Ambrose? All right——Come along, old dear.”

She linked arms with a handsome, dark-eyed boy and whispered to him as they went through the hall:

“I'm not telling every one, but I don't mind giving you the tip. Look out for a violet domino—p'raps she'll give you three and five. Mind, I don't promise.”

She had Paul Craddock on her left at dinner, and as soon as the fish came round, she told Ambrose to play with Janet Elliot on his other side, and turned to Paul.

“Well,” she said. “I don't suppose I've any dances left for you.”

“How are you going to be an absolutely dead secret if you book dances ahead?”

“Perhaps I'm not an absolutely dead secret to every one.”

“Must you be one to me? After all, I gave you the idea for your dress, and I haven't told a soul, so I deserve something.”

“We don't always get what we deserve. Think of all the lovely things I should have if we did.”

He looked at her with an expression which she could not interpret.

“Have you really anything left to wish for?”

“My
dear
Paul! What a question! Why, only yesterday I'd the most fiendish bit of luck. You know I'm off to Florence, to the Hallidays, to-morrow. And yesterday, after you rang up, if that miserable, abominable
fiend
of a Deane didn't go off at a moment's notice, just because her sister had had twins—twins!”

“Poor Candida! So you're maidless?”

She dropped her voice.

“No, I'm
not
—that's the extraordinary thing. I suppose I
am
rather lucky after all. I don't mind telling you, but for goodness gracious mercy's sake don't let on about it here. It's the sort of thing Elizabeth would have a fit over.”

“What have you done?” said Paul, smiling at her. “Go on—confess! I won't give you away. What have you done?”

Candida opened her pale eyes in a look of injured innocence.

“I?
Nothing.
She was absolutely dropped in my path.”

“She?” His tone sharpened just a little.

Candida bent nearer him, nodding.

“Ssh! Not a word! Elizabeth would have ten thousand fits.”

She sat up and helped herself to an entrée. Paul let it pass him, and she shook her head reproachfully.

“It's frightfully good. You ought to have some. I don't know what it is—it's a mystery like me!”

“Or your maid. How did you say you got her?”

Candida hesitated.

“Swear
you won't tell—
absolutely
? All right. I picked her up on the road, just out of Peddling Corner.”

“You
didn't.”

“I
did.
And she's pounds better at doing hair than Deane ever was. So I really am lucky.”

Paul appeared to feel no further interest in the picked-up maid. He gazed tenderly at Candida and said in a low voice:

“And am I to be lucky, too? Are you going to promise me some dances?”

“How can I? I'm a
secret.”

“Must you be a secret from me?”

She dropped her eyelashes.

“Do you want to know frightfully?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well—then—you won't tell any one?
Swear
?”

Mr. Paul Craddock swore.

Candida looked over her shoulder. Ambrose was telling Janet Elliot in full detail why he had taken nine to the fourteenth hole that morning. It was quite safe. She turned back to Paul and whispered.

“What did you say your favorite color was?”

Paul was not sure that he had a favorite color, but he knew, or thought he knew, where Miss Long's own preference lay.

He said, “Pale blue,” and looked suitably eager and devoted.

“How
clever
of you!”

“Is it pale blue?”

She laughed.

“A pale-blue domino
might
be there and give you seven and ten.”

Candida came upstairs in a state of reprehensible mirth.

“Lightning quick, Brown! I want to get away before the others. It is going to be fun. You haven't said a word to a soul, have you? No, there's no fastening—it's elastic. Pull! Pull like the dickens! Yes, that's got it. Tophole, isn't it? My good Brown, I've told Ambrose Medhurst that my domino is violet in
strict
confidence. And I've told Paul that it's pale blue—absolutely exclusive information. And Willie Elliot thinks it's white and gold. And Colonel Moulton caught me in the hall, and I just breathed in his ear that I was going to be a she devil in scarlet. Now, let's have the real article!”

Mally held up a black and silver domino. It was more silver than black really.

Candida pulled the hood close down over her hair and put on the mask with its deep lace fall.

“Now my fur coat to hide the domino—and that scarlet chiffon to put over my head! Are you ready? Come along then!”

Just at the head of the stairs they met Mr. Craddock standing on guard. Mally had on her dark-blue coat, and she had turned down the brim of her black felt hat, the better to hide her face. She went by, following Candida, and felt Paul Craddock's eyes.

CHAPTER XXII

The car slid through the dark lanes. Mally loved driving at night; there was something magical about the enclosing dark and the white beam that cut through it and made a road for them. To-night there was a touch of strangeness on everything. It had snowed a little, and tree, bush and hedgerow were like silver ghosts watching the black lanes.

Candida Long drove very well. She talked nearly all the time. But Mally had only a surface attention to give her. She was finding the situation quite extraordinarily exciting; with the excitement there was a touch of terror, a touch of amusement. The ball at Curston had been planned in her honor, it was her ball; and she was going to it in the double character of a fugitive from justice and Candida Long's maid.

Upstairs in the box-room at Curston was the trunk that she had left behind, her old school-box; and in the box was the domino that she had made to wear to-night. Roger had quarrelled with her because she would not tell him what the domino was like. Like Candida, she had meant it to be an absolutely dead secret, and she had bought the stuff in London one day when Roger had driven her up, and had sewed at it in her own room with the door locked.

It was at this point that the great idea came to her. It came just as Candida said in a commiserating tone:

“It'll be most awfully dull for you all those hours. But I suppose you know some of the people in the house, and they'll look after you—the housekeeper or some one.”

“Oh, I shan't be dull.” Mally suppressed a funny little laugh. “I—I shall be perfectly all right.”

“Well, mind you have some supper,” said Miss Long. “And meet me in the cloak-room when people begin to go. I say, we got away rather neatly—didn't we? I don't see how any one can have the least idea of who I am. I mean to have simply the most priceless time.”

Mally said, “'M,” which was all that was required of her. It was her ball, and she was going to it as Candida Long's maid. She could just see the stiff pride that had made the Moorings go on with it in the face of the broken engagement. She wondered whether every one knew. It seemed about a thousand years since she had flung her ring at Roger and cut his cheek, but really and truly it was only forty-eight hours ago.

Something inside Mally's mind said “Nonsense!” with such insistent loudness that she had to count up on her fingers to convince herself. It was between eight and nine o'clock in the evening that she had banged the door on Roger and her engagement. Then there had been a night divided between a garage, a car, and a hay-loft—a night that had felt about three weeks long; and a second night on a hard little bed in an attic room at Menden, where she had slept without moving. It was now just a quarter past nine, so that it was really only forty-eight hours and three-quarters of an hour since she had smashed Lady Catherine Cray's collection and run away from Roger, who deserved everything, every single thing she had done, and
more.
Of course he might have sat down straight away to write one of those devastatingly discreet announcements which one sees in the papers:

“The marriage arranged between Mr. Dash and Miss Asterisk will not take place.”