Hue and Cry (28 page)

“I'm
sure
we're being chased,” said Mally from the step of the car. Ethan's coat trailed from her shoulders to the ground; she clutched his cap in her bare hand.

“As a matter of fact,” said Ethan, “we had to bolt by one door whilst the local policeman was being let in by the other. And as everybody in Weyford knows the number of my car, I don't think we've a frightfully good chance of getting to London. I want to get to my cousin, Mansell Messenger. He's a solicitor and can advise us.”

“Then take my car, and we'll have yours. Come along, Ambrose, you shall drive. And we'll get off the main road and see how long we can keep going before we're taken up. I've never been arrested! It's the chance of a life-time. What a jest! Bless you, my children!”

She kissed her fingers to Mally and ran laughing to Ethan's car, dragging Ambrose with her.

“She
is
a brick!” said Mally. “Come along, slow-coach!” She jumped in, trailing the coat behind her. “I know where her garage is, so that's all right.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she told me—and because I'm so frightfully clever.”

“
Now then,”
said Ethan warningly.

Mally dimpled at him. With a sudden movement she rubbed her head against his shoulder and said, “Didums?” Then she began to laugh softly. “We're really, really,
really
going to get away. I didn't think we could—but we're going to!”

CHAPTER XXXIV

Mr. Mansell Messenger was a brisk little grig of a man with rosy cheeks, gray hair that rumpled easily, and very lively hazel eyes. He allowed the eyes to dart some searching glances at Miss Mally Lee as she sat in one of his big leather armchairs and told her story.

She told it all through from the beginning, and it did not escape him that a good deal of it was news to his cousin Ethan. He held a pencil in his hand and drummed against his lips with it. Every now and then he made a note of something. And then the eyes were scanning Mally again, from the short, rumpled dark hair to the shabby house shoes in which she had walked so many weary miles. The big muffling coat lay over the arm of the chair.

Mally, in her short skirt and jumper, was extraordinarily small and young. She sat up straight, and she told her story well, but not too well. Mr. Mansell Messenger had a well-founded distrust of the too glib tale. Mally was not glib; she was natural. He liked her voice, and the set of her head, and the way she looked at him. He liked the way in which she spoke of the Peterson household; there was no rancor, no sharp-voiced resentment. She was puzzled, and she had been frightened; and she was plucky—not the sort to be frightened for nothing.

When she had done, he asked her questions:

“Had any one in the house any grudge against you?”

Mally lifted her head a little.

“I didn't like Mr. Craddock.”

“Had you quarrelled?”

“Oh, no. We weren't
friends.
He knew I didn't like him.”

“May I ask how he knew?”

Mally stuck her chin in the air.

“I s-slapped his face.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Messenger—“just so. I'm sure he deserved it. But perhaps you'll just tell us why you found it necessary to slap him?”

“It was my own fault,” said Mally. “I ought to have known he was a slug and that you can't trust slugs. I came home late and he offered me sandwiches, and I said ‘Yes' because I was hungry—dancing always makes me hungry. And then he tried to kiss me, and I slapped him frightfully hard and ran away.”

Ethan, standing propped against the mantelpiece, was understood to mutter something of an imprecatory nature.

“Just so,” said Mr. Mansell. “And when did all this happen?”

“The night before.”

“The brooch was already lost then?”

“Yes, we'd been looking for it all the afternoon.”

“And it was next day after lunch that they searched you and found it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Just so. And when did you first hear about the lost paper?”

“After they searched me, I
think.”

“You're not sure?”

“Not quite sure. It was all so horrid—I didn't seem to be able to think. They sent the maid away, and then they went on, and on, and on about the paper. They said they knew I'd got it; and they said if I'd give it up, they wouldn't say any more about the diamond and they wouldn't send me to prison.”

Mr. Mansell bit the end of his pencil.

“And you say you had no knowledge of any paper?”

“I hadn't then.”

“But you had subsequently?”

