So Disdained (20 page)

I nodded slowly. I had no arguments to meet this chap's sincerity.

"You want to be careful you don't get caught out there if there
is
a break," was all I said. "Get clear in time."

"Ah," he said rudely, "ye're talking nonsense, and ye know it. But it's always the same with you rich folk." He paused. "Ye won't see what's going on under yer own eyes."

With that he turned on his heel and walked off. John gave me an anxious, uncomfortable look; I grinned back at him, and
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he hurried off after his brother. I fancy Stephen was a bit of a trial to John at times. Especially in the Red Bear.

I left soon after that, and walked back to my house. Lenden was still sitting there in that chair before the fire, but the fire was practically out and the room was filled with the smoke from his cigarettes. I stirred him up about the fire with a few winged words, and he got down on his knees to make it up, a little apologetically. He said that he had forgotten all about it.

I threw off my overcoat and went and sat down at the piano. "What'll we have?" I inquired. "Spot o' sugar?" He stared at me uncomprehendingly. "No," I said absently. "All right. Spot o' Chopin, then."

And I played him a couple of mazurkas. And when I had come to an end of that I glanced at him, and he was sitting there exactly as he had been when I first came in, and I thought he was asleep. And I swung round on the stool, and I said:

"You can have the Morris if you want her to-morrow. I shan't be using her myself."

He stirred in his chair. "Thanks," he said quietly. "I was going by train. I've been looking up the trains in your time-table, but it means going by Portsmouth and Southampton to get there. You're quite sure you won't be using the car?"

I shook my head. "I'm going to London again. I've got some insurance business to get through up there, but I got side-tracked on to this thing of yours this afternoon."

"Sorry."

He hesitated. "I was going to pinch the car as a matter of fact, and run over there this evening," he said. "And then—I thought it'd be better not to go over there so late . . . and it'd be nicer if I went over there after breakfast."

He paused, and then he said: "What's the shop like? She was always wanting to have a shop like that."

"It's not a bad place," I said. "There's two of them there, that I saw. She's got a red-haired young woman in to help her run it." And then I started in and told him everything that I had done or said, so far as I could recall. He heard me to the end in silence and then, with only the briefest excuse, he got
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up to go to bed. He made some remark to the effect that he was tired, I remember, and I remember that he paused in the doorway for a moment.

"This puts all the Russian business in the cart again," he muttered. "I don't know what the hell's going to happen about that."

Then he was gone. I played a bit of my own stuff, sat there idly for a quarter of an hour, kicked the fire to the back of the grate, and followed him to bed.

An early breakfast suited us both next morning; I was aiming to catch the 8.32 myself. Before I left I went out with Lenden to the stable to make sure he'd got the hang of the Morris; he started her up and got in.

He was wearing my ulster and my driving gloves. He nodded to me from the car. "See you this evening, then," he said, and with that he swung her round and out of the yard gate on to the western road to Petersfield, and he put his gloved hand up in salutation as the car shot up the road. And so he drove away out of my life and on to meet his wife and all the promise that she held for him. I only saw him once after that.

I had meant to go to Town. But as I turned back from the stable to my house, they came to fetch me to the telephone in the mansion. A cowhouse in one of our farms out by Leventer was blazing merrily, and it was up to me to go and see that they did something about it.

It was the usual sort of thing. A chimney in the farm-house first; they hadn't worried about it—in fact, they were rather pleased than otherwise when it happened. It saves sweeping the chimney if you have a little fire in it to burn away the soot. That went on while they were having breakfast and thinking no evil, till a lump of red-hot soot fell on a little stack of straw, and then half the outbuildings went up. We got it in hand by eleven o'clock, and then I went on with the farmer into Pithurst to see the insurance agent about the claim. By the time I got back to Under it was three o'clock.

I might very well have given up the idea of going to Town
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that day. But when I got back to the office my clerk showed me a telephone message from Lenden that had arrived about an hour before. He wasn't coming back that night unless I wanted the car, in which case I was to ring up a number in Winchester. Otherwise he'd be over first thing in the morning.

I told the clerk to ring up and tell him he could have the car for as long as he wanted it. He could have had a second honeymoon in it for all I cared. There was the little Talbot belonging to the mansion which nobody ever used except myself when the Morris was in dock. And, apart from that, there was the Siddeley.

There didn't seem to be much point in stopping in Under, and so I went up to London that afternoon, and put up at my club. That gave me the whole of the next morning clear for my business, and I reckoned to catch an afternoon train down again. If I didn't get away from Under while I had a chance, I thought, there'd be another fire, or a cat'd kitten, or something, and I'd have to stop and see to that.

I had a certain amount of luck next morning, and went on to Curzon Street for lunch to report progress to Arner. He told me that things in connection with Russia were still very bad. He didn't think that the evidence in the machine that had been shot down had been worth very much. There was little direct evidence to connect it with the Soviet. He was of the opinion that the break would not come at once, but on the next opportunity. Things were getting very difficult, especially in regard to Arcos, where all sorts of fishy work was going on. He thought that Arcos would be able to provide all the material that was necessary to make a breach with Russia, if that were considered necessary.

I gathered from the way in which he spoke that the espionage had sunk rather into the background. I wasn't sorry about that. It gave far more chance for Lenden.

I left Curzon Street at about half-past two, and took a taxi for Waterloo. There was a train down at three-fifteen; I went to the time-tables on the platform to verify that it stopped at Petersfield. There's always a bit of a crowd about that board,
[Pg 140]
and while I was looking at the list I felt somebody press in beside me. And somebody said:

"There's a luncheon-car as far as Exeter. And after that it seems to stop everywhere between Exeter and Instow."