“Barbara gave me her drawings. She loved them frightfully, and she said her father and Paul Craddock would burn them. She gave them to me after I climbed out of the window—I told you—and I put them in my pocket and forgot all about them until I was sitting under a holly bush in the wood at Peddling Corner waiting for something to turn up.”

“And then?” said Mr. Mansell Messenger.

“I looked at the drawings to pass the time, and I found a paper with a cross-word puzzle on it. But I wasn't feeling like cross-word puzzles, so I put it back in my pocket and didn't worry about it. Only when I was in that empty house I told you about, I looked at the paper again, and I thought it was
odd——
”

“You thought it was odd. In what way did you think it was odd?”

Mally met his eyes very engagingly.

“Just odd,” she said with a little wave of her hand. “I didn't worry about it much—I was too cold and hungry. But this morning I showed it to Ethan. And first we both thought it wasn't a cross-word puzzle at all; and then we wondered what it was. And then——” She turned towards the hearth. “Ethan, you've got it. Show him.”

Ethan came forward with the paper in his hand. He leaned across his cousin and laid it on the writing-table.

“It's a cipher,” he said. “I tumbled to that at once. But when I started to work it out I found that it was practically all decoded on the other side of the paper. Have a look at it yourself and you'll see.”

Mansell Messenger swung his chair about and positively pounced on the paper.

“Heliogabalus—Constantinople,” he read aloud, and stabbed the blotting-paper with the point of his pencil.

“The key words,” prompted Ethan; and Mansell said, “Just so,” and ran his finger along the next line, where the alphabet stood letter for letter beneath the two key-words.

Ethan went on explaining.

“They've taken the initial letters of the clues to make the cipher. Here it is, decoded.” He pointed lower down. “These two words—‘In England'—I worked out with the key. The rest was already decoded, including the signature. It's Paul Craddock's writing, Mally says.”

“That so?” said Mansell, looking sharply round at Mally. “Don't say you're sure if you're not. Don't say anything unless you're sure.”

“But I
am
sure—I'm
quite
sure.”

“Very well.”

He proceeded to read the decoded message over in an undertone. “Shipments made as arranged. Authorities alert. Suspect Pedro Ruiz. Advise no more shipments at present. Do not communicate with me in England. Varney.” He read it over twice, and stabbed at his blotting-paper all the time. Then there was a silence.

It seemed a long time before he made a quick movement and jerked a question at Mally:

“Any idea what this means?”

“N-no,” said Mally.

“No idea what shipments are referred to?”

She shook her head.

“Ever heard of Pedro Ruiz or Varney?”

“N-no.”

“But you're sure this is Mr. Paul Craddock's handwriting?”

“Yes, I'm quite sure.”

Mansell Messenger went on looking at her for about half a minute. Then he pushed back his chair and got up.

“I'm going to ask you both to go into the next room. Wait a moment whilst I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to telephone to Sir Julian Le Mesurier and ask him if he will see you. I think it possible that he may be interested in this cipher, and I should advise you to tell him everything you know quite unreservedly. If you are not willing to do so, I don't think I can help you very much. But if you will be guided by me——”

“Oh!” said Mally, a little overpowered. “But we
will.
That's why we came here—didn't we, Ethan? We
want
to be guided by you, so please don't say you won't help us.” She looked at him very appealingly indeed.

“I don't say anything of the sort.” Mr. Messenger took her by the arm, patted it, and propelled her gently towards the outer room. “Run along and talk to Ethan.”

The outer room was empty. As soon as Mansell had gone back into his office, Ethan picked Mally up and hugged her.

“You're not to be frightened,” he whispered in her ear.

“I'm n-not.”

“You are. And I won't have it. Do you hear? I simply won't have it. You're all shaking and cold like a little frozen bird. You're not to do it.”

“S'sh!” said Mally. “S'sh! He's left the door ajar. I want to listen.”

They stood quite still, and heard Mansell's voice a little raised.