And a girl's voice said: "Oh Lor. Can't you find one that doesn't?"

I wasn't paying much attention, because one never does in a crowd like that. But as I stood there following the figures in the list it seemed to me that I had heard the first voice before, quite recently, and I glanced back over my shoulder.

It was Mackenzie, the young pilot with the fair, sandy hair, who had flown the Nightjar from Gosport. He was dressed in mufti and he had a girl with him even younger than he was himself. He was pressed close up against me, and without reflecting I nudged him with my elbow.

He turned to me, and I was pleased to see him. "Afternoon, Mr. Mackenzie," I said amicably. "I think we've met before." I paused. "My name is Moran."

The crowd came surging round us, jamming us more closely together. His face was chalk-white, but whether it had been as white as that before I can't say. He forced his way backwards out of the press, and I followed him.

"Are you from Under Hall?" he asked, and there was something in his tone that shook me rather.

"I'm the agent there," I said quietly.

He seemed about to say something impetuous, but stopped. I became aware of the girl, who had pressed close up against his side and was holding his hand, regarding me anxiously. "Look here," he said, with evident restraint. "What's the matter? What the hell do you want with me?"

I eyed him steadily for a moment. I think he must have been on the very edge of a breakdown that day. Dead-white face, blue eyes, and sandy hair. That sort takes things very hard.

"Nothing at all," I said. "It's pure chance that you got shoved against me there."

"Pure chance . . ." he repeated scornfully. He dropped his eyes to the girl, and smiled at her. "I told you it was no damn
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good going away. There's no place where one can get shut of it."

The girl looked up into his face, and I saw her squeeze his hand. "It's quite all right," she breathed. "This is just an accident." They stood there for an instant very close together, in common defiance of the enemy—myself.

"God damn you!" he burst out suddenly, and shook her off. "Get along back to Under, where you belong!" And then to the girl: "Come on," he said. "Let's get along out of this."

He swung round, and went off up the platform. The girl cried—"Alan!"—after him, but he never turned. She hesitated for a moment, and decided she must say something to me.

"I'm so frightfully sorry," she said. "He—he's not quite himself."

I nodded. "I know. That's perfectly all right."

She was going off after him, but she stopped dead at that and came back to me. "What do you mean by that? How much do you know about it?"

I hesitated in my turn, and then: "I know he shot down a machine the other night, under orders," I replied.

He was fifty yards away by that time, walking with his head down among the crowd. He stopped for a moment, and looked back. The girl stared at me most urgently. "Tell me, was it fair?" I didn't understand what she meant. "Oh, was it a fair fight? He's so frightfully upset because he says it—it wasn't. He says all the time that it was . . . just murder."

In the bustle of the crowd it seemed to me that there came a little pause at that, as though all the world were waiting for my answer. She had courage, that girl. "I'm afraid the other fellow wasn't armed," I said. "He hadn't got a gun. In that way it was—very easy for him."

She stared at me wide-eyed for a minute. "I see," she said. "Thanks for telling me." And then she turned and ran off up the platform after him, and I stood there watching till I saw her take his arm, and they went away together.

I turned away depressed, and went and found a corner seat
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in the train. And then, as I opened my evening paper at the middle page, I got a shock. There was half a column of it, and it began:

BUTLER SHOT

OUTRAGE IN A SUSSEX MANSION

There were several paragraphs more of it, but no more news. They gave a little bit about Sanders, another little bit about myself, and a condensed biography of Lord Arner. I had plenty of time to think about it while the train meandered down to Petersfield, and I cannot say that I found my reflections very pleasant.

There was only one possible explanation of it, that I could see. There was only one possible thing in my rooms worth burgling the house for—only one thing that could possibly involve the use of firearms. It was only then that it came home to me what a ruddy fool I'd been about those plates. I'd left them sculling about where anyone could see them, thinking that they were harmless now that I'd exposed them. The upshot of it was that some Russian organisation had got wind of the situation, and paid me a visit to collect their property. I was dead certain that that was what had happened. Sanders
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had blundered in upon them by chance, attempted to defend my property . . . and they'd let fly at him.

I cursed myself most bitterly for all sorts of a ruddy fool not to have foreseen something of this sort. I might have known that to hang on to that box of plates was simply asking for it.

I got down to Petersfield at about five o'clock, and Kitter was on the platform there to meet me. I swung out of the carriage and gave him my case. "How's Sanders?" I asked.

"Doin' fine, sir. You've heard about it then?"

I nodded. "Is he much hurt?"

"They shot him through the shoulder, sir." He touched his shoulder to show me exactly where the bullet had gone in. "It went in here and came out at the back, sir. Doctor Armitage said it was providential it wasn't higher up, sir, or it'd have bust his shoulder-blade. It do seem a terrible thing to happen, and nine o'clock o' the morning, in England."

"Do you know how it happened?"

He shook his head. "Not rightly. The safe was all shut up when we went in. I don't know as they had time to pinch anything. I think Mr. Sanders surprised them in your room, like. And then they shot at him, and Mrs. Oliver was out in the yard near the door and she heard the shot, and she heard Mr. Sanders cry out. And she called to me and I got Watson because he was just in the garden there, and he brought a fork with him, and we went into your house and the window was open and Mr. Sanders on the floor, sir. And then we telephoned for the doctor, but I don't know what we'd have done but for the lady. She put him to rights before the doctor came, an' got him up to bed, an' that. And he's going on quite all right, sir."