“That you, Piggy? Yes, Mansell speaking. Hallo! Are you there? Yes, that's better now. Can you hear me all right? It's rather important. Look here, you remember our conversation last night after dinner.… Yes, the very confidential part of it.… She's here now.… Yes, that's what I said—
Here
—H for horse, E for Edward, R for ructions and E for emergency … A warrant? Yes, I know—so she says. I'd like you to see her. And I've a document that I think will interest you—Hallo, the door's open! Wait a minute while I shut it.”

The door shut with a click this time, and Mally fairly flung herself into Ethan's arms.

“Ethan—don't let them take me to prison! I c-couldn't bear it! I
am
frightened—I'm dreadfully, dreadfully frightened. Oh, I
am
!”

Ethan held her very tight indeed. She was shaking from head to foot, clinging to him with all her might and sobbing as a child will sob when it has cried all its tears away.

Presently Mally stopped shaking. Ethan was a very comfortable person—very large, and solid, and unshakeable. In a most irrational manner Mally began to feel a firm conviction that she would not be sent to prison. Ethan wouldn't let her.

Having arrived at this comforting conclusion, she rubbed her cheek against Ethan's arm and said in a little quick, eager voice, “I w-want to tell you about Roger.”

From the standpoint of the reasonable sex, this was certainly the last remark that any one would have expected her to make. Not only was Ethan taken aback, but he also experienced an extreme disinclination to be told anything at all about Roger Mooring. The fellow was a swab who had let Mally down. He was back history. And, quite frankly, he gave Ethan the pip.

“I don't want to hear about him,” he said. “Why should I?”

As he spoke, the outer door was pushed open. Ethan took a step back towards the window, Mally whisked about, fixing an earnest gaze upon an engraving of Queen Victoria, and there came in at the door a very tall, portly lady with a highly colored face and rather a wild black hat.

“I don't care if he's engaged or not—I've got to see him.” The lady looked back over her shoulder and addressed a flurried clerk after the manner of a politician replying to a heckler. At the first sound of her ringing voice, Ethan murmured:

“Oh, my hat!”

The door shut. The portly lady turned, and, exclaiming, “My dear boy!” advanced and kissed Ethan in a firm and businesslike manner.

“Er—Aunt Serena,” said Ethan. “Er—may I introduce Miss Lee?”

Mally stopped looking at Queen Victoria and lifted limpid eyes to Miss Serena's hat. Her lashes were still a little wet.

“Lee?” said Miss Serena. “Did you say Lee, Ethan?”

She took Mally's hand in a very hard, hot clasp.

“Are you related to Ernestine Wotherspoon Lee?”

“Who is she?” said Mally.

“You surprise me! I thought that every woman in the country knew the name and could feel thankful for the labors of Ernestine Wotherspoon Lee.”

“What did she do?”

“What did she
not
do? Ernestine by name, and earnest by nature. What did not her single-minded efforts accomplish for the Cause?”

Mally was just going to say, “What cause?” when Ethan saved her.

“Aunt Serena, Mally and I are engaged.”

Miss Serena Messenger was so much taken aback that she dropped Mally's hand and became for the moment a mere aunt.

“My dear boy, not really? How—how very unexpected!” She began to recover. “I—I——No, my dear boy, it would be against my principles to congratulate either of you. Miss Lee and I must have a little talk. I disapprove of marriage. I consider it a barbarous and degrading form of slavery, as you know. And I hope that perhaps I may induce Miss Lee to see things as I do, in the dawn-light of the new era which ushers in Woman as supreme. As your gifted relative Ernestine Wotherspoon Lee remarked last week in her address on ‘Woman Dominant'——”

The door of the inner room flew open, and Mr. Mansell Messenger appeared upon the threshold. If his first impulse was to shut the door and run away, he concealed it heroically.

“Ah! Serena!” he said; and then as he took her hand, “But I'm busy—terribly busy. Can't see you without an appointment, you know.”

“Now, Mansell! What's the good of talking like that? I'm here, and you've got to see me.”

“But I can't. No, Serena, I really can't.”

Miss Serena took him by the arm and began to walk resolutely towards the door.

“I shan't keep you for ten minutes,” she said in her loud ringing voice. “I just want to consult you on a point that has arisen in connection with our Z.K.W. work.”